Feels Blind Literary, Issue #12
Spring 2025 AWP Lauch

Spring 2025 Contributors

Note from the Editor in Chief

Dear Readers,

These are perilous times, so much so it’s often hard to know where to look or what to do daily. The Trump regime pulled funding and support from Ukraine, blaming them for their own invasion. They accidentally shared classified war secrets over Signal. They gutted the Department of Education, NOAA, EPA, IMLS, HHS, and more. Elon Musk has access to our personal data. Social Security is on the rocks. The future of student loans is tenuous at best. They slashed food assistance programs in the United States for schools and food banks. Their shutdown of USAID caused children to starve around the world. Massive cuts to NIH grants halted life-saving scientific research, including cancer research for children. Consumer rights, reproductive rights, and civil rights are being eroded at an alarming pace each day.

This list is in no way exhaustive, though it is exhausting. That’s their point. They want us to feel overwhelmed and defeated, like there’s nothing we can do to stop their path of destruction. Don’t internalize this narrative. Remember, they want to isolate us because community is resistance. Defy them by finding your people. This magazine is just one of the ways I’m doing so, elevating the voices and kinds of stories they desperately try to silence. Find the things you care most about, too, then do something about them. You can’t do everything. Trust that others will do the same, though, dividing and conquering in a collective effort to resist.

One issue I’ve been concentrating on is the attack on our Constitutional rights. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder at Columbia University, set a precedent that those who are here legally can now be removed by ICE, disappeared even, without proof of committing crimes. Several more students with Visas or green cards have been detained and/or deported since. A federal judge’s orders to return men who were deported without due process to El Salvador have been repeatedly ignored. State Department officials are preparing to launch an initiative called “Catch and Revoke,” which will enable Trump's regime to screen student Visa holders’ social media accounts to cancel the Visas of those who “appear to support Hamas or other designated terrorist groups.” All talk surrounding this initiative suggests they will target those who express any dissent to this administration’s policies, however. If Trump cared about actual terrorism, he wouldn't stack his own administration with Nazi sympathizers and he wouldn't cozy up to domestic terrorist groups like the Proud Boys, but he only truly cares about three things: staying out of prison, enriching himself, and absolute power.

In retaliation against Columbia, Trump directed the cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts for the institution, noting these moves “represent the first round of action." In other words, they are telling universities they will pay if they don’t restrict students’ Constitutional rights. Columbia already is making moves to bow to Trump, hoping to restore their funding. They held a town hall wherein they told students there is nothing they can do to protect them against this administration. It's horrifying how quickly Trump went from "we're going to arrest and deport all of the criminals and rapists" to "we're going to arrest and deport any student VISA or green card holder who expresses dissent." It’s more horrifying how quickly people and institutions in positions of power fell in line.

All of this is on the heels of other attacks on higher education, including the Trump regime’s threats to cancel funding from colleges and universities that don't pull DEI efforts. Many institutions are complying in advance, rather than fighting back. A friend shared that her institution's administration swept the offices of faculty and staff, removing all Pride and Black Lives Matter flags. Friends in higher education also have received communication like this from their institutions: “To implement Executive Orders, you must immediately terminate, to the maximum extent, all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) at every level and activity…You must immediately terminate, to the maximum extent, all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts promoting or inculcating gender ideology at every level and activity.” Faculty and staff have been fired, too, so these aren’t just empty threats. Whole departments or units have disappeared, such as the Institute for Inclusive Excellence at my former alma mater. 

Still, there are many moments of hope and resistance. Last week, one of my FWS students hosted the first in a series of career and college exploration workshops at a center primarily serving Latinx teens, a project made possible through a grant from a corporate sponsor. She brought in individuals from a lab that conducts life-saving cancer research, the team teaching the teens how to extract and mutate DNA. Another student translated for a teen who recently arrived in this country and is still learning English. Other teens were in an adjacent room taking guitar lessons. There was an exhibition up from a photography class. Science, life-saving research, education, the arts, corporate responsibility, federal programming that increases college access, equity through people helping each other, meaningful community—this is the country I want to live in and this is the country I will continue to fight for. I hope you will join me.

XO, Lindsay
Editor in Chief 

PS For this issue, my recommendation for a new or new to me band is the Lambrini Girls. The world needs more punk women raging right now.