Pamela Metz

My grandparents were there. Santa Anita Assembly Center, was a race track with stalls for horses. At it's peak it housed 18,719 Japanese Americans

This is a truly horrifying memo. It says that the policy of the US government will now be to proactively seek out and arrest likely tens of thousands of refugees who entered legally under Biden and subject them to detention, where they will be interrogated about their status.

I am so excited to share that registration for the first-ever PEOPLING POLITICS SYMPOSIUM is now open! Please join us on March 5 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington DC for an amazing lineup of speakers and discussions. RSVP at go.rutgers.edu/peoplingpoli...

We Are All Immigrants Now: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Decimates Health Care Access for All But a Privileged Few | Milbank Memorial Fund The GOP Plan to End Obamacare involves fiscally starving it to death rather than an explicit repeal. Trump’s recent signing of the “Big Beautiful Bill” brings us closer to that harsh reality.

The partial government shutdown over DHS funding is a consequence of extreme immigration enforcement — these policies affect us all.

Reposting my August 2025 op-ed about anti-immigrant violence and fear expanding to citizens.

Still timely. Still urgent.

www.milbank.org/quarterly/op...

Opinion | Trump Is Raising Billions in Federal Funds. That’s Not a Good Thing.

"People tend to associate democratic erosion with election interference and violent police crackdowns. But there’s a quieter tell that a democracy is endangered: the dissolution of laws that protect public money."

New article from me and Aziz Huq: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...

The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford | The Segregation Tracking Project Use our visualizations to explore educational opportunity in your school & community.

VERSION 2.0 of the Segregation Tracking Project is here!

New data on racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and schools over the last 30+ years for every school district, metro area, state, county, congressional district (new!), and more!

edopportunity.org/segregation/

The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with January 6. This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy. In a functioning republic, he would be impeached and removed from office today.

Here, I write about the public health threat posed by ICE.

Renee Good, Alex Pretti, & the dozens of others killed by ICE in recent months make this clear. But ICE also kills more slowly & covertly, by inducing chronic stress, fear, & threat.

Abolish ICE.

www.providencejournal.com/story/opinio...

ICE Begins Buying ‘Mega’ Warehouse Detention Centers Across US Plans for such centers and jails in nearly two dozen communities have sparked protests over suitability, proximity to homes and schools.

BIG news from @bloomberg.com, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* multiple commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps.

This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — literal warehousing of people.
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

"The pessimistic story is far darker. It’s about the raid being a test run for messing with election administrators and the counting of ballots in the midterm elections.... Now is the time for state and local governments, the courts, and the people to work against such potential election subversion"

I am thrilled to announce that I have been awarded the 2026 Robin M. Williams Jr. Lecturer from the Eastern Sociological Society. I'm grateful for this recognition and look forward to sharing insights from my work.
#Sociology #EasternSociologicalSociety #AcademicResearch #NotAllIn #SocialScience

My friends, we are in a serious constitutional crisis. The government is racially profiling, suppessing free speech, killing our own people in the streets— and lying about every fact along the way. If we don’t use our natural talents and voices to say “no,” then what’s the point of law at all?

Though MLK's Birthday was celebrated Monday, I think of him often.
Because of my research, this quote is prescient now: "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane."
It was the inspiration for an op-ed I published in Salon: www.salon.com/2026/01/19/m....

We are at an inflection point: if we ever get through to the other side of this, we will need to completely rebuild public trust in all kinds of data collection, which is going to hugely slow science — and, as usual, affect vulnerable populations most. 1/

I met an absolutely lovely academic who asked whether my department back home is affected by ICE -- a question dramatizing how little info is getting out.

For the record, the small example I chose:

My dept has a carpool to pick up grad students of color who can't safely commute to campus alone.

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

A five-year-old boy seized on his way home in Minnesota and now locked up in Texas. His family didn't know where he was for 24 hours.

Last year a whistleblower said DOGE had illegally accessed a Social Security database. SSA now acknowledges it's true—& that DOGE employees had secret agreement w/ unidentified political advocacy group to use SocSec data to help overturn election results. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

It has been deeply surreal to be trying to fight this occupation while also doing my usual job, parenting, etc. Just describing the basic facts sounds unreal. Really appreciate this clarity about what's happening in Mpls and how much worse it might get from the NYT today.

There is nothing complicated or subtle or hard to understand about what is going on.

Trump may not succeed. But he will only fail if patriots stand up and defend our democracy and the Constitution. We must act, as @mashagessen.bsky.social writes, while we still can. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/o...

A side by side of two photos of the same book, being held by each author with a box of more books in the background.

A book never feels real until you hold it in you hands. @profsorelle.bsky.social & I can now confirm that Uncivil Democracy is real! If you care about #peoplepower #housingjustice, #tenantorganizing & transforming our perverse political economy, this is a book for you.

Order here: bit.ly/3NLYCCw

The Problem Isn’t Apathy. It’s about Teaching Students Where Power Lives. American politics has become so nationalized that many people—especially students—no longer know where their participation ought to be focused. Every issue feels federal, every fight existential, and ...

We all know the federal government is dysfunctional and chaotic. The critical democratic work is happening closer to home.

@kcolempls.bsky.social (Metro State in MN) and I make the case in @thefulcrum-us.bsky.social — explaining why teaching students to build power locally matters more than ever.

Look what just arrived!

Excited to share that @povertyscholar.bsky.social and my new book hits shelves this month! If you're interested in #justice, #housing, and building collective #PoliticalPower, this book has something for you!

You can order here bit.ly/3NLYCCw or at your favorite bookstore.

I can’t emphasize enough how shocked my out of state friends and family are when I tell them what has happened in Minneapolis since Renee Good’s murder.

Without reliable media, most not-chronically-online people are completely in the dark. If you want to help Minnesota, tell people what you know.

Luke Shaefer named Chief Executive of Health, Human Services & Poverty Solutions for City of Detroit Ford School professor Luke Shaefer has been named to the newly-formed role as Chief Executive of Health, Human Services & Poverty Solutions for City of Detroit.

Luke Shaefer named Chief Executive of Health, Human Services, and Poverty Solutions for the City of Detroit as part of Mayor Mary Sheffield's incoming administration. 🎉

Read more: https://myumi.ch/e32Py

Minneapolis Knows How to Resist This Violence From George Floyd to Renee Good, the city has become all too familiar with fatal violence by law enforcement—and it knows exactly how to respond.

I tried to turn my rage yesterday into something that brings us some light. For @newrepublic.com, I wrote about how 2020 prepared Minneapolis for the current crisis of Trump's DHS. newrepublic.com/article/2050...

Inquiring minds: Q&A with Alex Albright | Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

And here is the Q&A I did for @minneapolisfed.bsky.social... if anyone would like to hear about taxi cab medallion numbers, owls, and the descriptive statistic 29%:

www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2025...

quote from a Q&A alex did

Hillary Stein, Janet Yellen, Alex Albright at ASSAs in Philadelphia

Ended 2025 with a Q&A interview saying I'd like to meet Janet Yellen

Started 2026 by meeting Janet Yellen

Thanks for the opportunity to share our work, @donmoyn.bsky.social!
With @lizananat.bsky.social: Service work is highly volatile! OBBBA's work requirements will make it hard for hourly service workers and their families to get supports they need, even when they're working consistently.

New with @agpines.bsky.social: on Can We Still Govern, we show how OBBBA's new work requirements will deny benefits to families due to volatile hours and employment in the service industry--which is caused by bosses, not workers