activism and Civil rights

An American Boat Sailed to Vietnam During the War. Then It Disappeared—Atlas Obscura and Mental Floss

The Phoenix of Hiroshima has had a long, strange trip.

From Bashed to Behind Bars: How Les Feinberg Helped One Trans Woman Fight Back—TakePart

"The connection between CeCe McDonald, a black transgender woman from Minneapolis, and Feinberg, a middle-aged, Jewish, working-class butch from Buffalo, New York, has roots in decades of solidarity, activism, and organizing among trans people who are targets and victims of violence. Feinberg described these lives for more than 20 years. Stone Butch Blues is the story of a butch named Jess who was forced to wear dresses as a child, but longed for a Davy Crockett hat or a suit and tie."

Eddie Is Gone—The Believer

"Winter is big-wave season on Oahu’s North Shore—on the radio, on the bus, in bars and restaurants, everyone was talking about 'the Eddie,' a surf competition named after big-wave surfing icon Eddie Aikau, which only takes place when the waves at Waimea Bay are consistently breaking at over twenty feet. After I’d spent a deadening series of days composing pro-imperialist schlock for tour buses, Aikau’s story captured my imagination. His life seemed to epitomize the tension between Hawaii’s often-violent struggle against cultural interlopers and the popular image of a lush paradise for western recreation and consumption."

The dangerous Catch-22 of coming out as a sex worker—Fusion

What would happen if everyone who’s had sex for money were open about it? 

LADIES IN THE STREETS: BEFORE STONEWALL, TRANSGENDER UPRISING CHANGED LIVES—NPR

"It was after the bars had closed and well into the pre-dawn hours of an August morning in 1966 when San Francisco cops were in Gene Compton's cafeteria again. They were arresting drag queens, trans women and gay hustlers who had been sitting for hours, eating and gossiping and coming down from their highs with the help of 60-cent cups of coffee."