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The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.

Alice Wong, disabled oracle and disability justice leader, died on November 14 at the age of 51. Alice, who had spinal muscular atrophy, will be the subject of a hybrid celebration of her life in the coming spring. She will continue to mean so much to disabled people, both those she counted as close friends and those acquainted with her via social media and her writings.

“What I will do is spend my time, energy, and labor intentionally with the people I care about,” Alice wrote in a Time essay last year. And based on loving tributes from friends of hers, she certainly did. 

One thing, of many, that I very much admired about Alice was her dedication to helping Palestinians in Gaza. On her website, Disability Visibility Project, she wrote in 2023, “I know that genocide is a mass disabling event and a form of eugenics.” The same year, along with Jane Shi and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, she........

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