R. Cielo Cruz

A beautiful love letter to independent journalism, and hope.

Read this whole thread, but this post in particular really drives home just how blindly we are accepting a profit-driven multicorporate agenda as some kind of inevitable "human progress."

The open use of federal funds as a blunt force object to get universities, cities, and other entities in line is criminal. Those are tax payer dollars! And so much capitulation! Dbjdonfonifbinrondondonodnonfonfoninfonfin

Narrator: “No they don’t. They do not even extend it to women.”

bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Three (or however many) years ago an attorney friend in CA told me that the conservatorship fights a la Britney Spears were way more far reaching and a bigger future threat than we could grasp. Everyone who makes $ off caging ppl, medically or criminally, is responsible for this.

Blocking everyone who tells me that we can resolve the femicide epidemic by teaching boys critical thinking skills. I know a woman who was nearly strangled to death by a logic professor. Fuck off.

A Black Woman battling a rare cancer needs help. After giving birth she found out she had cancer and lost her job because of it and is unable to work due to the pain. She’s raising money to afford groceries and bills this month. If we each give $1 she’ll reach her goal.

THE PERRY SECOND CHANCES SCHOLARSHIP 'Everyone Deserves A Second Chance!' - Gabrielle Angelique Perry, MPH, Founder & Executive Director The mission of The Perry 'Second Chances' Scholarship is to annually provide fiscal resources to formerly incarcerated women and the daughters of anyone who has been impacted by incarceration. Women who are currently enrolled or recently accepted into an accredited 2-to-4-year educational institution will be given a one-time, $10,000 scholarship, paid directly to their institutions, to support their education & needs in order to thrive in their educational endeavors. Applications open 11.15.2025 and close 2.27.2026, at www.theperryscholarship.org Learn more at thurmanperryfoundation.org

IT’S TIME Y’ALL!

In 1 month, my nonprofit thurmanperryfoundation.org will be awarding women across the U.S. w/ $10,000 EACH in scholarships through The Perry Second Chances Scholarship

I started this program giving money from my savings. Im so moved at what it has become.

Apps open 11.15 🩵✝️

The Adoption Trap Private foster care and adoption agencies in Texas are brokering contracts for moms to turn over their children in a murky legal world, spawning protracted civil custody battles.

Featured story: “The whole system is premised on commodifying human beings, regardless of whether or not it’s a for-profit or a nonprofit agency. And anytime you’re talking about people as a commodity, I don’t know what that looks like to do ethically.”

When Adoption Promises Are Broken Many birth mothers hope to maintain contact with their child. But their agreements with adoptive parents can be fragile.

If you want to understand open adoption, it makes sense to start with birth parents—yet studies of them are few. 2+ yrs ago, I began talking w/ birth mothers to try to understand what living in an open adoption is like for them, and what rights or options they might have if challenges were to arise.

This tactic is in the news again because ICE agents in Colorado were filmed breaking the window of a car with a baby in the backseat coloradosun.com/2025/10/01/i...

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived. ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

In the spring, the Trump administration abruptly cut $500 million from an emergency food assistance program that delivered meat, dairy, eggs and produce to food banks across the country.

Thousands of planned deliveries were canceled without warning.

Are You Still Rebuilding After Hurricane Helene? We Want to Hear From You. We want to hear from North Carolinians whose homes were damaged or destroyed to better understand how well the state housing recovery program, RenewNC, is working for those who need it.

We want to hear from North Carolinians whose homes were damaged or destroyed to better understand how well the state housing recovery program, RenewNC, is working for those who need it.

Help us report ⬇️

The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:sq3cuwk7tsjv564xefoj67tq/post/3m22qmtgnhc2a.

18/ Johnson determined the contractor had unauthorized contact with the press and had misled internal investigators about it, the IG report says. The ambassador defended the contractor’s dismissal during his Senate confirmation hearing this year.
www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

This thread is something.
@propublica is putting in the work

11/ Johnson is now Trump’s ambassador to Mexico, one of the most important diplomatic posts in Latin America. And Bukele has a new friend in Trump, whose administration paid a reported $6 million to use the CECOT prison.

Haymarket Presents: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson on Theory of Water YouTube video by Haymarket Books

Dr. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician and member of Alderville First Nation, will discuss "Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead" with Dr. Uahikea Maile, a Kanaka Maoli scholar, organizer, and practitioner from Oʻahu.

Oct. 6th, 6:30pm CDT

“DHS is terrorizing our communities and staging violent spectacles to produce fascist propaganda—and sometimes, for what appears to be purely recreational violence.”

States are cutting Medicaid provider payments long before Trump cuts hit North Carolina and Idaho have cut their Medicaid programs to bridge budget gaps, raising fears that providers will stop taking patients and that hospitals will close even before the brunt of a new fed...

Medicaid reimbursement for providers is already extremely low, one reason why many don't take Medicaid. This is going to drive even more providers away!

This week at an event for THE PEOPLE’S PROJECT, a reader asked in a gracious and cheeky way what I would hope white readers in particular would get out of the book. Or more directly, what I would TELL white readers. And this was basically my answer:

African-Americans are experts on America.

College radio stations are seeing a surge in student interest.

Stations that once struggled to fill airtime are now overflowing with student DJs. 

I spoke to 7 college radio stations across the U.S. to understand what is driving the revival:

emwhitenoise.substack.com/p/gen-zs-col...

I never get blocked as much as on the days i point out the every single thing that is happening now is something that multiple people from multiple spheres of life/influence said would happen. People's refusal to ask themselves "why didn't i believe them?" is preventing progress.

I took this photo of a sniper on a roof in Ferguson 11 years ago on this day.

And now there are snipers on a roof in Broadview.

America should listen to Black people

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.

That’s a beautiful, encouraging way to see it. Thank you. I know a few people struggling with such immense, unexpected loss of young people, one her own adult son. They have certainly brought with them so many gifts and left us with indescribable openings at a time when hearts could easily close.

The fact they jumped straight to AI actors modeled after women when, if I’m not mistaken, male actors are a higher labor cost kind of says it all doesn’t it,

3 people hospitalized after apparent Edisto Beach house fire, SLED investigating Three people were transported from the Town of Edisto to a local area hospital as a result of a fire on Saturday, a spokesperson with Colleton County Fire-Rescu

While eyes are on the goofy ass plan to terrorize citizens across the country with federal troops, the house of a South Carolina circuit court judge caught fire yesterday.

Diane Goodstein blocked the DOJ’s attempt to get voter data last month.

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