The Roundup Top Ten for April 7, 2023

That Sad Viral Story of a Goat Shows Ethical Void of the Meat Industry

by Gabriel Rosenberg and Jan Dutkiewicz

Cedar the goat has a name. Millions of other farm animals don't, and industry spends a lot of money to keep it that way, while obscuring the ideological work that goes into convincing Americans that animals are only meat.

Libraries Need More Freedom to Distribute E-Books; Publishers' Profit Stands in the Way

by Dan Cohen

A ruling against the Internet Archive will prevent a library from lending a digital scan of a book it owns, making access to them contingent on a publisher's willingness to create a separate digital version. The implications for libraries as holders of knowledge are dire.

What Disney's Orange Bird Logo Says about Corporate Support and the LGBTQ Movement

by Julio Capó, Jr.

In the 1970s, Disney was much more willing to tolerate the anti-gay tirades of singer Anita Bryant, which previewed today's "groomer" accusations, because of a lucrative and politically expedient partnership with Florida's orange growers, suggesting movement power, not corporate benevolence, is driving change.

Gender-Affirming Care Has a Long History, and Has Affected Non-Trans People Too

by G. Samantha Rosenthal

Medical intervention to make people's bodies conform to their assigned place in the gender binary has a long history; it has been controversial principally when the same treatments have been used by transgender people.

We Can't Accept a Vocational Training Model of College

by Bret Devereaux

Neither politicians nor students have any factual knowledge of which majors prepare students for the work force, but that hasn't stopped the institutional dismantling of the humanities and the elevation of the needs of corporations over those of the polity.

Blaming Atlanta "Cop City" Protests on "Outside Agitators" is Familiar and Shameful

by Benjamin Stumpf

Blaming outsiders for grassroots objections to turning valuable parkland over to the police to create an urban warfare training center is an effort to shift blame for violence from police to protesters and to assert that local communities accept the plan. Opponents of civil rights did the same thing.

Violence and the Unmaking of Asian-American Exceptionalism

by Gaiutra Bahadur

A series of violent anti-Asian attacks in the author's community during the 1990s underscores the debt Asian Americans owe to the African American movements for emancipation and civil rights, and the need for cross-racial solidarity in the face of racist oppression.