Molly recently spoke with Longform. Stream or download the podcast here.

Last summer, a New York city police officer choked a black grandfather named Eric Garner to death. Garner was suspected of selling loose cigarettes. The arrests of people like Garner are part of a controversial policing tactic called Broken Windows. Broken Windows claims to prevent large crimes by cracking down on small ones. But it’s really about controlling and punishing communities of color, through police encounters that can sometimes be deadly.

Written, illustrated and narrated by Molly Crabapple

Directed by Jim Batt

Sound Design by Kim Boekbinder

Shot by Keith Jenson 

“In America, where the fetish for foreign dissidents runs deep, Ganzeer could have dined out for years on his revolutionary cred, making do-gooders feel brave by proxy just for buying his paintings. But it was a role he rejected as Orientalism; he was sick of how the Western press reduced him to nothing but an avatar for the Egyptian Revolution and ignored his critique of their own countries.

“When you see injustice somewhere you want to call bullshit on it,” he told me. “There’s just so much injustice in the United States.”

“The Revolutionary, No Bullshit Art of Ganzeer”- Molly Crabapple. VICE

http://www.vice.com/read/the-revolutionary-no-bullshit-art-of-ganzeer

Molly Crabapple illustrated the cover for this month’s New Internationalist.

Inside this issue: Icelandic activist and founder of the Pirate Party, Birgitta Jonsdottir, guest edits an issue on the theme of ‘democracy in the digital era’. It tackles some of the thorniest issues of the day: privacy, censorship, mass surveillance, media freedom. But it goes several steps further than most media reports by presenting powerful and practical ways in which we can create a deeper and more meaningful democracy and a richer more rebellious political engagement, using the tools of the internet age.

You can read more and pick up an issue online at newint.org or one of the signed copies in our online store at mollycrabapple.com/shop

Molly is featured in the second issue of The Great Discontent, which “offers a candid glimpse into the lives of those who create for a living.”

Preorder here. Orders begin shipping the week of January 26th.

The artists of Charlie Hebdo join a long and tragic tradition. Mocking pen strokes send authoritarians into paroxysm of rage. Governments and extremist groups around the world target cartoonists for arrest, beatings and execution. Bullies can never take a joke.

— “Cartoonists, killed for their art, and humanity,” Molly Crabapple for CNN

New York State’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (HTICs) are the first of their kind in the nation. Launched with great fanfare in September 2013, these courts redefined prostitutes as trafficking victims rather than criminals.

“Human trafficking is… a form of modern-day slavery that we simply cannot tolerate in a civilized society,” Judge Jonathan Lippman, the court’s creator, said at a press conference announcing the formation of the special courts. “We now recognize that the vast majority of individuals charged with prostitution offenses are commercially exploited or at risk of exploitation. By offering vital services instead of punishment to these defendants, the Human Trafficking Intervention Initiative will act to transform and save lives—and, in turn, enable law enforcement to identify, investigate, and punish the traffickers.”

Despite the claims of reformers like Judge Lippman, HTICs are as controlling as any other court. Prostitutes might be called victims, but they’re still arrested, still handcuffed, and still held in cages. The only difference is that they’re now in a system that doesn’t distinguish between workers and trafficked people. To the courts, anyone who’s been arrested for sex work is raw material, incapable of making his or her own choices. Those like Love, who did sex work out of financial necessity, before leaving of her own volition, might as well not exist.

— “Special Prostitution Courts and the Myth of ‘Rescuing’ Sex Workers,” Molly Crabapple for VICE

This week we talk with Molly Crabapple, an artist and writer who has worked in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and with rebels in Syria. Crabapple is a columnist for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. We talk about art, journalism and the tensions that can exist when your work traverses the boundaries between the two. Molly also shares some advice for those who hope for a career in art. Shownotes available at sourcesandmethods.com.

Stream or download the mp3 here.

On Wednesday, Chelsea Manning – heroine, whistleblower and inmate – turns 27. She has been behind bars for four years and eight months, ever since her arrest for leaking ­classified US documents. There isn’t much prospect that she will be released any time soon … It is against this gloomy and unpropitious backdrop that leading writers, artists and public figures from around the world are today sending Chelsea birthday greetings. Their contributions include letters, poems, drawings and original paintings. Some are philosophical – yes, that’s you, Slavoj Žižek – others brief messages of goodwill. A few are ­movingly confessional.

All send a powerful reminder: that for millions in the US and beyond, Chelsea Manning is an inspiring moral figure who deserves our continued support.

— The Guardian: Dear Chelsea Manning