This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Apr. 25, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates…
Federal agents arrested a sitting Wisconsin judge on Friday, accusing her of helping an undocumented immigrant evade arrest after he appeared in her courtroom last week, FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media.
In a since-deleted post, Patel said the FBI arrested 65-year-old Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan “on charges of obstruction.”
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse… allowing the subject—an illegal alien—to evade arrest,” Patel wrote. “Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
It is unclear why Patel deleted the post. U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson Brady McCarron and multiple Milwaukee County judges confirmed Dugan’s arrest, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. McCarron said Dugan is facing two federal felony counts: obstruction and concealing an individual.
The Journal Sentinel reported that Dugan “appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Dries during a brief hearing in a packed courtroom at the federal courthouse” and “made no public comments during the brief hearing.”
Dugan’s attorney, Craig Mastantuono, told the court that “Judge Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest,” which “was not made in the interest of public safety.”
The FBI had reportedly been investigating allegations that Dugan helped the undocumented man avoid arrest by letting him hide in her chambers.
Wisconsin state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) said in a statement Wednesday that “several witnesses report that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] did not present a warrant before entering the courtroom and it is not clear whether ICE ever possessed or presented a judicial warrant, generally required for agents to access non-public spaces like Judge Dugan’s chambers.”
Clancy continued:
I commend Judge Hannah Dugan’s defense of due process by preventing ICE from shamefully using her courtroom as an ad hoc holding area for deportations. We cannot have a functional legal system if people are justifiably afraid to show up for legal proceedings, especially when ICE agents have already repeatedly grabbed people off the street in retaliation for speech and free association, without even obtaining the proper warrants.
While the facts in this case are still unfolding, it’s clear that actions like Judge Dugan’s are what is required for democracy to survive the Trump regime. She used her position of power and privilege to protect someone from an agency that has repeatedly, flagrantly abused its own power. If enough of us act similarly, and strategically, we can stand with our neighbors and build a better world together.
Prominent Milwaukee defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Franklyn Gimbel called Dugan’s arrest “very, very outrageous.”
“First and foremost, I know—as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades—that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel told the Journal Sentinel.
“And I’m shocked and surprised that the U.S. Attorney’s office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they’re going to charge her with a crime,” he added.
Julius Kim, another former prosecutor-turned defense lawyer, said on the social media site X that “practicing in Milwaukee, I know Judge Hannah Dugan well. She’s a good judge, and this entire situation demonstrates how the Trump administration’s policies are heading for a direct collision course with the judiciary.”
“That being said, given the FBI director’s tweet (since deleted), they are going to try to politicize this situation to the max,” Kim added. “That sounds an awful lot like weaponizing the DOJ, doesn’t it?”
Responding to Dugan’s arrest, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said on the social media site Bluesky: “The Trump admin has arrested a judge in Milwaukee. This is a red alert moment. We must all rise up against it.”
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Apr. 23, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The Trump administration has not only sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran megaprison due to an “administrative error” and so far refused to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the United States, but also shared on social media the home address of his family in Maryland, forcing them to relocate.
The news that Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and her children were “moved to a safe house by supporters” after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X a 2021 order of protection petition that Vasquez Sura filed but soon abandoned was reported early Tuesday by The Washington Post.
“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” said Vasquez Sura. “So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I’m scared for my kids.”
A DHS spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for a comment about not redacting the family’s address, according to the newspaper’s lengthy story about Vasquez Sura—who shares a 5-year-old nonverbal, autistic son with Abrego Garcia and has a 9-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was abusive.
On Wednesday, The New Republicpublished a short article highlighting the safe house detail and noting that “the government has not commented on the decision to leave the family’s address in the document it posted online,” sparking a fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration endangering the family.
“The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children,” MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye wrote on X Wednesday. “This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong.”
Several others responded on the social media platform Bluesky.
“These fascists didn’t stop at abducting Abrego Garcia, they’ve now doxxed his wife, forcing her into hiding,” said Dean Preston, the leader of a renters’ rights organization. “The Trump administration is terrorizing this family. Speak up, show up, resist.”
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, similarly declared, “The Trump administration is terrorizing this woman.”
Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst for the Project On Government Oversight’s Constitution Project, openly wondered “if publishing Abrego Garcia and his wife’s home address violates federal or (particularly) Maryland laws.”
“Definitely unconscionable and further demonstration of bad faith/intimidation,” Hawkins added.
While Abrego Garcia’s family seeks refuge in a U.S. safe house, he remains behind bars in his native El Salvador—despite the Supreme Court order from earlier this month and an immigration judge’s 2019 decision that was supposed to prevent his deportation. Multiple congressional Democrats have flown to the country in recent days to support demands for his freedom.
The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet.
And one of the most inhospitable.
But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape and they have given life.
Laguna Chaxa lies in the salt flats, 7,500 feet above sea level.
Its crystal waters reflect the horizon, the never-ending terrain of salt rocks. The rows of volcanoes that line the Andes mountains to the East.
In this lagoon, two species thrive. Brine shrimp and flamingos. The miniature shrimp multiply quickly, feeding on the phytoplankton packed with beta carotene, like carrots. The flamingos feed on the shrimp, which colors their feathers pink.
Growing the flamingo’s family tree is harder.
Raising an egg under the incessant sun is not easy.
Like penguins in the frigid extremes, the flamingos here lay just one egg a year.
And there is a battle to see which predator will get to it first. The foxes, which creep down off the hillsides, or the heat of the sun, which can cook it if left to the elements.
So the flamingos have learned to adapt.
They build bowl-shaped nests of mud and earth in the shallow waters of the lake.
The salty waters keep the foxes away, and cool the egg, despite the hot sun.
The baby flamingo grows inside the half-submerged egg.
But even then the parents keep watch.
If the egg is too hot, they fan it with their wings or block the sun’s rays with their bodies, shading it.
They have only one young a year. It must count.
“If it dies, the mother, heartbroken, walks into the desert and dies too,” says Ingrid, an Indigenous guide from the local Toconao community that keeps watch over the region.
And then the egg hatches, the white feathered baby breaks free into the salty waters that she and her family have called home for thousands of years.
Perfectly adapted and resisting in one of the harshest ecosystems on Earth.
###
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.
This story might seem a little out of place for this podcast. But coming just days after Earth Day, I wanted to highlight this just incredible lifelong resistance from animals and ecosystems all around us, to adapt and hold on as best one can. I really like this one. Also… April 26 is Flamingo Day. So happy Flamingo Day. Seeing them in action in these incredibly harsh climates of Chile and Peru, I have new found respect for these big pink birds. They are NOT just Florida lawn decor.
This is episode 24 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 my reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.
There you can also check out some exclusive pictures of the flamingos at Laguna Chaxa, taken both by myself and my daughter. I’ll add links in the show notes.
See you next time.
The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet, and one of the most inhospitable. But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape, and flamingos are one of a number of species that have adapted to live in this harsh environment, and are battling to survive.
This is episode 24 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.
This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. April 26 is also Flamingo Day. So, Happy Flamingo Day!
You can see exclusive pictures of the flamingos of the Atacama desert, in Michael Fox’s Patreon page. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. Written and produced by Michael Fox.
A row of travelers walks on an overgrown path of stone
chiseled half a millenium ago into the hillside.
Thousands of feet above the valley floor
thousands of feet above the snaking brown Urubamba River
craggy snow-covered 17-, 18-, 19,000-foot peaks reach toward the heavens.
They are not just mountains.
They’re Apus.
The word means “señor,” “elder,” or “the honored ones” in Quechua.
For the Andean Quechuan people, the apus are spirits that embody the mountains.
Spirits that protect them and their harvests.
And this group of travelers is also going to pay their respects to the ancient ones.
The path takes a sharp ascent and winds up over a pass.
And at the top they stop, 12,000 feet up.
Here… the land was terraced hundreds of years ago, by ancient bygone people.
Maybe the Incas. Maybe the Killke or Qotacalla people before them.
The land is still farmed today.
But it’s barren of trees and shrubs. They were long since cut, and cleared and used.
But people in the Andes of Peru are changing that.
The guide wears a traditional red woven Andean poncho.
He sets his llamas to graze on the lush green hillside
And pulls from their packs saplings. Tiny queñua trees — polylepis, in English.
They are native to Peru.
To the highlands and the hillsides here. They thrive in the high altitudes.
They help protect the soil. They conserve water.
They are sacred. And this team is here to plant them on the edge of the ridge where they will grow big and strong.
The team breaks into the ground with a pickaxe and shovel.
They pull out the rich moist earth.
And then say prayers to the Apus
three coca leaves in hand, blowing sacred breaths to the mountain spirits.
In every direction they turn, saying a prayer to the mighty summits that surround them… Pitusiray, Sahuasiray, Verónica, Chicón and all of the others, even those they cannot see.
In the base of each hole where the tree will be planted, they make an offering.
Coca leaves, crackers, candy, and other sweets.
The things that humans like, they say, are the same to be offered to Pachamama, Mother Earth, and the Apus.
The items are arranged in a gorgeous multicolored design.
And then they pour in beer. It fizzes and mixes.
More prayers in Quechua. A moment of silence.
They ask that these trees may grow roots.
Big and strong. That they may give life
and protect this sacred place.
The tree is a metaphor for their own future.
That the Apus may bless these little saplings and also their path ahead.
Their community. Their families and endeavours.
And then… they gently fill up the holes with the rich dark earth
llama dung for fertilizer
brown tufts of Andean grass to hold in the moisture.
More words of prayer on this ancient hillside.
Tiny trees being planted and born.
Dreams. Hope for what may come.
Resisting on the high mountains of the Andes.
Planting trees for tomorrow.
###
There has been a huge push to plant these trees and other native trees across the Andes in recent years. And it’s been a tremendous success.
In recent years, local organizations, together with dozens of Indigenous communities have planted more than 10 million trees up and down the Andes. Almost half of them in the Peruvian mountains around Cusco. Many of the tree species are threatened. And many of the ecosystems at risk.
The trees help to protect and preserve the local environments and ecosystems and in particular help retain water. The communities are also holding on to their local cultures, beliefs and religion. Making offerings and prayers to Pachamama and the Apus. Offerings for the resistance of their peoples on the hillsides of the Andes. Offerings for their children and their communities. Offerings for the future.
This is episode 23 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.
This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. So I thought this was a perfect story to highlight the incredible work Indigenous peoples and communities are doing in the highlands of Peru.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
This is episode 23 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.
This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. This is a perfect story to highlight the incredible work Indigenous peoples and communities are doing in the highlands of Peru.
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.
Tamara writes. She writes in her tiny apartment in bustling Puebla, Mexico, where street vendors hawk vegetables and fruits, clothes, and electronics. Where their calls ring like birdsong and the sound of city traffic bellows low like a bassoon, or a didgeridoo.
Tamara writes beautiful phrases, linking adjective and metaphor. Inventing words, painting pictures of alebrijes and butterflies and magic. But her stories are not fanciful. They are not fast-food fairy tales or strip-mall Coca-Cola Inc.-brand fables meant to lull you to sleep and to buy their products.
Tamara’s stories have an edge. They have a point, chiseled over years. They are stories of grit. They are stories of truth. Where the hero is not an impossibly brawny white uniform-wearing man, but an elderly migrant; a homeless grandmother, fleeing violence, picking her way forward, following the breadcrumbs left by an unjust system made not for her, but for the rich. For the elites. For the wealthy tourists, with their expensive cameras, who speak loudly in foreign languages in countries they only visit to say they’ve visited, and eat their food and buy their trinkets and return home to brag.
But Tamara’s protagonists also have their superpowers. They have magic. They see mystical creatures. They paint their own worlds, just like Tamara’s pen, or keyboard stroke.
Tamara writes of injustice. She writes of inequality. She writes of poverty. Then she volunteers at a migrant shelter. She marches with the Indigenous defending their homeland, fighting foreign water companies or mining corporations. She meets. She organizes. She speaks, softly. In a throng of people, she is often the one behind the lens of a camera. Tamara carries both powerful words and silence, in the same breath. This is her superpower. She knows both when to listen and to speak. A potent potion few heroes wield.
Global inequality is her Lex Luthor. Her Joker. Her Darth Vader. This system that permits some countries, and thereby some people, to hold so much power over the rest. This system that decides who needs to fight to survive and who gets to spend their days binge watching Netflix. Who will be educated. Who should travel. Who should live and who should die. All decided by what side of a fence they were born on. What mountainside. What distant shore. What tiny dot on the planet their mothers birthed and raised them.
This global caste system — that is her greatest antagonist. And she fights it daily the only way she knows how. With the very essence of her soul.
###
Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican writer and journalist. You can check out her work on her website ResistanceWords.com. I’ll add a link in the show notes.
Her latest novel, Eyes of the Earth, is a journey of magical realism about a 73-year-old homeless refugee in Mexico. Definitely check it out.
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 Stories of Resistance—a new 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.
He walks the white sands, weaving through the sunbathing crowd that lays near the turquoise waters of the Atacama ocean.
“Would you like to roll the literary dice?” Federico asks.
He wears a large smile, behind a salt and pepper beard, a brimmed hat and a blue flowered shirt.
He holds a large homemade die in his hand, numbers written on all sides.
He hands it to a little girl who laughs and tosses it into the air. It lands on the number 6.
He opens a book with a black and white cover. The drawing of a silhouette of people marching. The words “Nunca Mas,” “Never Again,” written across it.
He begins:
“If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating…
These are the opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” a poem about believing and hope. And making the impossible into reality.
It is cliche, but time stands still. The seagulls stop crying. The lapping of the water at the shore ceases. A boy kicks a soccer ball and it’s frozen in midair. The laughter from a group nearby pauses.
All that is left are the words. And the images and ideas painted by Federico’s rich, deep voice.
Federico’s arms move to the cadence of each line, as though he’s reciting to a crowd of thousands on a Victorian stage somewhere long ago, and far away.
This is both Federico’s job and his activism. A theatrical intervention. A temporal break from the digital monotony: The selfies, the tweets, the posts, the likes, the comments and the follows.
This is Federico’s resistance. Standing up to the cyber mayhem.
Breathing art into the void. Magic. Reflection.
“I didn’t used to read much poetry,” he says. “I had a hard time. I was too distracted. In poetry, you can’t be thinking about something else. It needs your undivided attention.”
“That’s what I like about it,” he says.
Not every poet is right for this occasion. Federico carries a book of poems by Jorge Luis Borges. But Borges is too heady. Too intellectual. Too hard to decipher under the hot sun after a glass, or two, of Chilean Pisco Sour, or while building a sand castle with your daughter.
Uruguayan great Mario Benedetti is more palatable. But there are so many. Ruben Dario, Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Joao Pessoa.
Federico’s repertoire shifts like the tides. Rising and falling. Growing and changing. He’s adding a collection of women authors.
Federico used to work in education. That was before his family planned a road trip, and the car broke down in another country, far from home. And they ran out of money to fix it. And now, they’re camped on the edge of town and he had to find a way to survive and he began reciting poems.
“I don’t usually have that many good ideas,” he says, tossing his die in the air. “This was one of them.”
“Would you like to roll the literary dice?” He asks.
###
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.
This is episode 21 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.
April is National Poetry Month, in the United States. I am taking advantage of it to feature three stories of resistance about poets and authors this week.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. You can support my work and find exclusive pictures and background information on my Patreon: patreon.com/mfox.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 21 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.
April is poetry month in the United States. We are taking advantage to feature three stories about poetry and writing this week. This is the second of those three.
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 Apr. 14, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“Everyone here is pretending,” said immigration policy expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick as a video of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele speaking in the Oval Office circulated on Monday.
Bukele, said the senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was pretending “that he’s incapable of releasing” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident whom the Trump administration expelled to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in March, while President Donald Trump continued to pretend he’s unable to demand Abrego Garcia’s release.
When reporters asked Bukele to weigh in on Abrego Garcia’s case, the Salvadoran leader scoffed.
“Of course you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” he said. “How can I return him to the United States, do I smuggle him into the United States? …I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
What an absolute joke. Everyone here is pretending. Bukele is pretending that he's incapable of releasing someone his own jail is holding at US expense, and Trump is pretending he can't just ask Bukele to release the guy. And meanwhile, Mr. Abrego rots in prison. https://t.co/Z0f6ky40DJ
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) April 14, 2025
Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant in 2011. He was accused by a police informant of being a member of MS-13 in 2019, but he denied the allegations and was never charged with a crime. He was denied asylum in a hearing, but a judge determined that he should not be deported to his home country of El Salvador, where he had a credible fear of facing persecution and torture.
He had been working as a sheet metal worker and living in Maryland with his wife and children for several years when he was among hundreds of people accused of being criminals and rounded up to be expelled to El Salvador under a Trump administration deal with Bukele last month.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Bukele joined the Trump administration in claiming nothing can be done to return Abrego Garcia to his family in Maryland.
“The U.S. is pretending it doesn’t have the power,” said civil rights lawyer Patrick Jaicomo. “And Bukele is pretending he doesn’t have the power. So who has the power?”
Bukele’s statement indicates that the U.S. government is NOT facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return, even by DOJ’s own self-serving definition.
Instead, the U.S. is pretending it doesn’t have the power. And Bukele is pretending he doesn’t have the power.
The Supreme Court last week said the administration is responsible for “facilitating” Abrego Garcia’s release, and the Department of Justice claimed in a filing on Sunday that under that order, it is only liable for allowing the man to enter the U.S. once he is freed from the prison in El Salvador.
Trump’s treatment of the case represents “a full-blown constitutional crisis and possibly the watershed moment for what the near future looks like,” said one writer. “If this holds, there is no law but Trump’s law.”
In the Oval Office, said J.P. Hill, both leaders were “openly saying they’ll defy the Supreme Court and maybe even send American citizens to the prison camp in El Salvador. Nobody will be safe if we let this happen.”
As Bukele and Trump both denied responsibility for the hundreds of people they have sent to CECOT, Documentedreported on Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who was also sent to El Salvador.
Gutiérrez has no criminal record in the U.S. or his home country, and was not a target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation operation. An ICE agent said, “He’s not the one,” when a group of officers came to make an arrest at Gutiérrez’s apartment building, but another replied, “Take him anyway.”
Gutiérrez’s story, said Reichlin-Melnick, “comes as Bukele today pretends that he has no power to release people held in his own prison.”
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Julia Conley.
A man sits at a dark wooden table in a bar in the old city of Montevideo, Uruguay.
The bar is old. Historic. It’s been around for more than a hundred years. And it looks it.
The decor hasn’t changed much since the 1870s.
Wooden walls. Wooden tables. Italian chairs.
The bar is called the Cafe Brasileiro.
And it was a favorite of more than a few Uruguayan poets and writers.
Mario Benedetti, Idea Vilariño, José Enrique Rodó.
They say Juan Carlos Onetti wrote the first words of his first novel here in the 1930s.
But of them all, one man is remembered in the menu…
Eduardo Galeano.
The ingredients of the Cafe Galeano are Amaretto, Cream and dulce de leche — caramel.
Galeano frequented the Cafe Brasileiro for decades. Chair leaned back against the wall. Sometimes a pencil or a pen in hand.
Titles cannot describe him.
He was writer, reader, journalist, editor.
But he was also historian.
Catching stories in the air.
Writing and retelling them anew.
But he did not write for the stuffy halls of the elites or academia.
He wrote for the people.
He was a truth-teller.
A myth-maker.
An essayist.
A poet.
Polishing his craft
Honing his art
Chiseling his sculptures with words
Until they were perfectly symmetrical
Beautifully balanced
The least common denominator of language and meaning.
Gorgeous bouquets of words.
He was a storyteller.
And his tales had morals
Points
Punchlines.
His vignettes — tiny packets of beauty
That remind us who we are
And where we come from.
The immense injustices carried out by the powerful
And the profound insight of the people.
His most famous book, Open Veins of Latin America, was published in 1971.
A hard-hitting examination of the gutting of the Americas by Europe and the United States since the arrival of Columbus.
But it reads like a novel.
They say the book was one of the few items writer Isabel Allende took with her when she fled Chile with her family following the brutal 1973 coup.
He too would have to flee in 1973, when the military took over Uruguay.
He went into exile first in Argentina, and then in Spain, when Argentina also fell into its own military dictatorship in 1976.
There, he wrote his Memories of Fire trilogy.
“I’m a writer obsessed with remembering,” he wrote once. “With remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
His were words of wisdom.
Upside-down words.
Words that celebrated the poor and working class.
Words that denounced the global injustices by stripping them of their fake façades and painting them anew… showing who they really were.
“What a paradox today’s world is,” he writes in his posthumous 2016 book, Hunter of Stories. “In the name of freedom, we are invited to choose between the same and the same, be it on the table or on television.”
Galeano passed away exactly 10 years ago — April 13, 2015.
His words live on.
###
My wife and I interviewed Galeano once in the mid 2000s, at the Cafe Brasileiro in Montevideo.
It was for a documentary we were doing about democracy, called Beyond Elections.
We spoke for only a few minutes. But his insight, as always, was profound.
“Every country is in the United Nations,” he said. “But we only formulate recommendations. The decisions are made by the UN Security Council. And within the UN Security Council, those who decide are the countries that have the right of veto. Which are five… the five countries that watch over world peace: US, the UK, France, China, and Russia. They are also the five top producers of weapons. In other words, world peace is in the hands of the lords of war,” he said.
I’ll place a link for the interview and our documentary in the show notes.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. This is episode 20 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 support my work and see exclusive pictures and background information in my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 20 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.
April is poetry month in the United States. We are taking advantage to feature three stories about poetry and writing this week. This is the first of those three.
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.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Apr. 09, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
The Senate has confirmed former Arkansas governor and fervent Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee as the U.S.’s next ambassador to Israel after numerous rights groups called on the Senate to oppose his nomination.
Huckabee was confirmed 53 to 46, in what was a largely party line vote — except for Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), who voted with Republicans in favor.
Advocates for Palestinian rights have long raised alarm about Huckabee’s nomination over his clear bias toward Israel and his numerous statements dehumanizing Palestinians.
He has visited Israel over 100 times and espouses his beliefs as a Christian Zionist who believes that Jewish people must take over Palestine in order to fulfill a Biblical prophecy; many anti-Zionists have pointed out that Christian Zionists often hold antisemitic beliefs in their support of this goal.
Huckabee also once said, at a campaign stop in 2008, that there is “really no such thing as a Palestinian,” erasing the existence of an entire people and stripping them of their cultural identity — much like Trump and Israeli officials seem to be seeking to do with their genocide in Gaza.
When asked about this comment during his confirmation hearing, he denied that this comment had anything to do with the forced expulsion of Palestinians, saying, “I simply referenced the biblical mandate that goes all the way back to the time of Abraham, 3,500 years ago.”
“The Senate’s decision to confirm Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel is a threat to Palestinians and Israelis, and to Jews, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color in the United States,” said IfNotNow in a statement. “He has claimed Palestinians do not exist & has allied with Israel’s violent settler movement and extremist evangelicals in the United States — and will undoubtedly pursue his dangerous Christian Nationalist worldview as ambassador.”
Many have specifically called out Fetterman, who is facing increasing isolation from his voter base and fellow Democrats over his zealous support of Israel since he took office.
“Fetterman was the only ‘Democrat’ who voted for Trump’s [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, who is ripping up the Constitution. Now he is the only ‘Democrat’ to vote for Huckabee — who wants to bring about Armageddon by ethnically cleansing Palestinians,” said the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. “Pennsylvania deserves a new Senator.”
And yet, in many places, there has been a push to privatize it.
This was the case in 1999, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, when the city privatized the city’s municipal water supply.
The move came at the mandate of the World Bank.
The new company was a subsidiary of the US construction firm Bechtel and several other foreign corporations.
The company raised water rates more than 30% overnight.
A manager said “If people didn’t pay their water bills their water would be turned off.”
Protests exploded in January 2000.
Workers. Campesinos. Retirees. Even the middle class hit the streets.
They were organized under the Coordinator in Defense of Water and Life.
And they occupied Cochabamba’s main square.
Their only demand: Cancel the contract.
They held a general strike that lasted for four days.
Police cracked down. Tear gas. Rubber bullets.
200 protesters were arrested. More than 120 people injured.
Protests spread to other cities. Roadblocks shut down towns and highways.
President Hugo Banzer declared a state of siege, suspending constitutional guarantees.
Nighttime raids. Arrests against labor leaders.
And then… Víctor Hugo Daza.
He was a high school student in a crowd of protesters that April, when he was shot and killed by a Bolivian Army captain.
The act was recorded on camera. It reverberated across Bolivia.
Finally, the Bolivian government acquiesced.
On April 10, 2000, leaders of the protest movement signed an agreement with the national government, reversing the privatization.
The people had won.
This is episode 18 of Stories of Resistance — a new 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.
If you are interested in more information on the Cochabamba Water War, we recommend you check out the 2010 movie “Tambien La Lluvia,” featuring Gael García Bernal. It is a tremendous look back at that time, amid a scathing critique of how the Spanish, foreign companies, and white elites have always treated local Indigenous and campesino populations in Bolivia and across Latin America.
I am admittedly apprehensive about accepting an award for our coverage on this catastrophic and preventable tragedy when people living in and around East Palestine have had their lives upended and are still going through hell. Chris Albright, the resident who spoke to me and Steve Mellon in this documentary report while we sat in his dining room, was just hospitalized again and spent the past weekend in critical care due to heart-related issues caused by the derailment. Some people we spoke to while filming in East Palestine last year have since had to move and leave everything behind to save their and their family’s health, becoming refugees from their own hometowns.
“Nothing has changed,” Ashley McCollom, a displaced East Palestine resident, told me in February. “It feels like the town is basically the same, the reactions, the uncomfortable feeling, the stress… you can clearly smell something’s not right.” I would like to take the opportunity of this award announcement to reiterate the same plea I’ve been making for two years: Please don’t forget about East Palestine. Don’t look away, don’t give up on these people, as so many politicians, pundits, and unaffected members of the public have. They are working people just like you and me, they are our neighbors, and they desperately need help. Please, I beg you, help them.
We at TRNN accept this award proudly as recognition of our dedication to the people of East Palestine, to our neighbors and fellow workers at the center of these all-too-frequent national tragedies, and to the work of lifting up their voices and reporting on their stories truthfully, transparently, and fearlessly. But these stories are not over, and the work is not done until people get justice, until the corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires poisoning our communities are stopped and held accountable for their crimes. And you have a role to play in shaping that outcome—we all do. What happens next depends on what you and others do about it, how you turn the information and perspectives we provide through our journalism, and the connections we facilitate on our platforms, into action.
At TRNN, we don’t just tell you about what’s happening in the world and expect you to simply react to it; we take you to the heart of the action where people are making change happen, and we encourage you to do something with it. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. TRNN is journalism and human-centered storytelling for people who are doing something and for people who want to do something but don’t know where to start. It starts here, now, with you, with us. We are working to change the world, and that work is gruelling, expensive, and time-consuming, and we cannot do it without you.
Thank you to the Park Center for Independent Media and to the award committee for honoring us with this Izzy Award. Thank you to all of our supporters who make our work possible, and thank you to everyone fighting wherever you are to make change and justice inevitable. Lastly, thank you to the people of East Palestine for opening your hearts and homes to us, and for trusting us to share your stories with the world—we won’t stop, and we won’t forget about you.
For more information about how you can help the residents of East Palestine, OH, email us at contact@therealnews.com.
Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever, Maximillian Alvarez Editor-in-Chief & Co-Executive Director, TRNN
The night is dark. Overcast. And, in Curitiba, cold.
Crowds amass outside the chain-link barbed-wire fence surrounding the courthouse and jail.
One group, dressed in yellow and green, sets off fireworks and cheered in euphoria.
The other, dressed in red, dances to the rhythm of drums.
And then, the sound of the spinning blades of a helicopter in the distance.
Inside is former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Working-class hero. Labor leader turned iconic president.
Now, convicted of corruption. Being flown to jail.
His supporters say he’s innocent—-convicted on trumped-up charges by a biased judge hell-bent on power, and taking down the Workers Party.
As the chopper arrives, military police inside the fence open fire on Lula’s supporters.
Rubber bullets fly. Tear gas canisters volley into the crowd. Some people fall. Others scream and run. The crowd is pushed back several blocks. They stand tougher and chant before rows of riot police.
The unthinkable has happened.
The night is dark and cold.
The future is bleak.
But with daybreak, something extraordinary happens.
People begin to arrive. First by the dozens and then by the hundreds.
They come by bus and car. They come from miles away.
They line the streets outside the jail.
Tents spring up along the sidewalks in this normally sleepy residential neighborhood.
Sleepy no more.
Two blocks from the prison, a vigil is emerging.
Round-the-clock action and organizing.
Chants, cheers, and music.
The Workers Party announces it’s moving its headquarters to the location.
“We are not leaving until Lula is free,” says one leader to cameras. “Free Lula!”
Supporters arrive from across the country to participate in the vigil.
Some come and go. Others stay. For weeks and then months. s.
From the spent tear gas canisters shot on the night of Lula’s jailing, something today is reborn:
A movement of resistance that will not go away, despite the attacks, the threats, the rain, sun, heat or freezing temperatures.
The vigil will see the seasons change. Winter transformed to summer, back to winter, and into spring.
And still the people stay.
And every day the crowd chants and cheers.
“Good morning, presidente Lula!”
“Good afternoon.”
“Good evening.”
580 days pass.
And then, finally, Lula is free.
The Supreme Court tosses out the charges. The courts have tossed out every charge against him.
His former jailer, Sergio Moro, has himself come under investigation for using biased methods to convict.
The first thing Lula does when he leaves prison is speak to the crowd outside.
“Thank you so much from the depths of my heart. I have no way of repaying you other than to say that I am eternally grateful to you and I will be faithful to your struggle,” he says.
“Thank you for chanting ‘Free Lula’ over these 580 days.”
It would take almost three more years, but on October 30, 2022, the former labor leader was reelected president of Brazil.
###
Hi folks. Thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. Lula was jailed on the evening of April 7, 2018, which is why I’m dropping this story today. I was there outside the federal prison that night, and I continued to do a ton of reporting on the Free Lula vigil over the next two years, as well as on Lula’s return to the presidency in 2022. You can check out my podcast Brazil on Fire for a deep dive into all of it. I have a whole episode on Lula’s jailing and the Free Lula vigil that helped to fight for his freedom. The podcast was co-produced by The Real News and NACLA. The link is in the show notes. You can also see exclusive pictures of the Free Lula vigil and support my work in my patreon… that’s patreon.com/mfox.
This is episode 16 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.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 16 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.
This week, in remembrance of the anniversary of Brazil’s military coup on March 31, 1964, we are taking a deep dive in Brazil. All three episodes this week look at stories of resistance in Brazil. From protest music, to general strikes against the dictatorship, to the Free Lula vigil in more recent 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. There, you can also see Michael’s exclusive pictures of the Free Lula Vigil.
You can check out more of Michael’s in-depth reporting of the Free Lula vigil in the following reports for The Real News and his 2022 podcast Brazil on Fire.
On March 18 Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire and recommenced its full scale assault, siege, and bombing of Gaza. Since then, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and the humanitarian situation is as desperate as ever. Watching mainstream media, however, one would hardly notice.
While US media outlets continue to report below the fold on the daily airstrikes, they are no longer treated as major stories meriting emphasis and urgency. This is especially true for the New York Times and TV broadcast news, which have all but forgotten there’s an unprecedented humanitarian crisis ongoing in Gaza–still funded and armed by the US government.
The paper of record, the New York Times, ran a front page story March 19, the day after Israel broke the ceasefire and killed hundreds in one day, but didn’t run a front page story on Israel’s bombing and siege of Gaza in the 13 days since. (They ran a front page story on April 3 that centered Israel’s military “tactics” in Gaza but didn’t mention civilian death totals.) The Times did find room on March 27 for a front page image of anti-Hamas protests in Gaza which, of course, are a favorite media topic for the pro-genocide crowd as they see it as evidence their “war on Hamas” is both morally justified and, somehow, endorsed by Palestinians themselves.
Like the New York Times, the nightly news shows–CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and ABC World News Tonight–covered the initial bombing and breaking of the ceasefire the day after (ABC News’s lede after Israel killed 400+ in under 24 hours: “What does this mean for the hostages?”), but have subsequently ignored Gaza entirely, with one notable exception. CBS Evening News did a 4-minute segment on March 26 on “allegations” Israel was using Palestinians, and Palestinian children in particular, as human shields and even this was front loaded with bizarre denunciations of Hamas “using human shields”:
check out the insane Official Hamas Condemnation throat-clearing required before gingerly reporting on widespread use of human shielding by Israel pic.twitter.com/shoO7gM78v
Most conspicuous of all was the total erasure of Gaza from the “agenda-setting” Sunday news programs that are designed to tell elites in Washington what they should care about. Gaza wasn’t mentioned once on any of the Sunday news shows–ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union–for the weeks of March 23 and March 30. Despite Israel breaking the ceasefire on Tuesday March 18 and killing more than 400 Palestinians–including over 200 women and children–in less than 24 hours, none of the Sunday morning news programs that have aired since have covered Gaza at all.
Combined with the nonstop “flood the zone” strategy of the Trump White House as it attacks dozens of perceived enemies at once, the US-backed genocide in Gaza is now both cliche and low priority.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday that at least 322 children had been killed and 609 injured since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18.
All indications are that Israeli officials were banking on US news outlets normalizing the ongoing genocide of Gaza, assuming–correctly, as it turns out–that the death and despair would become so routine it would take on a “dog bites man” element. Combined with the nonstop “flood the zone” strategy of the Trump White House as it attacks dozens of perceived enemies at once, the US-backed genocide in Gaza is now both cliche and low priority.
Indeed, Palestinians reporting from Gaza say the situation is as dire as it’s ever been. Israel cut off all aid on March 2 and the bombings have been as relentless and brutal as any time period pre-ceasefire. Meanwhile, with Trump openly endorsing ethnic cleansing, “debates” around how best to facilitate this ethnic cleansing are presented as sober, practical foreign policy discussions–not the open planning of a crime against humanity. “You mentioned Gaza,” Margaret Brennan casually said to Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, the last time Gaza was mentioned on CBS’s Face the Nation, March 16. “I want to ask you what specifics you are looking at when it comes to relocating the two million Palestinians in Gaza. In the past, you’ve mentioned Egypt. You’ve mentioned Jordan. Are you talking to other countries at this point about resettling?”
Witkoff would go on to say Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza would “lead to a better life for Gazans,” to which Brennan politely nodded, thanked him and moved on. Watching this exchange one would hardly know that was being discussed–mass forceable population transfer–is a textbook war crime. Recent revelations by the UN that aid workers had been found in a mass grave have also been ignored by broadcast news. 15 Palestinian rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one,” according to the UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) and the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS). This story has not been covered on-air by ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, or CNN.
The ongoing suffering in Gaza, still very much armed and funded by the White House, continues to fade into the background. It’s become routine, banal, and not something that can drive a wedge into the Democratic coalition. This dynamic, combined with US media’s general pro-Israel bias, means the daily starvation and death is not going to be making major headlines anytime soon. It’s now, after 18 months of genocide, just another boring “foreign policy” story.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Adam Johnson.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Apr. 01, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
On the morning of March 25, farmworker organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez was forcibly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who stopped his car while he was driving his wife to work in Skagit County, Washington. People to whom Juarez has spoken say he requested to see a warrant, and when he attempted to get his ID after being asked, the ICE agents smashed his car window and detained him.
Twenty-five-year-old Juarez helped found Familias Unidas Por La Justicia, an independent farmworker union in Washington State, in 2013, when he was just a young teenager. He has advocated around issues like overtime pay, heat protections for farmworkers and the exploitative nature of the H-2A guest worker program. Juarez is a beloved member of the Indigenous Mixteco farmworker community, and there’s been an outpouring of support for him across Washington State and the entire country.
Juarez is currently being imprisoned at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. His detention comes as the Trump administration escalates its assault against immigrants and workers. Union members and immigrant rights activists have been detained. The administration has also intensified its attacks on foreign-born students who have spoken up for Palestinian rights, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk.
To learn more about Juarez’s situation, Truthout spoke with Edgar Franks, the political director of Familias Unidas, about the farmworker organizer and his detention, the outpouring of support for him, and more. Franks, who also spoke to Truthoutlast November about the challenges facing farmworkers after Trump’s reelection, has worked closely with Juarez — who goes by “Lelo” — for over a decade.
Derek Seidman: To start, what’s important for readers to know about Lelo?
Edgar Franks: The most important thing is how much he cares about farmworker issues and how much he has advocated for farmworkers, especially the Indigenous Mixteco farmworker community that he’s from. One reason he organizes is because there are so few organizers in the state that speak to the issues of Indigenous Mexicans from his community. He’s very committed to his community and all the issues that affect farmworkers and immigrants. He’s always available, anytime people call him, because he believes so much in the cause.
He was one of the main people who helped start our union. When we first began, it was hard to communicate with some of the workers who still used their native language and didn’t speak Spanish well. Alfredo was key to bridging that communication gap because he spoke English, Spanish and Mixteco. With him, we were able to really get information from the workers about what they wanted and help them organize.
He also helped us lobby for the overtime rules for farmworkers and the rules on climate around heat and smoke. All our recommendations came straight from workers that Alfredo spoke with. He was always talking to workers. He’s also been calling attention to how exploitative the H-2A guest worker program is and how growers use the H-2A program as a tool to take power away from farmworkers. He’s also been lobbying on issues like housing and rent stabilization.
He’s a member of our union who’s been around since the beginning. He’s sort of like a shop steward. Everything that the union has done has Alfredo’s fingerprints all over it.
How do you understand his detention? What’s your analysis of what happened?
ICE is harassing and intimidating people and not even showing warrants.
We believe his detention is politically motivated because of his organizing in the farmworker and immigrant community. We believe he was targeted. The way that ICE detained him was meant to intimidate. They hardly gave him any chance to defend himself or explain. He wasn’t resisting, and he just asked to see the warrant. They asked to see his ID, and right when he was reaching for it, they broke his car window. The ICE agents escalated really fast. From what we heard, it was less than a minute from the time he was pulled over to him being in handcuffs.
I think the intent was to strike fear and intimidate Alfredo, but also to send a message to others who are speaking out against ICE and for immigrant rights, that this is what happens when you try to fight back.
In past years, we’ve seen people getting pulled over and asked for their documents, but now it’s becoming more aggressive. ICE is harassing and intimidating people and not even showing warrants. It’s free rein for ICE to do whatever they want. When you have federal agents with no real oversight, it empowers them to be violent and coercive over everybody. The tone being set by the Trump administration gives ICE agents and Border Patrol the feeling that they’re unstoppable. That’s really concerning.
Can you talk about the outpouring of support for Lelo?
It’s been great to see the huge support for Alfredo. It speaks to how much of an impact he’s had in the state and all over the nation. It’s been really nice to see the solidarity from people that probably never even met him or knew anything about the farmworker struggle, but who know an injustice has happened.
There was a rally on March 27 organized by the Washington State Labor Council, which represents all the unions in Washington. They showed up at the detention center calling for Alfredo and another union member, Lewelyn Dixon, to be freed. For us as a union, it’s most important to see our labor family stepping up. During the presidential campaign we saw how workers and unions were being used by Trump, but now all of our labor folks are seeing what’s really happening here, which is that Trump is using immigrants to attack workers and unions. It’s been great to see labor really stepping up on the side of immigrant workers.
What affects everybody else affects immigrants. At the end of the day, we all want food and housing and good schools. Immigrants have nothing to do with the rising costs of housing, or gas or eggs. The difficulties that are really affecting people’s lives are not caused by immigrants. They’re caused by the system and by billionaires like Elon Musk. The frustrations that people feel are real, but their anger is being pointed at immigrants, and that’s not where the anger needs to go.
How is Lelo doing? What have you heard?
He’s obviously upset. He misses his family and friends. He’s also been very moved by all the actions that are happening. But when some of his supporters went to go see him last week, you know what his message was? To keep fighting and keep organizing. That gives us strength and confidence to move forward. Lelo wants us to fight, so we’ll fight. If he’s fighting on the inside, we’ll keep fighting for him on the outside.
He now has legal representation, which was also a big concern for us. We can fight as much as we want on the outside, but we really need fighters in the legal system to help Alfredo. We’ll be there for whatever the legal team needs to uplift his fight, including creating pressure in the streets.
Lelo’s detention is coming amid a larger crackdown in the U.S. Do you see connections?
Lelo is concerned about others who are being detained. Lewelyn Dixon is a University of Washington lab technician and a SEIU 925 member. She has a green card and has been living in the U.S. for 50 years. She’s at the Tacoma detention center.
From the beginning, we thought Project 2025 and its plan for mass deportations was meant to get rid of all the immigrant workers who are organizing and fighting back for better conditions, and to bring in a workforce that’s under the complete control of their employer.
There’s the case of immigrant rights activists Jeannette Vizguerra in Denver. There’s the case of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University and other students being detained who speak out about Palestine. It’s not a coincidence anymore. This is the trend now, and it’s really concerning. The U.S. talks a lot about repressive governments in Venezuela or Cuba, but we have political prisoners right now in the U.S.
Do you think Lelo’s detention is part of a larger plan to attack farmworker organizing?
From the beginning, we thought Project 2025 and its plan for mass deportations was meant to send a chill among farmworker organizations that had been gaining momentum. It was meant to silence the organizing, deport as many people as possible, and to bring in a captive workforce through the H-2A program.
We think that might be the ultimate plan: to get rid of all the immigrant workers who are organizing and fighting back for better conditions, and to bring in a workforce that’s under the complete control of their employer with basically no rights. It’ll make it even harder to organize with farmworkers if more H-2A workers come. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it’ll be more difficult. All the gains that have been made in the last couple of years for farmworkers are at risk.
What are you asking supporters to do?
Alfredo’s big on organizing. Wherever you are, there are similar struggles that are happening. Whether you’re in New York, Florida, Texas or California, there’s organizing for immigrant rights and workers that needs just as much support as he does. We should go into our local communities and support those organizing campaigns.
We should see Alfredo’s case as an example of how effective he is and how much that threatens the establishment. But at the same time, he wouldn’t want people to stop organizing because he’s detained. He would want people to organize even more.
You’ve worked closely with Lelo for over a decade. What are some memories that come to mind that tell us more about who he is?
When we first started organizing in 2013, he was only around 14 years old. A lot of farmworkers didn’t know how to speak English, and so these workers, who were grown adults, would ask Alfredo to present their case. He was just a young teenager, basically a kid, and he was given the responsibility to represent farmworkers at speaking engagements with hundreds of people. And when he went, he spoke eloquently for over an hour about the life of being a young farmworker and why farmworkers needed a union. The campaign was maybe two months old, but he had already captured the idea of why unions were important at such a young age.
I remember all this because I would have to drive him around since he was too young to drive! So I would take him to talk to churches, or unions, or other groups around the community. He was doing all this when he was 14 years old. I was amazed. I couldn’t speak for two minutes without getting nervous, but here was this 14-year-old who could talk for an hour!
He was also asked to go to the 2022 Labor Notes Conference to present on the work of the union, and I just remember how excited he was that Bernie Sanders was going to be there. He got the opportunity to give Bernie a letter about our campaign to oppose the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. He was so excited about meeting Bernie Sanders.
He’s still like a little kid (laughter). He likes Baby Yoda and likes to watch animated cartoons. He tries to enjoy being young. He’s really humble. He’s 25 now, so almost half of his life has been toward organizing. It’s amazing just how much he’s been able to accomplish even as just a young man.
This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Mar. 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
In his broadest attack on federal workers and their unions to date, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced an Executive Order that claimed to end collective bargaining rights for nearly the whole federal workforce. Early estimates have the move affecting 700,000 to 1 million federal workers, including at the Veterans Administration and the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, Interior, Justice, Treasury, Health and Human Services, and even Agriculture.
This gutting of federal worker rights has the potential to be a pivotal, existential moment for the labor movement. It is a step that recognizes that the Trump administration’s rampage against the federal government is hitting a roadblock: unions.
Much remains to be seen: How quickly will the government move to execute the order? How much of it will stand up to challenges in court? Members of the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), who have been protesting ongoing firings and cuts, are holding an emergency organizing call on Sunday, March 30.
ECHOES OF PATCO
The move echoes past attacks on federal and public sector unions, including President Ronald Reagan firing 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Reagan’s move signaled “open season” on the labor movement, public and private sector alike.
The dubious mechanism that Trump is using to revoke these rights involves declaring wide swaths of the federal workforce to be too “sensitive” for union rights.
The Executive Order claims that workers across the government have “as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
Historically the interpretation of this has been much narrower. While CIA operatives have not been eligible for collective bargaining, nurses at the Veterans Administration have. These rights have been law since the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, and in various forms for years prior, starting with an executive order by President Kennedy in 1962.
For example, the Veterans Administration has the largest concentration of civilian workers in the federal government, with more than 486,000 workers. The Trump Executive Order declares all of them to be excluded from collective bargaining rights.
A MILLION WORKERS AFFECTED
The order names 10 departments in part or in full, and eight other governmental bodies like agencies or commissions, ranging from all civilian employees at the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency to all workers at the Centers for Disease Control (a part of the Department of Health and Human Services) and the General Services Administration.
Federal unions immediately denounced the Executive Order, promising to challenge it in court. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, said in a statement that AFGE “will fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks.”
It is unclear how quickly the federal government and its various agencies will act to nullify contracts and all that come with them.
At the Transportation Security Administration, where collective bargaining rights were axed in recent weeks, the impact was felt immediately: union representatives on union leave were called back to work, grievances were dropped, and contractual protections around scheduling were thrown out the window.
Some protests already in the works may become outlets for justified anger about the wholesale destruction of the federal labor movement.
Organizers with the FUN, a cross-union network of federal workers that has jumped into action as the crisis has deepened, are organizing local “Let Us Work” actions for federal workers impacted by layoffs and hosting the Sunday emergency organizing call March 30.
National mobilizations under the banner of “Hands Off” are also already planned for April 5.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Joe DeManuelle-Hall.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 26, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted by federal agents on Tuesday and has reportedly had her visa revoked, the university says, in what seems to be the latest instance of the Trump administration targeting and detaining an immigrant for their pro-Palestine advocacy.
Video of Ozturk’s arrest captured by a home security camera shows the student being apprehended by a group of six people in plain clothes whose faces are covered by masks and hats. A man first approaches and apprehends her, then grabs her wrists as the others convene from different directions. She asks if she can call the police for help, and they tell her, “we are the police.”
The group takes her backpack and handcuffs her before escorting her to an unmarked car parked nearby. The arrest and abduction take place in the course of less than two minutes.
Khanbabai says that the PhD candidate was on her way to meet friends for iftar, when those observing Ramadan break their fast, when she was apprehended by and detained by Department of Homeland Security agents.
Officials initially did not specify where Ozturk had been taken, and Khanbabai was unable to reach her. Later on Wednesday, Khanbabai said in a motion that she was informed by a senator’s office that the student was transferred to Louisiana. DHS agents also sent Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil to Louisiana, where he is being held in an immigration jail notorious for its abuses.
The transfer is despite the fact that a judge approved a petition barring Ozturk from being removed from Massachusetts without advance notice filed by Khanbabai on Tuesday. The Trump administration has been openly flouting court orders when it comes to its anti-immigrant onslaught; earlier this month, for instance, immigration officials deported Brown University assistant professor and doctor Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon, despite a judge having ordered the visa holder not to be removed.
Ozturk’s abduction comes just days after she was doxxed by Zionist vigilante group Canary Mission, advocates for Palestinian rights said. The group cited her activism against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including an op-ed published in Tufts Daily last year demanding that university leadership divest from Israel and condemn its slaughter of Palestinians.
Pro-Palestine activist groups have organized a rally in solidarity with Ozturk on Wednesday to demand her release. This is the first known instance of a student being targeted by immigration officials for their pro-Palestine activism in Boston.
Ozturk is the latest campus activist involved in the student movement against Israel’s genocide to be targeted by ICE in recent weeks. Recent Columbia University graduate and leader of student protests Khalil was abducted by ICE earlier this month and had his green card revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump officials openly admitted that Khalil was targeted for his activism, in what legal experts say is a clear violation of free speech rights.
Columbia student Yunseo Chung has also been targeted by the Trump administration for her participation in student protests. Immigration officials are seeking to deport Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the U.S. when she was 7 years old, according to a lawsuit filed by Chung against the administration this week.
Note: This story has been updated to reflect new information about Ozturk’s location.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 24, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday in separate strikes, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed to at least 208 since October 7, 2023, according to a count by Gaza officials.
Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was killed along with his wife and child when Israel struck his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that Israel deliberately targeted Mansour in the attack.
Shabat’s friends posted a message written by the young journalist that he requested to be published on social media in the event of his death.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces,” he said. “When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.”
“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months,” he wrote. “I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”
Drop Sitecondemned the attack in a statement. “Drop Site News holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam,” the outlet said. “More than 200 of our Palestinian media colleagues have been killed by Israel — supplied with weapons and given blanket impunity by most Western governments — over the past seventeen months.”
Fellow journalists in Gaza mourned Shabat’s death. “I no longer have words,” said Gaza journalist Abubaker Abed, who was a colleague of Shabat at Drop Site. “This is just an incalculable loss. This is unbearable.”
Shabat, like Abed and many other young people in Gaza, became a war journalist when the genocide began despite having other aspirations. Last year, he thanked university students across the world for protesting for Gaza, noting that he was in his third year in college when the genocide began on October 7, 2023.
“I’ll never be able to finish my studies because Israeli occupation forces bombed my university and every other university in Gaza,” he wrote.
His life was upended as he went out to report on Israel’s genocide, separating from his family in order to show the world the barbarity of the killings.
In October 2024, Israeli authorities issued a list of journalists it was seemingly targeting for assassination, accusing them, without evidence, as being affiliated with “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist” groups. Shabat, who was one of the only journalists left in north Gaza at the time, was on that list. He had already survived another targeted attack in November, when Israeli forces injured him in an apparent “double tap” strike on a house in northern Gaza.
Despite the November attack and concerns he was being hunted by Israeli forces for his work, Shabat pledged to continue reporting.
Just a month ago, amid the ceasefire, Shabat posted a video of him and his mother being reunited after 492 days, having been separated due to Israel’s evacuation orders.
"Time now is measured not in minutes, but in lifetimes of pain and tears. With every passing moment the anxiety and tension of the people here grows, as they wonder whether they will stay alive long enough for the fire to cease," wrote Hossam Shabat in one of his stories for us.
Last week, shortly after Israeli authorities resumed their heavy bombing of Gaza despite the ceasefire agreement, Shabat posted a video of him once again putting on his flak jacket and helmet marked “press.”
“I thought it was over and I’d finally get some rest, but the genocide is back in full force, and I’m back on the front lines,” he said.
Shabat had continually pleaded for the world to intervene and end the genocide.
“On October 17th, 2023, Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza,” Shabat wrote in his final Instagram reel. “Israel denied it. Western media believed it. And the bombing continued as ‘Israel investigated itself.’ UN and NGO investigations proved that Israel indeed did it. No government acted. No condemnations.”
“So Israel continued bombing, besieging and targeting EVERY SINGLE HOSPITAL in Gaza,” he continued. “Eighteen months of genocide and impunity meant that they didn’t have to deny bombing hospitals anymore. No one cares… They say the magic H word and war crimes are justified.”
Even posthumously, Shabat pled for Palestinian rights.
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza,” the journalist wrote in his final message. “Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
We’ve been reporting from the US Capital over the past several weeks, hoping to document how Congress is responding to the authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration.
It has been fruitful, albeit chaotic. There have been colorful press conferences and illuminating back-and-forths with Republican legislators, but not in the way we expected.
Republicans, it seems, are happy to dispense with democracy, provided liberals go with it into the dustbin of history. In person they seem practically giddy, almost ebullient, and dangerously overconfident that abolishing liberalism is an end unto itself, regardless of the consequences.
And that might be their downfall—and ours.
DOGE caucus co-chairman Rep. Aaron Bean answers questions during a press conference in Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2025. (Pictured L-R) DOGE co-chair Rep. Pete Sessions, Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Rep. Aaron Bean, and Rep. Ralph Norman. Photo by Stephen Janis and Taya Graham
During the press conferences we’ve attended, Republicans have reveled in massive federal job cuts and a possible tariff-induced recession. They’ve deflected serious concerns about data privacy and the dislocation of veterans from the federal workforce with puzzling confidence.
They have expressed few doubts about a feckless billionaire delving into Social Security data and IRS records with little apparent oversight.
“There is going to be some pain, but it’s going to be very, very short term,” he said with confidence.
Normally, all of these political third rails—a dour economy and massive federal job cuts—would be anathema to a party working to remain in power. Yet these controversial topics have been met with a collective shrug by MAGA apostles.
You could write off this behavior as the natural hubris of a newly elected majority. But that would be an understatement. Conservatives seemed buoyed by a different sort of political calculus—the kind that shrinks politics to a binary conception of power, us versus them, that is downright dangerous.
That’s because Republicans seem certain their sole enemy—and ongoing biggest political challenge—is excising liberalism from its traditional bastions, like the federal government and academia; not improving, not reforming, or even meeting the challenges of a changing world, but vanquishing their Democratic rivals. They’re giddy that Democrats and liberals have been silenced, obliterated, or otherwise marginalized.
That’s one of the reasons they seem unconcerned that the cuts have been indiscriminate and unlawful. Purging appears to be a priority. Chaos, the primary effect.
But all of this gloating ignores the reality of a world that is not so easily cowed. Conservatism may consider itself to be locked in an epic battle of left versus right, but the world is more complicated and nasty, and that might be a fatal miscalculation. The defeat of liberalism could be a pyrrhic conservative victory.
Consider that while the Trump administration has withdrawn aid and drastically cut funding for research at American universities, China has committed to even more funding for research.
If the game were simply between these two teams, liberals and MAGA, the victory could be resounding. Universities will falter, the federal workforce will dissolve, and the power base of liberalism will wither.
But the world does not abide by this calculus. This will not be the win MAGA expects. The upcoming fight will, more accurately, be one of democracy versus autocracy, scientific truth versus disinformation, and a free market versus a command economy. Battles we might not be able to fight if the chaotic deconstruction of the federal government continues.
These are the spoils Republicans seek. The rest of the world awaits a weakened nation courtesy of the Republican obsession with liberalism.
His was a voice people waited for all week long. A voice of love. A voice of reason. A voice against the violence that had descended on the region and spread like the plague.
This was late 1970s El Salvador. A country on the brink of civil war, ruled by a brutal, authoritarian government.
US-trained death squads were killing roughly 800 people a month.
And Monsignor Óscar Romero — Archbishop of San Salvador, the bishop of the poor — would not shy from denouncing the violence.
He preached every Sunday. His words were carried over the airwaves. People across Central America tuned in.
But he wasn’t always so outspoken. He was moved by what he saw around him. By the killings and the violence at the hands of state forces.
In 1977, just a month after Óscar Romero became archbishop of San Salvador, his close friend Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande was killed alongside a boy and an elderly peasant.
Grande had preached liberation theology and helped to establish Christian base communities that worked for social change. He had spoken out against the injustices and the repressive government.
“I, too, have to walk the same path,” Óscar Romero would later say, when he saw his friend’s body laying in state at San Salvador’s cathedral.
And as violence grew across the country, Óscar Romero became ever more outspoken against the killings and the massacres.
He wrote to the United States and asked it to cut off military aid to the Salvadorian dictatorship.
In his last sermon, on March 23, 1980, he spoke directly to the country’s soldiers during Sunday Mass at the Cathedral in San Salvador.
“The law of God that says ‘thou shalt not kill’ must prevail,” he said. “No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God.”
He closed his sermon…
“In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people. Whose cries rise to the heave more tumultuously every day. I beseech you, I beg you, I order you, in the name of God, stop the repression!”
The next day, he was shot and killed at the altar while delivering mass.
They called him the voice of the poor. La voz de la sin voz. The voice of the voiceless.
He still is. His words repeated to this day. His image carried in marches up and down the Americas.
His legacy lives on.
###
In 2018, Pope Francis declared him a saint.
March 24, the day of his assassination, is his Saint’s Day.
This is the tenth episode of Stories of Resistance — a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. 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.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 20, 2025. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to sign an executive order Thursday directing officials to shut down the Department of Education, Democratic politicians, teachers and communities across the nation are vowing legal and other challenges to the move.
Trump is set to check off a longtime Republican wish list item by signing a directive ordering Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states.”
Shutting down the department—which was created in 1979 to ensure equitable access to public education and employs more than 4,000 people—will require an act of Congress, both houses of which are controlled by Republicans.
“Trump and his Cabinet of billionaires are trying to destroy the Department of Education so they can privatize more schools.”
Thursday’s expected order follows the department’s announcement earlier this month that it would fire half of its workforce. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and more than three dozen Democratic senators condemned the move and Trump’s impending Department of Education shutdown as “a national disgrace.”
Abolishing the Department of Education is one of the top goals of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led roadmap for a far-right takeover and gutting of the federal government closely linked to Trump, despite his unconvincing efforts to distance himself from the highly controversial plan.
U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) called Trump’s bid to abolish the Department of Education “more bullshit” and vowed to fight the president’s “illegal behavior until the cows come home.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on social media: “Trump and his Cabinet of billionaires are trying to destroy the Department of Education so they can privatize more schools. The result: making it even harder to ensure that ALL students have access to a quality education. Another outrageous, illegal scam. We will fight this.”
It's the billionaires vs. the kids of America.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk side with the billionaires.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Democrat, warned that “ending the U.S. Department of Education will decimate our education system and devastate families across the country.”
“Support for students with special needs and those in rural and urban schools will be gone,” he added. “We will stop at nothing to protect N.J. and fight this reckless action.”
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA)—the nation’s largest labor union—said in a statement Thursday that “Donald Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America, by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires.”
Musk—the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—is the world’s richest person. Trump and McMahon are also billionaires.
“If successful, Trump’s continued actions will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections,” Pringle warned.
“This morning, in hundreds of communities across the nation, thousands of families, educators, students, and community leaders joined together outside of neighborhood public schools to rally against taking away resources and support for our students,” she continued. “And, we are just getting started. Every day we are growing our movement to protect our students and public schools.”
“We won’t be silent as anti-public education politicians try to steal opportunities from our students, our families, and our communities to pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” Pringle added. “Together with parents and allies, we will continue to organize, advocate, and mobilize so that all students have well-resourced schools that allow every student to grow into their full brilliance.”
Yolanda, a special ed assistant, is on the frontlines of Trump’s attack on public education. His latest move to eliminate the Department of Education threatens her job & the students she supports—along with school aides, bus drivers, custodians & educators who keep our schools… pic.twitter.com/rTiCULim8A
National Parents Union president Keri Rodrigues said that closing the Department of Education would disproportionately affect the most vulnerable students and communities.
“Let’s be clear: Before federal oversight, millions of children—particularly those with disabilities and those from our most vulnerable communities—were denied the opportunities they deserved,” Rodrigues said in a statement. “The Department of Education was created to ensure that every child, regardless of background or ZIP code, has access to a public education that prepares them for their future. Eliminating it would roll back decades of progress, leaving countless children behind in an education system that has historically failed the most marginalized.”
The ACLU is circulating a petition calling on Congress to “save the Department of Education.”
“The Department of Education has an enormous effect on the day-to-day lives of students across the country,” the petition states. “They are tasked with protecting civil rights on campus and ensuring that every student—regardless of where they live; their family’s income; or their race, sex, gender identity, or disability—has equal access to education.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, responded to Trump’s looming order in four words: “See you in court.”
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on Mar. 18, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Israel resumed heavy airstrikes across the Gaza Strip after two weeks of systematic Israeli violations of the terms of the ceasefire and the stalling of negotiations over the agreement’s second phase. The Israeli army began bombing numerous targets in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday past midnight, including civilian homes and tents for the displaced. As of the time of writing, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that over 404 people have been killed in Gaza and 562 were injured in multiple massacres carried out by Israeli forces since the early morning hours. According to the Health Ministry, among the slain are 174 children, 89 women, and 32 seniors.
After nearly two months of relative calm, the airstrikes resumed overnight without prior warning or evacuation orders, with local sources reporting that bombs dropped over Gaza City, northern Gaza, Khan Younis, Rafah, al-Bureij, and several other parts of the Strip.
Familiar scenes of mass killing returned to Gaza as hundreds of families gathered at hospitals throughout the Strip, carrying the remains of their loved ones.
“We were sleeping when suddenly a volcano descended on my children’s heads,” Muhammad al-Sakani, 42, told Mondoweiss in front of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, standing over the bodies of his two slain children. “This is the bank of targets of Netanyahu, Trump, and all the other cowards.”
“They are not to blame,” he added. “Their only crime is that our enemy is a criminal who assassinates children and women as they sleep.”
The Israeli military announced that it had carried out extensive strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza, adding that it was “prepared to continue attacks against Hamas leaders and infrastructure in Gaza for as long as necessary.” The army said that the attack would expand beyond airstrikes, signaling the likelihood of the return of a ground invasion. After the airstrikes had already begun and claimed hundreds of casualties, the Israeli military spokesperson warned several areas, such as Beit Hanoun and the Khuza’a and Abasan areas in Khan Younis, that they needed to be evacuated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office announced in a statement that the Prime Minister had instructed the army to “take strong action” against Hamas and that Israel would act “with increased military might from now on.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the resumed fighting was due to “Hamas’s refusal” to release Israeli captives and “its threats to harm” Israeli soldiers and communities near Gaza. Katz added that Israel would not stop fighting until all captives were returned and “all the war’s aims” were achieved.
In an interview with Fox News, White House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt said that “the Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight.”
“President Trump has made it absolutely clear that Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, and all those who seek to spread terror, not only against Israel but also against the United States, will pay a price for their actions,” Leavitt added.
Hamas remains committed to implementing ceasefire
Despite the Israeli aggression, Hamas continues to call on the international community to intervene and put an end to the bombing taking place in Gaza, reaffirming the movement’s commitment to completing the ceasefire deal.
Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif al-Qanou told Mondoweiss that Israel was “resuming its war of genocide and committing dozens of massacres against our people,” adding that Israel’s “prior coordination with the American administration confirms [U.S.] partnership in the war of extermination against our people.”
Al-Qanou stressed that Netanyahu resumed the war on Gaza to escape his internal crises and impose new negotiating conditions on the Palestinian resistance, referencing Netanyahu’s battle against corruption charges and his attempts to revive his right-wing government coalition. Qanou pointed out that Hamas adhered to all the terms of the ceasefire agreement and remains keen on moving on to its second phase.
“All the mediators are aware of Hamas’s commitment to the terms of the agreement, despite Netanyahu’s procrastination,” Qanou added. “His reversal requires them to reveal this to the world.”
The Israeli raids have killed several Hamas leaders across Gaza, including those holding civilian positions, such as Ayman Abu Teir, director of the nutrition department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, who was assassinated by Israel in his home in Khan Younis along with 13 members of his family.
Hamas mourned several of its leaders, including Issam al-Da’alis, head of Government Operations in the Gaza Strip, Ahmad al-Hatta, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Major General Mahmoud Abu Watfa, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, and Major General Bahjat Abu Sultan, Director-General of the Internal Security Service.
Local media sources affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also revealed that the military spokesperson of the PIJ’s armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Known by his nom de guerre, “Abu Hamza,” the spokesperson’s real name was revealed to be Naji Abu Saif, according to media reports. The PIJ did not officially confirm the news as of the time of writing.
Systematic Israeli ceasefire violations
Since the signing of the ceasefire agreement on January 17, which stipulated three consecutive 42-day phases under Egyptian, Qatari, and American sponsorship, Hamas has largely adhered to the terms of the first phase, while Israel has systematically violated it by suspending the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and progressively resuming the targeting and killing of civilians in Gaza’s border areas.
Hamas released 33 Israeli captives during the first phase as stipulated in the agreement, but Israel did not comply with its end of the deal, including the delay or prevention of the entry of reconstruction material, tents, and prefabricated mobile homes. More importantly, Israel has consistently attempted to walk back its commitments to engage in talks over the permanent end of the war and the full withdrawal of its forces from Gaza. Israel was supposed to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border during the first phase of the ceasefire. It was also supposed to have entered into talks over the second phase of the deal in mid-February, ahead of the end of the first phase. Israel did neither, instead shifting the goalposts for the agreement by insisting that Hamas continue to release more Israeli captives without entering into negotiations over withdrawing or ending the war.
In early March, Israeli officials threatened to completely close the crossings and prevent food, medicine, water, and electricity from reaching Gaza if more Israeli captives weren’t released. It implemented these threats during the past two weeks. Moreover, without announcing the resumption of the war, Israel resumed bombarding various areas throughout Gaza starting in March, resulting in the death of dozens of Palestinian civilians. In the two days before the official resumption of the war, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 15 people across Gaza.
There is a wall in Mexico City with a memorial plaque for the Irish.
But these were not just any Irishmen. They were members of the Brigada San Patricio—the Saint Patrick’s Brigade.
And they gave their lives for the Mexican struggle against the United States.
This was the late 1840s.
Potato famine was ravaging Ireland.
Hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens were emigrating to the United States.
In search of a better life abroad.
Opportunity and hope.
Many enlisted in the US army.
But in the 1840s United States, the Irish were second-class people…
If their white skin helped them to blend in, their accents did not.
They were ridiculed and discriminated against, for their accents and their Catholic faith.
And many were sent to the front lines to fight Mexico.
Then US President James K. Polk promised to expand US territory by any means necessary. When the US declared war on Mexico in 1846, it was a war for land, for manifest destiny…
But for many of the Irish sent to the front lines… they were fighting for a country that was not their own. And this war of conquest didn’t sit right.
They identified not with Uncle Sam, but with the Mexicans defending their land against a foreign aggressor. It reminded them of their own fight back home to defend Catholic Ireland against the Protestant British. Like the Irish, the Mexicans were also Catholics, seen as an inferior religion for those in the invading army.
In Mexico, the Irish watched homes burn, and violence, looting, and sexual assaults by US soldiers.
So… they defected. Hundreds left the red, white, and blue and joined the Mexican army.
They were known as the Saint Patrick’s Brigade, or the Colorados for their red hair. As many as 800 people would join the Saint Patrick’s Brigade.
They fought under Irish Captain John Riley. And they weren’t just Irish. A band of foreigners from a dozen countries, from across Europe. Many of them Catholics.
They marched under the green flag of Saint Patrick, with the harp and the shamrock and the Irish words Erin Go Bragh embroidered across it. “Ireland forever.”
They fought in Monterrey, Matamoros, and several other major battles.
Churubusco, in Mexico City, was the last. Even as the US ranks gained the upper hand, and the Irish ran out of bullets, their brigade pushed on. They tore down the white flag of surrender and battled with their bare hands. Many bodies were left on the battlefield.
The rest were taken and executed by American officers as traitors… for deserting their ranks in the US army.
But they are still remembered. From Ireland to Mexico.
Memorials still tell of their bravery.
Stories are still told.
Songs sung.
In Mexico, they have their own day of remembrance… September 12, which honors the Saint Patrick’s Battalion.
And of course… Saint Patrick’s Day. Across Mexico, people lift a glass to the brigade of Irish soldiers who fought to defend Mexican soil against the US invasion.
And the many who gave their lives…
In recent years, Mexico City has even illuminated the city’s Angel of Independence monument in green light to remember the Saint Patrick’s Brigade and their sacrifice for Mexico.
This is the ninth episode of Stories of Resistance — a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. 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.
You can check out folk singer David Rovics’ song, St. Patrick Battalion, here. In that same link you can also read the lyrics and see several videos of him performing the song live.
In response to President Donald Trump’s promises to increase deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, activist groups in Los Angeles have set up complex “community defense” networks. ‘La migra patrols’ look for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, students walk out of public schools, and volunteers canvass neighborhoods with flyers informing people of how to assert their rights if approached by ICE officers. Many of those groups draw on a rich, decades-long history of “community self-defense” and Chicano activism within Los Angeles.
Women carrying “mass deportation now” signs outside of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, WI. Photo by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.
During his 2024 reelection bid, President Donald Trump not only promised increased immigration enforcement along the US border, but used the slogan “mass deportations now” regularly on the campaign trail. Once Trump entered office on Jan. 20, he appointed Tom Homan as border czar, who announced his focus would be to deport “as many as we can.”
Almost immediately after his inauguration, Trump threatened to pull federal funding for sanctuary cities and pushed for immigration enforcement agents to be allowed to enter churches and schools to make arrests. Los Angeles officially declared its status as “sanctuary city” in December.
Protests against the threat of mass deportation began quickly. On Feb. 2, a large group marched through downtown LA and took to the 101 freeway. Hundreds of students left their schools and walked Cesar Chavez Avenue in protest two days later. Students from nearby middle and high schools denounced the ramp-up of deportations, walking out again on Feb. 20 to Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights.
Members of the Brown Berets and the American Indian Movement direct traffic outside of a protest. Photo by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.
This current wave of protests often references Los Angeles’ past of Chicano revolt. Call-and-response chants of “Chicano power” ring occasionally throughout the crowds. Brown Beret chapters from throughout Southern California have attended the protests to provide security. Indigenous dance groups often attend, and dance in step with drums.
The Chicano Moratorium on Aug. 29, 1970, looms large within immigrant rights groups in Los Angeles. On that day, as many as 30,000 activists marched through Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War and draft. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department broke up the rally violently; they claimed they had received reports that a nearby liquor store was being robbed. They chased the “suspects” into Laguna Park, and promptly declared the gathering of thousands to be an illegal assembly. More than 150 were arrested. Three people were killed: Lyn Ward, a medic and Brown Beret, Angel Gilberto Díaz, a Brown Beret from Pico Rivera, and Rubén Salazar, a Los Angeles Times journalist and columnist. Laguna Park was later renamed to Salazar Park in honor of the journalist.
The Chicano Moratorium on Aug. 29, 1970, looms large within immigrant rights groups in Los Angeles.
Though the brutality in response to the Aug. 29, 1970, Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War has led to it getting a large share of attention, there were actually three Chicano Moratorium rallies from 1969 to 1970. Years later, public records requests provided concrete evidence that the FBI had infiltrated them in an attempt to suppress their goals.
The Brown Berets emerged as a pro-Chicano organization in the late 1960s, and were central to organizing the Aug. 29 march. The group had been working for educational reform and farmworkers’ rights. They also worked against police brutality and the Vietnam War. Brown Berets began to operate under the motto “To Serve, Observe, and Protect,” and formed what they referred to as “community self-defense.” Often, they were outwardly in opposition to the Los Angeles Police Department, whose motto is “To Protect And To Serve.”
Carlos Montes was a co-founder of the Brown Berets and an organizer of the first rally of the Chicano Moratorium in 1969. He recalled moving to Los Angeles as a boy from Juarez, Mexico, and spending most of his life fighting what he called “the nightmare of US racism.” He said that, alongside others, he’d “organized the Brown Berets with the young, angry men and women. Angry Chicanos. We wanted to express our identity of being proud Chicanos, and we took on the struggle for better education.”
By the early 1970s, most Brown Beret groups had disbanded. Federal and state law enforcement infiltrated the group. Sexism allegations led women to resign en masse. The “East LA 13,” including Montes, faced 66 years in prison before they were acquitted on charges stemming from student walkout organizing. Montes fled underground to Mexico in 1970 with his wife, due to “heavy repression and threats.” Eustacio Martinez, an employee of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the US Treasury Department, had acted as an agent provocateur; he wreaked havoc on relations between pro-Chicano groups.
In 1994, California passed Proposition 187, which restricted undocumented immigrants from accessing public services, including education and healthcare. Just weeks later, a federal judge ruled an injunction after immigrant rights groups challenged it in court. Ultimately, courts sided with immigrant rights groups and ruled it unconstitutional under the 14th amendment.
In response to Proposition 187, and rising anti-immigrant sentiment, the Brown Berets began to reform. Today, female leadership and organizers are often at the helm of chapters. At ra, the majority of the voices saying “Ya Basta!” are often women.
Activists march from Calle Olvera in Los Angeles. Photo by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.
Calle Olvera and its adjoining plaza filled with pro-immigrant speakers and organizations on Feb. 17 of this year. More than 100 people gathered. More than 70 different activist organizations were present. Those organizations have agreed to march as the Community Self-Defense Coalition.
Rosalio Muñoz was present at the Calle Olvera protest carrying a sign; he’d been an organizer for the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. Muñoz was the first Chicano student president at UCLA. He won 60% of the vote on a platform that supported the work of the United Farm Workers, as well as organized against police brutality and US involvement in Vietnam.
Montes was there in Calle Olvera as well. He now works with Centro CSO, one of the groups that participated in the Feb. 17 march. The group organizes for immigrant rights, public education, and “supporting, in solidarity, other communities seeking social justice,” according to their website. The group is also helping to organize against threats of mass deportation, particularly in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Carlos Montes looks at a stencil reading “Chicano Power” in Boyle Heights. Photo by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.
In early February, Los Angeles Times revealed that ICE had plans for a “large scale” immigration operation. Further details were sparse, though rumors the operation would begin on Feb. 23 would ultimately prove correct.
Activist groups began to ramp up work behind the scenes to form ad-hoc community defense. Via Signal, an encrypted messaging service application, group chats were used for communication between different organizations and affinity groups. Dozens of “Know Your Rights” seminars have been held at community centers, churches, parks; many of them broadcast live on social media.
Unión del Barrio is another activist group involved in the Community Self-Defense Coalition. Since the 11th anniversary of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium in 1981, Unión del Barrio has “led struggles to resist migra and police violence; defend the rights of workers, prisoners, mujeres, and youth; and even launched numerous independent electoral campaigns.” Ahead of the Feb. 23 date, they called for additional volunteers in a widely circulated social media post. It read, in part, “Los Angeles: Who is willing to patrol their community tomorrow to look for ICE activities? Let’s protect each other by participating in this form of Community Self-Defense!”
Centro CSO organizes for immigrant rights, public education, and “supporting, in solidarity, other communities seeking social justice,” according to their website.
Unión del Barrio formed their patrols in 1992. On their website, they say they’re “a means of building community-based power that will challenge police and migra attacks. These agencies are trained to profile, harass, detain, arrest, and brutalize our people.”
Today, groups like Unión del Barrio train volunteers to look out for potential signs of ICE agents. They look out especially for Ford Explorers, Dodge Durangos, and Chevy Impalas—all vehicles they say are often used by immigration enforcement officers.
Lupe Carrasco Cardona, a member of the Association of Raza Educators (ARE), often patrols in neighborhoods of Los Angeles before she begins her workday as an educator for Los Angeles Unified School District. She says the group is about “communicating self defense, to defend the rights of the people whether they have documents or not.”
ARE has existed since 1994, and was originally founded in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood as a response to Proposition 187’s attempts to remove undocumented children from public schools. They have since expanded throughout California and have chapters in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Sacramento. In their mission statement, ARE says that they “believe that education is the first step in creating consciousness that leads to action. In these turbulent times, we know that it’s just not enough to teach about social justice, we have to practice social justice in every face [of] our lives.”
Carrasco Cardona said that she’s seen mental health issues rise among her students. From what she has seen as an educator in LAUSD, “students are very afraid. Students are not going to school; they’re coming to school with anxiety. It is really impacting their education.” The patrols are partially designed also to calm those fears, according to Carrasco Cardona. She continued, “We’re all here saying we see you, we love you, we are not going to let them just come and take you. We have to get to a point where the people defend themselves.”
Carrasco Cardona described how community self-defense works. “We divide major streets from north to south, and then everyone with a partner goes in a vehicle. We have radios and we have megaphones.” She said that if they find ICE officers, they respond with noise and alert nearby neighbors: “…We put them on notice that we see them. We make noise for people in the community so they know not to open their doors, and we radio the other community self defense units to come and support us [with backup].”
On Feb. 23, there were patrols on the lookout for immigration officials throughout the 4,084 square mile area of Los Angeles County, including in South Los Angeles, Skid Row, West Adams, Lennox, Boyle Heights, and East Los Angeles.
Members of “la migra patrols” in Boyle Heights. Photo by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel.
In Boyle Heights, a sign commemorates the neighborhood’s “tradition of activism.” Erected by the city of Los Angeles, it describes the neighborhood as “often viewed by longstanding residents as a district too easily marginalized by the city’s political and economic elite…” The sign describes an era from the 1920s to the 1940s, when Yiddish pro-labor organizations and mutual aid groups were harassed by LAPD’s anti-leftist “Red Squad.” In 1947, a chapter of the Community Service Organization was founded in Boyle Heights; Cesar Chavez began his tenure as national director there. The sign mentions walkouts in the 1960s, and refers to the East LA 13.
Just one block away from the sign, several members of Centro CSO filed into vehicles around 5AM on Feb. 23, beginning their “la migra” patrol. They used Signal and walkie talkies to communicate with others on patrol. Four people arrived in a black vehicle. While talking with The Real News Network, occasional updates came in via group chats. Updates came from patrols in other neighborhoods reported where there was no ICE presence.
The patrols are partially designed also to calm those fears, according to Carrasco Cardona. … “We’re all here saying we see you, we love you, we are not going to let them just come and take you.”
Between various check-ins, Montes described his life of activism. He described being represented in the East LA 13 trials by Oscar Z. Acosta, the boisterous inspiration for Hunter S. Thompson’s Dr. Gonzo in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. He checks in with others via walkie talkie. He moves onto various law enforcement raids on his home throughout his life. Then, he checks in again via walkie talkie. Eventually, he begins to talk about how some of the members of the Chicano movement in the 1960s have become labor organizers or politicians.
ICE agents passed by a Catholic church on 4th street in Boyle Heights. A short discussion of when the last time members attended mass followed. Several used to attend that church. One of the patrol members looked nervous; others looked focused and ready to respond if ICE agents stopped in the neighborhood.
Occasionally, as residents of the neighborhood walked past, the patrol was greeted in Spanish. The patrol offered business cards with phone numbers of immigrant rights groups and legal assistance.
A separate patrol spotted ICE agents in a parking lot in front of a Target in Alhambra. Broadcasting live from her phone on social media, Carrasco Cardona screamed: “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Within minutes of Carraso Cardona pointing them out they began to separate and drive to different areas of the county, and were gone.
When the Boyle Heights patrol heard that Carrasco Cardona had found ICE agents, they quickly filed into their vehicles. They kept in communication; other nearby patrols tracked the ICE vehicles exiting the parking lot, marking where they turned on freeways throughout Los Angeles. Eventually, reports of the vehicles from other patrols slowed down and stopped for the day.
Since the Feb. 23 raids, ICE operations have continued in Los Angeles; protests popping up in response have continued as well. Volunteers continue to patrol neighborhoods and canvas neighborhoods like Boyle Heights with flyers and small red cards informing Angelenos of immigrant rights.
Plans are materializing from activists for a Chicano Summit in Boyle Heights in mid-April. Gabriel, an organizer with Centro CSO, told The Real News that there could be dozens of pro-Chicano groups from throughout Southern California, and possibly the country, there.
When asked about seeing protests and imagery drawing from the Chicano Movement of his youth, Montes said: “Some of the students have been yelling ‘Chicano power!’ When hundreds if not thousands of people are chanting. It’s pretty powerful.” He smiled, and quietly recited the chant, then said the resurgence “takes me back, you know? From the decade of the Chicano power movement. ’65 to ’75, more or less. We never die, you know.”
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 11, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
A group of over a dozen lawmakers is demanding the “immediate” release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil after his likely illegal arrest and threat of deportation by the Trump administration this week.
The House members, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), raised alarm about the threat to free speech raised by Khalil’s detention, saying that his arrest violates immigration laws and effectively criminalizes protest.
“Mahmoud Khalil must be freed from DHS custody immediately. He is a political prisoner, wrongfully and unlawfully detained, who deserves to be at home in New York preparing for the birth of his first child,” the lawmakers wrote. “Universities throughout the country must protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression, and [the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)] must immediately refrain from any further illegal arrests targeting constitutionally protected speech and activity.”
The arrest violated Khalil’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and due process, the lawmakers said.
The letter was signed by 14 Democrats in the House: Representatives André Carson (Indiana) Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Al Green (Texas), Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Jim McGovern (Massachusetts), Gwen Moore (Wisconsin), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), Lateefah Simon (California), Delia Ramirez (Illinois), Nydia Velázquez (New York) and Nikema Williams (Georgia).
The case has been met with silence by other Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the state where the arrest happened and is a fervent Zionist. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also from New York, has also refused to denounce the arrest.
On Saturday night, DHS officers detained Khalil at his home in Columbia University student housing, citing his role in organizing pro-Palestine protests at the university last year. The Trump administration has threatened to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him for his activism — which experts say is illegal and a major overstep of the administration’s power.
Federal agents seemingly covertly transported Khalil, who is Palestinian, to a private jail in Louisiana without telling his wife, who is eight months pregnant. On Monday night, a federal judge temporarily blocked the planned deportation of the activist, pending more legal action.
“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the lawmakers said. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression.”
“We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country,” they went on. “Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country, but this lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to all Americans.”
Khalil’s detention has been widely denounced by advocates for Palestinian rights and civil society organizations.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American. The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes,” said Ben Wizner, who heads the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “To be clear: The First Amendment protects everyone in the U.S. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”
After workers unionized at six Nestle-owned Blue Bottle coffee shops in Massachusetts in 2024, they have been in the midst of a pitched struggle to secure a first contract for their members. Their landslide victory against the multinational corporation has been a source of optimism for the coffee industry, and the union has enjoyed broad support from their customers, other unions in Massachusetts, and even workers along the international supply chain. Now, months into bargaining, frustrations mount as the company seems determined to drag things out as long as possible.
Bringing in the Union Busters
As with past union campaigns at Nestle-owned companies, the corporation brought in Ogletree Deakins to handle the union campaign and negotiations at Blue Bottle. According to watchdog organization LaborLab, Ogletree Deakins is the nation’s “second largest management-side law firm specializing in union avoidance.” Over the past 40 years, Ogletree has played a leading role in keeping many multinational corporations operating in the US union-free—one of at least four major union avoidance law firms that have taken their union-busting tactics into an international arena in recent years.
Workers at Blue Bottle understand the stakes as they continue to push for their demands at the bargaining table, and have been frustrated by the company’s attempts to drag bargaining out. “[It’s] certainly frustrating,” said Alex Pine, vice president of Blue Bottle Independent Union (BBIU). “I think that their entire bargaining strategy, and certainly Ogletree Deakins’s, is to delay bargaining to demoralize membership.”
Despite these frustrations, bargaining continues. In the last bargaining session, held on Feb. 21, the union secured tentative agreements for a number of their noneconomic proposals, but have seen no movement on key economic issues, including wages and holidays. The union faces an uphill battle in continuing to secure neutral meeting places—of which there are precious few. They have been able to meet in city hall locations, which are free to use, but scheduling difficulties at Cambridge City Hall have delayed bargaining even further. The company has repeatedly pushed to meet in conference halls, but the union is unable to afford the associated costs with renting those spaces. Other alternatives for bargaining, including Zoom, have been roundly rejected by the company. “The company certainly could afford to cover the cost of a bargaining space, they just don’t want to,” Pine said in an email. “They understand that the more time we have to spend looking for a location to meet means less time to organize.”
The union’s demands form a comprehensive package that would vastly improve the conditions that their baristas and other staff labor under. Chief among those demands are wages that are comparable with the cost of living in Massachusetts, democratic control in the workplace, and protection from harassment. To that end, they have asked for $30 an hour for their baristas, which would meet the minimum threshold for the high cost of living in the Boston area, as well as fairer scheduling, better PTO and holiday schedules, a more comprehensive healthcare plan, and the ability to accrue sick time for their employees.
“[It’s] certainly frustrating,” said Alex Pine, vice president of Blue Bottle Independent Union (BBIU). “I think that their entire bargaining strategy, and certainly Ogletree Deakins’s, is to delay bargaining to demoralize membership.”
Perhaps more important, they have asked for a “just cause” clause to be included in their contract, which would restrict management from issuing what the union alleges are retaliatory write-ups. Since the union took their campaign public last year, multiple workers have been terminated without recourse–something that the union is working diligently to fix. Additionally, the union alleges that the company continues to create a hostile work environment for its employees.
In January, the union staged a walkout in protest of the closing of their Prudential Center location without guaranteeing hours or a tip differential to workers that needed to be transferred to other locations. In a Jan. 25 statement, BBIU noted that they had filed 16 unfair labor practice complaints against the company, saying saying that Blue Bottle “engaged in union busting by writing up members for petty infractions, cutting hours of vocal supporters, unilaterally changing store operating hours without bargaining with the union, and more. In another unforced error by management, in September Blue Bottle fired union organizer Remy Roskin without any prior discipline. Even with the company agreeing to bargain over Roskin’s termination, workers say that Blue Bottle has unnecessarily strained the relationship between management and employees.”
Taking on the megacorp
Just as with union campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon, and other multinational corporations, the workers of BBIU have no illusions about the monumental task ahead of them. A megacorporation like Nestle, which posted profits of over $10 billion in 2024 and projected continued growth in its coffee portfolio for the foreseeable future, seems to tower like Goliath over the organizing efforts of its coffee shops in Massachusetts. Against these odds, BBIU remains committed to fighting for better conditions in their workplaces, no matter how incremental it may seem.
The workers of BBIU have no illusions about the monumental task ahead of them.
“It feels really good. I’ll tell people [at school] like, ‘Oh, I’m in a union [organizing] against a company owned by Nestle,’ and they’re immediately like, ‘hell yeah.’ The fact that we’ve already, in a very real sense, won so much, like we had this landslide union victory,” said Abby Sato, barista and BBIU organizer. “Even though at the table it doesn’t feel like these huge wins in the larger schemes of things, we are kind of tipping the scale, so it does feel really good, and it does feel like when we come together, we can make real change,” they added.
This sense of victory has helped bargaining committee members stay positive, even as the company drags things out. “This is the thing that gets me kind of excited when thinking about what we’re up against is all of the possibilities that exist,” Pine said. Since the union won their election, members of BBIU have been in contact with members of Sinaltrainal in Colombia, the union representing coffee workers farther down the supply chain. Workers in Colombia have been in a nearly year-long labor dispute with Nestle over mass layoffs–including of sick employees. Last month, bargaining sessions were meant to begin, but have since been suspended.
For Pine, the regular messages of international solidarity from their union siblings along the supply chain have had a buoying effect. “Although the conditions of our workplaces are very different, it means a lot to me that we’re able to send messages of support to each other, talk about issues that we have with the company, and to have that kind of shared sense of international solidarity,” Pine said. That solidarity has given hope to Pine that they and their fellow workers can join a global movement to organize Nestle. “I think that there is a very real chance that we can begin to organize across the supply chain.”
For now, members are working on keeping morale up as bargaining stretches into yet another month. The union has worked hard to build up a strong union culture within their bargaining unit by continuing to hold social events and other gatherings. Pine believes that in the absence of any really meaningful social institutions or third spaces, the union is a source of community and shared power for their membership and supporters. “Even completely new members that don’t really understand what a union is already have positive feelings about it, because they understand that this can be a source or a space of a different way of life, really,” Pine said. “This is something collectively focused that gives people a sense of autonomy in their lives.”
Mega billionaire Jeff Bezos made news yesterday by formally announcing the parameters of the Washington Post opinion section in clear ideological terms, making explicit what has long been implicit in corporate media and, like then-New York Times opinion editor James Bennet did seven years ago when he said that the New York Times was “pro-capitalism,” effectively doing my job for me.
“I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” the Amazon founder and executive chairman wrote in an open letter to Post employees. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
As I wrote in 2018 when Times opinion editor James Bennet said in a closed-door meeting with staffers that the Times was a “pro-capitalism” newspaper, “Media criticism is, more often than not, a practice of inference: seeing patterns and inferring from those patterns the political make-up of media. Occasionally, however, decision-makers from major media outlets come right out and openly declare their ideology.”
Bezos has done us a favor by removing the mystery and inference and cheeky “open debate” pretense from the process of inferring the ideological perimeters of corporate media and laid it all out bare.
Obviously this dictate is, in theory, limited to the opinion section, not the news section, but those working on the other side of the firewall will no doubt take a hearty hint––if they didn’t the last time Bezos explicitly interfered in the opinion output of the paper. The fact is that, compared to peer outlets, the Washington Post’s current national labor coverage, while by no means aggressively anti-capitalist, is robust and generally favorable to workers. Reporters such as Lauren Kaori Gurley and Jeff Stein and columnist Perry Bacon Jr. have done excellent work highlighting the plight of Amazon employees and those on the business end of US sanctions, often in direct contradiction to Bezos’ bottom line and ideological preferences. While the Post’s local metro coverage, as I’ve documented, has often doubled as an Amazon lobbying front, its national coverage has often remained independent of the billionaire’s direct control. Indeed, the Post’s newly anointed chief economics reporter Jeff Stein publicly criticized his boss yesterday morning, writing on social media: “Bezos declaration Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today – makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.”
Bezos has done us a favor by removing the mystery and inference and cheeky “open debate” pretense from the process of inferring the ideological perimeters of corporate media and laid it all out bare.
One wants to be careful not to totally trivialize this escalation. While it is making explicit what has largely been implicit in corporate media, it appears to be removing even token and limited dissent. In some ways this could accelerate a long-overdue erosion of corporate media’s image as independent of owner influence; on the other hand it may just further codify corporate media’s drift to the right and awaken nothing but more open oligarch-endorsed fascism.
It’s a more open right-wing drift that’s manifesting as well with liberal news channel MSNBC this week, as the Comcast-owned network laid off big name personalities Joy Reid and Ayman Mohyeldin—who, incidentally, were the two best anchors on the topic of the Gaza genocide—in exchange for mid-tier Biden alum Michael Steele and Jen Psaki. Reid and Mohyeldin were, by no means, meaningfully subversive or existentially critical of Biden and his support for genocide (and Reid has a long history of smearing left-wing candidates in sloppy and dishonest ways) but, compared to their media peers, they ran sympathetic and nuanced segments that laid out the human stakes of Israel’s myriad war crimes. This isn’t a narrative being retconned after their firing either. I said this in October of last year, highlighting Mohyeldin and Reid explicitly, when publishing a comprehensive study of cable news’s Gaza coverage for The Nation.
Bezos’ on-the-nose power grab over the ideological output of the Washington Post’s opinion output is useful to analyze, as well, in the context of the media meltdown over then-candidate for president Bernie Sanders’ 2019 suggestion the Post’s coverage of him was, in the aggregate, more negative because the Post was owned by a billionaire. Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron called it a “conspiracy theory,” and CNN handwrungover the claim for days, with its anchors saying it was “dangerous.” NPR, like CNN, predictably drew facile equivalence with Donald Trump’s anti-media rantings. On its face, Sanders’ claim is fairly banal and obvious: clearly media outlets will reflect the ideological preferences of those who own them. There will be exceptions, there will be a scattering of dissenting voices—all sophisticated media understands the importance of permitting 10% dissent—but, generally, being owned by the world’s third-richest person will result in a specific ideological output, in the aggregate.
Bezos making this influence explicit could perhaps reduce some of this feigned indignation and pearl clutching when those on the Left dare suggest that having a handful of corporations and billionaires own our major media outlets limits the scope of debate and coverage of the news, or that capital-owned media will necessarily result in a media that favors the interests and ideology of capital. Yes it’s not neat and clean, yes there are exceptions, and no it’s not the top-down cartoon version of censorship and control we grew up learning about reading 1984—but concentrated wealth curating and dictating how the public interprets the world is inherently anti-democratic. A major media owner worth $235 billion saying the quiet part out loud is menacing, yes, and certainly portends a dark next few years. But in some ways it’s refreshing and—if we approach the broader corrosive nature of oligarch-owned media with open eyes—could be a first step towards a vision of how media can challenge the interests of capital rather than serve as its ideological play toy.
Taleb al-Majli effortlessly recites his detainee identification number from Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, where he was held more than 20 years ago—the numbers forever etched into his memory.
“Every day I still think about what happened to me,” explains the 58-year-old, who says American soldiers tortured and humiliated him in the prison. He is sitting on the hard floor of a small, mostly unfurnished, apartment he rents in Baghdad. “It lives inside me and never leaves me alone. I cannot begin to heal until I get justice for what they did to me.”
The torture and abuse of detainees by United States soldiers in Abu Ghraib made headlines and was broadcast from newsrooms around the world when photographs were released in April 2004 showing a hooded man standing on a box with electrical wires attached to his fingers, along with men stripped naked, leashed like dogs, or forced into sexual positions while US soldiers gleefully posed beside them. Majli tells The Real News Network that he appears in one of these images, in which naked detainees with bags over their heads are piled on top of each other in a disturbing human pyramid. Two American soldiers—Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner—are smiling and giving a thumbs up.
“The only thing I could think about at that moment was that I wish I had died before experiencing this,” Majli says, fiddling with his thumbs. “They stole my humanity from me. I still haven’t been able to process what happened to me there.”
Majli sitting on the floor of the apartment he rents in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.The other side of Majli’s prison identity card, showing an official Abu Ghraib entry stamp. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
For more than two decades, no one from Abu Ghraib—or other victims of torture during the US war on Iraq—ever received compensation from the United States government or its private military contractors. Majli is still among those who have not received redress for what he endured.
But, in November last year, something historic occurred in a Virginia courtroom. In 2008, three former Abu Ghraib detainees who were tortured at the facility sued Virginia-based CACI Premier Technology, Inc, which was contracted by the US military to provide interpretation services at Abu Ghraib. The federal lawsuit, Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc., alleged that CACI participated in a conspiracy to commit unlawful conduct, including torture and war crimes.
After 15 years of litigation, the jury agreed with the defendants, ordering CACI to pay $42 million to the former detainees—marking the first time victims of torture during times of war in the post-9/11 era have received compensation. The case is also the first lawsuit where victims of US torture and cruel treatment held a trial in a US courtroom.
Following this historic win, other former Abu Ghraib detainees hope this case can renew possibilities of getting redress for crimes they faced two decades ago. Rights groups propose that this could be a legal opening for other victims of US torture to come forward against private military and security contractors. Others, however, are doubtful the case could easily be reproduced by others.
‘No one will know about it’
During the rule of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, located 20 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. It held tens of thousands of political prisoners at one time. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and Saddam’s toppling, it was transformed into a US military prison.
Majli was detained in October 2003, picked up off the streets while visiting his uncle in Iraq’s western Anbar province. “They were just arresting all the men,” recounts Majli, who was about 36 at this time. “They zip-tied my hands and put a hood over my head. I was innocent and they took me for no reason at all.”
View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
After a few days at the Habbaniyah Camp in Anbar and another unknown location, Majli was transferred to Abu Ghraib, where he remained for 16 months. He was never charged with a crime nor informed of the reasons he was being detained. According to a leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report, military intelligence officers from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq admitted that between 70% and 90% of Iraqis detained after the US invasion were actually arrested by mistake.
Majli tells TRNN he was kept in solitary confinement for nearly one month, which is prohibited under international law. “All I could think about was suicide,” he says, adding that he tried to use the ceiling light in his cell to electrocute himself. “The American guards told me that behind the [isolation] cell is a shredder that was used during Saddam, so if they wanted they could shred me up and throw my remains in the river and no one will ever know about it.”
Majli recounts being attacked by unmuzzled dogs, ordered to strip naked while soldiers threw freezing water on him during cold winter months, and beaten directly on his genitals with a stick. In addition to the human pyramid, the soldiers forced him into sexual positions with other male inmates while he was naked and blindfolded—although he is not certain whether soldiers took photos of it.
Majli says US soldiers also shot live ammunition at the prisoners. With his own eyes, he saw two inmates killed from this and their bodies removed from the prison in body bags. Majli also developed pneumonia after guards flooded his cell with cold water as a tactic to stop the prisoners from getting rest.
“I never imagined that human beings were capable of such things,” Majli says, lifting his knuckles to his mouth and gnawing on the skin, a nervous tic he picked up in Abu Ghraib. “I felt so scared and nervous all the time in the prison that I started uncontrollably biting my knuckles. Even now, I still bite the skin on my knuckles and arms whenever I remember my time in prison. I can’t help it.”
Majli shows the scars on his knuckles and arms from chewing the skin any time he thinks of Abu Ghraib, a habit he picked up in the prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
When Majli was released in February 2005, his ordeal only continued. He was left penniless and psychologically distraught, suffering from nightmares and uncontrollable anger over what he endured.
According to Sarah Sanbar, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), owing to the sexual nature of the released photos former Abu Ghraib detainees face extreme stigma in Iraq’s conservative society. Therefore, many survivors of torture are too fearful to go public with their experiences. “A lot of people just don’t want to come forward,” explains Sanbar. “The people who do come forward face marginalization and stigmatization from within the community. Others are also harassed by contractors and soldiers for speaking out.”
“So we don’t actually know how many other victims of torture there are from Abu Ghraib,” she adds.
After Majli went public about his experiences in the prison, his wife filed for divorce and his children faced bullying in their schools, eventually dropping out. He is also forced to move each time his neighbors find out he was detained at Abu Ghraib. “This is the ninth house I have moved to in Baghdad,” Majli tells TRNN, nervously glancing towards the window.
Despite the US government’s attempts to portray the abuse at Abu Ghraib as an isolated incident, human rights experts assert that these abuses were indicative of a grim pattern of torture that characterized the Iraq war and the so-called War on Terror. The only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib was that it was photographed and shown to the world, Sanbar says. But widespread torture and mistreatment of detainees, which was sometimes more extreme than Abu Ghraib, have been documented in numerous US military-run locations throughout Iraq.
Suhail al-Shimari, Salah al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad al-Zubae, the three plaintiffs of the Virginia-based case, were subjected to weeks and months of serious mistreatment, humiliation, degradation, and denial of their humanity while at the “hard site” of Abu Ghraib, where the most severe acts of torture were carried out.
The plaintiffs described being sexually assaulted, electrically shocked, deprived of sleep, forced into stress positions—which resulted in one of the men vomiting black liquid—forced to wear women’s underwear, and threatened with dogs. Shimari was dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. None of the men, however, are in the notorious photos, in which Majli says he appears.
Unlike Majli and other victims of US torture, these three men got their day in court—and won.
‘Empire’s court’
US courts have repeatedly dismissed similar cases against the federal government because of a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war. Since the US is not party to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC), war crimes are investigated by the US military internally, a process which has continuously failed to provide redress for victims.
In what rights groups say is a rarity, 11 US military officials were convicted of crimes relating to the Abu Ghraib scandal from 2004 onwards—several of whom received prison sentences ranging from a few months to several years. But, “Abu Ghraib is a symptom of a much bigger cancer within the US government,” explains Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT).
“What took place in Abu Ghraib is not isolated, but part of the Bush administration’s War on Terror torture policy. There are innumerable other cases of torture where it was not photographed or caught on film and it never attracted media attention. And those victims were essentially forgotten and the perpetrators never punished.”
Owing to the immunity afforded to the US government, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed the lawsuit on the plaintiffs’ behalf, decided to sue CACI in US courts through the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows for non-US citizens to bring civil actions before US federal courts in cases concerning violations of international law. Over the years, several Supreme Court decisions have greatly limited the reach of ATS.
While two of the plaintiffs testified from Iraq, Ejaili, a former Al Jazeera journalist who is now living in Sweden, traveled to the US to testify. “He basically entered the Empire’s court and stood firmly and demanded that they be heard,” explains Baher Azmy, the legal director of CCR. “And this jury agreed.”
CACI is appealing the decision and will likely try to take it all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to Azmy.
Human rights experts hope this case can pave the way for other victims of US torture to seek redress from private military and security contractors. “I hope we see more people filing under the ATS,” says Rizvi, from CVT. “I hope this creates a [legal] precedent and shines some light on those who have been waiting for justice for a long time.”
Majli tried to obtain compensation from the US government for years after his release, requesting assistance from the Iraqi Bar Association in Baghdad; however, they informed him that they did not deal with such cases. He also reached out to the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights, but other than providing him a letter confirming he was in their system as a former prisoner of Abu Ghraib, they were not able to help him.
Since then, he has been stuck, without any legal avenue in Iraq to seek redress from the US government for the abuses. “Myself and all the other Iraqis abused in Abu Ghraib deserve financial compensation so we can heal and rebuild our lives,” Majli tells TRNN. The news of the historic legal win in November has given Majli a glimmer of hope, wondering if this could be a new avenue of getting justice for the abuses that continue to haunt him.
“This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But, according to experts, this court win would likely not be helpful to other victims of torture at Abu Ghraib. While ATS does not have a specific statute of limitations within the law itself, conventionally courts consider it to be 10 years. Therefore, a US court accepting cases from more than 20 years ago would be very unlikely.
According to Sanbar, from HRW, there are also limitations for other, more recent victims of torture to emulate this case. “The context in which a lot of this torture occurs is that you’re picked up off the street and sent to a detention facility,” Sanbar explains. “You don’t speak the language of your captors. You’re not able to recognize the different insignias or uniforms. And you don’t actually know in a lot of cases who is the one torturing you.”
CCR’s case was helped immensely by the fact that the US government conducted extensive investigations into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the reports of which were released to the public, and specifically identified CACI’s role in the torture and abuse. In other cases that did not attract the outrage that Abu Ghraib did, information is not shared publicly. “In future cases, it will be very easy for the government to deny access to information on the grounds of national security,” Sanbar says.
The US government has also long issued gag orders against detainees at Guatanamo Bay, which has become a symbol of torture, rendition, and indefinite detention without charge or trial. Most recently, it was revealed that part of the plea deal of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, includes a lifetime gag order on speaking about aspects of his torture by the CIA. Moreover, Congress has constitutionally divested the federal courts of jurisdiction over suits for damages by former Guantanamo detainees.
Despite these barriers, the court win is still extremely significant, not least because it sends a message to private security contractors that they can be held accountable for abuses they commit abroad. “This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But Sanbar emphasizes that this court win should not distract from the fact that the US government has an obligation under national and international law to provide redress and reparations for harm it has committed “both in terms of holding its own soldiers accountable and providing redress to victims.”
“There is currently no legal avenue for people who claim they were tortured or mistreated by US officials to have their cases heard or for them to apply for compensation,” she adds.
‘Heart can’t heal’
“My heart cannot heal without justice,” says 50-year-old Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed, who was detained by US soldiers in December 2005, nearly two years after the first photos from Abu Ghraib were released to the media, sending shockwaves throughout the world.
The public indignation that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004 did not deter US soldiers from abusing and humiliating Abed immediately upon his arrest, during which Abed, along with his brother and nephew, were beaten by the soldiers, including with the butt of their guns; they were also forced to strip down to their underwear.
They were transferred to a US-run military camp, where a party among soldiers was underway. “There was a DJ and the men and women were dancing together,” Abed recounts, anxiously shaking his leg up and down while seated on a chair at his home in Baghdad. “The soldier threw me on the ground and started dancing, kicking sand and dust into my face and mouth.”
According to Abed, the three men, who were still only in their underwear, were then forced to stand in front of freshly dug holes in the ground, resembling graves. “The translator working for the soldiers told us they will now execute us so we should say our last words.” They were forced to stand in front of the graves for about an hour, while celebratory music blared around them. Then soldiers beat them again, Abed says.
He was detained without charge or trial for a year and a half in Camp Bucca, once referred to as “Iraq’s Guantanamo Bay,” and Abu Ghraib, where he was held for two months. “For weeks in [Abu Ghraib], they were beating me constantly. On my hands, legs, and back, with their fists, feet, and their guns,” Abed tells TRNN.
Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed at his home in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
Abed abruptly stops speaking as he chokes back a wave of tears. “Most of us don’t like to talk about our experiences because it’s too painful,” he says, slowly regaining his composure.
“I deserve compensation from those who abused me—not because I want money. Even if they paid me $1 million for each day I was unfairly detained, it would not be enough. But I want recognition for what happened to me.”
For years after his release, Abed says he lived in constant fear that US soldiers would come for him again. “If I even heard a noise outside—like a rustling of leaves—I would become terrified, worried it was the Americans,” he explains.
“The Americans just saw all Iraqis as terrorists. They made us feel like we were not human. Since I was a child, I heard about America and the Western world and how they respect human rights and democracy. But the truth is the opposite.”
High on the hillsides of the Waraira Repano mountain, a sea of cinderblock homes pushes up to the edge of the forest.
This is the commune of Altos de Lidice. They have been organizing. Organizing to bring sports to local kids in the community. Organizing to ensure that everyone in the neighborhood has access to water, education, and, above all, health.
These are dire needs in 2019 Venezuela.
US sanctions are wreaking havoc. They were first imposed by Obama and then ramped up by Trump. They block Venezuela from trading internationally and selling oil, its top export. The sanctions have unraveled the economy and spiked inflation. Millions of Venezuelans are fleeing the country.
Broken cars sit along roadsides, because there are no parts to fix them. Water systems are failing, because replacement parts can’t be purchased from abroad. Health supplies are hard to find. So is medicine.
The shelves of pharmacies across the country are empty. Pharmacists say almost half of their product is impossible to acquire. The medicine they do have is so overpriced, it’s out of reach for most Venezuelans.
“People with cancer pretty much just die, because they just can’t afford it,” one pharmacist in Caracas tells me.
And that is what’s happening. According to one study, tens of thousands of people have died over the last two years, due to the sanctions. People with cancer, people who need dialysis, people with diabetes and hypertension, and who can’t acquire insulin or heart meds.
But neighbors in the Altos de Lidice commune are standing up for each other. They’ve created a community pharmacy. They get the medicine from anywhere they can. Donations from abroad. From individuals. Solidarity groups. Medicine has been brought to them from Australia, Brazil, Italy, and Chile.
It’s run by a health committee organized by a group of neighbors. They meet in one of their homes. The same place the pharmacy is run out of.
A sign sits out front. “Communal Pharmacy. Health for the Barrio.”
The medicine is all free. It’s delivered to those with a doctor’s note from the local community health clinic. Which is also free.
It’s one small service. But for those in the community here, it’s making a tremendous difference. It’s a matter of survival. A lifeboat in a sea of struggle.
Community resistance, in the face of harsh sanctions—and US intervention.
This is the sixth episode of Stories of Resistance.
Stories of Resistance is a new project, co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. 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.
Last June, months before her release date, Paula Drake remembers getting called to fight the Gorman Fire in Los Angeles County, California. She was part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Malibu Conservation Camp #13, which is jointly operated by CDCR and the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD).
When her crew arrived at the fire, she remembers, it covered about 500 acres, but by the next day, it had spread to 15,000 acres. Drake knew how to hike through the mountains with a 40-pound bag on her back and run a chainsaw through the rugged terrain — skills that made it possible to help contain the fire. Out of that experience, she felt pride and camaraderie with her crew.
Drake remembers “just feeling like you’re a part of something bigger and being able to give back to a community that has deemed us unredeemable, and being able to be like a productive member of society.” She returned home in November and is pursuing a career in firefighting.
“The experience there was absolutely amazing,” she said. “It was amazing enough to where I decided, coming home, that this is something that I would like to do with my life, and be able to grow in the firefighter industry, and hopefully make it a career.”
Incarcerated firefighters make up 30% of California’s firefighting crews, and those who participate in the program are able to live at one of the many conservation camps or fire stations outside of prison, where they are given training and work alongside the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL Fire) or the LACFD. Drake said that, while it is still a prison program, the fire camps allowed her to have more freedom.
Drake said she would make about six dollars a day, and an additional dollar per hour she was working a fire. A seasonal CAL Fire firefighter gets paid a salary of more than $50,000 a year.
“Society has deemed us these dangerous criminals that shouldn’t be allowed to have their freedom, yet, here we are running chainsaws and given these tools that are highly dangerous, so is it really even necessary for people like us to be somewhere where we’re stripped of our freedom?” Drake said. “I just think that people don’t realize what an impact it has on us and the community.”
While versions of the CDCR firefighting program have been around in California for over a century, they became the subject of headlines earlier this year when several fires broke out across California and over 1,100 incarcerated firefighters were deployed to fight the Eaton Fire, Hughes Fire, and Palisades Fire in Los Angeles County, which destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses. These firefighters were out for days at a time, and had no contact with their families. However, many reported a sense of pride that they were helping the community.
Even though they put their lives at risk and do the same jobs as any other fire crew, those who are incarcerated get paid between five to ten dollars a day by CDCR, plus an extra dollar an hour by CAL Fire when they are deployed to an active fire. As she worked second saw—a position where she helped clear the terrain with a chainsaw—in the fire crew, Drake said she would make about six dollars a day, and an additional dollar per hour she was working a fire. A seasonal CAL Fire firefighter gets paid a salary of more than $50,000 a year.
“You’ve got paid crew members working right next to you, doing the same exact job, but getting paid a hell of a lot more, and we interact with these crews, we cut lines with them,” Drake said. “We’re putting ourselves at risk. The compensation doesn’t really match up with the job that we’re doing.
In many cases, incarcerated firefighters are saving lives. Eduardo Herrera, who was a firefighter while incarcerated, remembers being called to a traffic collision in Los Angeles County. He was assigned what the LACFD calls “landing zone coordination” to arrange for a helicopter to pick up victims. At that time, while awaiting transport, a victim went unconscious, so Herrera had to perform CPR. He later found out that the individual that he was performing CPR on was a deputy sheriff of 27 years on his way to work.
“I was an incarcerated municipal firefighter, so not only was I serving the community, I actually helped save lives of our law enforcement, which is a very unique situation,” Herrera said.
He remembers other police officers and military members thanking him for his work and shaking his hand.
Herrera described his experience as “something that most of the public are not aware of. I think that that’s just another story of the capacity of change and what we’re capable of doing in spite of our circumstances.”
During the two years he worked in this program, Herrera, who was released in 2020, resided at a fire station in Mule Creek. He remembers being deployed to residential structure fires, rescues, traffic collisions, medical calls, and vegetation and wildlife fires. He said that participating in the program reduced his sentence by just under three years.
Hererra said that he is glad that the public is becoming more aware of the important work of firefighters who are incarcerated—people who “have maybe made a mistake in their lives, but they’re no longer defined by that mistake and wanting to pay it forward and make a difference.” He said it is important the public know what change looks like and what it can be and what it can mean for their communities.
“I’m glad that now we’re having this dialogue, and the narrative is starting to be changed in regards to seeing the capacity that we have to serve the community,” Herrera said. “It gives people hope. I believe the public wants to hear stories of hope and redemption.”
Herrera is now a firefighter with CAL Fire in the Riverside unit. He said that while he was incarcerated, he did not make as much as he makes now.
“The discussion about pay is always going to be a discussion, because we definitely didn’t make what your normal firefighter that’s out here makes,” Herrera said. “At the end of the day, we’re the hard workers, we work two times harder, if not more, than anybody else, because we had more to prove, and there was a sense of pride that went with it.”
“Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines saving lives,” Bryan said in an email. “They are heroes just like everybody else on the frontlines and they deserve to be paid like it.”
Last month, Assembly Member Isaac Bryan introduced a bill, AB 247, which would ensure incarcerated firefighters are paid an hourly wage equal to the lowest nonincarcerated firefighter in the state for the time that they are actively fighting a fire.
“Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines saving lives,” Bryan said in an email. “They are heroes just like everybody else on the frontlines and they deserve to be paid like it.”
Sam Lewis, executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition—which helped write and introduce AB 247—said that incarcerated firefighters have returned to their fire camps and have been in good spirits about the job they did. He said that the ARC, who owns the Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp for incarcerated youth, provided more microwaves, an air conditioning unit, new boots, and sporting equipment for the youth who returned from fighting fires. Through donations, they were also able to give all of them hygiene packages that include new toothbrushes, lotion, deodorant, nice soap—things he said they might not normally be able to get while incarcerated.
In the time that passed since the fire, Lewis said six youth at the camp who were fighting the fires have been released and received a $2,500 scholarship as they transition out of incarceration into training to become full-fledged firefighters. Lewis said the work they are doing to save homes and lives is important, and that they should be paid the same as the lowest paid firefighters on any other crew.
“The fact that they get paid basically $10 is not equitable, it’s not fair,” Lewis said. “They’re putting their lives on the line too. Why wouldn’t they be paid for something that they’re providing that’s needed, desperately needing in the state of California? So it was a simple question of equity.”
Lewis said that people who are incarcerated often want to demonstrate that they’ve changed and be able to give back to their communities, and participating in the program has been a way for people to transform their lives.
“Sometimes people end up in jails or prisons with the belief that they don’t have value, and it’s clear that every human being has value once you find out what your purpose is,” Lewis said. “In many instances, people who have an opportunity to go to these fire camps find that their purpose is to be of service to their communities in this way, and so it’s a way of them being able to demonstrate their commitment to their communities, but also to find their pathway to redemption.”
