All recent posts on Carwil without Borders
On Charles McMillian, outstanding witness in the murder of George Floyd
This is Charles McMillian, who begged George Floyd to do anything to survive, and who begged Officer Chauvin to stop killing him. I love this man’s courage, his caring, his ability to put on a suit and hope that his words will matter in the trial of Floyd’s killer in the way they didn’t matter…
No Kings protests were extraordinary. How exactly?
Americans, citizens and immigrants alike, protested on Saturday, June 14, in exceptional numbers as a wave of No Kings protests became the most widespread public repudiation of the second Donald Trump administration. These protests, which were undoubtedly energized by the standoff between Los Angeles-area communities and Federal troops, could mark a turning point from isolated…
Resistance to Trump reaches its first turning point
“The Whole World Is Watching.” It’s been decades since American protesters chanted this sentence at American police in an effort to deter violence and brutality. But it has perhaps never been more true than right now. The political drama of the USA in 2025 has the world riveted, and I as I walked through the…
Trump’s authoritarian turn is everyone’s problem
It’s May 2025, and it feels like every new conversation (in my circles? in the United States? far beyond that?) needs to start with an acknowledgement of the bleak bigger picture on the national and global stage. Like every How are you? could be personal, but could also be a How are you coping with…
Prom for the US tech oligarchy
It was an inescapable image of the 2025 presidential inauguration: the joint appearance of Mark Zuckerberg (CEO, Meta), Priscilla Chan (co-CEO and operating leader of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Zuckerberg’s spouse), Jeff Bezos (founder, Amazon) Lauren Sanchez (Bezos’ fiancée and co-chair of the Bezos Earth Fund), Sundar Pichai (CEO, Alphabet/Google), Elon Musk (CEO, Tesla,…
Evo Morales faces criminal investigation over sexual relationship with teenage girl
Five years after his ouster from office, former president Evo Morales is suddenly facing a serious investigation into his apparent sexual relationship with a minor at the height of this presidency in 2015–16. The allegations cover the illegal and coercive nature of the relationship as well as allegations that the girl’s parents traded sexual access…
Recent political violence in Bolivia is happening between social movements, not against them
This review of lethal political conflict in Bolivia is cross-posted from the Ultimate Consequences research project website, where I’ll be archiving my commentary and analysis on political violence in the country. Featured photo above shows protesters against the La Deseada mine in Mapiri, in Larecaja Province, where mining conflict have claimed five lives in recent…
Suwalki, 1937/2002
In the summer of 2002, I went on a winding journey from Berlin northwest to Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania in Germany, then east through Gdańsk and Białystok in Poland, to ultimately reach the town of Suwałki in northeast Poland. This route had been charted by my mother to follow our family tree, seeking out each place named…
Gratitude for South Africans at the ICJ
South Africa’s existence as the country it is now is the result of a remarkable global collective struggle that many US residents played a part in. This struggle was only in small measure a legal one, but it built on the ways democracy, anti-racism, and equality of all nations were built into the global legal…
First Generation B(l)ack
In 2002, my mother Carolyn James (1936–2023) and I traveled to Berlin, to Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, to Danzig, to Suwalki, to Warsaw, and to Auschwitz in search of our ancestors and relatives. This essay, from 2002, reflects on what I, a descendant of these lands but also of Africa, found. There is a different view of…
The scale and pace of death in Israel–Gaza war are staggering
This is not just another turn in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The extraordinary attacks by Hamas on October 7 and the thirty-one days of bombardment and invasion by the Israeli military that followed have led to a loss of life on an historic scale in Israel and Palestine, respectively. Researching and accounting for lethal political violence…
Three Palestinian photographers, three Israeli killings
In 2012, photographer and videographer Roshdi Sarraj (Twitter|Instagram) co-founded Ain Media with Yaser Murtaja (Instagram). Both used up-close and drone-mounted cameras to document the life of the everyday life, wartime suffering, and protest movements of Gaza. I became aware of Murtaja and Ain Media’s remarkable work through his last piece, documentary coverage of The Great…
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About the blogger
Carwil Bjork-James is an ethnographer, photographer, writer, and participant in creative mass movements. He is assistant professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University. (The views expressed here are his own, not those of the university.)
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