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Susan Philpott

@susanphilpott.bsky.social
317 followers 219 following 90 posts

Public historian of the struggle for justice and equality. Lover of podcasts and family, including our tiny dog Chester. Recently widowed.

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Reposted by Susan Philpott
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 18h
Productivity as an adult is just an endless process of applying new psychological tricks and operant conditioning to yourself until an acceptable number of tasks are completed.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The daily debate: stay and uphold what we can or leave.
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Pamela Toler (she/her) @pdtoler.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
One of the best parts of being a historian? Changing my mind. Sometimes one letter or one newspaper article sends me back to rethink everything I thought I knew. That's not failure. That's good history. 🗃️
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Reposting so I remember to read. I'm heading to Newport in September!
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Emily Ramshaw @eramshaw.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
In the past decade, more than 5,000 women have served in combat roles. And the occupation standards for these roles have always been gender neutral by law, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s false insistence that requirements were lowered for women and that there were quotas made for women.
19thnews.org
Women have served in combat for a decade. Lawmakers want to protect that right.
“As far as I’m concerned, the only person who doesn’t think that women should have the opportunity to serve in these roles is Hegseth,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, a lead sponsor of a new bill.
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Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
disco park ranger (wait for it)
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Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Today is Monday, July 13 Good morning ❤️ eat take your meds hydrate tell your people you love them let them love you back We are here. This is real. Let's build a home for each other and fight like hell. All you fascists bound to lose ✊
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Sent these to my therapist at 9 am. I’m totally normal, why do you ask??
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Dr. Cara Berg Powers @clbergpowers.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Believe Women is an epistemological stance. It doesn't mean you assume that every single woman is telling the truth and women never lie. It means you understand that in the system that we exist in, there's much more risk and pain for women coming forward about abuse than there is anything to gain.
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Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
This is wonderful. Finding a mystery daguerreotype with deep historical meaning.
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Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
To all my queer and trans buds, even those I don’t know, if someone’s coming for you behind your identity, let me know so I can give them a real problem to handle. Being a problem is my speciality, and I’ve chosen to embrace it. Let me use this weapon on your behalf.
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Jay Hulme @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
It's Joan of Arc's feast day today. Here's a poem for everyone who needs to remember that there's more to life than the fight.
from 'The Vanishing Song' by Jay Hulme

'What rage or madness drives you?'

Joan of Arc, March 1430

You will not find Joan of Arc in the Bible, she is something stranger than scripture. Her sword rattles among the saints, arms aching for another fight.

When she arrived she found Heaven more difficult than expected -a place of pure justice; her steel unnecessary. Hands unbloodied. Speeches unspoken.

Joan waits for the prayers of wronged women. Her hands grasp the pommel of a blade. When God asks what she is doing in this place of peace, she says:

Lord, you have made me for war, and I have no idea what to do with the gift of all I was fighting for.
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Jeanne Theoharis @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Given the evisceration of the VRA, it's useful to listen to Coretta Scott King: “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it every generation.” She understood nonviolent direct action was "militant" and essential and spent her entire life fighting.
Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King holding hands marching with others in the Selma to Montgomery March.
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Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
GIVEAWAY! Dead Weight is coming out next week and to celebrate I'm giving away two copies that have been personally bitten by Uggi and will be personally signed by me and shipped to the winners wherever they live! To enter just like and share this post and I'll select the winners on May 26th!
Uggi the dog next to my hand, holding a copy of Dead Weight Two copies of Dead Weight with teethmarks
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 29/04/2026
This is coming from a place of warmth and acceptance… -It’s ‘sleight of hand’ -It’s ‘bated breath’ -It’s ‘lo and behold’ -It’s ‘one fell swoop’ -It’s ‘brass tacks’ -It’s ‘free rein’
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The Map Center @mapcenter.com · 26/04/2026
It's a shame that "defend your culture" always means "hate strangers different from you" and never "enact anti-pollution laws so that you can go fishing with your grandkids the way your grandpa taught you."
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Aubrey Gordon @yrfatfriend.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
FINALLY, an episode about alleged sex cults and weighing your own poop!!
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
men can’t understand what it’s like for women to see story after story after story of women being victims of sexual violence in a culture where it’s routine; what it’s like to live in a world that is fundamentally hostile to our existence. it’s a wonder we leave the fucking house, let alone thrive.
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Jerad Walker @jeradwalker.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
What a beautiful moment.
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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
How to end an interview: In 1889, Frederick Douglass told a visitor to his DC home that any government that would "grant the right of suffrage and deny itself the power to protect that right is...a sham and a fraud." Then he grabbed his violin and played the Star Spangled Banner.
Mr. Douglass rose, and, taking the violin, played once more to the delight of the PRESS representative "The Star Spangled Banner, and the goodbye was exchanged, and thus closed the longest interview ever obtained with the "Sage of Cedar Hill."
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
In 1854, after watching the federal government deploy 2000 federal troops and spend $40,000 sending Anthony Burns back into slavery, Boston's Amos Adams Lawrence said “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”
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Omg. WTF is Happening? @lalahaenzy.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
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Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
An amazing read. Lessons from Minnesota.
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taylr @taylordahlin.com · 27/01/2026
brass solidarity band performing “stand by me” in the streets of whittier next to alex pretti’s memorial. the crowd started chanting “the people united will never be defeated” so they incorporated it into the song. i love minneapolis
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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 11/01/2026
Hi, I’m John Marks, I’m a public historian and writer. I’ve been helping history museums prepare for the nation’s 250th anniversary for 9 years now. Despite everything else happening in history, I’m still excited about this anniversary—and you should be too. Here’s why. 🧵 /1
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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.com · 30/12/2025
I'm going to share my CPTSD-informed end-of-year reflective exercises. I'm not a therapist, just a veteran of it and this is the kind of language that works for me. 1) a) One sheet of paper, 10min: what moved forward this year, even A TINY BIT: progress toward a goal or an internal shift, whatever.
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Kevin M. Levin @civilwarmemory.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
This is incredible news. Today, Virginia officials will unveil a statue of Barbara Johns at the Capitol to replace one of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that had stood for more than a century. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
washingtonpost.com
Statue of Black teen who fought segregation replaces Robert E. Lee at U.S. Capitol
Barbara Rose Johns was only 16 when she led a walkout in 1951 to protest horrendous conditions at her segregated high school for Black students in rural Farmville, Virginia.
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Leah Sottile @leahsottile.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
If you can believe it, January 1, 2026 marks ten years since the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. For Portland Monthly, I wrote about how the ensuing decade was dominated by anxious men and a culture of lawlessness. www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-cit...
pdxmonthly.com
The Takeover of Malheur Kicked Off a Decade of Lawlessness
The wildlife refuge occupation set the stage for Trump, January 6, and so much more.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
My hot take: Pies are good. All of them. Anytime is a good time for pie.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
> @samsteindc.bsky.social
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The Associated Press @apnews.com · 05/11/2025
BREAKING: Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students. Follow AP for live updates.
bit.ly
Live updates: US voters head to the polls in first general election since Trump's return to power
One year after Donald Trump retook the presidency, 2025 Election Day includes closely watched races for New York City mayor, New Jersey governor and California's Proposition 50.
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Johnny 🫧 Cowlick @jefferycowlick.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Video by Audrey Akin. 9:37pm, November 4, 2025. Brooklyn, New York--the moment the results were announced. That's the sound of HOPE, America 💙 ✊ 🇺🇸
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
When Daylight Saving Time ends in the second month of your furlough, sleep time becomes 6:30 pm - 2:30 am.
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AmeriKraut @inchargeofthegirls.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
sherman, for the love of god!
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 29/08/2025
Every time you use ChatGPT or something like it, you’re helping to train an algorithm that is actually being developed to do things like this
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Sharing so I remember to read this
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Kara N. Slade @karanslade.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
I didn’t know until now that in the original Rosie the Riveter painting, she is crushing a copy of Mein Kampf under her foot. Happy feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, remembering all the women who crush the serpents of Satan under their heel.
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Sean Beckner-Carmitchel @acatwithnews.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Dolores Huerta, a 95 year old labor organizer with deep roots going back even before the Delano Grape Strike in 1965, here in Boyle Heights speaking at a protest. She called the past several days of detainments throughout Los Angeles a “horrible assault.”
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Tracy Jan @tracyjan.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Many of the federal workers being forced out by Trump are Black women who spent decades building a career of government service, only to see those careers shattered in a sudden purge. By @davidmcswane.bsky.social
propublica.org
Dismissed by DEI: Trump’s Purge Made Black Women With Stable Federal Jobs an “Easy Target”
The president’s attack on diversity efforts has derailed the government careers of highly educated civil servants — even though the jobs some lost were not directly involved with any DEI programs.
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Jane Marie @seejanemarie.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Jesus forgot to add “bitch!” Matthew 25:40
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 26/05/2025
"I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom." - Abraham Lincoln
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
Booker: Do you think we got the right to vote for women because a bunch of men on the House floor got together and said “on the count of three, women get the right to vote..” That’s not how it happened… Change doesn’t come from Washington. It comes to Washington.
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Orion Rummler @oriion.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Women made history in space long before the Blue Origin flight: Meet the astronauts, engineers and mathematicians that pioneered aerospace over the past 100 years.
19thnews.org
Women made history in space long before the Blue Origin flight
As astronauts, engineers and mathematicians, women have been pioneers in aerospace for over 100 years.
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Susan Philpott @susanphilpott.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Those moments when you discover that the ideas you've been trying to articulate have already been explained eloquently by someone much smarter than you over 40 years ago. Thank you, Paula Giddings.
Paragraph in When and Where I Enter. "In the course of my research, several themes emerged. One of them, clearly exposed through the experience of Black women, is the relationship between sexism and racism. Because both are motivated by similar economic, social, and psychological forces, it is only logical that those who sought to undermine Blacks were also the most virulent antifeminists. The means of oppression differed across race and sex lines, but the wellspring of oppression was the same. Black women understood this dynamic. White women, by and large, did not. White feminists often acquiesced to racist ideology, undermining their own cause in doing so. For just as there is a relationship between racism and sexism, there is also a connection between the advance of Blacks and that of women. The greatest gains made by women have come in the wake of strident Black demands for their rights."
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
This stunning portrait of trailblazing civil rights legal visionary Pauli Murray, now hangs in the Pauli Murray Suite at Howard Law School. The portrait was donated by alumni.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
People wanting other people to be nicer CAN trigger a backlash, but it is the fault of the backlash, not the people saying please respect me.
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