Bodies move from Metra station to station.
Downtown, yellow cabs hail pedestrians.
C.T.A. buses redistribute patrons. And then
there are the lines: red, green, orange
brown, yellow, pink, purple and blue.
Construction on the Dan Ryan stalls
the pace, the seven lanes rat-race
at each side. The train carries me to the Southside,
where buses run whenever, but never on time;
small families haggle prices with gypsy cab
drivers; resourceful in getting across the map.
The red line goes that far, but ends at 95th;
on the Southside, the city goes into the hundreds.

-By: Nicole Thompson (Intro to Poetry)

“This notion—raceless antiracism—marks the modern left, from the New Democrat Bill Clinton to the socialist Bernie Sanders. Few national liberal politicians have shown any recognition that there is something systemic and particular in the relationship between black people and their country that might require specific policy solutions.” -Ta-Nehisi Coates

“But if the bargain protected white workers from slavery, it did not protect them from near-slave wages or backbreaking labor to attain them, and always there lurked a fear of having their benefits revoked.”  -@tanehisicoates  via @theatlantic

“The descendants of indenture would enjoy the full benefits of whiteness, the most definitional benefit being that they would never sink to the level of the slave.”  -@tanehisicoates  via @theatlantic

The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition.”  -@tanehisicoates  via @theatlantic