Scalawag will no longer be publishing the weekly Mobtown Redux column, as its creator, Logan Hullinger, has passed away. 

Logan created Mobtown Redux in 2023 and committed himself to a "radical, advocacy-based approach" to journalism, covering the rights of drug users and reporting responsibility on addiction, drug policy, and the harm reduction movement in Baltimore, Maryland—the epicenter of the overdose crisis in the US.

As an independent journalist and recovering addict, Mobtown Redux was a personal passion project that aimed to shift narratives around drug users and the inequities they face. He wrote about drug use, harm reduction, and the War on Drugs with the compassion and care that it deserves, and that too few journalists grant in their coverage. Logan's work emphasized the need for decriminalization, pinpointed the anti-Black racism at the heart of the War on Drugs, and interrogated the various ways the overdose crisis is sustained through dangerous policies. 

We were incredibly privileged to have connected with Logan. We met him at a convening hosted by the Movement Media Alliance last year and immediately fell in love with his work and the passion with which he spoke about it. We are grateful that he trusted Scalawag to be a home for his vital work, and heartbroken that our partnership was cut short.

At Scalawag, we publish stories and work with our communities through a harm reduction lens. A core principle of harm reduction is recognizing that relapse can very well be a part of someone's recovery—and that, tragically, it can sometimes be fatal. Logan was very open about his struggles with substance use and bipolar disorder. His family shared that he would want people to know the cause of his passing, in hopes of continuing in death what he did in life: being transparent about the realities of drug use and underscoring the necessity of the harm reduction movement.

Donate to GoFundMe to help support Logan's family, and read more of his indispensable coverage at Mobtown Redux, Baltimore Beat, and Filter. 

"Prosecutorial policy rooted in the decades-old War on Drugs is all but guaranteed to undermine Baltimore's overdose crisis response for another four years, foreshadowing innumerable preventable deaths and widespread suffering."

"Either the city destroys the lives of drug users by feeding them to the carceral beast, or it interrupts the supply and kills them through that means.

The fact that law enforcement has essentially been given carte blanche to continue its assault on drug users in the name of public safety is not only nonsensical but incredibly dangerous."

"Unlike previous versions of the legislation, it would not decriminalize paraphernalia. Advocates are instead pushing for a streamlined bill this year that would repeal laws criminalizing paraphernalia entirely, bypassing the inevitable—and likely lengthy—debates over what items fall under that umbrella."

"The city's recent focus on the mass overdose protocol…won't stabilize the increasingly lethal drug supply, and it sure as hell won't shift the city toward a more compassionate approach to drug use as long as the police prioritize crackdowns with their whopping $613 million war chest. 

The words of those in power mean little, given how the city has positioned itself against drug user liberation. Instead, they've bankrolled a system that forces drug users into the shadows, jail cells, or graves."

"The needs of Baltimoreans who are unhoused, use drugs or are in crisis have been discarded in pursuit of bolstering the police state and allowing the cancer to fester. The brazen disregard of calls for social reforms, replaced with seemingly unlimited funding for the police force, is what Baltimore deems 'public safety.'"

Sherronda (they/she) is a Southern-grown gothic nerd. As a versatile creator, they lend their talents to multiple spheres as an essayist, editor, storyteller, creative consultant, and artist. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Scalawag Magazine and is the author of "Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture." Alongside queer theory and (a)sexual politics, their writing often focuses on cultural critique and media analysis, especially horror. Sherronda strives to lead our editorial team with empathy and passion to inspire imaginative resistance, radical creativity, and cathartic experience.

Da’Shaun Harrison is a queer and trans afropessimist and anarcho-communist born and bred in the South. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and received several other media and literary honors. As a movement media and narrative strategist, Harrison draws from a deep history of community organizing—beginning in 2014 during their first year at Morehouse College—to inform their cultural criticism and political thought.

Through the lens of what Harrison terms “Black Fat Studies,” they lecture widely on the intersections of blackness, fatness, and gender. Harrison currently serves as Co-Executive Director of Scalawag Magazine, where they were previously the magazine’s first Editor-at-Large. They are also a co-founder of the Movement Media Alliance (MMA), which houses projects such as Media Against Apartheid & Displacement (MAAD), Communities Beyond Elections (CBE), and other collaborative media efforts.

In addition to their editorial and organizing work, Harrison served on the Board of Directors for the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) from 2023-2026. They also co-host the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back and are ⅓ of the video podcast In The Middle. Between 2019 and 2021, Harrison served as Associate Editor—and later Managing Editor—of Wear Your Voice Magazine. Their work remains grounded in abolitionist practice and destructive media.

As a speaker, Harrison has delivered keynotes and guest lectures at universities and colleges such as Harvard Law School, Yale University, Northwestern University, Spelman College, University of Cincinnati, Trinity College, and more. Their research and writing has appeared in anthologies and other texts, including Black Love Matters (2022), In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities (2022), and The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies (2023). As a public intellectual, Harrison’s work is regularly in conversation with thinkers such as Sabrina Strings, Kiese Laymon, Joy James, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Hortense Spillers, C. Riley Snorton, Jamil al-Amin and others on the topics of (anti-)fatness, (trans)gender and sexuality, Black Feminism, Afropessimism, and Socialist thought, to name a few.

Harrison’s writing has appeared in PhiladelphiaPrint, Scalawag Magazine, Wear Your Voice, THEM, Black Youth Project, BET, Prism, and elsewhere. They have also been featured in/interviewed by Black Power Media, The Takeaway, Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, The ACLU, The Fader, Teen Vogue, the New York Times, and a host of other podcasts and digital media platforms.