Kira Pratt

That murder is a microcosm of what New York City has become. A native who can’t get the help they need due to cut social services is yelling that JAIL is better than his NYC. And a gentrifier who helped displace him murders him because he doesnt belong in HIS NYC. Heartbreaking.

The criminalization of poverty and mental illness—which is getting worse under Eric Adams’s leadership—empowers racist violent bystanders to be the cops they wish to see in the world. Where normal people see someone struggling or expressing frustration, they see a threat.

The man who killed Jordan Neely wasn’t protecting himself. He was empowered by a cultural movement that has normalized regular citizens deputizing themselves as judges and executioners in the name of white supremacy. Infamously this also happened in another period of US history

You can now read my recently published Comment on UCLA Law Review's website! Huge thanks, again, to all my mentors who guided me through writing this Comment, and to the hardworking UCLA Law Review editors who worked on perfecting it! uclalawreview.org/tribal-soverei…

It's just ever dismaying to see how our memory around hard-earned victories of social and political movements of the past can so easily be forgotten, leading us to rehash the efforts of those before us. So it goes

I'm reminded both of how enduring, but also how amnesiac collective memory can be, when I look at that gathering and then turn, for example, to some discourse on Twitter yesterday, in which people are trying to advocate for windowless buildings in NYC again.

This morning, across the street from the building where I was teaching, a crowd gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. People had posts, uplifting hangers adorned with clothes, that represented the women and children that died in the fire

i understand people wanting to hold onto their childhoods but i wish there were more critical thinking re: the harms of nostalgia, like how nostalgia is a way that people shield themselves/their beloved franchises from substantive critique

@isaacxiv_ @Denverite Congratulations Isaac! That's amazing news!

@AdrianCJax I've been a quiet follower for a while. I lost my dad this year, so I understand how hard it is to deal with that, alone, right now. I'm so sorry for everything else that's adding to it. I'm sending you love and support and hoping things get better for you soon.

But! When it came down to it & I had to figure out how to produce results on my own, I muddled through my trial by fire and got... well, something! A good start, at least, for future work. R can throw me errors I don't understand all day, but it can't break my stubborn resolve

Text Analysis final is done! I started this class in the spring, and then everything fell apart (if you know, you know). So it is a huge relief to finally finish this class. And I feel genuinely proud of myself! Text Analysis--and especially R--really humbled me!

Finished one of my finals, so now I'm reflecting. Intro to Public History was easily my favorite course this semester. It was so nice to finally be surrounded by people who are also interested in history and collective memory. Plus, it gave me a lot to reflect on and process.

For any of you that thought the academy was some sacrosanct space to idle about & contemplate the meaning of life, pls wake the fuck up. It is a workplace with bosses and workers. This flex is about power and their efforts to break the will of the workers on campus.

Kanye—a man we know to be a megalomaniac, unmedicated, a contrarian, and shades of bigoted—is not necessarily “more antisemitic” than any of these awful right wingers. But they’re able to sit “look uncomfortable” & let their black mouthpiece say whatever horrible thing he wants.

@marquisele I'm on insta @ kira.marie!

R makes me feel sooo dumb. I think that I'm catching on and getting all slick and then it throws me an error seemingly just to humble me. Truly an antagonistic relationship. 😭

@marquisele Lucifer! What a charmer 😌 Congratulations -- How exciting!!

In other Halloween hot-takes 🎃, I do unironically consider "Thriller" to be one of the greatest songs of all time. And I do believe the song, itself, is an inevitability in terms of the multiverse.