Democracy is shaped not only in courtrooms and voting booths, but in ordinary public spaces — malls, workplaces, schools, sidewalks — wherever people encounter authority.
This seven-part series began after I filmed an interaction at the Mall of America and found myself under surveillance for it. What followed became a reflection on privilege, accountability, and what it means to witness safely and steadily when others cannot.
Surveillance observes. Witnessing protects. This is what democracy looks like.
Read more...
Medicine has a way of convincing even the strongest clinicians that exhaustion is a personal flaw.
You tell yourself you should be tougher.
You should bounce back faster.
You should “handle it.”
But what if your body isn’t failing — it’s protecting you?
What if the fatigue, irritability, scanning for threat even in the grocery store, the Sunday-night dread before walking back onto the unit — what if all of that is simply biology doing its job too well?
This is the truth physicians rarely hear:
Your body isn’t broken. It’s brilliant. It adapted to survive medicine.
And now it needs help coming back down.
