Kit O’Connell (pronouns: they/them) is a movement journalist, radical troublemaker and freelance writer from Austin, Texas.
Kit O’Connell is the GLAAD Media Award-nominated former Digital Editor of the Texas Observer. Their writing has appeared in The Advocate, the Austin Chronicle, LGBTQ Nation, The Barbed Wire, YES! Magazine, Deceleration, and Truthout, among other places.
In September 2024, their work was profiled by Columbia Journalism Review.
Kit O’Connell, movement journalist
Raised by their family to be an activist, Kit began writing in their teens. Kit became a full-time journalist through their involvement with the Occupy Wall Street movement, ultimately joining the foundational political blog Firedoglake in 2012 as an editor and correspondent. At Firedoglake, they broke a story proving police had infiltrated the Occupy Austin encampment and entrapped activists, and they later risked arrest to cover a mass occupation of the Texas Capitol for abortion rights in 2013.
In 2017, they became the Editor-in-Chief of Ministry of Hemp, a site they made into an important news and information source for the hemp industry. At the Ministry, they advocated for more equitable hemp policy during the national push to legalize the plant and their reporting helped improve water rights for farmers.
From July 2022 until February 2024, Kit served as Digital Editor of the Texas Observer. Kit’s July 2022 article in the Observer, “There Is No Legitimate ‘Debate’ Over Gender-Affirming Healthcare” was nominated for 2023 GLAAD Media Award for their detailed critique of harmful reporting about transgender healthcare from the New York Times. Their November 2022 collaboration with photographer Jesse Freidin, “Are You OK? The Lives of Young Trans Texans,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award. That same year, under Kit’s leadership, the Observer became one of the first nonprofit publications to launch its own server on the distributed social network Mastodon—a move that ended up being instrumental in saving the publication from closure during a financial crisis in 2023. Kit also helped the publication reach over 60,000 followers on Bluesky.
For well over a decade, Kit’s organized, marched, and written on behalf of a variety of causes. They briefly appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” stirring up shit at the Texas Senate during the 2013 feminist uprising at the Texas Capitol. Media from New Zealand to Scandinavia quoted a press release they wrote announcing the arrest of Santa Claus.
Proudly disabled, transgender and nonbinary/(gender)queer, Kit lives with their spouse and two cats in Austin, Texas.
Find more of Kit
Follow Kit on Bluesky at @kitoconnell.com.
Follow Kit on Mastodon at @oconnell@federate.social and @kitoconnell@kolektiva.social.
Contact Kit O’Connell: kitoconnell@pobox.com
2013: Now Is The Time To Act — Kit O’Connell with Caitlin Perrone & Taylor Hampton
Photo of Kit O’Connell on the Austin Boardwalk by Montinique Monroe.