If a picture is worth a thousand words, his spoke novels. He was Steinbeck, Tolstoy, and Tolkien… all in one. His images capture the spirit of the poor and working classes.
And they grip the viewer. Refusing to let your eyes peal from the picture before you. Pictures in black and white. Pictures that seem to have been painted by brush strokes, but which are as real as the camera equipment he used.
Sebastião Salgado was an artist, and he was a documentarian, capturing the plight of the downtrodden, but also their soul. Their beauty.
He was criticized for this. They said he glorified poverty. He responded that the poor deserve just as good a picture as the rich. Probably even better.
Sebastião Salgado was born February 8, 1944, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He trained as a Marxist economist. Joined the movement against Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960s, and went into exile in France in August 1969 with his wife.
“I arrived in France with Lélia, my wife, at the end of the 1960s as an exiled person, fleeing the system of deep repression that existed at the time in Brazil,” he posted on Instagram almost two years ago. “Soon afterwards, the Brazilian military dictatorship withdrew our passports and we had to file an injunction to get them back. We became refugees here in France, and then immigrants. When I did a piece of work on refugees and immigrants, I already knew this story, in my own way I had lived it. For years, I had been looking for people who had been displaced from their place of origin and were in transit, looking for another point of stability. They left either for economic reasons, climate change or because of conflict. I realised a body of work called “Exodus”. In reality, I was photographing a part of my own life, portrayed in other people, some of them in slightly better situations than I had, and the vast majority in much worse conditions. It was a very important moment in my life, of identifying with these people, and of feeling deeply what I was photographing,” he wrote.
He first began taking pictures in the early 1970s with his wife’s Leica. By 1973, he had quit his job at the International Coffee Organization and became a freelance photographer. He traveled the world. Worked for several photography agencies.
He was covering the first 100 days of Ronald Reagan in 1981, when he was one of the only photographers to capture the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life.
Salgado sold the pictures to finance his first major photography trip to Africa.
Salgado’s projects would span the world. He would travel to 120 different countries on his photography trips. His pictures are big. Larger than life. Epic. Like the landscape photographer Ansel Adams’, but with grit. Portraying humanity…
The best and the worst.
And at their heart, revealing truth, struggle, the fight to survive, to exist. And the underpinnings of an unjust, unequal global system where so many have so little and so few have so much.
Like his 1986 pictures of the Serra Pelada Gold Mine, in Brazil. They seem like something from a dystopian future, or a long-forgotten past. Thousands of workers in shorts and t-shirts climbing through the mud on rickety ladders in near-slave conditions.
“He always had the idea that things are always going to get better, that we are on the path for development and somehow if he could create a warning, he could contribute to this process of social progress in society,” his son, filmmaker Juliano Salgado would later say.
Salgado shot masterpiece collections of pictures of workers. Of the fight for land and land reform. Of nature. The Amazon. Climate change. And when he visited communities, land occupations, or groups like Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, he didn’t just drop in, shoot and leave, like news agencies photographers then and now. He stayed for days. He documented it. He experienced it. He lived it.
Sebastião Salgado’s photography spoke volumes, portraying deep and profound truth, shining light on the problems and the injustices of the world in exquisite images that one simply cannot ignore.
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Sebastiao Salgado passed away on May 23, 2025, at the age of 81.
His legacy lives on.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I have been a huge fan of Sebastiao Salgado for years. I’m happy I was able to do this short story on his tremendous life and work.
This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, you can find follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at Patreon.com/mfox.
Thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 43 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work.
There is a boat sailing to Gaza right now. It carries aid for the people of Palestine. And it is called the Freedom Flotilla.
It is a sign of solidarity. A sign of resistance. Against Israel’s war on the people of Palestine. Against the death, and destruction and pain. A sign of international resistance against the Israeli genocide.
On board is Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, and 11 others from around the world.
“12 people are here on board, to break the siege and to create a people’s humanitarian corridor. To take whatever aid we can carry. And to say that we do not accept a genocide. We do not accept ethnic cleansing. And we will not stay silent.”
That’s Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila.
The goal is to break Israel’s siege of Gaza and deliver much needed humanitarian aid. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, strictly controlling the entry of supplies, goods, and aid into the region.
On board the ship is rice, flour, baby formula, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, and medical supplies.
This is not the first time they have tried to sail to Gaza.
One month ago, another ship, also sailing as part of the Freedom Flotilla, was attacked by drones. 15 years ago, another group of ships were attacked. Israeli forces killed 10 people on board. Injured dozens. And arrested everyone.
Greta Thunberg spoke to the public shortly before they set sail on June 1.
“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And no matter how dangerous this mission is. It is no where near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of a live-streamed genocide.”
“We just want to say that this isn’t just about getting food into Gaza. It’s also about breaking the medical seizure of doctors. Bringing in doctors and medical equipment. And I just have a few messages to all of the doctors and nurses in Gaza that are doing amazing work. Not just the local doctors, but the international doctors. We see you. We see the work that you’re doing on there and the reporting that you’re doing on the ground.”
The Freedom Flotilla left from Sicily, Italy, on June 1. It’s a seven-day voyage. If all goes as planned, they will arrive to Gaza this weekend.
“We need you to keep all eyes on deck. To follow the mission. And to keep putting pressure on your respective governments and institutions to demand an end to the genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
###
Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I have no words to describe the dire situation in Gaza. We’ll be following the progress of the Freedom Flotilla closely over the coming days.
If you liked this story, please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I’ll add links in the show notes.
You can support my work and this podcast, plus check out exclusive pictures, videos and stories on my Patreon. That’s Patreon.com/mfox.
This is Episode 42 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
###
“We know that for 78 years, not a single bottle of water, not a single piece of bread enters Gaza. So we are going on a small boat called Madleen that fits 10-12 people, carrying whatever humanitarian aid we can carry, carrying all the people that wants to go there, and go into Gaza, not because we think that a few boxes we will be able to take will make a difference… we know that this is just a drop in the ocean, but we are going to open a people’s humanitarian corridor.”
This is episode 42 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work.
On May 19, the former presidential candidate for Ecuador’s leftist Citizen Revolution party, Andres Arauz, learned that the country’s attorney general was bringing him up on charges.
Attorney General Diana Salazar Méndez accused Arauz of “illicit association” in a political case, referred to in Ecuador as the Caso Ligados, which concerns current and former members of the country’s Council for Citizen Participation (CPCCS), all with ties to the Citizen Revolution party, discussing strategies in 2024 to promote allies to positions of power within the CPCCS. Arauz is one of three prominent left figures being charged and facing possible jail time.
Arauz is the secretary general of Citizen Revolution and an outspoken opponent of the government of right-wing President Daniel Noboa, who was inaugurated to his second term on May 24.
Noboa is a Trump ally and the son of billionaire businessman Álvaro Noboa. Buoyed by a campaign rife with fake news, facing accusations of vote buying and fraud, Noboa secured a commanding victory in last month’s presidential election. Since then, he has wasted no time in targeting his political opponents.
Noboa is a Trump ally and the son of billionaire businessman Álvaro Noboa. Buoyed by a campaign rife with fake news, facing accusations of vote buying and fraud, Noboa secured a commanding victory in last month’s presidential election. Since then, he has wasted no time in targeting his political opponents.
Arauz says the charges against him are merely the latest example of Salazar weaponizing the judicial system against prominent figures of the Ecuadorian left. He says this is part of a larger campaign of lawfare waged to tarnish the image of progressive leaders in Latin America—in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere—and attack their political reputations and their parties.
Salazar has been a controversial figure in Ecuador since she was appointed attorney general in 2019. She has faced widespread accusations of waging a politically motivated witch hunt against leading left figures in the country, including former President Rafael Correa and former Vice President Jorge Glas, who is currently serving time in jail.
Political analysts and opponents of the Noboa government accuse Salazar of using her authority to target Noboa’s political enemies, even though the attorney general’s office is supposed to be an independent branch of the Ecuadorian government.
Political analysts and opponents of the Noboa government accuse Salazar of using her authority to target Noboa’s political enemies, even though the attorney general’s office is supposed to be an independent branch of the Ecuadorian government.
And yet, Salazar has often received praise for her work from the US State Department, the US embassy in Ecuador, and media outlets like The Economist. She was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024. But she has herself been under investigation after a series of leaked chat messages between herself and an Ecuadorian member of the National Assembly called her impartiality and ethics into question.
The day after bringing Arauz up on charges, Salazar announced her resignation as attorney general, a position she has held for the last six years, and accepted a position as the country’s new ambassador to Argentina.
I spoke with Andres Arauz in May over WhatsApp. Below is the text transcript of our interview, which has been lightly edited lightly for clarity and readability.
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Michael Fox: Like you mentioned in a post on X, there have been accusations against you in the past, but this is the first time you’re formally being brought up on charges. What does this mean? What’s really going on here?
Andres Arauz: This is the first time that charges are being pressed against me. I’ve had many accusations in the past. When I was a presidential candidate in 2021, I was accused of receiving funds from the Colombian guerrillas, and that was all later disproven and understood to be fake.
So this is not the first time that I am being accused. I’ve had other accusations—all of them have been dismissed.
So this is not the first time that I am being accused. I’ve had other accusations—all of them have been dismissed.
But this is the first time since I was a candidate in 2021 that a bogus accusation has actually gotten through the investigation phase and they are now pressing charges against me.
But this is the first time since I was a candidate in 2021 that a bogus accusation has actually gotten through the investigation phase and they are now pressing charges against me.
What is funny, though, is that none of the investigation that the prosecutor’s office has done has actually required testimony from me, so they’re pressing charges without ever having asked for my testimony. They have not requested any documents related to me, except for my travel records in and out of the country.
It’s very disconcerting that the attorney general pressed charges against me the day before she quit—literally, the night before she announced her resignation and made it effective.
And, as we now know, she was designated ambassador to Argentina the day after she quit. So, Day 1: press charges against Andres. Day 2: she quits. Day 3: she’s named ambassador to Argentina.
But the fun fact, here—and the most relevant fact concerning judicial independence in the case of Ecuador—is that in the executive decree where President Daniel Noboa announced that Salazar is designated to become ambassador to Argentina, it says that the Argentinian government gave their formal acceptance for her to be ambassador on January 29, 2024.
The request for her to be ambassador was probably sent in early January 2024, which means that all this time that she was a supposedly independent attorney general, she was actually an employee of the Noboa government, or at least acting as someone assured to become an employee of the Noboa government. This, of course, creates conflicts of interest, given that I am in opposition, formally speaking and legally speaking, to the Noboa government.
This is a bogus political accusation on behalf of the Noboa government, clearly.
Fox: In Ecuador, the attorney general is supposed to be independent, right? They’re not a lackey of the president, or at least they shouldn’t be, correct?
Arauz: Unlike in the United States, where the attorney general is also a secretary of the Executive branch, in the case of Ecuador, the attorney general is outside of the Executive branch. It’s a completely independent authority that’s not even nominated by the president or by the national parliament. It’s a completely independent office of the state.
Fox: Why is this happening right now? January 2024 was roughly a year and a half ago…
Arauz: It’s political persecution. I was a very outspoken figure during the most recent election against Noboa and his government, his economic policies, his bad practices in terms of economic mismanagement, and also his corruption scandals. And of course, this is just payback. It’s payback time.
It’s political persecution. I was a very outspoken figure during the most recent election against Noboa and his government, his economic policies, his bad practices in terms of economic mismanagement, and also his corruption scandals. And of course, this is just payback.
Salazar is leaving because she fulfilled her duties in terms of the political agreement that she had with Noboa and former President Guillermo Lasso. In the last couple of weeks, before she left, she accused me and she accused former Vice President Jorge Glas of another crime, even though he’s already in jail. And she dismissed around 10 different accusations against Lasso.
So, it’s not a coincidence that all of this happened in the last two weeks before she left office. We believe that this is just a political arrangement between Salazar and the Noboa government, and this is why she lacks objectivity and impartiality. Her accusations should be reversed, or at least the accusation against me should be reversed, given this obvious conflict of interest.
Fox: Can you explain the charges against you?
Arauz: The charges against me are not explained in the letter where she says she’s gonna press charges against me. She just says, “I’m going to accuse Andres Arauz, Esther Cuesta, Raúl González, etc. because there is data.” There’s no actual motivation or explanation. It’s very difficult for me to defend myself if I don’t know what I’m being accused of.
The actual crime that she’s accusing me of is not corruption, it is not influence or meddling, nothing violent, nothing that has to do with drugs, nothing that has to do with organized crime. The charges against me are what in Ecuadorian criminal code is called “illicit association.” And illicit association is a pre-crime type of accusation, where the person accused is not accused of committing a crime, but of planning or conspiring or thinking about committing a crime.
So it’s a generic accusation. The history of the “illicit association” type of criminal behavior goes back to Italy, when they couldn’t get the mob leaders for assassination or extortion, because those crimes were never visible. So they got them for being in meetings where those things were being planned. Now, this criminal charge, which has been historically used for violent crimes that were planned but not perpetrated, is being used for a political issue. You know, “He was planning a political meeting,” or something like that—it’s extremely unheard of. And it’s a very bad signal, because it means that they don’t have any evidence. They would have accused me of corruption if they had evidence, but they didn’t. They would have accused me of something violent or committing some type of economic crime, but they didn’t. They’re accusing me of political pre-crime.
The formal accusation from March—not against me, but against the other people that are being accused on this matter—was that there is an illicit association to take the power of the state by designating people that are more ideologically close to Citizen Revolution, which is the name of our party.
I know that in the end this case has no possibility of being successful if there were rule of law, but in the immediate future I have to ensure that they don’t put me in jail.
I can send you the accusation from the attorney general. It says, “Yes, I’m accusing them of trying to take the power of the state by putting in people that are ideologically close to them.” That is literally what a political party does!
It’s very, very troublesome. I just laugh, because it’s laughable. But this is a person’s freedom and liberty…
Fox: What are the next steps in the charges against you?
Arauz: The now-former Attorney General Diana Salazar sent a letter to the judge of this case, Daniella Camacho, saying that she should define a time and date for my hearing, where she will decide whether or not to include me as a formal suspect and what the provisional measures are for considering me a suspect.
So, there is a range of provisional measures and outcomes here, from nothing to showing up in court every two weeks, to not being able to leave the country, to wearing one of those bracelets, to prison.
That’s the range of options that the judge has when considering the supposed danger I pose to society. So they have to determine what kind of measures they’re going to apply against me, and of course that’s my main fight right now. Because I know that in the end this case has no possibility of being successful if there were rule of law, but in the immediate future I have to ensure that they don’t put me in jail, and that they don’t prohibit my freedom of movement, because, as you know, I’m all over the place. I travel extensively. I’m an internationalist. I have a lot of work abroad. And if they don’t allow me to move around the world, that is a very severe restriction on me and my different duties.
Fox: Do you think that, at the end of the day, they know they don’t have anything on you, but they’re doing this as part of a larger effort to attack, intimidate, and crush the opposition here in Ecuador?
Arauz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is absolutely what is happening. And if you check some of the pro-government trolls and some of their main media spokespeople, that’s what they’re going for. They’re saying, “Haha, finally, we’re going to get you and you’re gonna rot in jail!”
We have identified previously, from research, who are the trolls being paid with our taxpayer dollars. And we know that’s the message that they want to send. And we also have official government voices, party parliamentarians and legislators, saying, “Haha, we’re gonna put you in jail!” and so on.
This was expected, because this is what these new proto-fascist governments do. They use lawfare to silence their opponents and consolidate power.
In fact, the reason why I’m involved in this case at all is because on March 12, 2024, a group of parliamentarians from the government’s party, led by Adrian Castro, a legislator from the Azuay Province, filed a criminal complaint against me. And the day after… You know, our judicial system isn’t exactly efficient and quick, but in this case it was… So, the day after, Attorney General Salazar decided to include this criminal complaint and merge it with the Ligados case.
So this is a clear indication that I’m being included here for political reasons. In fact, the criminal complaint says that I should be investigated because I had posted a tweet in solidarity with Augusto Verduga, who is a member of the Citizens Council, and who is ideologically close to us, when his advisor was assassinated.
I also said that the prosecutor should investigate the possibility that the assassination had political motives. So that’s why I’m in this case—for a tweet.
Fox: How do these charges against you fit within the context of the lawfare against progressive leaders across the region, from Jorge Glass to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to ex-Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner?
Arauz: Well, this is a continuation of political persecution and the use of the judicial system for political purposes.
They’ve been doing that for the last 10 years against political leaders. Of course, the people you mentioned are very high profile political leaders that have received similar treatment by the judicial system in these attacks against them. And in my case, while I’m perhaps not as high-profile as them, I have been a very uncomfortable voice in the Ecuadorian political scene—with the added element that my voice has a lot of international repercussions, because of my work abroad and so on. So it’s a voice that they definitely want silenced, and they want to basically damage my reputation.
Fox: The name Diana Salazar means nothing to anyone outside of Ecuador. But putting her within the context of this larger lawfare happening in the region, could we call her the Sergio Moro of Ecuador? (Sergio Moro was, of course, the biased judge who jailed former Brazilian president Lula on trumped-up charges for 580 days, before the decision was tossed out by the Supreme Court.)
Arauz: Absolutely. In fact, the analogy is perfect, because Sergio Moro conspired with the prosecutors and the judges to go after Lula the person, and not the supposed crimes. You can see the same motive in Diana Salazar’s chats that have been leaked in the past (in a piece that was published by José Olivares and Ryan Grim in The Intercept and in Drop Site News), where she talks to judges, to former judiciary council members, and to Ronny Aleaga—it is very clear that she was conspiring to use the judicial system to attack these political opponents. So there’s a clear analogy to Sergio Moro and his chats with Deltan Dallagnol.
So that’s one point of analogy. The second point of analogy is the fact that as soon as the candidate that beat the left in Brazil won, Jair Bolsonaro, Sergio Moro became Bolsonaro’s first justice minister.
In the case of Diana Salazar, as soon as her job was over as the attorney general, she was designated an ambassador for Daniel Noboa’s government.
So, the analogy is perfect. It resembles perfectly what has been happening here.
Fox: What do we know about the role and involvement of the United States here? In the case of Lula, for instance, through the leaks that were published in The Intercept, we know that the FBI was highly involved with Sergio Moro and the Lava Jato investigation. Do we have any idea of the role the US is potentially playing with Diana Salazar and these lawfare cases against Jorge Glass, Rafael Correa, and now yourself?
Arauz:Yeah, she’s very, very close to the US Embassy in general, and specifically to former Ambassador Michael Fitzpatrick. She wasn’t too close to Ambassador [Art] Brown, who was designated the last year of the Biden administration, but he was just sacked a few days ago by the Trump administration.
She had very close links to the Department of Justice, specifically a deputy director there. We did some research and found some strong links.
But what we know about her history in broader terms is that she was selected by the United States as a key prosecutor in the first FIFA-gate case—she was the lead prosecutor in Ecuador. And so the US got to groom her and they took her on trips, they sent her to the UK, and that’s when they sort of signed her up to be a strong militant for the more political cases.
And then, after that, the US basically reaffirmed its support in the form of an award that the State Department gave her in 2021. She’s been awarded these prizes and stuff by the US government, showing clearly that they are behind her. Whenever there’s a crisis with regards to her position, they go and take pictures with her and say, “We support the attorney general of Ecuador.”
Attorney General Garland welcomed Attorney General of Ecuador @DianaSalazarM2 on her first visit to the Justice Department. DOJ looks forward to continued cooperation and partnership with @FiscaliaEcuador in combating transnational organized crime and corruption. pic.twitter.com/GaQCeYxVNY
They’re very explicit about their support. And just recently, when she resigned as Attorney General, they issued these really nice words about how exemplary and perfect she has been.
Fox: How does it feel to have these charges levied against you?
Arauz:To be sincere, it is a surprise, because for me this case has always been absurd. That may be a little bit of a naive attitude—one always hopes that there will be rule of law and not these selective cases of political persecution.
So there was a little bit of surprise on one hand, but then, the realist in me, the political mind, is like, “No, of course this is not a surprise.” This was expected, because this is what these new proto-fascist governments do. They use lawfare to silence their opponents and consolidate power. We’ve studied this, we have books on it. So this is always what was going to happen.
Now, there is always a personal dimension to this. It takes a heavy toll on one’s closer circles, you know, family and so on. But fortunately, I do feel like I have a broad support network that will, at least, make these injustices visible.
So, I will fight the good fight. I will present all of the paperwork and all the evidence to clear my name. We’ll see if that is enough for the judges, or whether the political pressure from the government and the media will be what prevails.
Dekhla Rashid slaps down seven photographs onto the floor of her home in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit—one after another… after another… after another. She gently spreads them out on the tiles. “These are all my relatives the Dutch government killed,” she says, flatly.
Most of the images are of smiling children. These are Rashid’s nephews and nieces, who were between the ages of seven months to 11 years.
Dekhla Rashid and her nephew Najm and niece Tabarak hold up photos of their family members killed in the Dutch airstrike on Hawija. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
Exactly a decade ago, on the night of June 2, 2015, the Dutch air force bombed a facility used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to manufacture explosive devices in the town of Hawija in Iraq’s northern Kirkuk Province, to which Rashid and her family had fled a year before. The secondary explosion from the strike was massive, flattening surrounding residential neighborhoods and damaging homes as far as five kilometers from the site.
At least 85 civilians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. In a split second, Rashid’s brother, Abdallah Rashid Salih, lost one of his wives and nearly all of his children. Some families were completely wiped out. The bombing mission was one of some 2,100 raids carried out over Iraq and Syria by Dutch F-16s as part of the US-led international coalition against ISIS between 2014 and 2018. The bombing in Hawija was among the deadliest and most serious incidents during the operation.
For years, senior government officials and ministers attempted to cover up and downplay the bloody incident, failing to report known civilian casualties and deliberately misinforming the Dutch parliament on the extent of damage caused by the airstrike. But in 2019, victims in Hawija filed a civil case against the Netherlands—which is still ongoing—demanding accountability and compensation.
“The Dutch government needs to recognize that we are human beings, just like them,” says 56-year-old Rashid, sniffling through tears. A decade later, survivors are still struggling to put their lives back together.
‘ISIS is coming’
In June 2014, ISIS, known for their severe brutality and radical interpretations of Sharia law, took advantage of rising insecurity in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq and led a successful offensive on Mosul and Tikrit. Soon after, the Islamic Caliphate was declared, stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in northeastern Iraq.At its height, the caliphate controlled an area roughly the size of Portugal, spanning about 90,000 square kilometers, including about a third of Syria and 40% of Iraq.
Rashid, her brother, and his entire family immediately fled their homes in Tikrit during the initial offensive. “We heard a lot of bullets and rockets being fired from ISIS,” Rashid tells TRNN. “We grabbed some basic items and left everything else behind us and just ran as fast as we could.” The second wife of Salih, Rashid’s brother, was shot and killed as she fled, just seven months after she gave birth to her first child.
Owing to Hawija’s proximity to Kirkuk, just an hour’s drive away, scores of IDPs from across ISIS territory traveled there, hoping to find a route into Kurdish-controlled territory.
Quickly, the Iraqi government requested military support from the United Nations to fight against ISIS, prompting the United States to appeal to other countries, including NATO members, to aid Iraq’s military efforts. More than 80 countries, including the Netherlands, joined the US-led international coalition that took part in Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR). The operation consisted mostly of supporting Iraqi forces through airstrikes targeting ISIS infrastructure and leadership. The Netherlands was among the first European countries to send combat aircraft to Iraq.
Each time Rashid and her family stopped somewhere to rest, they were warned by others fleeing that ISIS militants were coming. Eventually, they arrived in Hawija, about 100 kilometers away from Tikrit. Kurdish Peshmerga forces, with aerial support from the OIR coalition, successfully blocked ISIS’ advancement into the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. However, the militants were able to successfully overrun Hawija and controlled the town until October 2017.
Around 650,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) fled into Kirkuk, beyond the reach of ISIS. But Rashid and her family did not make it there in time; they became trapped in Hawija, their lives suddenly transformed by the harsh realities of ISIS rule. Along with hundreds of other IDPs who had attempted to flee, Rashid and her family settled in the town’s central industrial area, which is interconnected with family homes and surrounded by densely populated civilian neighborhoods.
According to Tofan Abdulwahab Awad, head of Al-Ghad League for Woman and Child Care—an Iraqi organization that has worked on documenting the aftermath of the bombing—owing to Hawija’s proximity to Kirkuk, just an hour’s drive away, scores of IDPs from across ISIS territory traveled there, hoping to find a route into Kurdish-controlled territory.
“But these IDPs found themselves in a big jail,” Awad tells TRNN. “ISIS would allow the IDPs into Hawija, but they would not allow them to run to Kirkuk.” Any man who was caught was immediately executed, Awad says, and ISIS planted landmines on the informal routes from Hawija to Kirkuk, blowing up entire families who attempted to escape. Still, some IDPs were able to successfully bribe ISIS members to smuggle them further north.
According to Awad, ISIS coerced the IDPs to settle around the town’s industrial area by prohibiting them from leaving the city limits and offering them free housing around a large warehouse that was encircled by a tall cement wall. The IDPs and residents in Hawija had no idea that this warehouse was being used by ISIS to manufacture vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBEIDs), store weapons and homemade explosives, and as a collection point for vehicles to distribute them from that location. According to a recent report, ISIS was storing about 50,000 to 100,000 kilograms of explosives at the facility.
The exact number of IDPs who settled around the warehouse is unknown since many were transient—staying in Hawija for a night or two before finding a way further north. But there were likely at least hundreds of IDPs there, says Awad. “Of course, people who are desperate and have lost everything would accept the free housing around the warehouse,” Awad explains. “The city became very crowded with civilians.”
“But the IDPs were being manipulated by ISIS to stay around that area so the group could use them as human shields to prevent the international coalition from targeting that warehouse.”
‘Judgement day’
Rashid and her brother’s family settled in the industrial zone next to a compound for fixing automobiles and paid rent for the first month. “We were very poor,” Rashid says. “So we didn’t have enough money to keep paying. But the landlord allowed us to stay for free after that.” According to Awad, the landlord was likely compensated by ISIS to encourage the family to stay there.
On the night of June 2, Rashid was on the ground floor of their apartment with Najm, the infant whose mother was killed a year before when they fled Tikrit. The rest of the family was sleeping on the roof, escaping the heat of Iraq’s summer nights.
When the clock struck midnight, without warning, an enormous explosion pummeled the town. “Everything turned red,” remembers Rashid.
When the clock struck midnight, without warning, an enormous explosion pummeled the town. “Everything turned red,” remembers Rashid. “It felt like there was a powerful earthquake shaking the ground. I thought it was Judgement Day.” Rashid immediately threw herself on Najm to protect him from the blast.
Following the explosion, an eerie stillness permeated the town, which had become submerged in complete darkness. Only a slight cast from the full moon illuminated Rashid’s surroundings. “Dust and shattered glass were everywhere,” Rashid says. A terrifying screech suddenly cut through the air. “I heard my brother yelling over and over again, ‘My whole family is gone!’” In the darkness, Rashid grabbed Najm and slowly made her way towards Rashid’s frantic screams.
When she reached the roof, “I saw that the children were on the floor covered in blood. They were dead.” Rashid pauses as she breaks down in tears.
She points at the photos laid out in front of her. One of the photos is of Rashid’s 32-year-old sister-in-law, Salih’s first wife, and another is of her 22-year-old niece, who had just graduated from university. The rest of the photographs are of Salih’s children, between the ages of seven months and 11 years old.
Five-year-old Amal’s skull was shattered into two pieces; her brain fell out onto the ground. Yamama, 11, was still breathing, but her body was almost entirely cut in half; she died en route to the hospital. Mahmoud, Salih’s other seven-month-old, was found dead, with one of his eyes dangling outside of its socket.
“I will never forget what I saw that night,” Rashid says, her voice shaking. Only three of Salih’s children survived, including Najm, the seven-month-old Rashid had protected during the explosion.
Dekhla Rashid stands next to her nephew Najm, who was seven months old when his mother was killed by ISIS. He was one of the children who survived the Dutch bombing, which killed most of his siblings. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
The dawn light revealed the devastating impact of the blast. “There was so much destruction,” Rashid recounts. “I truly thought it was the end of life on this planet.” According to Awad, more than 1,200 shops, homes, and public institutions, including schools, were completely obliterated in the explosion, while around 6,000 homes were damaged.
Around 190 families in Hawija have at least one member who was confirmed killed or whose body is still missing after the attack, notes Awad. Some IDPs in Hawija did not bring their identity documents with them, especially if they were ever affiliated with the Iraqi government, military, or police—an immediate death sentence under ISIS rule. These unidentified bodies—and possibly more—were buried in mass grave sites in Hawija, to which the Iraqi government has not allowed organizations access, according to Saba Azeem, who heads projects in Iraq for PAX’s Protection of Civilians team, a Dutch peace organization that has done extensive research and documentation of civilian experiences in Hawija.
There are unofficial reports from Iraqi intelligence that civilian deaths from the strike surpassed 100.
Rashid and her surviving family moved into another home and continued living in Hawija for months after the attack. “The whole area was under siege and all the roads were closed so there was nowhere for us to go,” she says. “Every time we heard a plane above us the children would start screaming and crying.”
“We thought the international community was going to save us from ISIS,” Rashid adds. “But then they targeted us. We were living in constant fear. We felt like at any moment they were going to strike us again.”
Residents in Hawija were so terrified of another attack from the coalition that they risked their lives desperately trying to flee into Kirkuk. Many were caught by ISIS and executed or blown up from mines, according to Awad.
Unable to continue living in terror of another attack, Rashid, her brother, and his surviving children decided to take the dangerous journey back to Tikrit, walking throughout the night. When they arrived, they found their home there was also burned down and destroyed. “We were forced to start again from zero,” Rashid tells TRNN.
‘Constant lying’
For years, victims in Hawija had no idea who was exactly behind the airstrike.
In 2018, in communications with parliament, the Dutch ministry of defense alluded to inquiries into incidents in which they may have been responsible for civilian casualties during the war against ISIS. Dutch journalists were able to trace some of this information back to Hawija. In 2019, four years after the strike, Dutch media reported for the first time that it was two Dutch F-16 fighter jets that dropped the bombs on the warehouse in Hawija, which caused the mega secondary explosion.
This prompted human rights lawyers to visit the town and assist victims, including Rashid’s family, in filing a civil lawsuit against the Netherlands in October 2019. According to Liesbeth Zegveld, a prominent human rights lawyer representing the victims and their families, the case against the Netherlands currently represents 300 claimants. If successful, the case’s outcome will apply to all other victims as well, she says.
While the claimants are demanding compensation from the Dutch government, the court proceedings—which have involved some of the claimants, including Rashid’s brother Salih, traveling to the Hague to testify—are still establishing whether the Dutch military was liable for the damage. The claimants argue that the Dutch took an unreasonable risk when they bombarded Hawija, without having proper information on the amount of explosives at the site and the potential harm it would cause to the civilian population. If the court agrees, then compensation would follow, explains Zegveld.
Photo from Hawija, showing the continued destruction 10 years after the 2015 airstrike that killed dozens. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.Photo from Hawija, showing the continued destruction 10 years after the 2015 airstrike that killed dozens. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.Photo from Hawija, showing the continued destruction 10 years after the 2015 airstrike that killed dozens. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
The Dutch state has refused to take responsibility for the devastation, shifting blame to the United States for having provided incomplete intelligence before the airstrike and claiming they could not have known that the warehouse was surrounded by civilian populations.
Earlier this year, however, a long-awaited report was published by the Committee Sorgdrager, an independent commission established in 2020 by the Dutch government and headed by Minister of State Winnie Sorgdrager, which has shattered the state’s defense. In the report, the commission reveals that senior Dutch government officials withheld important information from parliament on the extent of civilian casualties or shared incomplete information, even years after the airstrike.
The Netherlands had too-little access to intelligence from its coalition partners, the committee says. As a result, the Netherlands appears to have relied entirely on US intelligence. This could make the United States equally liable for the devastation in Hawija, but “each party has to follow their own checks and balances,” explains Frederiek de Vlaming, a prominent criminologist and former director of the Nuhanovic Foundation, which has provided crucial support for victims during the court proceedings.
“[The commission] has shown that the Dutch military did not follow their own checks and balances or procedures, and neglected their duty and responsibility to investigate cases where there’s a risk of civilian casualties,” explains Vlaming.
While the United States is also responsible, it would be nearly impossible for victims to seek redress from the US owing to a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war.
The commission concluded that the Netherlands should and could have known that the area of the ISIS bomb factory was located in a populated area.
Significantly, the commission concluded that the Netherlands should and could have known that the area of the ISIS bomb factory was located in a populated area. It pointed out that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had published information about the IDPs in Hawija’s industrial area months before the airstrike. According to the commission, coalition country representatives and pilots were aware of the residential neighborhoods around the target, with one individual even mentioning that there was a mosque nearby—a clear indicator of civilian infrastructure.
Due to the presence of civilians in the area, the Dutch squad commander requested that the strike be delayed from 9PM to midnight, with the assumption that fewer civilians would be moving around the area at that time. This decision clearly shows that the Dutch military anticipated there would be civilians in the area.
Furthermore, the ministry of defense had claimed that a video which had captured footage of the post-strike destruction was overwritten the day after the airstrike because it did not show anything important. But, in March, a few months after the commission report was published, Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans announced that this video had been found at a military base.The video shows that the industrial area in Hawija had been completely wiped out after the airstrike and the residential areas surrounding it were destroyed and badly damaged.
“What we have seen [from the state] is just constant lying,” Vlaming tells TRNN. “They have lied about everything for years and in different stages.”
The commission also criticized community-based compensation schemes that the Netherlands provided to Hawija in 2021, following pressure from the Dutch parliament. This consisted of funding projects through the IOM and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) around infrastructure, basic services, and employment. These projects were completed in October 2022 and February 2023, more than seven years after the airstrike, with a total cost of €4.5 million.
The commission concludes that this general compensation was “too little, too late.” Residents in Hawija have also stated the projects are a “drop in the ocean” compared to the devastation the Dutch military caused. The state has previously rejected individual compensation to victims and families of victims.
Zegveld tells the TRNN that she expects the commission’s findings to significantly help the claimants’ case against the state.
‘Frozen’
Rashid and her family are still haunted by the bombing a decade ago. “My brother doesn’t even do much now in his life except eat and cry,” Rashid says, her eyes fixed to the ground. “It’s like our lives are frozen into that one night. None of us can escape thinking about what we saw.”
“It’s hard for us to even look at their pictures,” Rashid continues, glancing at the photographs still lined up on the floor. “These were children. They were pure and innocent. What crime did they commit?”
Tabarak, Rashid’s niece who is now 18 years old, still suffers from night terrors. “Every night, I dream about what I saw that day,” Tabarak tells TRNN, sitting beside her aunt. “I have to relive it every single day.” Mohammed, Rashid’s nephew who is now 23, sometimes falls into psychosis, Rashid says; he suddenly begins screaming hysterically before coming back to reality.
Some residents can no longer stand the sight of meat, she says, after witnessing their neighbors’ bodies ripped apart from the blast; others have attempted suicide. Residents are living with permanent and debilitating injuries.
According to Azeem, from PAX, these experiences are common throughout Hawija. Some residents can no longer stand the sight of meat, she says, after witnessing their neighbors’ bodies ripped apart from the blast; others have attempted suicide. Residents are living with permanent and debilitating injuries. Many shops and businesses are still destroyed and unemployment is rampant. Without financial support, many have been unable to rebuild their lives even 10 years later.
There has been no environmental testing or cleanup initiated in Hawija, according to Azeem. Residents tell TRNN that they have observed an increase in cancer cases and rare deformities in children, which they connect to toxic elements from the explosives still in the environment.
Undoubtedly, financial compensation for affected individuals is badly needed. But, for Rashid, compensation is not the ultimate goal.
“We want our rights,” Rashid says, her voice rising sharply. “We want the Dutch to admit what they did and take responsibility for the lives they destroyed. We lost our families, our children, our homes, our health, and our livelihoods. We lost everything. That is not something the Dutch can just ignore.”
Despite the Netherlands continuing to dodge responsibility for their role in devastating the lives of numerous residents in Hawija, Rashid has found some hope in her pain.
“The only thing that gives me strength to wake up each morning, even when I feel like dying, is that I know deep in my heart that we will get justice,” Rashid says, displaying a firmness that hitherto was masked by tears.
“But it is up to the Dutch to decide from which court that justice will come: the Dutch court or the court of God.”
Jake Tapper has sunk his teeth into the most Jake Tapper of stories. At present, he is in the midst of an aggressive book promotion tour of his co-authored “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” where he finds himself pontificating on how the media “missed” the Biden aging story, waxing poetic about how “politicians lie, White Houses lie, power is an aphrodisiac. We need to all remember that and not take at face value anything we’re told.”
I won’t run through the well-worn criticism of Tapper’s self-serving about-face, namely from right-wing media, which has correctly noted that Tapper was one of the very people he’s now criticizing. This isn’t a criticism Tapper has sufficiently addressed—he told Piers Morgan on Monday that he “wished [he] had covered the story better.” But it’s also not the most interesting, or relevant, part of Tapper’s book tour and the broader recriminations of the Biden aging story. The right gets to ding Tapper and many in mainstream media as phony blowhards, and that’s a clean hit (though these same right-wing media personalities are, of course, notably silent on Trump’s visible cognitive decline). But what’s more useful analysis, and more illustrative of how the corporate media functions, is that the Biden aging story, such as it is, is the perfect low-calorie pseudo-scandal. It is, in other words, the platonic Jake Tapper Story.
What do I mean by that? First, let’s lay out some basic facts: Was Biden in visible cognitive decline for years? Yes. Did outlets like CNN take part in downplaying and covering it up in service of power? Almost certainly. Is this story, as Tapper told Piers Morgan, “maybe even worse than Watergate”? Possibly, but not in the way Tapper means it. Watergate, despite being used as a synonym for major political scandal, was a ticky-tack transgression compared to Nixon’s myriad war crimes and illegal military actions in Southeast Asia. Watergate was broadly understood to just be the lowest-hanging fruit—evidence of a much broader regime of elite corruption and lawlessness.
What is the Biden aging story evidence of? Tapper never really says beyond bromides about “power corrupting.” As with Watergate, Biden’s inner circle covering up Biden’s rapid mental decline probably doesn’t crack top five most offensive things Biden did, chief among them wholeheartedly supporting a genocide in Gaza for 15 months. And this is what makes it the perfect Jake Tapper story.
As I laid out in a Citations Needed podcast episode about Tapper’s schtick back in 2018, the platonic Jake Tapper story is one where he can look adversarial and play the role of Handsome Newsman Speaking Truth To Power while harping on a story that, when it’s all said and done, offends no traditional centers of power, namely corporate interests or the military state (and its attendant pro-Israel lobby).
The platonic Jake Tapper story is one where he can look adversarial and play the role of Handsome Newsman Speaking Truth To Power while harping on a story that, when it’s all said and done, offends no traditional centers of power, namely corporate interests or the military state.
This is Tapper’s wheelhouse. But this time, he’s not attacking Democrats from the right. He’s attacking Democrats from an even better place—nowhere—in what amounts to a post-ideological process criticism. Yes, Biden World lying about the President’s declining mental state had disastrous consequences for Democrats, but it’s a years-old story, and involves nothing systemic except for broader concerns over gerontocracy (which, despite their occasional merits, also neatly avoid any discussion of class conflict). And Tapper is effectively taking on a man nearing the end of his life, long after he’s out of power.
This is consistent with Tapper’s usual sweet spot of attacking Democrats from the right for being insufficiently pro-empire or pro-austerity. Tapper rose the ranks of Salon, ABC News, and eventually CNN by hounding the Obama White House, and Democrats in general, over a wholly fabricated “debt crisis.” He then proceeded to repeatedly attack the Squad in bad faith as a matter of course and spent weeks mugging over Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, removing the fourth wall altogether and producing a two hour prime time special promoting a Stabbed in the Back myth for the Biden White House.
Meanwhile, as I detailed in part for The Nation last year, in over 15 months of co-hosting the influential Sunday news show State of the Union during the Gaza genocide under Biden, Tapper never once platformed a single Palestinian guest, while giving ample platform to a revolving door of Biden officials, Israeli spokespeople, and two softball interviews with Israeli Prime Minister—and fugitive from international justice—Benjamin Netanyahu.
Consistent with his yawning through the genocide under Biden, Tapper mostly ignores it under Trump and only chimes in to frame the latest Israeli war crime in terms favorable to Israel. Even worse than never bothering to interview a single Palestinian, his Sunday news show, since Israel recommenced its genocide on March 18, hasn’t brought up Gaza as a topic once. In nine episodes, nine hours of “agenda-setting” Washington programming, Tapper and co-anchor Dana Bash have not broached the subject of Gaza at all, despite the fact that the United States is directly involved in the killing over of 1,309 children and injuring 3,738 more, and arming and funding a deliberate hunger campaign that Human Rights Watch, and over 760 other human rights groups, call “the deliberate starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare.”
And when Gaza is mentioned on Tapper’s other program—his afternoon show, The Lead—Tapper dutifully parrots the Israeli line, including prefacing any story about Israel bombing hospitals and schools with the baseless conspiracy theory that “Hamas regularly takes shelter in hospitals and schools.” As I noted last month, Tapper led the media charge last September fabricating an “antisemitism” scandal out of whole cloth to smear Rep. Rashida Tlaib (which he sheepishly walked back but never apologized for), while letting Tlaib’s Republican colleagues repeatedly smear her as a “terrorist” without an ounce of pushback. Indeed, Tapper has long run down the list of insipid pro-Israel talking points without any meaningful criticism of its apartheid system or its recent, openly genocidal policies beyond the safe and ponderous noncriticism of “are you killing too many civilians?” handwringing.
So Tapper has found the great scandal of the Biden years, and it is, of course, not one that upsets anyone at the Pentagon, the US Chamber of Commerce, the editorial boards of the New York Times or the Atlantic or AIPAC. The Biden aging story is the perfect pseudo-scandal for corporate media, and thus the perfect Jake Tapper story: vaguely true, but ultimately of peripheral importance, scapegoating a handful of Biden flunkies and, most important of all, it allows Tapper to polish his Speaking Truth to Power brand without speaking truth to anyone in a position of actual power.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on May 29, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
As the death toll of Palestinians continues to rise and more than a half a million people in Gaza are on the brink of famine, U.S.-based Veterans For Peace and several allied organizations have launched a 40-day “Fast for Gaza.”
From May 22 to June 30, 600 people in the U.S. and abroad are fasting and demanding full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority and an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.
Mary Kelly Gardner, a teacher from Santa Cruz, California, told Truthout she joined the fast in memory of her late father, a service member in Vietnam who “staunchly opposed U.S. militarism.” He opposed “the so-called ‘war on terror’ and ongoing U.S. violence against Middle Eastern countries,” she said. Gardner is limiting herself to 250 calories for the first 10 days of the fast. “Then I will switch to fasting during daylight (as Muslims observing Ramadan do).”
Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to survive on 245 calories per day; 250 calories daily is considered a starvation diet, as the body breaks down muscle and other tissues. Prolonged fasting can cause dehydration, heart problems, kidney failure and even death.
Gardner is distressed because her “tax dollars are being used to fund this horrific violence” (which, she noted, constitutes genocide) “in the form of weapons shipments.” She feels the need to speak out. Gardner said her goals are to “get people’s attention with a meaningful action” and “engage in a practice that challenges me to be more personally present with the human suffering taking place in Gaza.” She is “intentionally causing myself some discomfort and inconvenience,” yet “not harming myself.”
For 11 weeks, using starvation as a weapon of war, Israel has blocked all food, medicine and other relief from entering the Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million Palestinians. Now aid is trickling in under the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a delivery system established by the U.S. and Israel to bypass the UN, provide a fig leaf of aid and blunt global outrage at Israel’s starvation tactics. Risk of famine comes even as Israel intensifies its military campaign. On May 27, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported at least 54,056 people killed, including at least 17,400 children, and at least 123,129 people injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
On the sixth day of the fast, Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, told Truthout:
On day 6 of the fast, limiting ourselves to 250 calories per day helps us focus on Gazans with no relief in sight. But Palestinians face intense risks of aerial attacks, sniper assaults, housing demolition, forcible displacement and genocidal threats from Israel and its allies to eradicate them.
On day 6 of the fast, I am wondering about Ron Feiner, the Israeli reservist sent to prison three days ago for refusal to go to Gaza. How is he faring? He told the judge who sentenced him to 20 days in prison that he couldn’t cooperate with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s sabotage of ceasefire agreements. We acutely need his witness. I’m hungry for solidarity.
On day 6 of the fast, we’re remembering the names and ages of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s children. Their charred corpses came to her as she worked a shift in the pediatric ward of Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital. Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, her spouse, was gravely injured in the Israeli military attack on their home — an attack which left only one child surviving.
Kelly listed the names and ages of the al-Najjar children: Yahya, 12 years old; Rakan, 10 years old; Eve, 9 years old; Jubran, 8 years old; Ruslan, 7 years old; Reval, 5 years old; Sadin, 3 years old; Luqman, 2 years old; and Sidar, 6 months old. Eleven-year-old Adam, the sole surviving child, was critically injured in the Israeli bombing.
US and Israel Provide Gaza With a Mere Fig Leaf of Aid
The fast comes as the U.S. and Israel have launched a plan in concert with the GHF. The plan is to be carried out by ex-Marines, former CIA operatives, as well as mercenaries connected with Israeli intelligence. GHF has come under increasing criticism from the UN and dozens of international humanitarian organizations.
Ten people have been killed this week and at least 62 were wounded by the Israeli military as starving Palestinians gathered at a GHF aid distribution site in Rafah in southern Gaza. Although Israel says that 388 trucks entered Gaza during the past week, that number doesn’t come close to the requisite 500-600 trucks that entered daily before Israel cut off all aid on March 2.
In January, after spending months making unfounded accusations against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel banned it from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. UNRWA is the agency that has provided food, health care and education to Palestinian refugees since 1949. UN Secretary General António Guterres has said that “UNRWA is indispensable in delivering essential services to Palestinians,” and “UNRWA is the backbone of the United Nations humanitarian relief operations” in Gaza.
Aid is trickling in under the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a delivery system established by the U.S. and Israel to bypass the UN, provide a fig leaf of aid and blunt global outrage at Israel’s starvation tactics.
Guterres slammed the GHF, saying the aid operation violates international law. In a joint statement, two dozen countries — including the U.K., several European Union member states, Canada, Australia and Japan — criticized the GHF model. They charged that it wouldn’t deliver aid effectively at the requisite scale and would tie aid to military and political objectives.
A leaked UN memo reportedly warned against UN involvement in the GHF, saying it could be “implicated in delivering a system that falls short of Israel’s legal responsibilities as an occupying power.” UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher called the scheme “a deliberate distraction” and “a fig leaf for further violence and displacement.”
The GHF was established after Israel charged that Hamas was looting aid trucks, a claim refuted by Cindy McCain, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and widow of Republican Sen. John McCain.
“Right now, we have 500,000 people inside of Gaza that are extremely food insecure, and could be on the verge of famine if we don’t help bring them back from that. We need to get in, and we need to get in at scale, not just a few dribble [sic] of the trucks right now, as I said, it’s a drop in the bucket,” McCain said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
In a March 2025 report, the UN body that monitors famine found that 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip have reached “Phase 5: Catastrophe/Famine,” which means that households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs. Moreover, 96 percent of Gaza’s population is experiencing “acute food insecurity,” and 22 percent of those in Gaza are suffering from “catastrophic levels” of food insecurity.
McCain said, “These people are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it. This — this doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything. It has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death.”
GHF has a cynical purpose. It “aims to push northern residents to relocate southward in search of food — a step toward their displacement from Gaza altogether,” UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said. “We used to have, before, 400 distribution places, centres in Gaza. With this new system, we are talking about three to four, maximum, distribution places. So it’s also a way to incite people to be forcibly displaced to get humanitarian assistance.”
Issam Abu Shaweesh, director of a WFP aid distribution center in western Gaza City, said the GHF aid packages don’t contain essential food items such as meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits and baby formula — evidence that the goal is just “to keep people from dying of hunger” instead of meeting basic nutritional needs.
The Government Media Office in Gaza issued a statement saying that, “The so-called ‘safe distribution sites’ are nothing but ‘racially isolated ghettos’ established under the supervision of the occupation, in exposed and isolated military areas, and are a forced model for the booby-trapped ‘humanitarian corridors’ that are used as a cover to advance the occupation’s security agendas.”
Two senior officials of GHF have resigned: Executive Director Jake Wood said the organization’s plans are inconsistent with the “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” CEO David Burke also resigned.
The resignations came days after Swiss authorities considered opening an investigation into GHF, which had been registered in Geneva. On May 29, Swiss authorities found the organization was violating Swiss law.
Fasters “Simply Have to Do More Than Hold a Sign at a Demonstration”
Meanwhile, the fasters continue to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“Having seen what war does, not just to people but all living things, I simply have to do more than hold a sign at a demonstration,” Mike Ferner, former national director of Veterans For Peace and co-organizer of the fast, told Truthout. “Many, many people feel the same way and that’s why in just five days, over 600 people in the U.S. and beyond have registered to participate,” he said, adding, “Until Americans actually run their government and direct our wealth to sustain life, we will have to protest in the strongest ways possible.”
“The Marine veteran who started the fast with me, Phil Tottenham, said this genocide pained him so much he wanted to do what Aaron Bushnell did but didn’t have the courage. ‘But what is the most we can do?,’ Tottenham asked,” Ferner said. Bushnell, a member of the U.S. Air Force, died after setting himself on fire outside the front gate of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. on February 25, 2024, in protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides — too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Viet Nam,” Ferner said in a press release from the Institute for Public Accuracy. “I’m fasting to demand humanitarian aid resumption under UN authority and to stop U.S. weapons from fueling the genocide.”
But this is not just a game. And they are rooting for not just any soccer team. This team has an identity. It has a mission. A sporting team that is synonymous with resistance. Synonymous with the struggle for Palestine…
And the Palestinian people.
This is Club Deportivo Palestino, Palestine Sporting Club. A soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile.
Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people.
The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Their slogan is: “More than a team, it is an entire people.”
That slogan breathes true for fans in the stadium.
11-year-old Kamal Haddad is in the crowd with his father and his grandfather. Their family emigrated from Palestine during the First World War. They say this team is a way of keeping their traditions alive.
“This is a team that’s defending a Palestinian identity here in Chile,” says Kamal Haddad. That’s why we use the slogan ‘Gaza resists.’”
His grandfather, beside him, says his father brought him to his first Palestino game 50 years ago. Now he’s there with his son and his grandson. Three generations of one family, cheering on Palestine — the team, the country, and the people.
“This is so important,” he says. “It’s like our identity. and it’s a way of maintaining our traditions. With my family. With my children.”
The team, the players, and the fans have remained outspoken in defense of Palestine. Their history. Their people. And outspoken against the violence in Gaza.
Before a game in May last year, the players walked onto the field wearing black jackets to protest the children killed by Israel in Gaza. The team has taken the field in Palestinian scarves and waved anti-war banners. Among the chants in the crowd is “Gaza resists/Palestine exists.”
And the Palestino Soccer Club is an inspiration abroad, with nearly a million followers on Instagram. Games are televised in refugee camps in the Middle East.
They are a symbol. An inspiration of resistance, standing in defense of the Palestinian cause even so far away from Palestine, so far away from the violence in Gaza.
###
Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I attended a Palestino game last year in Santiago, Chile. You can check out exclusive pictures of the team and the fans on my Patreon. That’s Patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast.
This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
Chile’s Club Deportivo Palestino is a soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile. Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people.
The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Their slogan is: “More than a team, it is an entire people.”
The team, the players, and the fans have remained outspoken in defense of Palestine. And outspoken against the violence in Gaza.
This is episode 40 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru.
It’s far from the highway, along a winding dirt road that’s carved along harrowing precipices.
Up here, the air is cool… and their town of adobe and cinderblock homes is nestled on the side of the mountain.
As are their fields of duraznos. Peach trees, which cover the terraced hillsides down into the valley and up toward the craggy peaks.
This has been their home and the life-blood for generations. The people here are simple. Humble. They hold on to tradition. Women wear colorful dresses, the same sewed and worn by their grandmothers before them. Men’s hands are calloused and strong from long days toiling in the fields.
It only rains during the rainy months, which turn the hillsides green. And then, slowly they fade to brown throughout the year. The residents of Parán get their water for their homes and their peaches from the precious springs that dot the mountain.
Life slows down, here.
But they have had to battle.
In 2012, the Canadian mining company Lupaka Gold acquired an old mine and set to turn it back on. They called it the Invicta Mine.
Lupaka Gold would extract precious minerals. Gold and silver.
The company met with other nearby communities. It made agreements. But not with the people of Parán… even though Parán had the most to lose.
See, Parán sits down the mountain from the entrance to the mine and on the outside of the mountain where the mine is operated. When the mine workers blast, at night in particular, the people of Parán feel it. Their homes shake and rumble. They awake from their dreams.
And the residents of Parán fear the upgraded mine will contaminate their only water source—the springs that flow from the mountain that feed both their groves of peach trees and their families. The springs that flow from the very mountain where the mine is located.
And so, when the Invicta mine opened and its trucks began to rumble up and down the windy roads with precious metals extracted from deep inside, the people of Parán said, “no.”
They blockaded the road leading to and from the mine. They hauled logs and rocks onto it, and refused to move. Day and night they remained. The mine trucks sat idle. So Invicta took action. They sent in thugs to attack the roadblock. And attack they did. Firing live rounds. The Parán protesters fled down the mountain to their homes.
But if this act was meant to scare, all it did was unite Parán unanimously that they would fight.
They held a community meeting. Everyone decided. All adult men and women, that they would join in the roadblock. They split into teams of 30 to 40 people each. And they returned to the roadblock even stronger. Each team would spend 24 hours there. They would camp overnight, then the next team would arrive and they would switch. Day after day. Month after month. Together, the Parán people stood.
But the mine pushed back. As did the Peruvian police. In the beginning of 2019, they sent in a brigade of 200 officers that was meant to end the roadblock once and for all.
Still the people of Parán resisted. But at a great toll. During the operation, a police officer shot a man. A community member. The nephew of one of the community leaders.
Nehemías Román Narvaste.
A great loss.
But finally, also, came victory… The community held on. Lupaka Gold agreed that their losses due to the Parán roadblock and the mine shutdown were too great and that they would close the mine.
The people of Parán had won.
“Yes, whenever, there’s a problem, everyone participates, women and men,” says community leader Leonel Roman Palomares. “We decide what to do in a meeting. And everyone decides together with one voice.
“In that sense, we’re very united,” he says. “Whenever there’s anything that may harm the community. We are very, very united. And this community has been through a lot.”
###
In 2020, Lupaka Gold took the state of Peru to court under the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement for lost profits. It is demanding the state pay it $100 million in lost profits for the closure of the mine. The decision is expected in the coming weeks.
###
Hi folks, thanks for listening.
I’m your host Michael Fox.
I visited Parán last month, spoke with residents and shot some pretty incredible drone footage of the community and their surrounding peach fields. You can also check out exclusive video and photos of the community on my patreon. Patreon.com/mfox. I’ll add a link in the show notes.
This is episode 39 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru. They are peach farmers. Their orchards line the mountainside. The same mountain where a new Canadian mine, known as Invictus, was beginning to operate. They feared for their future and that the mine would contaminate their precious springs, their only source of fresh water for their town and their peach trees.
In 2018, they began an around-the-clock roadblock against a new mine. When they were attacked by armed thugs, they held a community meeting and the entire village—all adult men and women—agreed to participate in the protest against the mine.
They were finally successful.
This is episode 39 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can see exclusive pictures, drone footage, and pictures of the Parán community in Michael Fox’s Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work.
For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones.
Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes.
Searching and hoping.
The crunch of the ground beneath their feet. The harsh wind whipping at their clothes. The hot sun on their faces.
“For us there was no wind, there was no cold, there was no heat, there was no hunger,” Violeta Berríos says.
Her partner, Mario Argüelles Toro, was a taxi driver and a local leader in the Socialist Party. It was his death sentence.
Mario Argüelles Toro was detained and tortured just weeks after the September 1973 coup d’état by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.
On October 19, 1973, Mario was taken from prison, executed, and disappeared alongside 25 others for their support for the former democratically elected President Salvador Allende.
Executed during what they called the Chilean army’s “Caravan of Death.”
The men’s partners and mothers responded, transforming their sadness into action.
They founded the Group of Family Members of the Politically Executed and Disappeared Detainees of Calama.
They took to the desert, scratching at it each day, demanding that it reveal its secrets.
And after years, finally, it did.
In 1990, in a place called Quebrada del Buitre, or Vultures Gorge, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth.
This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years. But most of their bodies were no longer there.
Just as the women were getting closer, General Augusto Pinochet had ordered their remains dug up, removed and buried someplace else. An evil scavenger hunt, in which the rules are rigged and the dice are staked.
Between 1990 and 2003, the women would find the partial remains of 21 of the victims.
Today, a memorial lives on a hillside just off highway 23, heading east out of Calama.
This was once barren desert for miles, but it now lies beneath a sea of wind turbines. The sun burns overhead. The wind threatens to knock you over.
The memorial is in the shape of a circle. Almost like a small amphitheater, with stairs leading down. In the middle is a patch of dry Atacama earth. Rocks and small marble stones are laid there in the shape of a cross. Pink and red flowers have been placed throughout. Pink concrete columns rise into the air. Each of them bears a name inscribed on a little plaque. The name of each of those who was detained, tortured, executed and disappeared here in the Atacama desert.
This is the location of the mass grave, where the women of Calama finally found the fragments of bones that proved their loved ones had been here.
Behind the memorial is a crater in the ground, where the grave was opened, and where they exhumed what they could. Rocks, in piles or in tiny circles, mark the locations where parts of their loved ones were found.
The memorial is a sentinel in the desert. A beacon of memory. Memory of lives lost. Of the horror and the pain of the past. But also the memory of the women’s determination. Their hope and struggle. Their resistance in the desert…
The women are still searching for and demanding justice.
For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones — their husbands and partners who were ripped from them, detained, tortured, executed, and disappeared in the weeks following Chile’s US-backed 1973 coup d’état.
Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes, searching and hoping.
And finally, in 1990, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth. This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years.
This is the May Week of the Disappeared — a week to remember and honor those who have been forcibly disappeared and the fight for truth and justice for their families.
This is episode 38 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 26, 2025. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Video footage of a young girl trying to flee an inferno caused by a Monday Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of Palestinians including her mother and siblings sparked global outrage and calls for an immediate cease-fire in what one former Israeli prime minister called a “war of extermination.”
Medical officials in Gaza said that at least 36 people were killed by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombing of the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in the al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City. The Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) said that 18 children were killed in the “brutal massacre.”
“The school was supposed to be a place of safety. Instead, it was turned into an inferno,” Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told reporters. “We heard desperate cries for help from people trapped alive inside the blaze, but the fire was too intense. We couldn’t get to them.”
From the flames of the massacre committed by the Israeli criminal occupation forces at Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj neighborhood — a school that had become a refuge for displaced families — comes the image of a child: Ward Jalal Al-Sheikh Khalil, the only… pic.twitter.com/FMpXlFOMN9
Video recorded at the scene of the strike showed the silhouette of a young girl—identified as 7-year-old Ward al-Sheikh Khalil—moving against the infernal backdrop as she tried to escape the blaze. According toThe National, paramedic Hussein Muhaysin rushed in to rescue the child, whom he said “was moments away from death.”
“When we pulled her out, she was in shock, silent, trembling, unable to comprehend what had just happened,” Muhaysin said. “We couldn’t bring ourselves to tell her that her entire family was killed in the bombing.”
The child’s mother and at least five siblings were reportedly killed in the bombing.
“Only her father survived, and he is now in critical condition,” said Muhaysin.
“We see tragedy every day, but holding a child who has lost everything, who doesn’t even know yet, that’s a kind of pain no one can explain,” he added.
7-year-old Ward Al-Sheikh Khalil, survived the Israeli army attack on the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City. Her mother and five siblings were killed in the attack. 📸Dawoud Abo Alkas pic.twitter.com/WEXLPVLRGd
The IDF admitted to the bombing—one of 200 it said it carried out Monday—and claimed it targeted “a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control center.” As usual, no evidence was provided to support the claim.
Meanwhile in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, another predawn IDF strike reportedly killed 19 people—mostly women and children—sheltering in the Abdel Rabbo family home. Medical officials told reporters that recovery operations were still underway on Monday afternoon, with charred and mangled bodies being pulled from the rubble.
Moumen Abdel Rabbo, who rushed to the scene following the attack, told The National: “It was sudden. The house was completely flattened. Ambulances barely made it through to recover the wounded and the dead. Some bodies are still trapped under the rubble.”
Abdel Rabbo said that Israeli bombing continued nearby and drones buzzed overhead as first responders—who are often attacked and killed by Israeli “double-tap” strikes—dug through the ruins in search of survivors and victims.
“How can we search for survivors under fire?” he asked. “These were civilians; mothers, toddlers, elderly people. This wasn’t a military target. It was our home.”
🚨New Massacre
MoH: 19 people most of them children have been KILLED in Israeli bombing of the house of Abed Rabbu family in Jabalia! pic.twitter.com/HquLwTu1lL
The GMO said Monday that more than 2,200 Palestinian families have been entirely wiped out since October 2023.
The U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement Monday condemning the school shelter bombing and Sunday’s “barbaric” killing of two Red Cross workers—weapon contamination officer Ibrahim Eid and hospital security guard Ahmad Abu Hilal—in an IDF airstrike on their home in Khan Younis. The weekend bombing followed the March 23 massacre of 15 Palestinian first responders including Red Crescent paramedics by Israeli ground troops in Rafah.
“How many more children, women, the elderly, journalists, healthcare workers, and first responders must [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu slaughter with American weapons before [U.S. President Donald] Trump forces him to accept a permanent cease-fire deal that ends the genocide for good and frees all captives?” asked CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.
“Every hour that Israel’s genocidal crimes continue with impunity—and with our government’s complicity—adds more dishonor to a shameful period in the history of our nation and the world,” Awad added.
Hamas, which led the October 7, 2023 assault on Israel that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called ” friendly fire” and under the intentionally fratricidal Hannibal Directive—is believed to still be holding 23 living hostages of the 251 people it kidnapped during the attack.
On Monday, the Trump administration refuted reports that Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire proposal by Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff under which 10 hostages would be released in exchange for a 70-day truce.
Although Witkoff toldCNN Monday that the “deal is on the table” and that “Israel will agree” to it, he subsequently walked back his claims. An unnamed Palestinian official toldThe Times of Israel that Witkoff changed his mind on the proposed deal. The envoy blamed Hamas for an unspecified “unacceptable” response to the proposal, which he also claimed he never proffered.
Hamas told the U.S. it agreed to what the U.S. told Hamas was necessary for a deal. Israel then blew up & furiously denounced the terms the U.S. officials told Hamas were acceptable. Now Witkoff is blaming Hamas to appease Netanyahu who is currently burning children alive in Gaza https://t.co/ROs5rW7Rm5
Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes including extermination and forced starvation in Gaza—said Monday evening that he hopes to be able to announce at least some progress toward a hostage release deal on Tuesday and that his government “will not give up on the release of our hostages, and if we do not achieve this in the coming days, we will achieve it later.”
Amid IDF attacks including a Friday airstrike on the Khan Younis home of Drs. Hamdi and Alaa al-Najjar that killed nine of the couple’s 10 children, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote that his country’s relentless obliteration of Gaza amounted to “war crimes.”
Dr. Alaa al-Najjar's children before Isr@el brutally murdered all of them in cold blood.
She was a pediatrician working to save children's lives; she had been working many months without any salary, just to help her people. Allah chose to raise her ranks and taking nine of her… pic.twitter.com/jpP0iUymIj
“What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians,” said Olmert, who led Israel during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead war on Gaza. “We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit—but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, viciously, maliciously, recklessly.”
While Israel has nominally allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza—where officials say hundreds of people, mostly children and elderly, have starved to death in recent days—officials said Sunday that only around 100 of the 46,200 trucks scheduled to enter Gaza over the past 84 days have actually made it into the besieged enclave.
Hamas said Sunday that “the occupation orchestrates the crime of starvation in Gaza and uses it as a tool to establish a political and field reality, under the cover of misleading relief projects that have been rejected by the United Nations and international organizations, due to lack of transparency and minimal humanitarian standards.”
On Sunday, Jake Wood, who led the controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed organization established to distribute aid in Gaza, resigned, citing concerns that the mission would violate basic “humanitarian principles.”
The U.N.’s International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel that cites the “complete siege” among evidence of genocidal intent.
More than 190,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israel’s 598-day annihilation of Gaza, including at least 14,000 people who are missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. However, a peer-reviewed study published in January by the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet found Gaza fatalities were likely undercounted by 41%.
Oaxaca, Mexico. A city that will unexpectedly become ground zero for one of the most radical movements Mexico has seen in the 21st century.
May 22.
Teachers strike across the state, against dismal resources for schools, kids, and themselves.
They are met with widespread repression. At least 90 people are injured by police forces.
So, backed by community members and organized over community radio stations, they found APPO, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca.
They start holding people’s assemblies. They take over the city. Their movement is compared to the Paris commune. It’s been called the first popular revolt of the 21st century.
Roadblocks line city streets. A clip from a documentary from the time, Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad, “A little bit of so much truth,” says roughly a thousand barricades cover the city each night for more than two months.
And they also take their fight to Mexico’s capital. A group of teachers go on a hunger strike, demanding respect and the resignation of the Oaxacan state governor.
Police and armed gunmen respond. They unleash widespread repression, attacks, disappearances, killings.
Among those killed is Brad Will, a US documentary filmmaker and indy media activist. He’s shot filming a protest in a street just east of Oaxaca City on October 27, 2006. The footage you’re hearing is from the camera he was holding at the time.
The month after Will is killed, the federal police surround the APPO encampment, cracking down and detaining hundreds. Many are tortured. Some are disappeared.
“It was a really repressive environment,” says human rights defender Aline Castellanos Jurado. “You never knew if they would raid your home. Or where the disappeared were. Or what they were doing to the detained.”
Arrest warrants are issued for hundreds. Many go into hiding. Some flee the country.
By the end of the year, the local government had largely crushed the physical resistance…
But their spirit remained. They would inspire others in Mexico and abroad. And within a decade, Oaxacan teachers would again be in the streets. Organizing, protesting. Marching for their right to teach.
For their children’s and their students’ rights to education.
Resistance in the name of the peoples’ right to learn, and the teachers’ right to be compensated fairly and respected.
On May 22. 2006, teachers struck across the Mexican state of Oaxaca against dismal resources for schools, kids, and themselves. They were met with widespread repression. It would kick off months of protests that would unexpectedly turn Oaxaca into ground zero for one of the most radical movements Mexico has seen in the 21st century.
They started holding people’s assemblies. They set up barricades across the city. Teachers, housewives, Indigenous organizers, health workers, and students took over 14 different radio stations to defend their struggle.
This is episode 37 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 22, 2025. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
House Republicans on Thursday morning passed their sprawling budget reconciliation package after making last-minute changes to the legislation to mollify far-right hardliners.
The final count was 215-214, with every Democrat voting no and Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)—chairman of the House Freedom Caucus—voting present. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, opposed the bill.
Earlier Thursday, the House voted to begin floor debate on the legislation after the GOP-controlled rules panel approved a slew of amendments to the bill, including a change that would move up the start date of draconian Medicaid work requirements to December 31, 2026—resulting in even bigger cuts to the program and more people losing coverage. Under an earlier version of the legislation, the work requirements would have taken effect at the start of 2029.
The updated bill would also “give states a financial incentive not to expand” Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act “to people with higher incomes than traditional enrollees, though still near the poverty line,” Politicoreported.
If enacted, the House GOP’s legislation would slash roughly $1 trillion combined from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), potentially stripping health coverage and food aid from tens of millions of low-income Americans to help fund trillions of dollars in tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest.
The bill, which runs over 1,100 pages, would also trigger cuts to Medicare, slash clean energy tax credits, and hand the U.S. military an additional $150 billion.
“Republicans just voted for the largest cuts to healthcare in American history—cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “At least 13.7 million will now lose their healthcare as a result. And why? To pay for tax cuts for billionaires and special interests. This is a betrayal of the middle class.”
I’ve literally never seen anything like this before. There’s no legislation in history that does so much, so fast, w/ so many last-minute changes, with so little analysis of the bill.Of course that’s the point. They’re going at warp speed to avoid analysis because they know it’s wildly unpopular.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released earlier this week showed that U.S. households in the bottom 10% of the income distribution would be worse off if the House Republican bill became law, while the top 10% would end up wealthier.
“Let’s call this what it is—theft,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House Rules Committee. “Stealing from those with the least to give to those with the most. It’s not just bad policy, it’s a betrayal of the American people.”
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said in floor remarks just after midnight Thursday that “at least here tonight, the people stealing from Americans are not folks with tattoos and hoodies—it’s people wearing suits and ties and congressional pins, sitting in this Capitol right now.”
“Not in some random alley wrapped in darkness,” Frost added as Republican lawmakers booed, “but in the United States Congress wrapped in the flag. It is disgusting, and we will never forget this.”
Frost: Tonight the people stealing are not folks with tattoos and hoodies but people wearing suits and ties and congressional pins sitting in the capitol now, not in some alley wrapped in darkness but in the US congress wrapped in the flag. It is disgusting and we will never… pic.twitter.com/7BpiNS0Ezs
One GOP lawmaker, Massie of Kentucky, blasted his party for advancing the legislation while most Americans were asleep.
“If something is beautiful, you don’t do it after midnight,” said Massie, alluding to the official title of the legislation—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Republican lawmakers teed up the final House vote after days of marathon hearings, jockeying behind closed doors, and private meetings with President Donald Trump, who pressured far-right Republicans to drop their objections and fall in line.
The legislation still must clear the Republican-controlled Senate, which is expected to make significant changes. The House would then have to pass the bill again.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said in a statement following Thursday’s vote that “Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is a betrayal of our families and a $7 trillion handout to billionaires.”
“So many families in our communities are already struggling to put food on the table and pay for their healthcare. For the over 324,000 children, seniors, and people with disabilities who rely on Medicaid in our district, it is the difference between life and death,” said Tlaib. “This budget makes $880 billion in cuts that will decimate Medicaid, nearly $300 billion in cuts to food assistance, but increases the Pentagon war machine by $150 billion.”
“It’s tax cuts for billionaires, and healthcare cuts for our families,” she added. “It will take food out of the mouths of hungry kids. Nearly 14 million Americans will lose their healthcare, and thousands of people will needlessly die. We will not stop fighting to block this budget from being signed into law.”
This story originally appeared in Truthout on May 20, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Thousands of babies in Gaza may die over the next two days if Israel does not lift its near-total humanitarian aid blockade and allow the entry of a flood of food and other basic necessities, the UN’s humanitarian chief warned on Tuesday.
“There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, in an interview on the BBC.
“This is not food that Hamas is going to steal,” Fletcher went on, contradicting Israel’s narrative about humanitarian aid. “We run the risk of looting, we run the risk of being hit as part of the Israeli military offensive, we run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished.”
The interview came after Israel allowed the entry of just five aid trucks into Gaza on Monday — a “drop in the ocean” of what Palestinians need. But any small measure of relief those supplies may bring is moot as even those trucks haven’t reached any Palestinians so far, Fletcher said.
“Let’s be clear, those five trucks are just sat on the other side of the border right now, they’ve not reached the communities they need to reach,” Fletcher said.
Meanwhile, the UN has said that there are thousands of trucks carrying crucial goods like baby food lined up and ready for entry at Gaza’s border, just miles away from the babies Israel is starving.
The UN said that Israel has cleared 100 trucks to enter Gaza on Tuesday — still a far cry from the hundreds of trucks per day that humanitarian groups say are needed to fulfill basic needs and relieve starvation for millions of Palestinians in the Strip.
Though the trucks have theoretically been approved for entry, Israel may still block the trucks from entering the region; indeed, though Fletcher said on Monday that Israel had approved the entry of nine trucks, only five were ultimately allowed in.
The starvation crisis in Gaza is dire, with food insecurity experts warning that the entire region is on the brink of or experiencing famine after nearly three months of Israel’s total aid blockade. It has been over a month since the UN said that its agencies had given out its last food stores in the region, with community kitchens forced to shutter their operations in recent weeks as a result.
Many Palestinians say that the starvation is even worse than Israel’s bombardments, having been starved by varying levels of Israel’s blockade for 19 months and with food costs constantly on the rise. The total aid blockade ushered in the worst conditions of the genocide so far; one Palestinian reporter said in March that children in the region are so hungry that they’re drawing pictures of food in the sand.
The World Food Programme has estimated that there are 14,000 children in Gaza with severe acute malnutrition, a deadly condition marked by a skeletal appearance and extreme weight loss, causing damage that can last a lifetime if untreated. According to an assessment by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, nearly 71,000 children are expected to experience acute malnutrition in the next year due to Israel’s blockade.
They called him the world’s poorest, or humblest, president.
He was often seen driving himself in his 1987 baby blue VW bug.
Memes have gone viral recently showing him giving Noam Chomsky a ride.
He lived on a farm.
His clothes were simple.
So were his words and his actions.
Yet he created tremendous change and left an indelible mark on the tiny country of Uruguay and the entire region of Latin America.
When Pepe Mujica passed, tens of thousands of supporters arrived to pay their respects.
As his body was driven through the streets, huge crowds lined the sides of the road and applauded. Others marched alongside his coffin, which was draped with the flags of Uruguay and his party, Frente Amplio.
He was cremated, as he had requested. His ashes were scattered beneath a tree on his farm.
Pepe Mujica was an extraordinary person.
He showed that anyone could become president.
Even elderly farmers,
Former guerrilla fighters,
Former political prisoners.
“They say I’m a poor president. No, I’m not a poor president,” he said in an interview several years ago. “The poor people are the ones that always want more. Because they are always on an infinite race. They don’t have time to live.”
When he spoke, he did so with the wisdom of someone who had fought,
Faced the worst,
Seen it all,
And still believed in humanity,
And in political struggle,
And the possibility of change…
Late last year, during the 2024 electoral campaign, he said goodbye on stage.
“I’m an old man who is very close to beginning a journey from which you do not return,” he told a packed crowd of supporters. “But I am happy, because you are here. Because when my arms go, there will be thousands of arms lifting up this struggle and all of my life, I always said that the best leaders are those that leave a group of people that is even greater than themselves. And there you are!”
Pepe Mujica led Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, with the leftist coalition Frente Amplio.
His was one of the most progressive governments in the country’s history.
Mujica helped to lift thousands out of poverty.
Inequality reached a record low in Uruguay.
Unemployment dropped below 7%.
Same-sex marriage was legalized, as was abortion and marajuana.
When he left office, he had an approval rating close to 70%.
During his speech at the UN under his presidency, he said, “We have the necessary resources to ensure that everyone on the planet can live with dignity, but they are in the predatory waste of our civilization.”
Mujica had come a long way.
In the mid-1960s, Mujica had joined the urban guerrilla movement, the Tupamaros, to fight against the country’s authoritarian government.
Government repression was on the rise.
Within a few years, the government would suspend rights and constitutional guarantees.
The Tupamaros and Pepe Mujica fought back.
In 1970, Mujica was shot by police six times and nearly died.
He was arrested. Escaped. Arrested again. Escaped again.
And finally, in 1972, he was arrested for good.
He would spend the next 13 years in jail.
The entirety of the country’s military dictatorship.
He was tortured. Continuously.
And held in inhumane conditions.
Most of his time in jail he spent in solitary confinement.
But Mujica survived. He continued.
For the military and conservatives, he represented all that was wrong in the country.
For everyone else, he was a hero.
When he was released in 1985, he dove back into politics.
He was elected congressman.
Then senator.
Then appointed to be a minister.
Mujica’s resolve against such great odds would lead him to the presidency, and into the hearts of people across Uruguay and the world.
###
Today would have been the 90th birthday of Pepe Mujica.
He passed just last week, on May 13, 2025, after a battle with cancer.
In his final months, he was busy saying goodbye to old friends, and even traveling to meet with the new generations of activists in his political party.
On the day of Pepe Mujica’s funeral, people held many signs in his honor in the streets. One of them read:
“Your legacy will endure.”
José “Pepe” Mujica was a former political prisoner who suffered more than a decade of prison and torture under Uruguay’s military dictatorship. He rose to become the country’s president from 2010 through 2015.
They called him the world’s humblest president. He was often seen driving himself in his 1987 baby blue VW bug. He lived on a farm. His clothes were simple. So were his words and his actions. Yet he created tremendous change and left an indelible mark on the tiny country of Uruguay and the entire region of Latin America.
This is episode 36 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.
In the central park in Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, there is a statue of a man.
He’s dressed in working man’s clothes of the 20th century. Long-brimmed hat. Jacket and boots. His hands are clasped around his belt buckle. He stares ahead… determined.
His name is Augusto Sandino.
The man who would lead the six-year rebellion against the US occupation of Nicaragua.
The man who would become a legend across the country… and also far from the shores of Central America.
Sandino was born on May 18, 1895.
The so-called illegitimate son of a wealthy coffee merchant and his indigenous servant.
Sandino lived with his mother until he was nine years old, and then his father took him in and arranged for his education.
He helped his dad. Learned the coffee merchant business and started buying and selling on his own.
As he grew, he became a successful small-time merchant himself, selling grains, beans, and rice.
But in his mid-20s, something went wrong.
There was a dispute over a business deal.
They say he shot someone and had to flee. An illegitimate son would be hauled in on charges.
So he traveled to Honduras and Guatemala. He worked for the US banana juggernaut United Fruit.
He lived in Mexico on the heels of the Mexican Revolution. He met radical labor groups. Anarchists and communist revolutionaries. He became inspired.
But in 1926, a civil war broke out in Nicaragua, and he returned home.
He joined the Liberal Army. He became a general.
And when the civil war ended the following year, Sandino was one of the only liberal generals who refused to lay down his weapons. He had 29 men.
See… Nicaragua was still under US occupation. At the time, the United States had occupied the country for roughly 15 years.
The United States said it was helping Nicaragua maintain political stability.
In reality, the US sought two things. One, dollar diplomacy. The US government was doing the bidding of US corporations, looking to bank off of Nicaragua’s natural resources. And two, the United States had built the Panama Canal. And it didn’t want a foreign power challenging the US shipping dominance and building another one in neighboring Nicaragua.
And so, when the United States imposed the terms of the agreement to end Nicaragua’s Civil War… Sandino said no.
He wanted the US Marines out of Nicaragua.
“I will not sell out, nor will I give up,” he said. “I want Patria o muerte—a free country or death.”
His guerrilla war for Nicaragua’s freedom against the United States would become the stuff of legends across the world.
Sandino took his army to the Segovias, the mountains of northwestern Nicaragua, and began his insurgency.
Small, but powerful.
Tactical hits and runs against the US marines.
They attacked US-owned mines. US-owned plantations.
Peasants and miners joined. The insurgency grew.
And the US began to use airplanes to support troops on the ground.
But they could not catch Sandino.
In one message sent secretly by Sandino in 1929, he says, “I will not abandon my resistance until the pirate invaders… assassins of weak peoples are expelled from my country. I will make them realize that their crimes will cost them dear… Nicaragua shall not be the patrimony of Imperialists. I will fight for my cause as long as my heart beats.”
The United States called him a bandit. Much of Latin America called him a hero.
One of the world’s first anti-imperialist heroes of the 20th century.
There were pro-Sandino movements across the world.
When Chinese nationalists fought their own war in the late ’20s against a puppet regime, they marched with portraits of Sandino.
And he won.
After a protracted guerrilla war, the United States withdrew the last US marines from the country in early 1933.
But the following year, Sandino traveled to Managua for talks with president Juan Bautista Sacasa.
After the meeting, his car was ambushed, and Sandino, his brother, and two of his top generals were killed by members of the US-trained National Guard.
They were acting on orders from General Anastasio Somoza García.
Two years later, Somoza Garcia would stage a coup and install a US-backed dictatorship and family dynasty that would rule Nicaragua for more than four decades.
Sandino, the man, the legend, and his revolutionary struggle, would continue to inspire.
And that is why his name was chosen for the Sandinistas, Nicaragua’s revolutionary guerrilla army that would fight and finally defeat the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.
###
Augusto Sandino was born May 18, 1895. 130 years go.
His legacy lives on.
###
Hi folks, thanks for listening. As always, I’m your host Michael Fox.
I’ve included some links in the show notes to reporting from my podcast Under the Shadow about Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolution and the US backlash. Definitely check them out.
Also, you can check out exclusive pictures from Sandino’s hometown, Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, in my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox.
This is episode 34 of Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 34 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can check out exclusive pictures from Sandino’s hometown, Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, in Michael Fox’s Patreon. There you can also follow his reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
An audit of past rulings by a controversial medical examiner found that 36 cases of police custody deaths deemed accidents should have instead been classified as homicides.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose agency managed the audit of former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. David Fowler, said the audit was disturbing and that the reclassified cases warranted further scrutiny.
“These findings are of great concern and demand further review,” Brown wrote in the preface of the report.
The report is simply an audit. It does not formally reclassify any of the cases that have been reviewed. Normally, changing an autopsy determination requires a hearing in front of a judge.
The push to examine Fowler’s past rulings came after he testified at the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was charged with murder after video surfaced of him sitting on George Floyd’s neck for roughly nine minutes. Floyd later died at a nearby hospital.
The case sparked outrage and nationwide protests.
Fowler testified that Floyd did not die from positional asphyxiation, the result of the downward pressure of Chauvin’s knee. Instead, he attributed carbon monoxide poisoning from a nearby tailpipe to be the primary cause.
The testimony sent shockwaves through the medical community. An open letter penned by roughly 450 medical experts called for a review of Fowler’s rulings in light of his testimony. The pushback prompted the state to undertake a comprehensive audit, the findings of which were released in a 90-page report.
Among them is the death of a 19-year-old Eastern Shore resident, Anton Black.
Black died after police chased him to his mother’s home. The body camera showed officers lying atop the former track star, who weighed 160 pounds at the time of the arrest. Fowler ruled the death an accident due to an underlying heart abnormality and bipolar disorder, a decision his family said did not reflect the evidence.
“This is a classical case of positional asphyxiation in which somebody is placed face down, and then someone leans on his back, presses down on his back, and he’s tasered, after several minutes, and then he goes limp,” Wecht told TRNN.
Black’s family eventually won a $5 million settlement of a wrongful death suit against the state. Sonia Kumar, senior staff attorney at the Maryland chapter of the ACLU, who was lead counsel on the lawsuit, released a statement calling the audit result long overdue.
“This report vindicates what family members and communities—mostly Black and Brown Marylanders—have been saying for decades: that the entire system has been complicit in making police-involved deaths seem inevitable,” Kumar wrote.
The audit also includes other cases covered by TRNN.
Among them is the death of Tyrone West. West was pulled over in 2013 in North Baltimore after officers stopped his car for a broken taillight. Officers dragged him out of his vehicle and beat him for roughly an hour. West died later at a nearby hospital.
Fowler ruled his death was accidental, the result of dehydration and an underlying heart condition. Prosecutors also declined to press charges.
But Tyrone’s sister Tawanda Jones fought back. She started a series of protests known as West Wednesdays that have continued every week since her brother’s death in 2013.
Jones noted that the first protests were staged outside Fowler’s office.
“That’s where West Wednesday started, at his office. And now the right is finally coming out. I am just overwhelmed.”
Now she is calling for the prosecutor to reopen her brother’s case.
“Yes absolutely, I am going to keep pushing forward.”
Critics say Fowler’s misclassifications were purposeful, with the aim to lower the number of homicide cases in a city where political careers are made or broken by the murder rate. Other sources say the primary goal of his questionable findings was to protect police officers from accusations of wrongdoing. But families like Tawanda’s are simply seeking closure and justice.
“I’ve been fighting for my brother and other families for so long. I just want the truth to be known.”
Ana Maria’s father runs a liquor store just down the street from their house. Every night when he goes to lock up, pairs of feet follow him. Feet in tired shoes. Nervous feet. Wanted feet. Feet on the run.
He guides them into the basement of his shop and maybe rolls out a blanket or two. They lie, alongside cases of the Chilean beer Escudo, or Shield, and hope that it will protect them. Sometimes they even try a bottle. They whisper to each other in the darkness. They develop plans. They talk of fighting. Or fleeing the country. Or they reminisce of better times. Times only just past.
They sleep beside the Escudo… under the watchful eye of rows of Chilean Pisco, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Syrah.
They have restless, agitated dreams. Dreams they cannot run from. Dark dreams that descended on Chile in September, 1973, and enveloped the country in a thick grey fog. A fog that will not go away. A fog that plucked people from off the street and removed them, never to be seen again.
But these feet are survivors.
In the morning, Ana Maria’s father comes to open the shop. He brings food. A large bowl of cazuela. Bread. Sandwiches. His wife cooks.
“I’m famished,” he tells her every morning. “So hungry.” It’s hard to tell if she knows why.
The feet eat quickly and quietly. Then they lace their shoes, grab their bag and slide out the back door into the empty street.
Thrushes and sparrows dart from tree to tree, singing their early morning song. The sun hasn’t yet crested the Andes.
The feet walk quickly. Determined. They have no other choice. They have to… before the fog descends again. Sometimes, in 1973 Chile, it’s hard to tell which is worse, the bad dreams or the reality.
###
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.
This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend.
In honor of this episode, I’ll be posting a series of pictures of the Museum of Memory in Santiago, Chile. It’s a powerful museum focused on remembering the victims of the country’s 1973 coup, the Pinochet dictatorship, and the resistance against it, like this. Those are available exclusively for my supporters on Patreon. There you can also follow my reporting www.patreon.com/mfox.
Thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox. Written and produced by Michael Fox.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 13, 2025. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
House Republicans on Monday quietly revived a proposal that would grant the Trump administration broad authority to crush nonprofits it views as part of the political opposition, from environmental justice organizations to news outlets.
Fight for the Future and other advocacy groups called attention to the measure, which was buried in the final pages of the House Ways and Means Committee’s draft reconciliation bill, starting on page 380.
A markup hearing for the legislation is scheduled to take place on Tuesday at 2:30 pm ET.
The proposal would empower the U.S. Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits deemed material supporters of terrorism, with only a hollow simulacrum of due process for the accused organizations. It is already illegal for nonprofits to provide material support for terrorism.
“The House is about to hand the Trump administration the ability to strip nonprofits of their 501(c)3 status without any reason or recourse. This is a five-alarm fire for nonprofits nationwide,” said Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at Fight for the Future. “If the text of last autumn’s H.R. 9495 is passed in the budget, any organization with goals that do not line up with MAGA can be destroyed with a wink from Trump to the Treasury.”
The measure passed the Republican-controlled House late last year with the support of more than a dozen Democrats, but it never received a vote in the Senate.
“This terribly thought-out legislation means that under the current administration, every environmental, racial justice, LGBTQ+, gender justice, immigration justice, and—particularly—any anti-genocide organization throughout the country may be on the chopping block,” said Holland. “If Democrats capitulate to the wanton destruction of crucial civil society institutions, they had better expect civil society to burn them to the ground for that betrayal.”
WE NEED CALLS NOW! HR 9495, now known as Section 112209, if passed, would give the Trump administration unprecedented power in suppressing nonprofits, by allowing the administration the power to strip organizations of their tax exempt status! Call 319-313-7674
The GOP’s renewed push for what opponents have called the “nonprofit killer bill” comes as the Trump administration wages war on nonprofit organizations, threatening to strip them of their tax-exempt status as part of a sweeping attack on the president’s political opponents.
“In the months since inauguration, Trump and his Cabinet have found other means of cracking down on political speech—particularly speech in favor of Palestinians—by deporting student activists and revoking hundreds of student visas. He has already threatened to attempt to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, part of his larger quest to discipline and punish colleges,” journalist Noah Hurowitz wrote for The Intercept late Monday.
“But the nonprofit clause of the tax bill would give the president wider power to go after organizations that stand in his way,” Hurowitz added.
Robert McCaw, government affairs director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Monday that “this provision is the latest in a growing wave of legislative attacks on constitutional rights.”
“CAIR is urging every member of the Ways and Means Committee to VOTE NO on the inclusion of this provision and to support an expected amendment to strike the language,” the group said in a statement. “Three Democratic members of the committee—Reps. Brad Schneider (Ill.), Tom Suozzi (N.Y.), and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.)—previously voted in favor of the Nonprofit Killer Bill on the House floor last year. They must reverse course and vote to oppose it in committee.”
US-backed wars are wreaking havoc across Central America.
And, in particular, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Authoritarian governments have unleashed waves of violence on their populations.
Trained death squads disappeared thousands.
There are raids. US-backed massacres.
One after the next.
And so tens of thousands of people begin to flee to the one place they believe they may be safe…
The United States.
The very country helping to instigate the violence in their homelands.
But the United States says they are not welcome.
President Ronald Reagan refuses to admit that these thousands are fleeing abuses and government repression back home, because it will bar the US from funneling more support to the authoritarian Central American regimes…
So Reagan calls them “economic migrants.”
Fleeing not violence, but poverty.
And this bars them from receiving asylum.
But if the US government will not respond, others will stand up…
“…A government that has failed in its responsibility to society, so other institutions must act.”
Local residents in Tucson, Arizona, begin to provide aid and assistance to the waves of Central American migrants that are arriving to the US border.
In March 1982, on the second anniversary of the killing of El Salvador’s Archbishop Óscar Romero, Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church declared itself a sanctuary for migrants in need.
They hang a banner outside the church. It reads: “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of Central America.”
John Fife was the minister of that church and one of the founders of the Sanctuary Movement.
“Basic human rights had been violated in systematic ways. And every other possibility had been exhausted… And so the church in Tucson, Arizona remembered that God had given the communities of faith an ancient gift called sanctuary. That the church was given that gift by God to save lives, to keep families intact, to say to the government you have absolutely failed in your responsibility to do justice and therefore that failure means that the community of faith has been given a gift by God to stand up and in nonviolent direct ways say no to more deportations. No to more devastation of families.”
Other churches joined Southside Presbyterian. They would take in migrants and refugees. They would shelter them against government agents and border patrol.
A new underground railroad for Central Americans fleeing US-backed violence abroad.
It quickly became a national movement.
Within three years, 500 churches, synagogues and university campuses had joined and were actively protecting Central American migrants.
Good samaritans standing for their Central American brothers and sisters.
“On any given night there might be from two to 25 [refugees] sleeping in the church,” said one member of Southside Presbyterian. “The congregation set up a one-room apartment for them behind the chapel. When that was full, they slept on foam pads in the Sunday school wing.”
The US government responded. The Justice Department indicted 16 people for aiding undocumented immigrants.
“If I am guilty of anything, I am guilty of the Gospel,” said one defendant.
People protested at immigration departments in numerous cities.
Half of those indicted were found guilty of human smuggling. Most received light sentences.
Finally, in 1990, Congress approved temporary protected status to Central Americans in need.
A tremendous victory that would benefit hundreds of thousands… millions of people.
But the struggle continues.
In recent decades, a New Sanctuary Movement has begun to fight to end injustices against immigrants regardless of immigration status.
Under Donald Trump’s first administration, the concept of sanctuary cities arose to respond to government policies that pushed deportations and immigrant crackdowns.
All of this is more important than ever… NOW.
Whereas in the past police and immigration officials were instructed not to arrest people in sensitive places, like churches. That policy has now been overturned.
Trump has unleashed a war on US immigrants… suspending visas and green cards and removing resident status at will.
But people are pushing back.
###
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.
This is episode 32 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox.
Thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 32 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
It’s Mother’s Day, again. That time for showering your mom with cards and flowers, and chocolates and gifts… right?
Wrong. Or at least, that was NOT the intention of the original holiday, nor the goal for the women who dreamed of it.
Peace. Unity. Solidarity was.
The year was 1870. Just after the Civil War, in the United States. More than half a million people had died.
And one woman decided to stand for peace and an end to war.
Her name was Julia Ward Howe. She was a well-known author and poet. An abolitionist and an activist. She wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a patriotic song for the Union ahead of the war.
And in 1870 she wrote her “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world”… Her “Mothers’ Day Proclamation.”
“Arise, then… women of this day!” She wrote.
“Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
“From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.”
She called on women to unite. To meet. To join hands across cultures and nations and lead the way for an end to war.
She called for a Mother’s Day for Peace.
Around this time an organizer and social activist from West Virginia named Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis was already picking up the cause. She’d started Mother’s Day Work Clubs in several cities to help improve health conditions. During the Civil War, they’d declared neutrality and offered medical aid and assistance to soldiers from both the North and the South.
After the war, she worked to reunite communities destroyed and divided by the fighting. Despite threats of violence, she planned a “Mothers Friendship Day.” In Pruntytown, West Virginia, they brought together soldiers from both sides, the Union and the Confederacy, to help each other heal. They sang songs. They cried.
And when Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis passed in 1905, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, made it her life’s mission to establish a day for mothers in her honor.
She held the first Mother’s Day ceremonies in May 1908, in Philadelphia and Grafton, West Virginia. She distributed white carnations to those in attendance to symbolize the quote “truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love.”
She campaigned tirelessly for the day to be transformed into a national holiday. She organized. She wrote letters to powerful people.
And… they listened.
In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May a national holiday — Mother’s Day.
But… It did not go as planned.
Jarvis saw her holiday coopted by businesses trying to make a buck. How it was being commercialized with the sale of flowers, gifts, and greeting cards.
That was not the idea. And she railed against it.
She famously said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”
She filed lawsuits against companies she said were profiting off of the holiday.
She protested. And was arrested for obstructing the sale of flowers.
In the 1940s, she organized a petition to rescind the day.
Mother’s Day, she said, had lost its essence. Its meaning. In the name of profit.
It had lost its roots of peace. Love and Unity…
But it is never too late.
This Mother’s Day, let’s remember where this holiday came from.
Forgo the presents, and the flowers and the chocolate.
And instead give your mom a hug and share with her the story of the true meaning of Mother’s Day.
A Mother’s Day for Peace.
An end to war.
An end to violence.
An end to the separation of families.
A call for unity among nations and peoples.
Regardless of the color of their skin, their language,
Or their immigration status.
###
Thanks so much for listening.
I want to send a special thanks and shout out to the peace organization Code Pink for their excellent article that shined light on this forgotten story of Mother’s Day. The article was written over a decade ago, but nothing has changed. I was inspired to do this episode thanks to it. I’ll add a link in the show notes to that article as well as some other stories with background to this forgotten history.
As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 31 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Revolutionary Poet Salvadoran Roque Dalton was all three. Profoundly all three. Born on May 14, 1935. He grew up in San Salvador Studied law at the University of Chile And later at the University of El Salvador There he formed a writer’s group of up-and-coming poets and authors… He was inspired by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Communism and revolutionary causes.
His poems are pure art Mixing politics with poetry Blending verse and prose Humor and reality History and current events. Beautiful lines alongside anger at the suffering plight of humanity And above all… that of the downtrodden and poor of El Salvador… Like his poem, COMO TÚ, “like you”:
“I, like you,” he writes “love love, life, the sweet charm of things, the celestial landscape of January days. My blood also boils, and I laugh through eyes that have known the spring of tears. I believe the world is beautiful, that poetry is like bread, for everyone. And that my veins end not in me but in the unanimous blood of those who fight for life, love, things, the landscape, and bread, the poetry of everyone.”
His poems and prose have punchlines innuendo Heart and depth
“Poetry,” he wrote, “Forgive me for helping you understand that you are not made only of words.”
His poems have humor, as he displays the tragic hypocrisies of the world And seems to almost be winking at you. But they are also profoundly serious.
“In the middle of the sea a whale sighs,” he writes, “and in its sigh it says: love with hunger does not satisfy.”
He writes of the past and the very, very present Foreign invaders from forgotten times. And the current ones… bearing gifts, wrapped in red, white and blue With promises of riches and so-called freedom granted by Washington… and foreign corporations. And he was clear that, together with a group of other Latin American poets, he was trying to develop a new style of radical poetry, rooted in politics and social struggle.
This is one of the few recordings of Roque Dalton I’ve been able to find. In it, he says…
“Instead of singing, our poetry poses problems. Presents conflicts. Presents ideas, which are much more effective than hymns at making people conscious of the problems in the fight for the freedom of our peoples.”
But Roque Dalton did not just write words. He lived them. He attended the world youth festival in Russia He traveled, met and spoke out against injustices He was imprisoned. Escaped. He traveled. He lived in Czechoslovakia. Exiled in Mexico. Exiled in Cuba. And trained to fight there.
In the 1970s, El Salvador was ruled by a brutal US-backed dictatorship. Repressive. Violent Hundreds of people disappeared each month. He joined the ERP, the People’s Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla movement that would fight against the government. But he and the leadership differed over the direction their movement would take. He remained outspoken. He said they needed to build their base. And in an unthinkably treacherous crime…
The leaders of his guerrilla army killed Roque Dalton on May 10, 1975 Just four days before his 40th birthday. As an excuse, his murderers claimed he was a CIA agent. And they disappeared his body.
But Roque Dalton continues to inspire even 50 years after his killing. His poems. His books breath with life as if they were written yesterday. As if he were still here. And in a way, he still is… continuing to inspire inside and outside El Salvador.
I once asked Santiago, the head of the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador and the former director of Radio Venceremos, El Salvador’s guerrilla radio, what his favorite poem was. His answer was this:
Alta hora de la noche (In the Dead of the Night), by Roque Dalton.
I found this version of it online, read by none other than the iconic Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, a close friend of Roque Dalton’s.
When you learn that I have died, do not pronounce my name because it will hold back my death and rest.
Your voice, which is the sounding of the five senses, would be the dim beacon sought by my mist.
When you learn that I have died, whisper strange syllables. Pronounce flower, bee, teardrop, bread, storm.
Do not let your lips find my eleven letters. I have dreams, I loved, I have earned my silence.
Do not pronounce my name when you learn that I have died from the dark earth I would come for your voice.
Do not pronounce my name, do not say my name When you learn that I have died, do not pronounce my name.
Roque Dalton left a wife and three sons, who also joined in the struggle against the bloody, US-backed Salvadoran government of the 1970s and ’80s. And who have continued to demand justice and the truth about their father’s death.
Roque Dalton’s words, actions and memory still inspire… So many years later.
One last thing to add. Remember this song… Unicorno Azul, Blue Unicorn, by Cuba’s celebrated singer songwriter Silvio Rodriguez. Well, lyrics talk about a lost blue unicorn. Silvio Rodriguez wrote it for Roque Dalton in the years following his death.
###
Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I’ll be honest, this episode really touched me. Roque Dalton has long been one of my favorite poets and there are just so many layers here. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll add some links in the show notes to more of his poetry, Julio Cortazar reading Alta hora de la noche and the clip of him speaking about developing a new radical poetry for Latin America.
I’ll also include links for my stories from my podcast Under the Shadow about El Salvador’s Civil War in the 1980s and the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador.
This is Episode 30 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 30 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.
Freedom House, the $94 million, nominally independent “human rights” NGO, has been suspiciously quiet as the Trump administration disappears, imprisons, and deports activists opposing the US and Israel’s assault on Gaza.
The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil on March 8 kicked off an harrowing wave of free speech suppression aimed at those protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over 300 high-profile arrests and deportation threats followed Khalil, including that of Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, who has been rotting in a prison for 41 days for simply writing an op-ed critical of Israel in a student paper. She is being held in gulag-like conditions in a Louisiana prison, far from her family, despite the fact that the State Department’s own internal report found she broke no law. Since March 8, Freedom House has published dozens of reports, essays, blog posts, articles, media quotes and social media posts. But, strangely for an alleged human rights group, none have mentioned the White House’s unprecedented crackdown on free expression.
Freedom House’s own website makes clear that defending “free speech” is central to its mission. “Free speech and expression is the lifeblood of democracy, facilitating open debate, the proper consideration of diverse interests and perspectives,” they wax romantically. Which makes it all the more strange they have said nothing about these textbook cases of criminalizing freedom of expression.
TRNN reached out to Freedom House several times for comment on their silence, or to explain why they haven’t issued a statement of solidarity with any of those who disappeared for Gaza activism, but the organization did not return our emails. Freedom House receives over 80% of its budget from the US State Department and, by its own admission, has been hit hard by Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. In their statement asking for private donors to fill the void left by the Trump cuts, they hinted at one reason why they are silent on Trump’s authoritarian crackdown—it seems only “America’s adversaries” can be authoritarian, not the US or its allies. “Freedom House has been severely impacted by the disruption of US foreign assistance,” they wrote, “and the termination of critical programs that Congress funded to counter America’s authoritarian adversaries and support the global struggle for democracy.”
It seems only “America’s adversaries” can be authoritarian, not the US or its allies.
So what happens when the US is the authoritarian in question? It seems the response is to simply act like the draconian suppression of speech doesn’t exist. Trump’s crackdown on Gaza activists isn’t the first time the US has been authoritarian, of course. The US has long had the world’s largest prison population by a wide margin, long had a deeply racist and unequal justice system, long visited authoritarian violence and economic hardship on other countries—including the underlying genocide in Gaza in question.
But Trump’s deportation and imprisoning of people for—by the White House’s own admission—pure political speech marks a meaningful escalation that is clearly in conflict with Freedom House’s already limited, negative rights framework of “freedom.” Plenty of other freedom of speech organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have aggressively defended Khalil and others by filing lawsuits, issuing statements, and making clear where they stand. Why hasn’t an organization with tens of millions of dollars like Freedom House done the same?
The answer is obvious: Freedom House is not an independent organization. They are, and always have been, a soft power organ of the US State Department that uses the thin patina of independence to meddle and concern troll the human rights abuses of “foreign adversaries” while downplaying and whitewashing those by the US and its allies. Israel, for example, always gets their nice green “free” label despite currently carrying out what Amnesty International labels a “genocide” and militarily occupying 4.5 million Palestinians who, even before Oct. 7, were either subject to decades of siege in Gaza or brutal occupation in the West Bank. But don’t worry, Freedom House bifurcates the West Bank from Israel’s score. Why? It’s unclear. Israel has waged a decades-long occupation of Palestine, where the freedom of movement, commerce, food, everyday internal travel, and basic human dignity of Palestinians is subject to the whims of Israeli leaders, but, Freedom House has to get that score above 70 and bestow Israel with a nice green label, lest they get angry phone calls from Congress and the White House.
The silence from the risibly named “Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners” program housed within Freedom House is the most conspicuous. We tried to reach them specifically for comment, but they also did not respond to our request. The program is named after the late Washington Post columnist Fred Haitt, whose most impactful contribution to American politics was lying and lobbying for the Invasion of Iraq both in his personal capacity and as editorial page editor at the Post. Which is the perfect face of an organization entirely neoconservative in its feigned concern for “freedom,” a selective tool of shallow moralizing unconcerned with introspection or criticism of the myriad ways the United States suppressed freedom of speech and human rights. Even when Trump comes into office and unleashes an unsophisticated, explicitly illiberal attack on basic liberal rights, Freedom House can’t bring itself to release a token statement or half-hearted condemnation to maintain the pretense of independence. Instead, its reaction is cowardly silence and moving on to condemn safe, official Bad Guy Countries like China and Cuba.
Ricardo Jones and his wife, Neusa, are from the Southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. Birth is their calling. But not just any birth. Home birth. Natural birth. Humanized birth, where the mothers and their babies come first, Where the mothers are embraced and supported, Where they’re empowered. Because birth is not a sickness. It’s not an illness. It’s not a problem. It is a gift. A passage. It is, perhaps, the most sacred moment of a mother’s and a family’s life, And women have been giving birth since the dawn of the human race. Ric Jones and his wife Neusa work together. He is an obstetrician. Neusa is an obstetrics nurse. But they embrace the ancestral knowledge of midwives. And they are running uphill Amid a system that is stacked against them. In Brazil… nearly 60% of births are c-sections. In fact, it’s one of the countries with the highest c-section rate in the world. That is, in part, because doctors can charge more for c-sections, and they can do more births in a day. In private hospitals, the c-section rate is even higher — around 90%. The World Health Organization says c-section rates should be closer to 15%… Because in some cases, c-sections are necessary. They can save lives. But when they aren’t necessary, more medical intervention costs more money and leads to higher risks. Three times the risk of disease or death, over a normal birth. Ric Jones and his wife have tried to do things the other way… Naturally. Minimal intervention, unless it is needed. Ric Jones and his wife, Neusa, have delivered more than 2,000 babies. Some babies who are now parents of their own.
But for their work, Ric and Neusa Jones are under attack. On March 27, 2025, Ric Jones was convicted of first-degree murder, 15 years after one of the thousands of babies he delivered died of congenital pneumonia in the hospital, 24 hours after the child was born at home. Ric Jones received a sentence of 14 years in prison. His wife, 11 years. Ric Jones spent three weeks in prison. He is now out while they await the decision over the appeal…
But a movement has grown in their defense. Parents, midwives, doulas, birth activists are standing up. They’ve denounced the case against them. They’ve denounced Ric Jones’s imprisonment. They are demanding justice For Ric and Neusa Jones. They say that for their care and their love, And their outspokenness in defense of humanized birth, Brazil’s medical establishment is trying to make an example out of them. And Ric and Neusa Jones are not the only health professionals and natural-birth midwives being criminalized. In Europe, the United States, and Latin America lawyers are taking midwives to court To try to end their work forever, And leave the birthing to the hospitals.
Ricardo Jones says, “The criminalization of natural childbirth is an international phenomenon and is in line with the interests of the medical industry, which controls childbirth care in the West, and hospital institutions, the pharmaceutical industry, etc. that profit from longer hospital stays, drug use, beds, dressings, health insurance, ICU stays, etc. In other words, all those who profit from the “wheel of fortune” of capitalism involved in healthcare. The risk we run is the complete artificialization of birth, where no child will be born through the efforts and determination of his or her mother, but through the time and skills of a third party, who will do it according to their interests.”
But mothers, midwives, doulas, and birth activists will not go silently. They are speaking out. From Brazil and across the planet, women are demanding their right to birth whenever, wherever and however they want… Be it in a hospital or in their home. To birth is not just their right. It is an honor and a gift. And it should not be up to the busy high-paid doctors and the medical establishment To decide how each mother should bring her child into the world. Their right to birth how they want is under attack, As are midwives across the planet. But they will not go silently. They are fighting.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening.
Today, May 5th is the Day of the Midwife. It’s really pretty surprising the number of lawsuits against midwives and natural-birth obstetricians in countries across the world that are trying to stop these powerful men and women from doing their job, and continuing with their calling.
If you’d like to learn more, I’ve included some links in the show notes.
As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 29 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Each country has its own rules, laws and legislation regarding home birth, natural birth, and humanized birth.
Most of this episode is focused on Brazil, where caesarean section rates are some of the highest in the world, and natural-birth and home-birth midwives, obstetricians, and doulas say they have felt clear marginalization and abuse by mainstream health professionals.
In the United States, home births are actually on the rise, with more midwives and doulas being certified, but as more and more states move to legalize homebirth, it’s also created a legal grey area.
Overall, women and men carrying out these home and natural births in many countries say they feel targeted for their work.
Below is a small list of lawsuits against natural birth midwives in numerous countries. They say this is part of a movement to end humanized and home birth. In many of these cases, midwives were accused or convicted of manslaughter. Ric Jones was convicted of murder, intentionally killing the baby.
