As you all know, last year, we launched our newsletter, The Take on X. We spotlighted 11 writers who educated us on any given topic.

This year, we have revamped our format, and we are looking for writers to supply one newsletter on any given topic, which will go out on the first Thursday of the month. On the last Thursday of the month, we will run a meeting on Twitter Spaces to discuss the topic.

This is still the plan; however, it has come to my attention that there was a typo in my email the original posts. I 100% blame Chrome, but in that vein, I have decided to push the deadline by a couple of days in case other people have struggled to reach me.

So, we will be accepting applicants until 1 February at noon ET! Use those extra 48 hours wisely!

Format breakdown

• First Thursday of the month: Newsletter gets published
• Last Thursday of the month: Twitter Spaces discussion with friends and us to explore the discussion more (one of our team and I will host the chat, so don’t worry about doing work for this)

Pitch format

Subject line: The Take on X application

• Writing samples and a brief introduction
• 3–4 sentences on the topic of your choice. We will be looking to build on the content from last year, so please have a look at the conversations that have already been done
• A couple of names of folks you’d like us to bring into the Twitter Spaces chat
• Your preferred month of being featured (we can’t promise anything, but I will try to keep your request in mind)

Email me: zuva@aninjusticemag.com

zuva [at] an injustice mag [dot] com

To look at the content we accept, check out last year’s contributions! But please don’t feel pressured to explore these topics. Just use them as guides, but feel free to go wild.

Let us know if you have any questions!

The Take on X Vol. 2 Deadline Has Been Pushed was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are looking for 2022 contributors

Last year, we launched our newsletter The Take on X. We spotlighted 11 writers who educated us on any given topic. We explored millennial Africa, climate justice, antisemitism, Black mental health, queer representation on TV and many more! Their stories can be found on our homepage under The Take on X for all those wishing to read their contributions.

Vol. 2 will be running a little bit differently. We will be relaunching the newsletter; however, keeping in mind capacity, we will be scaling things back considerably.

For 2022, we will be looking for writers to supply one newsletter on any given topic, which will go out on the first Thursday of the month. Like last year, you have free rein to select your topic and content.

However, on the last Thursday of the month, we will run a meeting on Twitter Spaces to discuss the topic. We will also get in guest speakers to make the discussion as nuanced as possible.

Format breakdown:

• First Thursday of the month: Newsletter gets published
• Last Thursday of the month: Twitter Spaces discussion with friends and us to explore the discussion more (one of our team and I will host the chat, so don’t worry about doing work for this)

We will begin this new program from February, with the first newsletter instalment hosted by me. I will be doing ADHD in the Black community (E.g. 3rd February, my newsletter will be released, and on 24th February, we will host a spaces chat).

This year’s iteration of the newsletter was wonderful, and I appreciate everyone who joined in with us. However, this year I am trying to keep in mind the capacity of our writers and ourselves.

We will be accepting applicants from now until 30th January at noon ET! All I need from you is a pitch on your takeover topic.

Email me: zuva@aninjusticemag.com

zuva [at] an injustice mag [dot] com

Pitch format

Subject line: The Take on X application

• Writing samples and a brief introduction
• 3–4 sentences on the topic of your choice. We will be looking to build on the content from last year, so please have a look at the conversations that have already been done
• A couple of names of folks you’d like us to bring into the Twitter Spaces chat
• Your preferred month of being featured (we can’t promise anything, but I will try to keep your request in mind)

To look at the content we accept, check out last year’s contributions! Let us know if you have any questions!

Calling All Our Writers! Vol. 2 was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hello again!

As mentioned yesterday, this newsletter instalment is the second in a series of two. I thought it best to split up our roundup so give you all a breather before after the information dumb.

Just to quickly recap, we are now looking for 11 writers to takeover our next newsletter instalment. We will be accepting applicants from now until 30th January at noon ET! All I need from you is a pitch on your takeover topic. Click here for the details.

I decided to name these newsletters as I feel we are all tentatively waiting to finally kick-off 2020 — two years later. In many ways, the publication has grown, died and been reborn over the past few years. As we get older, I want to ensure we continue to adapt and change (with the times) for the better.

Today’s piece will be a roundup of our highlights and an opportunity to give you all thanks. But on a personal note, I appreciate all of you who continue to believe in our mission. I would like to thank all of our writers for supplying excellent content and our readers for supporting them. I may be biased, but this is an amazing community we have built; I’m excited to see where we head next.

Thank you to our Patrons and supporters

I would like to take a moment to thank our Patrons for supporting us. With the money we have received from you and other donors we have:

• Paid for premium software to help make our job a little easier, such as Grammarly, Canva, Textblaze, Linktree, and Google.
• Secured funds to trademark the publication and registered as a company! The publication is registered in the UK, and it means we will be looking for more ways to monetise and support our contributors. Don’t worry; we aren’t leaving Medium anytime soon — being registered just allows us to broaden our scope and mission.

Publication next steps

As mentioned above, the next year will be spent on trying to continue the strides we have made. Seeders recently lit a fire under my ass, so I am hoping to hit even new heights in 2022.

We are already off to a great start. We began the year with just over 10k followers and we closed it with 19K. We also hit 2.5m minutes read and over 1.3m views. I only share this, so our writers remember that there are people all over the world reading your work — your stories matter.

Paying respects

I would also like to take a moment to pay respects to Yolisa Qunta, our team member who tragically passed away this year. I send the same thoughts and prayers to those of you who have also lost people this year. This year has been a tough one but I wish you all the very best this holiday season in particular.

Yearly recap

As is customary, we will be closing this newsletter with a small showcase of some of the pieces we have published. Get ready to add some solid pieces to those lists!

1. The Unraveling of a Dream by daniel james belnavis (most read piece)

I was an original cast member in the 1st National Tour of Hamilton: An American Musical (aka the Angelica Company).

I have never been certain that I would share my experience, my real experience, with the show publicly. I’ve gone back and forth about it a thousand times. It has taken me the better part of a year to write this, not only because of the pain and re-traumatization it brings, or because of the care and intention with which I am trying to handle this material, but because of the fear and anxiety I feel about dissenting from something that is such a major part of the zeitgeist. But I refuse to let fear and anxiety inhibit me from using my voice or taking up space. Now, more than ever, it is of the utmost importance for Black people to tell our stories, especially as they relate to the trauma we have incurred through the seemingly endless manifestations of systemic and institutionalized racism and oppression that have long upheld our world.

2. Dear American Progressives: Your Jewish Friends Are Terrified by Your Silence by Boaz Munro (3rd most read and featured by Medium in their end of year list)

Dear American Progressives,

I need to be honest, because I’m more frightened than I’ve ever been in my life. My heart has been pounding for over a week and I keep forgetting to eat.

It’s not just me. Most American Jews I know are feeling fearful, regardless of their politics. I’m hearing from Jewish friends I haven’t heard from in decades — some heartbroken, some frantic.

We need to talk about what just happened in America.

3. Stop Calling for a Civil War if You Don’t Want to Fight in One by Gentleman Bandit

I do not want a Civil War in the United States. Some folks would say we’re already in one, but nothing that’s happening now is the kind of Civil War that I’m referring to. I mean an open armed conflict between major armed factions over the territory of the USA.

Some 90-year-old professor on Twitter told me I’m an idiot for thinking this, because these days war isn’t even about shooting and dropping bombs — these days, it’s all about Information Warfare! I’m sure that’s news to the thousands of people being shot and blown up all over the world every single day in old-fashioned wars. Information War seems to refer to “hacking” activities at the most extreme, and at the other end of the spectrum literally just trying to convince other people of your opinion. When I say “Civil War,” I mean masses of people picking up guns and bombs and fighting each other.

4. Can You Truly Be Christian Without Being Some Kind of Socialist? by Joel Nihlean

Today, most people associate Christianity with an extremely conservative brand of politics, with hypocrisy, and with a creeping authoritarianism. They’re not wrong on the whole. Granted, Christianity — like so many other religions and philosophies throughout the centuries — has given people a lot of pretty weird ideas.

But this conservative, evangelical brand of faith has had a corrosive effect. It has no doubt played a role in people leaving organized religion in droves. This conservative brand has not always been the norm — not for Christianity everywhere in the world.

Christianity, throughout history, has been the driving force for a lot of evil in the world, but it’s also been the source and inspiration for a lot of radical change for the better.

5. Please, Call Me “It.” “She” is My Father. by Gentle Zacharias

My transition has been lurching, haphazard, long stretches of increasingly pressurized discomfort punctuated by sudden, sweeping changes. People are often surprised at my decisions, because I tend to keep my own counsel about this kind of stuff — gender kind of stuff, I mean. I’ve come to understand that some of that is dysphoria, and some of it is environmental — I’ve always found my body hard to inhabit, and I’ve never found a lot of sympathetic ears about that, so I just kept it to myself. They didn’t have “nonbinary” in the 90s, it wasn’t out yet.

6. The Masculinity of Doing the Least by Nicole Froio

When an acquaintance got engaged, many years ago, his announcement post on Facebook deeply irritated me. In the post, he implied his fiancée was forcing him into the marriage. “She convinced me,” the post seemed to say, sheepishly. “She wore me down and now I’m condemned to marriage.” They had been together for years, so no one was surprised that they were engaged, and maybe that was the joke. But the performance of doing the least and minimizing his relationship with his partner to a lack of choice irked me. I was mortified on his fiancée’s behalf, but many people commented their congratulations.

7. Why Are Americans and Conservatives So Afraid of Socialism? by Abbey Heffer

I went a little bit viral on TikTok recently for voicing the unthinkable: I said that I like paying taxes. As you might imagine, the Americans and Conservatives in my comment section were shocked and appalled. The words communist and socialist were thrown around like insults, images of gulags and famine were invoked to prove some kind of vague and poorly-articulated point about freedom.

In contrast, the (predominantly western/northern) Europeans seemed to find my explanation pretty fair and even stopped to correct me on some of the finer points of Scottish, Scandinavian and German socialist democracy.

What shocked me, however, was not that so many Americans and Conservatives seemed to misunderstand fundamental aspects of civil life — like taxation — but that so many seemed so vehemently opposed to any suggestion that we should all contribute to the collective welfare of our countrymen.

8. The United Kingdom — A Case Study on International Victimhood by Bayo Awesu

Whether or not supply chains sort themselves out, or what a pig-less, blanket-less Christmas dinner might look like is not the point of topic here. The point of topic is instead a rather unique but not untypical British response that has come from all of this. And that is none of this is our fault. If only the bloody EU would stop with the bureaucracy, and if only those same HGV drivers we’d politely told to get the fuck out in 2016, 2019 and 2020 would hurry up and come back; then we wouldn’t be in this mess. If only the French weren’t trying to sabotage us at every turn. If only Biden would let go of that grudge he still holds against Boris Johnson over comments made on Obama’s Kenya ancestry. If only we didn’t lose out on World Cup bids to corrupt voting systems. If only the Eurovision song contest wasn’t an Anti-British propaganda tool…and on that subject why the hell isn’t St George’s day a national holiday again?!

9. Why Do White People Own 98% of the Farmland? by Andrew Gaertner

I am a white person living in rural Wisconsin. Someday I would like to buy farmland in a place near water, grow fruit trees and vegetable crops, build or buy a house, and retire living the good life. There are no barriers in Wisconsin that I know of to owning farmland, except me having enough money and there being a willing seller. It will be hard to save for it, but I could do it. On the surface this doesn’t seem like a racially biased system. So then why is 98% of the farmland in the US owned by white people?

How did we get here? Why should I care?

Besides being unjust, could this racially biased system also make it harder for me to buy farmland?

10. What Your Asian Friends Need Now Is Solidarity by Friday Things

One day last year, I was doing a phone interview for a story about race and activism. It was with another racialized person, so it wasn’t weird that we were discussing our own experiences-until, about halfway through the conversation, they told me that I haven’t really experienced racism. At first, I wasn’t hurt as much as I was confused. I’m racially ambiguous, sure, but I have brown skin, so I haven’t run into very many people who doubt my experiences. Then I realized what was going on: we were on the phone and they had no idea what I looked like. They only had my last name to go on, which seemed to be enough for them to decide not only that I must be Chinese, but that my experience as a person of colour wasn’t valid. They went on to clarify that, okay, maybe I had experienced some racism, but it couldn’t have been that bad. What’s more, they were sure that my parents came here with money, which must have eased my path.

11. The Inescapable Neoliberal Bias Behind ‘Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell’ by Alex Mell-Taylor

It should also be noted that the quality of these videos is beyond superb. Each one involves a narrator breaking down complex topics as cutesy animated ducks act as our visuals (seriously, I love these ducks). I have found their videos to be an excellent place to start for certain topics. The research underpinning them is far more in-depth than your average YouTube video — something that should be applauded.

However, there is a philosophy underpinning most of these videos that’s more than simply “the scientific method.” While they claim to be science-driven about the positions they have taken, the Kurzgesagt company that makes these videos has a worldview that fosters market-based, arguably “neoliberal” solutions when it comes to tackling humanity’s biggest problems.

12. I Told My Landlords They Were Violating the Law and I Wish I Didn’t by Mackenzie Saunders

Instead of moving the dumpster, management decided to paint over the disability spot altogether. They painted over the aisle, the disability symbol, and the parking spot lines. What used to be an accessible parking spot is now a large rectangle designated for a dumpster.

Instead of accommodating me, they accommodated garbage.

Instead of making space for their disabled residents, they made space for their dumpster.

Instead of choosing to make life easier for their disabled residents and guests, they chose to make a big spacious area for their big precious dumpster.

What a warm welcome to my new home.

13. Why We Often Overlook The Causes Of Poverty by Jon Upshaw

With this scenario in mind, one thing became clear to me: poverty begins and perpetuates a “runaway effect”. Consider the following scenario:

Some unexpected event forces you to become homeless. Maybe your partner divorces you. Or perhaps you lost your job that provided you main source of income. And if you don’t have a support network, you’re without a place to live.

You can’t get a job without an address. To verify your US citizenship, employers require that you have a physical address for both security and tax purposes. This means no one will give you even the slightest chance when you apply for work.

No job means no income. Without employment, you have no money coming in. This makes things you took for granted earlier (renewing IDs, paying for transportation services, buying goods and services) an impossibility, unless you beg on the streets.

No income means no means of living. With nothing in your bank account, you cannot enjoy the simple things most take for granted. Eating out at a restaurant is now a luxury you can’t enjoy.

14. As a Sex Worker, Don’t Ask Me to Rank Men’s Penis Sizes by Their Race by Mysterious Witt

I recently received an email from a reader asking me to rank men’s penis sizes by their race. As a sex worker, this reader wrote, I must have a lot of sexual experience with men of different ethnicities.

This reader lived in Eastern Europe where he confessed there “aren’t many Asians or Black people.” However, he did have a female friend who’d had sexual experiences with men of both races and could attest that Black men’s penises were much larger than white men’s penises and that Asian men’s were much smaller.

Surely, as a sex worker, I must have come to similar conclusions. And if Black men’s penises were bigger than white men’s, how much bigger were they? And how much smaller were Asian men’s penises?

This reader wanted graphs. He wanted measurements. He wanted me to compare and contrast.

15. How John Pee-Pee is Teaching Kids About Body Awareness by Sarah Falck

In January 2021, the Danish broadcasting station Danmarks Radio (DR) announced their new children’s TV show with the title “John Pee-Pee” (Org. “John Dillermand”). The premise of the show is fairly simple — it centers around a man named John, who happens to have a very, very long penis. John’s penis often causes him more trouble than good, and when his penis gets him in trouble, he always needs to come up with a solution and make things right.

The first season of “John Pee-Pee” includes 20 episodes with titles such as; “John goes to the zoo”, “John saves Christmas”, and “John makes a friend”.

When the first episode aired, the theme song video was shared widely on social media in Denmark, some with delight and others with revulsion. It instantly became a matter of discussion, and everyone, even people who seemed to have yet to watch the show, joined in on the conversation.

It didn’t take long for international media to grab on to the story. Many were quick to question DR’s decision in making the show, claiming the content was offensive and not suitable for children.

Here’s why I disagree.

16. Detransitioners Aren’t an Excuse to Be Transphobic by Kravitz M.

Several online publications and the like have discussed people who used to be transgender but have since stopped identifying as such. These outspoken individuals, often referred to as “detransitioners” or “ex-transgender,” typically express grief over their hormone therapy or surgery, frequently pointing to trauma, social pressure, or inadequate healthcare as the reasons they identified as transgender in the first place (not always the case, but the most common example we see).

Some people medically detransition due to health concerns, unrealistic expectations of the transition process, or simply not being able to afford to transition anymore. Others find discomfort with the new gender roles society expects them to fulfill or suffer too much transphobic discrimination to feel comfortable transitioning anymore. Some realize they’re a nonbinary gender for which transitioning is no longer necessary for them. Others transition only for a few bodily changes (deepened voice, breast growth, etc.) then stop once they happen.

Holiday submission break

Another reminder that our publication is taking a short break from reviewing submissions and adding new writers until 5th January for non-Patreon members.

Please click here if you wish to know more about our expedited/holiday review for our Patreon supporters.

And that’s a wrap! See you all next year.

From myself and the team, Happy New Year!

Rebirth, Part 2: Giving Thanks was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hello wonderful people!

I hope you all had a great Christmas! This time last year, I spoke on gratitude and practising optimism. After a year of putting my words into practice, I can thankfully say that things have been going alright. I know I’m only in my mid-twenties, but I finally feel as if I know myself.

We are coming into our second year of the pandemic and I am sure there are many of us questioning everything. It’s safe to say that we are all tired, and I’m sure that many of us are frightened of this fatigued version of ourselves. Whereas before we craved normalcy, we are now confused about what “normal” means.

After all, pre-2020 wasn’t that much better than the version of the world we have today. We have also collectively been through so much that there is no turning back.

Personally, the only thing that has kept me grounded is the communities I have fostered. Whether this be you all at An Injustice!, my friends back home or my Twitter folk. Gratitude can not exist in a vacuum, and every time I am close to giving in to despair, I see the beauty of the world through all of you.

These communities are why I feel less alone and crazy for believing in the “greater good”. So to anyone else feeling exhausted, just know that you aren’t alone. We will get through this because we have to.

Just remember, you’ve made it through every single battle you never thought you’d survive. Yes, technically, rock bottom seems to find a new bottom every time you think this is the end. But you’re just gaining XP (experience points), baby! We got this!

NB: This years newsletter will be a two-parter, so bare with us.

The Take on X

As you all know, we recently launched our newsletter this year! In it, we featured many wonderful writers writing on various topics. I’d like to thank them all for their contributions and effort with this!

Augustina Boateng, Ono Mergen, Mallory Mosner, Alexandra Tsuneta, Suvi Helena, Michel Ghanem, Dr Theresa Ford, Faith Ann and Hasheemah Afaneh

Their stories can be found on our homepage under The Take on X for all those wishing to read their contributions.

We are looking for 2022 contributors

Vol. 2 will be running a little bit differently. We will be relaunching the newsletter; however, keeping in mind capacity, we will be scaling things back considerably.

For 2022, we will be looking for writers to supply one newsletter on any given topic, which will go out on the first Thursday of the month. Like last year, you have free rein to select your topic and content. However, on the last Thursday of the month, we will run a meeting on Twitter Spaces to discuss the topic. We will also get in guest speakers to make the discussion as nuanced as possible.

Format breakdown:

• First Thursday of the month: Newsletter gets published
• Last Thursday of the month: Twitter Spaces discussion with friends and us to explore the discussion more (one of our team and I will host the chat, so don’t worry about doing work for this)

We will begin this new program from February, with the first newsletter instalment hosted by me. I will be doing ADHD in the Black community (E.g. 3rd February, my newsletter will be released, and on 24th February, we will host a spaces chat).

This year’s iteration of the newsletter was wonderful, and I appreciate everyone who joined in with us. However, this year I am trying to keep in mind the capacity of our writers and ourselves.

We will be accepting applicants from now until 30th January at noon ET! All I need from you is a pitch on your takeover topic.

Email me: zuva@aninjusticemag.com

zuva [at] an injustice mag [dot] com

Pitch format

Subject line: The Take on X application

• Writing samples and a brief introduction
• 3–4 sentences on the topic of your choice. We will be looking to build on the content from last year, so please have a look at the conversations that have already been done
• A couple of names of folks you’d like us to bring into the Twitter Spaces chat
• Your preferred month of being featured (we can’t promise anything, but I will try to keep your request in mind)

Holiday submission break

Another reminder that our publication is taking a short break from reviewing submissions and adding new writers until 5th January for non-Patreon members.

Please click here if you wish to know more about our expedited/holiday review for our Patreon supporters.

That’s it from me (for now). Please stay tuned for Part 2 of our newsletter coming tomorrow. That one will feature a roundup of our year!

Rebirth, Part 1: The Relaunch of Our Newsletter and Other Updates was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.