Monster of 2022: Brazilian Football Players and the Gold Steak
Mother Jones; Stu Moffat/Unsplash The day after the Brazilian national team beat Switzerland in the group stage of this year’s World Cup, a handful of players went out for dinner. The group included Arsenal’s Gabriel de Jesus and Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior. Ronaldo, Brazil’s former striker and a talismanic figure in football, attended. They chose to…
Monster of 2022: People Suing to Kill Student Debt Relief Because They’re Not Included
Mother Jones; Getty When the Biden administration announced in late summer that they would be cancelling $10,000 of student debt per borrower, Americans had thoughts. Some cried tears of joy on TikTok, others went off online with assorted criticisms: The administration should cancel more debt, or less debt, or tighten relief eligibility, or loosen it,…
Hero of 2022: Mike Davis, and Learning In Order to Act
Mother Jones; Wikimedia In March 2020 the writer, scholar, and activist Mike Davis—who passed away earlier this year from complications from Esophageal cancer—addressed the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and what must be done to survive it, in an essay for Jacobin. It was titled “In a Plague Year.” As usual, he was prescient. He…
Hero of 2022: Abortion Providers Who Refused to Quit
Mother Jones; Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/Getty Abortion is healthcare, and no law prohibiting it can eradicate its necessity. That hasn’t stopped Republican legislators from trying. Fifty-five abortion restrictions were enacted in 2022. Many of these laws target doctors and healthcare workers, threatening them with fines and jail time for providing necessary and wanted care. But…
Hero of 2022: The Gen-Z Voters Who Saved Us From Ourselves This November
Mother Jones; Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Lauren Nicks, a college student in Georgia, voted for the second time this year. Her vote was her voice, she says, and she was motivated enough to figure out the logistics of sending in an absentee ballot to her home state of New York. She was part of the massive youth voter…
Monster of 2022: Video Assistant Referee
Mother Jones; Francois Nel/Getty Every few years, the world discovers anew a wonderful old document called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a 1944 booklet published at the direction of William J. Donovan, the head of what was then called the Office of Strategic Services and is now the CIA. Donovan’s memo detailed ways in which…