The New York Times (12/2/19) apparently doesn’t think Greta Thunberg is an icon Gaza desperately needs.
When Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was fighting for climate justice in her home country and the world stage, the New York Times gave her top billing. She co-authored an op-ed (8/19/21), and was the subject of a long interview (10/30/20).
Acclaimed film director Darren Aronofsky wrote a piece for the Times (12/2/19) headlined “Greta Thunberg Is the Icon the Planet Desperately Needs.” Seeing a photo of her at 15, staging her first environmental protest, he said: “Here was the image—one of hope, commitment and action—I needed to see. An image that could spark a movement.” Her work was highlighted constantly in the Paper of Record (e.g., New YorkTimes, 2/18/19, 8/29/19, 9/18/19, 1/21/20, 4/9/21, 11/4/21, 6/30/23).
Now Thunberg is sailing to Gaza with a group of 11 other activists in what AP (6/2/25) called an “effort to bring in some aid and raise ‘international awareness’ over the ongoing humanitarian crisis.” The Israeli blockade of Gaza and the ongoing military strikes on the devastated territory is leading to a massive starvation crisis (UN News, 6/1/25; FAIR.org, 4/25/25).
No fawning coverage of Thunberg’s activism from the Times this time. No Hollywood big shot saying that he hoped her trip would “spark a movement.”
‘Professional tantrum-thrower’
Fox News‘ Greg Gutfeld (6/3/25) decried Thunberg’s “promiscuity of activism.”
The right-wing press is upset about Thunberg’s voyage and Palestine advocacy, of course. The Israeli military “says it is ‘prepared’ to raid the ship, as it has done with previous freedom flotilla efforts,” reported the Daily Mail (6/4/25), adding IDF spokesperson Gen. Effie Defrin’s remark: “We have gained experience in recent years, and we will act accordingly.” Israeli security sources have reportedly vowed to stop the vessel before it gets to Gaza (Jerusalem Post, 6/4/25, 6/5/25).
The British Spectator‘s Julie Burchill (6/4/25) said:
When we consider child stars through the ages, the girls generally age better than the boys; Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Billie Piper all made the seamless switch from winsome cuties to gifted entertainers. The same cannot be said of Greta Thunberg, though she’s certainly remained consistently irritating. Neither a singer nor a thespian, she is a professional tantrum-thrower, more comparable to the fictional horrors Violet Elizabeth Bott and Veruca Salt than the trio of troupers listed above.
“Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (X, 6/1/25), a ghoulish statement suggesting that an attack on the ship was imminent. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (6/2/25) called the message a “grotesque social media post suggesting a possible Israeli state terrorism attack on peaceful international activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza.”
The pro-Israel media criticism website HonestReporting (6/4/25) called Thunberg’s participation in the aid mission an “anti-Israel publicity stunt.” “Greta Thunberg’s beliefs are as shallow as her need for attention,” said Fox News host Greg Gutfeld (6/3/25). Rita Panahi of Australia’s Sky News (6/4/25) called Thunberg a “doom goblin.”
These comments aren’t just mean-spirited but ominous, considering that the group’s previous mission was aborted when their ship suffered a drone attack (Reuters, 5/6/25), and an aid flotilla to Gaza 15 years ago ended up with Israeli special forces killing ten activists (Al Jazeera, 5/30/20).
From star to nonentity
Greta Thunberg (AP, 6/2/25): “No matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide.”
And yet while the New YorkTimes (5/2/25) covered the aborted mission and Thunberg’s involvement, it has not yet reported on the current mission and Thunberg’s role. As noted earlier, AP (6/2/25) covered the launch of the current mission, with Thunberg aboard, which was re-run in the Washington Post (6/2/25). She has done interviews with other media from the boat (Democracy Now!, 6/4/25).
How could she have gone from a star in the Times‘ pages to such a nonentity? Given how much attention she received in the Times for leading a movement for climate justice, one might think that her dedication to the strife in Gaza might warrant some attention, too.
For activists and journalists who have covered the press response to the crisis in Gaza, this is all part of the Palestine exception, where liberal groups and outlets might show concern for humanitarian crises around the world, but lower their outrage or stay completely silent on the subject of Palestine.
FAIR (5/22/25) recently noted another example of this phenomenon at the Times. An op-ed by its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger (5/13/25), decried attacks on the freedom of the press around the world, but omitted that the biggest killer of journalists in the world today is the Israeli government.
‘Money from Hamas’
The New York Times (5/14/25) treated the idea that Hamas might be bankrolling an American children’s entertainer as a plausible allegation.
The New York Times (5/14/25) recently covered the backlash children’s entertainer Rachel Griffin Accurso, aka Ms. Rachel, has received from pro-Israel activists for using her platform to speak out for Palestinian children. The most eyebrow-raising bit from the piece:
Last month, the advocacy group StopAntisemitism labeled Accurso the “Antisemite of the Week” and, the New York Postreported, sent a letter urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Accurso is receiving funding to further Hamas’s agenda.
Accurso “posted nearly 50 times about the children of Gaza, most of which is filled with misinformation from Hamas, and only five times about Israeli children,” the group, which monitors statements about Israel on social media accounts of prominent figures, said on its website. “In the case of the Israeli children, she only posted due to widespread public backlash, never condemning Hamas and the Palestinians.”
Accurso, 42, in an emailed response denied having received money from Hamas. “This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false,” she said.
It’s impossible to imagine that if Accurso had been speaking about Ukrainian children suffering under Russia’s invasion, the Times or any other US establishment outlet would entertain the notion that she was working on behalf of the Azov Battalion or another extremist Ukrainian faction. Alas, this is how the Palestine exception works in US media like the Times.
Accurso and Thunberg’s advocacy for Palestinian civilians is dangerous to those cheerleading the slaughter in Gaza, because their status as clear-eyed and big-hearted people give public legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. The Times invoking the Palestinian exception against them is a part of a larger effort to keep public opinion from turning against Israeli militarism.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky:@NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
New York Timespromo for an upcoming podcast on how “medical treatment for transgender young people, and how the care got pulled into a political fight.”
As Pride month kicks off, the New York Times is releasing a new six-part podcast about medical care for trans youth—a subject on which Times coverage has been shameful.
Reporting on the issue is of critical importance at the moment, given the breathtaking assault on trans rights by the Trump administration, which has issued at least six anti-trans executive orders in its first months. Across the country, 920 bills aimed at trans people have been introduced in the first half of 2025, and the Supreme Court is poised to issue a decision in the Skrmetti case that may legitimize restrictions on gender-affirming care.
But in light of the Times‘ documented anti-trans bias—and the fact that reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, responsible for much of their previous problematic coverage (FAIR.org, 8/30/23, 7/19/24), is centrally involved in the podcast—trans activists are girding for the worst. Ghorayshi has been criticized for misreporting the experiences of trans minors and their families, misrepresenting study findings, and promoting unsubstantiated claims that contributed in part to the closure of a St. Louis youth gender clinic.
FAIR described an article by the New York Times‘ Azeen Ghorayshi (8/23/23) as “a greatest-hits album of all of the Times’ problematic coverage on adolescent gender-affirming care, filled with familiar tropes and tactics the paper of record has used to distort the issue.”
The podcast teaser offers a glimpse of what’s to come: back-and-forth quotes from trans people and those seeking to take away trans kids’ health care, plus some troubling quotes like this one:
If the treatment is barred, some kids will suffer because they can’t access the treatment. If the treatment is allowed, some kids will suffer who get the treatment and later wish they hadn’t. And then the question becomes, how does the court choose which group?
It’s not clear who the speaker is, but the sense the listener gets is that these are equal harms. The reality is that regret over gender-affirming care is extremely low (Medium, 3/24/23), and such care has been shown to greatly reduce the alarmingly high suicide rates among trans youth (HCPLive, 3/8/22).
It’s worth noting that standards for gender-affirming care for youth do not even recommend surgery for children under the age of 18 except in extreme cases. Instead, treatment typically begins—after screenings from both mental health and medical professionals—with entirely reversible puberty blockers.
A voice later in the teaser remarks:
Conservative states want to just, you know, be done with trans people altogether. And when reports come out that show this, you know, two-sided thing and the skepticism and the fact there’s no evidence, this just adds fuel to their fire.
Sign at the Transexual Menace protest at the New York Times (photo: Tyler Albertario).
The claim that “there’s no evidence” to support the value of gender-affirming care is not a fact, but a myth (Psychology Today, 1/24/22)—one promoted by credulous reporting of the British government’s Cass Review by the Times‘ Ghorayshi (FAIR.org, 7/19/24).
The teaser frames the story as one in which “the medicine and the politics have become impossibly entangled.” As media critic Parker Molloy (Present Age, 6/4/25) observes:
Transgender healthcare didn’t get “pulled into” a political fight—it became the target of a coordinated campaign by anti-trans activists and Republican politicians. But the Times‘ language suggests this is some kind of natural, inevitable conflict rather than a deliberate assault on medical care.
The Transexual Menace, a group of trans rights activists, is picketingNew York Times offices today. “For years now, the New York Times‘ reporting on trans healthcare has given undue credence to anecdotes offered by bigots,” spokesperson Anabel Ruggiero said in a statement. The group is demanding “an end to the Times’ deliberate anti-transgender bias.”
Los Angeles Times reporter James Queally was subpoenaed on May 9, 2025, by two Knock LA journalists for testimony at the trial of their civil case against the city of Los Angeles, California, and multiple police officers.
Queally and the two reporters were among the nearly 20 journalists detained while documenting protests near LA’s Echo Park Lake on March 25, 2021, after police surrounded and arrested everyone using a tactic called “kettling.”
Queally was released after approximately 30 minutes, with help from attorneys and a managing editor for the Times. Other journalists, including the two reporters for nonprofit community journalism outlet Knock LA, were charged with failure to disperse. The charges were quickly dropped.
The Knock LA reporters, Jonathan Peltz and Kate Gallagher, then filed a lawsuit against the city, as well as then-Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore and 10 police officers. The reporters alleged that their arrests violated both their constitutional rights and California’s Tom Bane Civil Rights Act, which protects journalists.
“This is a civil rights action challenging the Los Angeles Police Department’s longstanding policy, custom and practice of obstructing, targeting, and retaliating against members of the press for exercising their First Amendment rights to gather news regarding police officer activity in public places,” the lawsuit states.
Three weeks before the case was set to go to trial on May 27, attorneys for Peltz and Gallagher subpoenaed Queally, ordering him to appear as a witness and to testify about “the protest, his coverage of it, and being detained, but ultimately released when the officers identified him as a journalist.”
In a motion to quash the subpoena filed May 23, attorneys representing Queally argued that, in a rush to vindicate their own interests, the Knock LA journalists had infringed on the rights of a fellow reporter.
“The free flow of information to the public is jeopardized when litigants use the coercive power of the Court to force journalists to testify in support of parties’ private aims, which undermines reporters’ credibility and hampers their ability to do their job,” the motion said.
Dan Laidman, one of the attorneys representing Queally, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the decision to challenge the subpoena doesn’t reflect any position on the merits of the case.
“James Queally and the Los Angeles Times have demonstrated histories of supporting press freedom and fellow journalists,” Laidman wrote, but added, “Forcing reporters to testify in court about matters that they cover compromises their ability to gather the news, and under the First Amendment it’s only allowed as a last resort in exceptional circumstances.”
A hearing on the motion is scheduled for June 26, and the trial date has been moved to Aug. 5.
Janine Jackson interviewed guitarist Tom Morello about music as protest for the May 30, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: We know the roll by now: Trump blurts out his latest hateful fever dream, and then anyone seeking favor scrambles to, if not make it make sense, make it happen. Among the latest is a demand that the Federal Election Commission launch a “major investigation” of Bruce Springsteen, who described the Trump White House as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” in a UK concert, even after Trump tweeted that Springsteen “ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT,” and “we’ll all see how it goes for him.”
If there’s a “musicians to threaten” list going around, our guest is for sure on it. I suspect he’d be curious if he weren’t. Guitarist Tom Morello has been a member of bands Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, along with myriad other projects, including supergroup Prophets of Rage with Chuck D, and his solo work as the Nightwatchman. He’s also, I understand, co-directing a documentary, and who knows what else. He joins us now by phone from LA. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tom Morello.
Tom Morello: Thank you very much for having me, Janine. Nice to hear your voice.
JJ: This is all as ham-fisted as everything Trump does, and yet that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
TM: Sure.
JJ: Intimidation doesn’t have to hit its ostensible target to have effects. So maybe no one thinks Taylor Swift, for example, is shaking in her boots, but less-powerful and less-protected artists might feel some kind of way. So how would you speak to artists trying to make their way, about how you see the potential role of, in particular, musicians in Trumpian times?
Tom Morello: “I’ve always had the firm belief…that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make.” (Creative Commons photo: Ralph_PH)
TM: Yeah. I mean, I’ve always believed that dangerous times demand dangerous music, and especially in these troubled times, music, joy and even laughter have suddenly become acts of resistance. There may come a time in the not-so-distant future, we may be at it right now, where the ideas expressed in our songs, and the people who write them and play them, and maybe even those who sit in the audience, may find themselves censored, smothered, evicted and erased. But not today.
I’ve always had the firm belief, and expressed over 22 albums in my career, that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make, and so I try to encourage both myself and my audience to head out into that world and confront injustice wherever it rears its ugly head, whether it’s in your school, in your place of work, or in your country at large: the threats of the Trump administration is to not just artists, but it’s a McCarthyite fervor that seems to be on the rise. And there’s two ways to respond to it. One is to duck and cover. And the other is to meet the moment.
I’ve been very encouraged; the way that Bruce Springsteen has continued—his response to Trump’s diatribe was to release an album of the show that infuriated Trump. I played a couple of days ago at my alma mater, Harvard University, with a set that not only supported Bruce, but supported the university stance of not bending the knee and kissing the ring and allowing private education facilities to be under the governance of a proto-fascist regime.
So people have to make up their minds who they are and what they’re going to be. My take has always been, if you do have convictions, you need to weave them into your vocation, and let the chips fall where they may. If you don’t have convictions, then by all means, don’t pretend to have them for Tom Morello.
JJ: Boston Mediadescribed the atmosphere at your recent set at Boston Calling as “cathartic defiance.” I suspect you’re happy with that.
TM: I felt that, and I think that it’s cathartic because we live in a world where people don’t know if anyone’s feeling the same way that they do, if anyone’s willing to speak out when the right-wing choir is so loud, it’s like, will anyone stand against it? And when you play a set of my own music, Rage Against The Machine songs, some Bruce Springsteen songs, and rile them up with a good Fred Hampton–like fervor in between songs, people recognize that, “Oh, we are not alone,” and that music is a force that can really steel the backbone of people in times of turmoil and struggle.
JJ: I was bemused by one headline I saw that called that set “expletive-laden,” and that was the headline, and I thought, “Wow, we’ve got ‘grab them by the pussy’ in office, but it’s still worth noting when people don’t show decorum.”
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny. The fact that that’s news, with the rollback of democracy and the mass murder of children and whatnot, if someone uses a cuss word, that that’s going to make the headline, feels absolutely ridiculous.
JJ: It’s ridiculous. Well, all right. Mother’s Day, which just passed, has become about buying flowers for underappreciated women, but some will know that it began as Mother’s Day for Peace, when activists were calling for husbands and sons not to be killed in war. Its founders hated that it became a Hallmark holiday.
Part of what I see you doing is waking present-day listeners to the history of protest music, and music as protest. Using Woody Guthrie‘s “This Land Is Your Land” is a great example of censored, semi-understood, sanitized history. Why does that song mean so much to you?
TM: Sure, sure, sure. Well, I learned “This Land is Your Land,” like most of us did, in the third grade, where they censored out the verses that explained what the song was really about. “This Land is Your Land” is a radical anthem about economic leveling. It was written by Woody Guthrie, and Woody Guthrie knew that music could be a binding force. It could be an elevating power, an uplifting, unifying and transcendent thing, that music can be both a defensive shield and a weapon for change. Authoritarians and billionaires think that this country belongs to them. Woody Guthrie’s song insists that this land is your land.
Woody Guthrie
JJ: And yet the very verses—it’s remarkable, in the sense that we learned to sing it and celebrate it and say, “Yeah, we all believe in this, but not this part that we’re not going to talk about.” It seems emblematic in some ways.
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah:
As I was walking, I saw a sign there
And that sign said “private property.”
On the other side, it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,
Near the relief office, I see my people.
And some are grumbling and all are wondering
If this land is still made for you and me.
And then he sings the chorus, “This land was made for you and me,” answering his own question in a very powerful way.
JJ: I’m pretty sure that anyone singing that today would be told to shut up and sing.
I want to take you, just for a second—I’ve been to Rage shows, and I have seen oceans of young white men scream full-voice, “Some of those who work forces! Are the same who burn crosses!” since before George Floyd, before Michael Brown, before “I can’t breathe.” It’s…interesting, I will say. And it must mean that you’ve seen, for many, many years, a kind of energy, in a kind of place that I suspect many folks didn’t think existed.
TM: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of different buckets the people who enjoy Rage Against The Machine exist in. Some are people who come to the music because they pre-diagnosed to agree with the politics of it.
Some simply enjoy it for the raw power and the aggression and the screaming guitar solos and whatnot, and have no idea what’s going on in the lyrics, that sort of shout along. They’re more than welcome.
Then there are those that are drawn to the songs because of the heaviness of the music, or the aggression of the music, and they come away with a different set of ideas, because that band has a different set of ideas than the other bands that play similar music. Sometimes you see that Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, where their eyes are opened.
And then there’s the unique bucket of those that believe the songs are right-wing anthems, and are shocked to find that the members of Rage Against The Machine have politics very, very different from their own.
JJ: It’s got to be strange. It’s got to be strange. You know, if I put up a Facebook post and it gets more than 20 views, I get nervous: I’m not trying to be a spokesperson, I’m just trying to speak. You cannot answer every objection to what you’re doing. You cannot come along with every record and interpret it for people. So you have to relax and let it speak, right?
TM: Yeah. The Rage Against The Machine music, and the music in my 22-album career, it’s not a Noam Chomsky lecture. The idea is to make art that is compelling, and makes people jump up and down, or shake their butts or whatever, and then there is a message that’s contained in it. And you can check all the boxes, or one of the boxes, and it’s totally all right.
JJ: Right. Right. Well, you’re a musician because you love music, and you are political because you’re political, and these things come together. So, I mean, unless it’s an article about what strings you prefer, there’s really hardly a way for a music critic to talk about your career, and your various projects, without talking about social and racial justice, or what many insist on calling “politics,” as though that were somehow a separate, denatured category of interest. So I just said, “Shut up and sing.” That’s never made sense as a complaint with you, but it’s really dumb, whoever it’s aimed at?
TM: Well, I mean, “shut up and sing” is exclusively reserved for artists whom you disagree with. It’s not “shut up and sing” if you’re politically aligned. It’s when the cognitive dissonance occurs—like, “I really like this music, but I can’t stand the fact that I’m having my nose shoved in my own prejudices.”
JJ: You’ve been interviewed, you’ve been spoken to a lot, and I can imagine some of the things that reporters come at you with. I remember, years ago, you went on Bill Maher, and had that experience. I wonder, do you ever feel like you need to redirect? I find sometimes I have to say, “Well, I’m not going to respond to that question. I’m going to say something different.” Do you ever need to redirect reporters, mid-conversation?
TM: I would say that I wish sometimes that there was more thoughtful reporting than what I’m exposed to, because to most people who cover music, I’m a unicorn. They don’t have a lot of artists that they’re exposed to that have a lifetime of political engagement. So a casual music journalist tends to ask the same seven questions, over the course of 30 years. I actually look forward to stuff that’s a little bit more on the Bill Maher end of the spectrum, where it’s a little bit more sparring, or it’s a little bit more thoughtful or more in-depth. Because they’re like, “So what’s it like being in a political band?” –that level of discourse.
JJ: Exactly. Well, I would say a word that I would use to describe you, Tom, is “jovial.” You’ve made yourself this big fat target, and you seem to be enjoying yourself, like, “This is what I trained for.” To what do you attribute this willingness to be misunderstood, and even hated?
TM: Well, I mean, I’m not jovial because people hate, let me just make that very, very clear.
JJ: No, clear, clear. You’ve been jovial the 30 years I’ve known you.
TM: Yeah, I think that’s independent. It’s independent. I mean, part of it is having a really, really clear North Star. From 16- or 17-years-old, I can attribute a large measure to my mom, Mary Morello, who is currently 101 years old, and still the most radical and popular member of the Morello family. But there’s always been this social justice North Star that is unbending and uncompromising, and I know what I was put here to do.
I didn’t choose to be a guitar player. That chose me. So I’m kind of stuck finding a way to express my convictions in my vocation, and just no two ways about it. Countless opportunities go away when you say the things I say, play the things I play and believe the things that I believe, and it’s totally fine. There’s a contingent of the audience that is smaller than it would be otherwise. But when people make music, make any art, that is widely and generally loved and absorbed by the vast majority of the population, it tends to be shitty art, and I’ve never been interested in that.
JJ: Jim and I used to say we live our life between two Marx quotes: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” and “I have spoken and saved my soul.”
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JJ: It’s a difficult engagement; for many people, it’s more difficult today than it ever has been, but for many of us, it’s been difficult our whole lives, and knowing when to speak, and how to also keep ourselves safe, and all of that.
It’s not a time to shy away from resistance. It’s a time to lean in. On a cultural front, that’s what these shows are, my small contribution to withstanding the fascist gale that is blowing.
Just talk, finally, Tom Morello, about how you see the present moment, your role within it, and what you’d like folks to think about.
TM: Well, having been engaged in activism of some sort for, my gosh, 40+ years now, it’s a realization that each of us are a link in the chain. Those of us that have a conviction that the world can be a more peaceful, a more equal, a more just place: The arc of history may bend towards justice, but sometimes it swings back the other way, and that doesn’t mean that you should despair. That means you should realize what is moving the meter are people, no different than anyone listening right now. When there’s been progressive, radical, even revolutionary change, it has come from people no different from anyone listening to this right now.
So while that may sound daunting, the good news is that those people who have moved the meter, from Spartacus to today, have been no different from the people—like, no more money, power, influence, courage, intelligence, creativity. It’s a matter of standing up in your time, and doing it to the best of your ability, and recognizing that, in this particular historical moment, it’s a little bit now or never. If you’ve got feelings, you’ve got to express them. Apply yourself in your place of work, in your school, in your union, in your town, in your country right now. The cavalry is not coming. You’re it.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with guitarist, activist, now filmmaker Tom Morello. Thank you, Tom. Love to your mother. Thank you for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
TM: Thank you so much. Say hi to the family for me.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing an online “rebellion” over its cuts to both Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Universal Credit. It comes in the form of a virtual protest on Saturday 7 June. This will be happening alongside a physical one in London. And the organiser of the virtual demo says that her and her friends are doing it because house-or bed-bound people ‘deserve to have their voices heard, too’.
The callous DWP
Pressure is mounting on the government and the DWP over their planned cuts to chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits.
DWP boss Liz Kendall laid out in March to ‘reform’, that is – cut – chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits. It set this out in its Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working green paper.
Notably, the paper included a suite of regressive reforms to make it harder for people to claim disability benefits like Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The changes it’s proposing target neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders. Moreover, disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition, will no longer be eligible.
And revelations from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has also shown that the changes will disproportionately hit PIP claimants over 50 as well. Specifically, the criteria goalpost shifts will deny 1.09 million (nearly 70% of those who could lose out) the Daily Living component of PIP. Part of this cohort is obviously also people Labour is already hammering with the Winter Fuel Payment cuts.
Labour lies: time to call it out
Overall, Labour and the DWP have already lied about the number of people its Green Paper plans will affect. Research keeps exposing the devastating scale of the governments planned cuts. While its impact assessment calculated 370,000 current claimants, and 420,000 future ones would lose their DWP PIP entitlement, it’s likely to be much higher than this.
Another FOI made by a member of the public unearthed that around 209,000 people getting enhanced rate DWP PIP Daily Living will lose it. On top of this, around 1.1 million people getting the standard rate will lose it.
In total then, nearly 1.4 million people could, on reassessment, lose their Daily Living element of DWP PIP. However, as the Canary’s Steve Topple previously noted, this doesn’t tell us how many could lose their full PIP altogether. This is because the data does not show how many of these people get standard or enhanced Mobility Element of DWP PIP.
Nonetheless, it’s evident that the plans will be enormously detrimental for chronically ill and disabled people. And in early June, parliament is expected to vote on these plans.
Protest in London – but also online
It’s why the People’s Assembly ‘No To Austerity 2.0’ demo for Welfare not Warfare will bring together a wave of opposition. Together, they’ll call out the Labour’s cuts to disability benefits, Winter Fuel Payments, and proposed cuts to public services to fund increased arms spending. On 7 June, the People’s Assembly and its supporters will be uniting to demand Welfare not Warfare and No To Austerity 2.0:
Be there. I’ll be there. We’re all going to be there. It’s going to be a march of hope to bring about real change. –@jeremycorbyn
As a disabled person, I’ve spent years watching government after government punch down on people like me. Trapped in my bed and home for over a decade, I could only watch as cruel policies stripped away our dignity, rights, and support. I couldn’t march in the streets. I couldn’t shout my rage. I felt silenced, invisible – furious with nowhere for that rage to go. I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt like that.
Disability Rebellion was born from that fury.
When the proposed benefit reforms was released, I knew we needed a way to fight back – a way for disabled people to be heard even if we couldn’t be physically present at protests. From there, we grew into an online campaigning group. And that’s our power: we create space for disabled voices in a world that too often ignores us.
Real-world protests are often inaccessible—but our voices deserve to be heard, too. This is why we started doing online protests: to give everyone a voice, even if you’re bedridden and housebound. We don’t want to leave anyone behind.
Ignoring house-and bed-bound people (much like the DWP)
Notably, while these DWP cuts have called for concerted boots and wheels on the ground action, it shouldn’t mean bed-bound and house-bound disabled people are left out of forging the fight back.
In fact, chronically ill and disabled people at home are arguably some of the voices most needed. Notably, it’s this demographic who are more likely to be among those unable to work.
Of course, it’s also the case that DWP cuts will hit them the hardest. The government has justified these plans through hostility to those who can’t work. All the while, ‘disability confident’ work-from-home part-time positions are shamefully sparse, to virtually non-existent.
Yet to many campaign groups, people who cannot attend protests in person are often forgotten about. Moreover, as Atlanta told the Canary:
People have told me online protest doesn’t matter. But I’ve seen the opposite. Even single tweet can open eyes. Online actions can trigger actions on the streets. DR is growing stronger by the day and we’re constantly learning new ways we can utilise social media to build our movement and contribute to driving change.
Social media gives us direct access to MPs who are finally listening – some even standing up for us because of what we’ve said. John McDonnell and Richard Burgon are members of DR now.
The growing rebellion among Labour MPs? I believe the combined efforts of activists online is fuelling it.
So we are not powerless. We are fighting. And Disability Rebellion will keep fighting – online (and wherever our members want to take this) alongside other activists and movements.
“We’re not done”
Therefore, 7 June is a vital moment for people who cannot physically protest. So, from 12pm onwards get involved by posting about disability rights and the DWP cuts on X, Instagram, and other platforms. Use the hashtags #WelfareNotWarfare #TakingThePIP #StopTheCuts #TaxTheRich #DisabilityRebellion.
As Atlanta summed up:
Together, we are pushing to make all protest accessible, and we’re proud to work with any movements that share that goal. For example, we’re excited about the Taking The PIP campaign – the energy around it is electric and celebrity involvement will help amplify the voices of disabled people.
We believe in unity and in shaking things up until we are seen and heard.
This is just the beginning. We’re not done. Not even close.
Laila Soueif is one of the most determined people I know, and for that reason, she is in grave danger. The grandmother, 69, is lying in a hospital bed in central London, perilously close to death after 245 days on hunger strike. She could still survive, but it will depend on the UK government taking strong action.
Soueif stopped eating to try to save her son, the imprisoned British-Egyptian national Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and winner of the 2024 English PEN writer of courage award. He has spent more than a decade in an Egyptian jail cell because of his writings on democracy. Soueif wants more than anything else to reunite him with his own son, 13, who lives in Brighton and has barely been able to spend time with his father.
Helena Kennedy KC is a Labour peer and was chair of the Power inquiry into the reform of democracy
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Tom Morello at Occupy Wall Street (CC photo: David Shankbone)
This week on CounterSpin: Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and…Oprah? They’re among the entertainers in Trump’s ALLCAPS sights for, it would seem, endorsing Kamala Harris in the election? And/or maybe saying something unflattering about him or his actions—which, in his brain, and that of the minions who’ve chosen to share that brain, constitutes an illegal political contribution to his opponents, wherever they may lurk.
At a moment when politicians who swore actual oaths are throwing over even the pretense of democracy, or public service—or basic human decency—many of us are looking to artists to be truth-tellers and spirit lifters; to convey, maybe, not so much information as energy: the fearless, collective, forward-looking joy that can sustain a beleaguered people in a threatening time.
There’s a deep history of protest music and music as protest, and our guest is very intentionally a part of it. Tom Morello is a guitarist; part of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage and The Nightwatchman, among many other projects. His music has always been intertwined with his activism and advocacy for social, racial, economic justice; so we talk about the work of artists in Trumpian times with Tom Morello, this week on CounterSpin.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the embassy shootings, a lawmaker’s arrest and commencement protests.
Laila Soueif continues protest against detention of Alaa Abd el-Fattah in Cairo
The mother of the imprisoned British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been admitted to hospital after spending more than 240 days on hunger strike.
Laila Soueif’s family said she had been admitted to St Thomas’ hospital in London on Thursday night with dangerously low blood sugar levels, but continues to refuse medical intervention that would provide her with calories.
1 June 2025 sees the 40th anniversary of the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ – one of the darkest days in contemporary British history, when a convoy of 150 vehicles heading to the people’s free festival at Stonehenge was ambushed in a quiet corner of Wiltshire, contained in a field for several hours, and then brutally attacked by over 1,000 riot police.
Remembering the Battle of the Beanfield 40 years on
Traveller homes were systematically wrecked, and most of the over 500 people present were assaulted, many with blows to the head, and arrested. It was the largest mass arrest in British legal history. One young mother carrying her baby, was dragged out of her home by her hair. Some of the police, clearly intent on causing serious damage to both people and homes, were masked up to protect their anonymity. Many didn’t wear numbers. Traumatised children were taken into care, and in some cases held for a few days. Seven dogs were put down.
ITNwere on the field and filmed what its journalist, Kim Sabido, would later describe in a piece to camera as:
the worst police treatment of people that I’ve witnessed in my entire career as journalist.
Additionally, Observer journalist Nick Davies described an attack on one particular bus:
They just crawled all over that vehicle truncheons flailing, hitting anyone they could reach. It was very violent and very sickening. And it was at that point that my photographer, who was trying to take pictures of it, got arrested, and I myself got threatened and told to leave.
Copyright Ben GibsonCopyright Ben Gibson
The event became known as the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’, although it was more like a massacre: the Thatcher government’s final solution to the traveller ‘issue’. Like the miners, the travellers were portrayed as an ‘enemy within’, anathema to everything Thatcherism stood for. It was estimated that at the time of the Beanfield there were some 12,000 travellers living on the road throughout the UK. And the numbers were steadily growing, taking advantage of the thriving free festival circuit throughout the UK at the time.
The Peace Convoy at Nostell Priory: a taste of the violent repression to come
Moreover, also like the miners, Thatcher used an increasingly para-militarised police force to smash the Peace Convoy. Travellers in Yorkshire reported seeing a coach load of riot police heading to the picket line, holding up a sign saying, “YOU’RE NEXT”. In August 1984, police at the Nostell Priory festival in Wakefield, Yorkshire, just a few miles down the road from Orgreave, gave people a taste of things to come. Police assaulted them, held them in custody, and systematically wrecked their homes.
Thatcher herself eventually said that she was:
only too delighted to do anything we can to make life difficult for such things as hippy convoys.
As traveller Mo Lodge told us:
Stonehenge was just an excuse. The real reason was the threat to the State. The numbers of people at Stonehenge was doubling every year for four years. Well, that was a huge number of people that were suddenly flocking into buses or whatever and living on the road. It was anarchy in action and it was working, and it was seen to be working by so many people that they wanted to be a part of it.
Five years later, 26 people sued the Wiltshire Police for damages at Winchester Crown Court, in what became known as the ‘Beanfield Trial’. It was the closest anyone came to a public inquiry. As film students, we went down to cover it.
Everyone we hoped to interview appeared at that trial, such as the Earl of Cardigan, who witnessed a heavily pregnant woman with “a silhouette like a zeppelin” being “clubbed with a truncheon”. ITN journalist Kim Sabido was also there, and told the court that, ‘the nastier more controversial shots that were taken’ disappeared from the ITN library.
So, the Battle of the Beanfield trial revealed every piece of video and photographic evidence we might need, the official police report, and their radio log. It would all go into the final documentary ‘Operation Solstice’, broadcast by Channel 4 in November 1991, despite the police’s best efforts to get it pulled. We had had to condense 20 plus hours of rushes down to a meagre 26-minute slot.
So, we ended up with this sizeable archive, mostly unseen, on an array of now defunct video formats, each potentially threatened by dust, heat, and moisture. And it had lain for 33 summers and winters in a mum’s loft. Until now.
Dale Vince at the Beanfield
We had learnt that Dale Vince, the CEO of Ecotricity, social commentator, and one-time backer of Just Stop Oil, was on the Beanfield.
He had been a motorcycle outrider on the trip down to Stonehenge, passing messages up and down the line, discovering the police’s sneaky roadblock trap up ahead, for which he got a mention in the police radio log:
we have a motorcycle outrider now approaching, if he gets anywhere near our ground unit they suggest they may attempt to take him out.
We asked him to help fund the saving of this archive, which he did, and he also agreed to do an interview.
So, I have spent the past four months going through and editing the interviews, conducted just five or six years after the Beanfield. These were therefore some very fresh recollections. I have brought out the best of each story, really getting under the skin of what happened and why, and placing it all on a website in time for the 40th anniversary. Alongside this, with access to all the rushes again, I reedited ‘Operation Solstice’, so that it explains and contains a lot more.
The Battle of the Beanfield to today: an increasingly authoritarian police state
One of the lasting legacies of the Battle of the Beanfield, and subsequent police operations surrounding travellers and the summer solstice, would be to tighten an increasingly authoritarian police state belt. In 1986, ushered in on a wave of news-managed moral panic, it was the Public Order Act. Supposedly the government aimed it at a minority, but, as with every legal knee jerk since, it bound everyone. In one section, it limits the number of vehicles that could park up together to twelve – because they really didn’t like people meeting up.
This would soon become six thanks to the Criminal Justice Act 1994, another tightened notch, only this time with two new convenient groups – ravers and road protestors – in the crosshairs. More recently, we’ve seen anti-protest laws, controlling everybody, not just Just Stop Oil. None of these increasingly draconian police powers get repealed, you notice. They just get built upon.
In the coming weeks there will be a screening and exhibition at Glastonbury, and highly likely a gathering at the site itself on 1 June, as there is pretty much every year. This will be hosted at Parkhouse Roundabout, Wiltshire, where someone has placed on one of the fence posts a commemorative plaque. It says:
This marks the spot of THE BATTLE OF THE BEANFIELD June 1st 1985.
An inscription adds:
You can’t kill the spirit.
And despite their best efforts, after nearly 40 years of the Public Order Act 1986, with hundreds of people now taking up van life in laybys, carparks, and in fields all over the country, they still clearly haven’t. Because no matter how hard they push down with that thumb, the spirit, like water, will always find a way:
Copyright Alan Lodge
Featured image via Ben Gibson and additional images via Ben Gibson and Alan Lodge
An autonomous group acting under the banner of Palestine Action Scotland targeted another contractor complicit in the arms supply chain to genocidal Israel.
Company supplying services to arms company Leonardo gets the Palestine Action Scotland treatment
Early on 25 May, activists damaged the front facade of the facility housing Castle Precision Engineering in Glasgow Southside.
They used the group’s signature red paint symbolising complicity, spraying it extensively across the exterior of the building:
Israel’s overt goal of exterminating and displacing Palestinian life is made possible by facilities like this one. Vital parts are distributed to assembly lines in Scotland to make the planes, drones and weapons that are slaughtering children as you read this.
Castle Precision Engineering: contracting for genocide
Castle Precision Engineering works directly with Leonardo, one of the worlds largest arms manufacturers. Leonardo has close ties to the Israeli State and to the Israeli-based Elbit Systems, a major supplier of the Israeli Army. Its Edinburgh site manufactures the laser-targeting systems for F-35 fighter jets. Israel has used the model to bomb Gaza.
Arms manufacturers such as Leonardo require a network of contractors to function.
The spokesperson further stated:
By targeting one of their suppliers, Castle Precision Engineering, we are directly responding to calls from Palestine to disrupt the chain of arms from Scotland to Israel.
We’re ordinary local residents taking direct action against the bloody supply chain enabling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Anyone as horrified by the atrocities Israel is committing could do exactly as we have done. As long as complicit companies try to operate from within our communities in Glasgow, they will remain a target.
The spokesperson continued:
While our governments attempts to publicly decry Israel’s actions and shift the blame in the face of mounting public and legal pressure, it actively supplies the flow of arms that makes these crimes possible. Marches and petitions are not sufficient. It is our collective responsibility to cut off at its source.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) set out clear obligations for UN states. This includes: not supporting Israel’s unlawful acts and the unlawful situation it has created in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and ensuring Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, or the laws of war.
After a two-week trial, a jury at Bradford Crown Court has acquitted members of the Bradford 4 Palestine Action activists of trumped-up burglary charges. However, due to the judge ruling out all legal defences, activists have still left the court with convictions for ‘criminal damage’.
Palestine Action Bradford 4: Teledyne weapons factory shut down on Nakba Day 2024
Activists had occupied the roof of the Teledyne weapons factory at Shipley near Bradford, on 15 May 2024 for several hours. They timed to action to commemorate Nakba Day. The group successfully scaled the roof of the weapons plant, and painted it with anti-Genocide slogans, breaking windows, and causing damage to the structure, including making a hole in the roof. The cost of damage to the factory, which they successfully shut down for the day, was put at £60,000.
The court began the trial a year after the action.
Activists have repeatedly targeted Teledyne because the company manufactures components that the Israeli military have used to genocidal effect against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Teledyne is known to have made shipments to Israel in November and December 2023. The company has received 28 weapons export licenses to Israel since 2021.
Products that Teledyne has manufactured include filters for Israeli-user missiles AGM-Harpoon, AIM 120 AMRAAM, and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. They also produce components for Israel’s killer drone fleet, and for F35 jets. A Teledyne manager testified that it was “probable” the Israeli military were using Teledyne components in Gaza. However, he caveated this, saying that exports to Israel represented only 5% of Teledyne’s total.
Activists acquitted for burglary, but convicted for criminal damage
The jury acquitted three of the Palestine Action Bradford 4 activists of burglary, but convicted them of criminal damage. They convicted a fourth activist named Ricky on both counts.
Describing herself as a “Proud Bradfordian”, Serena Fenton was the first of the activists to give evidence. She told the Jury:
It’s terrifying to think that export licenses are being granted to export these missiles right here in Bradford.
Next to give evidence was Francesca Nadin, who refused to accept that they had broken the law by stopping production at Teledyne. She told the court:
Innocent people are being murdered every day, and that is thanks, in part, to the components made by Teledyne.
The final Defendant was Amareen, who stated in court that:
When the state fails to uphold international law, when the regulatory bodies look away, what are ordinary people supposed to do?
After the jury had heard all the evidence however, Judge Smith ruled out all defences in the case. These included defences like Necessity, Prevention of Intentional Cruelty, Preventing Crime Abroad, and Consent. Because of this, the defendants took a collective decision to discharge three of the four barristers.
Instead, they decided to address the jury themselves. By the time the court reached a verdict on Thursday, Israel had already killed 51 Palestinians in Gaza on that day
alone.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action stated:
The Bradford Four risked their liberties to attempt to prevent the flow of arms and the facilitation of genocide. Despite being stripped of these defences by the judge, they know that those aiding and abetting the massacres in Gaza should have been the ones in the dock. As the government continues to make record arms sales to Israel, direct action remains a necessary tool to resist this complicity.
Four Just Stop Oil supporters have been sentenced in relation to an attempted action at Manchester Airport in August 2024. The four took action as part of the ‘Oil Kills’ international uprising, which occurred across 31 airports around the world, in order to demand a fossil fuel treaty to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.
Just Stop Oil sees four more supporters locked up
Daniel Knorr (23), Margaret Reid (54), Indigo Rumbelow (31) and Ella Ward (22) appeared before Judge MacAdam this morning at Manchester Crown Court on Minshull Street. Indigo Rumbelow received a 30 month custodial sentence. Daniel Knorr received a 24 month custodial sentence. Ella Ward and Margaret Reid each received an 18 month custodial sentence. Each were ordered to pay £2000 in costs.
As they were sentenced, some of the defendants shouted, ‘billions will die without action, this court is complicit!’
In February, all four Just Stop Oil defendants were found guilty by majority verdict of ‘conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’. They were arrested in the early hours of 5 August 2024, as they left a BnB in Gatley Close to head to Manchester Airport.
They have been held on remand since that time, briefly being granted bail during the duration of the trial, however were immediately sent back to prison at the end of proceedings.
During the trial, the defendants freely admitted planning to access the airport via the perimeter fence and then, if possible, three would glue on to the taxiway. They made the case that they were seeking to prevent harm and inform the public of the huge risks now unfolding due to the collapsing climate.
During the course of proceedings, Judge MacAdam stated that he was ‘neutral’ on the topic of climate breakdown, elaborating that he ‘didn’t have time’ to read scientific reports on the topic, despite overseeing a climate trial.
“Billions will suffer and die”
One of those sentenced this morning was Daniel Knorr, who prior to sentencing said:
Since my imprisonment began, things have continued to get worse. The world still sleepwalks towards hell. Current estimates tell us the world will reach three degrees of warming. This means abject terror for ordinary people, it means billions made refugees and billions killed. It means hundreds more floods like storm Daniel, where over 10,000 people were washed out to sea.
People are taking action because they are terrified of what rising temperatures and food shortages will mean for them and for their kids. So as long as the climate crisis keeps getting worse, people will keep taking action, prison or not.
Prior to sentencing Just Stop Oil supporter Ella Ward said:
I’m not worried about my sentence, I’m worried about living in a world where crop failure means I can’t put food on the table. I’m worried about living in a world where billions suffer and die for a small number of rich people to get richer. I acted because doing nothing is unthinkable and because the science is clear. We have no other option: we have to just stop oil.
Also speaking before sentencing Indigo said:
Each day I have sat in prison, the ice melts faster, the fires burn wilder and the extinction rate climbs steeper. If the courts want law and order they need to start prosecuting those who extract and burn oil and gas while knowing that it will lead to the deaths of billions of people.
Reading from her mitigation statement Margaret said:
I am here because I don’t want to sit back and watch billions of people suffer and die.
I will accept whatever conditions the court imposes on me… but it breaks my heart that whatever sentence you impose will make no difference at all to the existential threat that is hanging over every single one of us in this court, and over everyone we love.
Outrageous treatment of Just Stop Oil
Commenting ahead of the sentencing, Tzeporah Berman, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative said:
The citizens standing up to raise awareness of how fossil fuels are causing lethal heat waves, floods and droughts and threatening our children and our health are not criminals – history will remember them as heroes. Our laws have been distorted by the wealth and influence of the oil and gas companies that continue to call the shots to protect their obscene profits over the public good.
Calum Macintyre, 32, from Folk Mot Fossilmakta, who also joined the campaign last summer said:
I took action as part of the Oil Kills campaign last summer in Norway. We broke through the fence at Oslo airport and glued ourselves to the taxiway. Afterwards the police took our details and drove us to the train station in order to get home. No night in the cells, no months on remand, no threat of years long prison sentences. Two of us have just been to court and were fined.
Compared to the treatment of our friends in the UK – many of whom have been sitting on remand since last summer – the difference could not be more stark. It is terrifying to see the erosion of people’s civil liberties in the UK.
In 2024 Just Stop Oil successfully won its original demand of ‘no new oil and gas’ and on 27 March 2025 announced an end to the campaign of action. However, its supporters will, the group says, “continue to tell the truth in court, to speak out for our political prisoners and to help build what comes next”.
During the group’s three-year history Just Stop Oil supporters have been arrested 3,300 times and imprisoned 180 times, for having broken laws that were drafted by the fossil fuel industry.
After today’s sentencing there will be seven people in prison as a result of taking action with Just Stop Oil.
A rally took place outside the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London on 21 May to “defend the right to protest”. Protesters, including Jeremy Corbyn, took to Scotland Yard to call for an end to police persecution of people who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Corbyn, Nineham under “a serious and deeply political attack”
Stop the War Coalition co-founder and vice chair Chris Nineham insisted at the protest that:
This movement has faced unprecedented harassment from the police from the start. Every single one of our national marches has had control orders placed on it – something never seen on peaceful protests before.
He added that:
Journalists have had their homes raided in the morning. Young activists are languishing in prison for the crime of putting graffiti on arms factories. And on January the 18th, in a major escalation, as you know myself and Ben Jamal and 13 other leading figures in the movement were arrested, charged, or have been called in for police interview.
And he stressed:
We should be under no doubt. This is a serious and deeply political attack on the right to protest and on free expression in this country. It constitutes a real moment of danger for anyone who dissents to the direction the government is trying to take this country in. And it is essential that we respond.
“It is only right that the police drop all the charges, release all the prisoners, stop harassing a movement that has been vindicated. This is a movement for justice, a movement for freedom and a movement for humanity!”@ChrisNineham at tonight’s defend the right to protest demo pic.twitter.com/piuEpneR6g
Jeremy Corbyn was present at the rally. And signs in the crowd included ones saying “Jews against ethnic cleansing”, “Jews against the occupation”, and calling for the UK to expel its highly controversial Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely:
Emergency protest at Downing Street on Friday 23 May
An emergency protest, meanwhile, will take place outside Downing Street to call on the government to go beyond words and finally stop all arms sales to Israel.
Emergency Protest – Stop Arming Israel – Words are not enough Friday 23 May, 6:30PM Downing Street
Israel is starving Palestinians to death in Gaza. Meanwhile our government continues to send them arms and offers only words of condemnation.
This follows a slight increase of Labour’s criticism of Israel as its ongoing blockade of Gaza threatens the lives of thousands of babies in the occupied territory.
Protests by Chinese construction workers, teachers, and factory employees demanding unpaid wages have erupted across China in recent days amid rising public anger over the impacts of tightening local government finances, according to affected workers and videos posted on social media.
From China’s northern province of Hebei to the southern autonomous region of Guanxi, bordering Vietnam, and its neighboring coastal province of Guangdong to the east – Chinese workers are facing the full impact of cash-strapped institutions grasping for ways to survive the economic downturn.
In an example of measures by local governments to raise funds, the village committee of Pingtang in Gushan Town, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, issued a notice stating that “sanitation management fees” and “parking fees” would be collected from all residents from May 10.
Those failing to pay on time would be subjected to additional fees and vehicles being clamped, starting from June 1. Speaking to Radio Free Asia, some locals and rights activists called the move a “blatant extortion” and “illegal.” The local government said it was investigating the matter.
Last November, China’s Ministry of Finance announced 10 trillion yuan (US$1.38 trillion) of new measures to help cash-strapped local governments struggling with mounting debt levels spurred by a property market slump that has crushed land transaction sales, one of their main sources of fiscal revenue.
“High local debt and tightening central policies have seriously affected grassroots fiscal operations. The most direct victims are front-line workers and contract workers,” Zhang, a retired teacher from Guizhou University in Guizhou province’s Guiyang city, told RFA. He wanted to be identified by a single name for security reasons.
On May 19, workers of the No. 10 section of the Yangxin expressway civil engineering project under China Railway Seventh Group Co. Ltd. gathered in front of the Branch of the Management Department and demanded they be paid their back wages, according to a video posted by a prominent citizen journalist who manages the X account @whyyoutouzhele, also known as “Mr Li is not your teacher.”
“We live in a boarding house and wait every day. They have said several times that they will pay our wages, but they didn’t even give a date,” said one worker in the video posted on X.
A video posted by X user ‘@YesterdayBigCat,’ a prominent source of information about protests in China, showed the protestors making a fire and cooking meals in large woks at the entrance of the company, suggesting they were in it for the long haul.
“Our work is hard and tiring … but our money has been delayed. Some workers have sick family members and are urgently waiting for money to save their lives,” one worker, who was among the protesters at a project site of China Communications Construction Group in Hebei province’s capital Shijiazhuang, told RFA.
On May 18, the protesters held up banners to demand the long-term wage arrears due to them. The same worker told RFA that the company had repeatedly promised to pay them their wages but has failed to do so.
Workers at the Qianlima Embroidery Factory in Haimen city in the coastal province of Jiangsu resorted to protesting outside their boss’s home for two consecutive days this week, but still haven’t been paid, according to a video posted by @YesterdayBigCat.
Stability unraveling?
While worker protests and labor disputes are not uncommon in China, social media posts point to an uptick in protests among sectors such as education, healthcare and sanitation.
This adds to broader dissatisfaction with the economic situation. Retail sales growth and industrial production slowed in April. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods took effect in March and increased to 145% in April, weighing on shipments and export activity. Respite came in May, after the two governments agreed to a sharp tariff reduction for 90 days to allow time for talks.
Fu Linghui, a spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics said this week that the reduction in tariffs between China and the U.S. will be beneficial for bilateral trade and the global economy. He said despite external uncertainties, the “fundamental aspects of China’s improving economy remain unchanged.”
But the foundation for a sustained economic recovery needs to be “further consolidated” in China with the implementation of various macro policies, Fu said.
“They (the protesters) are the most vulnerable group,” said Zhang, the retired teacher. “Once they speak out, they will be suppressed as ‘troublemakers’, but in fact they just want to survive.”
“In the past, it was migrant workers and laborers who demanded wages, but now it is teachers, doctors, and sanitation workers. This shows that China’s ‘stable structure’ is beginning to unravel,” he said.
Several teachers who were employed on a contractual basis in Zaozhuang prefecture-level city in the southern Chinese province of Shandong said their salaries were six months in arrears.
“Our monthly salary is only around 3,000 yuan (or $416), and we have been living on borrowed money for the past six months,” one primary school teacher said.
Another teacher in Shanxi province in northern China said her school was demanding the return of year-end bonuses previously paid out to staff since 2021, along with a part of the pay they received for after-school activities.
These moves have caused widespread dissatisfaction, the teacher said in a post on social networking platform Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote.
Healthcare and sanitation workers face similar issues.
A nurse at a public hospital in northwestern Gansu province said her monthly salary is only 1,300 yuan (or US$180) and that her performance bonus had not been paid for four months.
Edited by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.
King’s College, Cambridge has become the first Oxbridge institution to commit to wholly divest millions from the arms industry as well as companies complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestine by the end of the calendar year.
King’s College Cambridge: finally divesting
The announcement was made in an email to all students by Provost Dr Gillian Tett after a vote by the Governing Body last night. It follows almost a year of sustained campaigning from student activist group King’s Cambridge 4 Palestine (KC4P), alongside the broader Palestinian solidarity movement.
The college has voted to adopt a “responsible investment” policy which excludes companies involved in activities that are “generally recognised as illegal… such as occupation” and production of military weapons. The college has committed to implementing these changes in their investment portfolio this year.
While this announcement has come far too late for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have already been murdered by the Israeli state, KC4P has welcomed the commitment to divestment and hope that this sets a precedent for educational institutions globally. They stand in solidarity with the Cambridge for Palestine coalition and urge Cambridge University to follow the example now set by one of its most renowned colleges.
Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza; instead of investing in this destruction, our university should be supporting the rebuild of Gaza’s decimated education system.
At present, King’s College is the first Oxbridge institution to bring its investments in line with international law and recognise the barbarity of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people. This barbarity is enabled and enacted by companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, two of the companies in which King’s will no longer invest. However, KC4P expects the college to also apply these principles to the speakers and companies they choose to platform and affiliate themselves with, beyond addressing their financial ties.
Israel’s current escalations in Gaza are beyond horrifying. No aid has entered Gaza in almost three months, with this blockade enforcing widespread famine with starvation being used as a weapon of genocide. King’s College’s decision must trigger global condemnation of Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people. KC4P stands with the Palestinian people in their fight for liberation.
A “massive victory”
Stella Swain, Youth and Student Officer at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said:
This is a massive victory, and speaks to the incredible power and commitment of student campaigning, at King’s College and across the country.
If King’s College, at the heart of Cambridge, can finally listen to its students and divest from the arms industry and companies complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestine, then every university can act to ensure they are on the right side of history.
We are almost 20 months into a genocide, people in Gaza are starving: there is no excuse for our universities to be investing in war crimes. PSC research has found that UK universities collectively invest nearly £460 million in companies complicit in Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid. But more and more universities are listening to their students and cutting all investments, proving that universities can stand up for justice for Palestine.
Laila Soueif announces life-endangering action in protest over continued detention of Alaa Abd el-Fattah in Cairo
The mother of the imprisoned British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has announced she has resumed a near-total hunger strike, stopping taking the 300-calorie supplements she had been consuming on her partial hunger strike for the past three months.
Since the start of her hunger strike 233 days ago, Laila Soueif, 69, has lost 36kg, about 42% of her original body weight, and now weighs 49kg. She is taking the life-endangering step in protest at the continued detention of her son in Cairo beyond his five-year sentence.
In October 2022, two protesters with the group Just Stop Oil shocked the world by tossing tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s iconic “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” said one of them, Phoebe Plummer, moments after the two soup-throwers glued their hands to the wall.
A new podcast series digs into what drove these activists to pull these shocking stunts — and whether they actually work. In 2023, Alessandra Ram and Samantha Oltman, two journalists who met at Wired over a decade ago, quit their jobs to investigate every aspect of this story, from the street blockades and court drama to the money trail that supports disruptive climate activism. After they gained trust with activists, they embedded with Just Stop Oil, at one point observing how its members get trained for police confrontations (they “go floppy,” with their limp weight making it harder to get dragged out of the street). The podcast, “Sabotage,” landed in Apple’s top 40 podcasts and just wrapped up with its series finale last week.
“Sabotage” raises a key question: Are “radical” climate activists really that radical? After all, the suffragettes actually slashed famous paintings, and “Sunflowers,” despite all the uproar over the soup incident, still sits untarnished in the National Gallery. All kinds of people have gotten arrested in order to bring attention to climate change, as the podcast documents, including climatescientists and a doctor motivated by how a warmer world spreads infectious diseases. If you take a clear-eyed look at what climate change means for life on this planet, Ram and Oltman ask, what’s the sane thing to do?
The pair launched their production company, Good Luck Media, to “tell stories you won’t be able to stop talking about” — ones that just happen to concern climate change. As they developed the podcast, they used a litmus test to see if a particular story was worth telling: If they shared it while getting a haircut, would the stylist be into it?
Ram and Oltman stand beside “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London. Andy Fallon for Good Luck Media
Their podcast goes in unexpected directions — one episode follows a love story disrupted by a prison sentence, while others explore the wealthy heirs, like Aileen Getty of the Getty oil fortune, who are giving their inheritance away to controversial climate activist groups. The podcast was co-produced by Adam McKay (the director of Don’t Look Up and Succession) and Staci Roberts-Steele of Yellow Dot Studios.
Convincing Just Stop Oil activists to talk wasn’t easy. “There are so many misconceptions around this group, even though they have been, especially in the U.K., covered all the time,” Ram said. “People really just like to troll them.” The journalists slowly gained trust by approaching interviews with curiosity instead of judgment.
“What we found really fascinating as we embedded with them was understanding they’re incredibly strategic, despite how almost goofy some of their stunts are,” Oltman said. The soup-throwing protest in London’s National Gallery, for instance, was critiqued as nonsensical — what does attacking art have to do with climate change? — but it turns out that the absurdity was the point. Recent research by the Social Change Lab in London shows that Just Stop Oil’s illogical protests get more media attention than those with a clear rationale and also lead to an increase in donations. It’s part of a growing body of research that shows climate protests achieve results, even unpopular ones.
Just Stop Oil’s stunts appeared to work. Just two and a half years after the infamous soup-launching — and despite the United Kingdom cracking down on peaceful protests with years-long jail sentences and raiding activists’ homes — Just Stop Oil has already achieved its central goal. This spring, the U.K. confirmed it was banning new drilling licenses for oil and gas. Just Stop Oil announced in March that it would be “hanging up the hi vis,” boasting that its movement kept 4.4 billion barrels of oil in the ground and was “one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history.” Hundreds of protesters marched through Westminster at the end of April for the group’s final action — though there’s been plenty of speculation that their disruptive stunts will continue under a new name.
Just Stop Oil activists march on Waterloo Bridge in London as they staged their final protest on April 26.
Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Given Just Stop Oil’s over-the-top actions, you might expect the activists to have big personalities. But Ram and Oltman found that many of the protesters they met were shy, quiet, and anxious. “I was startled by the gulf between who these people seemed to be in their actual personality and the risks they were willing to take, particularly in the public shame and outrage front, to try to move the needle on climate change,” Oltman said.
“Sabotage” paints their stories with nuance, managing to avoid the usual media caricatures to reveal the real people behind the movement through small, vivid details. The infamous soup-throwers, for instance? The night before their demonstration, they practiced the Campbell’s toss in a tiny bathroom, making a mess as they hurled tomato soup at the glass in the shower.
“I haven’t been acting in a radical way by joining Just Stop Oil,” Anna Holland, one of the soup-throwers, says in the podcast. “We’re facing the extinction of everything we know and love. And the only radical thing a person could be doing right now is ignoring it.”
On Saturday 17 May, three Palestine Action activists breached the runway at Ireland’s Shannon Airport, and sprayed a US military aircraft with red paint. One of the women held an Irish flag reading “US MILITARY OUT OF NEUTRAL IRELAND” in front of the war-plane, before authorities apprehended them.
Palestine Action Éire disrupt the US military industrial complex at Shannon Airport
Palestine Action Éire coordinated the action, in which activists rendered the plane inoperable with red paint across the cockpit windows:
BREAKING ACTION AT SHANNON AIRPORT
3 Women have gone airside to inspect a US warplane at Shannon Airport.
‘Operation Siren’ have sprayed the warplane with red paint & held an Irish flag reading ‘US MILITARY OUT OF NEUTRAL IRELAND’
— Palestine Action Éire (@pal_action_eire) May 17, 2025
The three activists allege that the a plane that landed at Shannon Airport is supplying troops and munitions to active warzones in the Middle East. This includes Israel and Yemen. They claim that this is in direct violation of Ireland’s constitutional commitment to neutrality, and in breach of international law.
The war-plane that they targeted is N351ax calling CMB564. It refuelled at Shannon on 15 May, and flew on to Kuwait. Then, it proceeded to US and British occupied Diego Garcia Islands in the Indian ocean on 16 May. It returned to Shannon on 17 May, with a refuelling stop at Kuwait.
The same week as Nakba Day
Activists carried out the action the week in which Palestinians marked Nakba Day on 15 May. Dhikra an-Nakba remembers the violent, permanent displacement of the Palestinian people from their lands and communities. In the 1948 Nakba (meaning “the catastrophe”), Zionist paramilitaries and, later, the Israeli military violently expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
Since October 2023, Israel has massively escalated its campaign against Palestinians, especially in Gaza. It has resumed its mass-killing of Palestinian civilians since the breakdown of the ceasefire on the 18 March, 2025.
A recent ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as a recent report by Amnesty International, concluded that it is plausible that a genocide is taking place against the Palestinian people. One of the markers of genocide used in the ICJ ruling is the deliberate starvation of civilians. In June 2024 the Lancetestimated that Israel has killed over 186,000 civilians in Palestine since October 2023. Since the breakdown of the ceasefire on the 18 March, Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza. Many humanitarian organisations on the ground are now reporting that if the international community does not act urgently and demand that Israel stop halting aid from entering Gaza, widespread famine will soon break out, due to shortages of food and water.
Arms destined for Israel going through Irish airports
The outlet confirmed that US weapons and military personnel regularly travel though Shannon Airport to the Middle East, including directly to Israel. This is in direct breach of Ireland’s constitutional commitment to neutrality, which specifies that Ireland shall not participate in any war. Additionally, they demand that the Department of Foreign Affairs stops permitting flights carrying weapons and military equipment through Irish Airspace. They argue this is another flagrant breach of Neutrality and the ICJ ruling.
According to the Irish Examiner, in 2024 alone, the Irish government permitted 1,267 times. A recent opinion poll in the Irish Examiner showed that 75% of Irish people across the political spectrum support Ireland’s position of neutrality. The Irish government is thereby acting against the will of the people of Ireland.
Edward Horgan, who has spent decades documenting activity with ShannonWatch, confirmed that:
the number of US Military planes coming through Shannon has increased significantly in the last few months as the killing and destruction on the ground in Palestine has ramped up.
The women who took action today join the legacy of over 40 activists who have taken action against the US Military at Shannon Airport in the last 20 years. A statement from the three women given to Palestine Action Éire said the following:
Nothing makes me more cynical than to hear Micheál Martin and Simon Harris feign ignorance of the illegal arms being transported through Shannon by the US Military. It’s insulting – verified reports conclude these arms are destined for Israel for the purpose of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Amazon is once again at the centre of controversy – this time for selling a book that promotes a pseudoscientific and abusive “treatment” for autism involving bleach enemas. A petition on change.org from Autistic Inclusive Meets (AIM) is calling on the company to remove the book from its marketplace, and the outcry is more than justified.
It is shocking that in 2025, we still need to say this: autism is not a disease, it is not something that needs curing, and subjecting children to chemical abuse is both morally indefensible and medically dangerous.
The pseudoscience of bleach “therapy”
One of the autism books in question on Amazon, Spectrum Harmony Planner 5 Month Organiser, encourages parents to use chlorine dioxide—an industrial bleach—as an enema or oral solution to “treat” autism.
This so-called “Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) has been condemned by numerous health authorities, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which states that ingesting it can cause “severe vomiting, severe diarrhea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration, and acute liver failure.”
It is horrifying that Amazon, one of the world’s largest and most profitable corporations, continues to sell a book promoting these methods, despite years of warnings and widespread condemnation. By doing so, Amazon not only profits from abuse but also lends legitimacy to pseudoscience that harms autistic children.
AIM previously managed to get several books taken down.
But at the core of this controversy lies a fundamental lie about autism.
Autism is NOT a ‘disease’
Autism is not a disease (paging Amazon, here). It is a neurodevelopmental condition – a natural variation in how people think, perceive, and interact with the world. It is not a disease, nor a tragedy, nor something that needs to be “fixed.” In fact, many autistic people are proud of their identity and reject the notion that they should be “cured.”
Scientific consensus supports this. There is no cure for autism, and importantly, no need for one. The concept of “curing” autism is not only scientifically unfounded but rooted in ableist thinking that views neurodivergency as inherently inferior.
The majority of autistic people are clear—they do not want to be cured. They need acceptance, support, and accommodations that allow them to thrive on their own terms.
Trying to “cure” autism sends a harmful message: that autistic people are broken. But they are not. What is broken is a society that refuses to accept difference and a corporation like Amazon that enables dangerous practices for profit.
Amazon and its ethical failure on autism
Amazon’s decision to continue selling Rivera’s shocking book on autism is a dereliction of its ethical and moral responsibility.
It is unconscionable that a company with such immense resources and reach chooses to ignore the pleas of medical professionals and autistic people. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg.
As Emma Dalmayne from AIM highlights, there are over 30 other books that claim to ‘cure’ autism, or present it as something that needs to be cured:
By hosting and profiting from books that promote child abuse, Amazon becomes complicit. So, on Tuesday 20 May at 1pm, AIM and its supporters will deliver their petition to the company’s offices in Shoreditch, London. The Canary will be there supporting them:
If Amazon wants to be seen as a socially responsible company (a challenge regardless of this one story), it must act immediately to remove the book and issue an apology to autistic communities.
Autism doesn’t need a cure. But Amazon certainly needs a conscience.
Three Youth Demand supporters exposed the sham that is Eurovision’s values of supposed “universality”, “inclusivity”, and “celebrating diversity through music”. The song contest platformed contestant Yuval Raphael from Israel – all as the settler colonial state has launched its latest genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Unsurprisingly, Swiss law enforcement leapt to Raphael’s aid – swiftly detaining the three activists. Needless to say, the contest’s values clearly doesn’t include colonised and illegally occupied peoples outside its white Western Eurocentric ‘vision’.
Youth Demand at Eurovision: Israel performs as it rains bombs down on Gaza
At approximately 9:30pm CEST/8:30pm BST, security forcibly removed three Youth Demand supporters from the St Jakobshalle arena in Basel, Switzerland, during Yuval Raphael’s performance of ‘New Day Will Rise’:
The three were then placed behind a screen outside the venue by security. They remained in detention held by armed police:
One of those arrested was David Curry, 22, from Manchester, who said:
After dropping the equivalent of six Hiroshima’s’ worth of bombs on Gaza, Israel has been blockading all food, water and key medical aid from entering Gaza for over three months now. Israel is being armed and aided by UK and European governments, whilst they murder a child every 45 minutes. To top it off, here we are having a party with them on the biggest stage of them all! Help us resist by signing up at YouthDemand.org.
Since December 2023, the British army has flown over 500 spy flights over Gaza, raising fears of complicity in Israeli war crimes. It continued these flights during and after the ceasefire, despite Israel’s bombing campaign killing over 17,400 children. Youth Demand highlighted that the genocidal state has killed many more than the 6,500 in the St Jakobshalle arena. The UK government has refused to deny the Israeli F-35 fighter jets bombing Gaza have access to the Akrotiri RAF bases in Cyprus.
The House of the People: a democratic way forward
The House of the People highlighted by the action takers is a citizens’ assembly being held in July 2025. Any person in the UK is invited to sign up, with it selecting the 100 participants by a Democratic Lottery. Experts will offer them their advice throughout the process, which will culminate in five concrete proposals for the UK government. Part of the campaign’s demand is for the UK to abolish the House of Lords in favour of a House of the People.
Swiss police also arrested 27-year-old Meaghan Leon from London. She said:
I cannot not sit back and watch Europe throw a party with the genocidal state of Israel in attendance, especially after Russia was rightfully kicked out for their aggression towards the Ukrainian people. Do Palestinians not deserve the same consideration?
We need to end all arms sales to Israel. Across the continent and in the UK, all polls show this is what the people want, yet our leaders ignore us. We need to upgrade our democracies and we need a House of the People.
Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision song contest has always been controversial. The geographers among you may recognise that Israel isn’t even part of Europe (much like Australia). Beyond that, the nation of Israel has been repressing and murdering the Palestinian people for decades, and as such there’s a movement to boycott their cultural outputs.
The Israeli government has likely been very happy with its inclusion in Eurovision. Now, however, it looks like the competition is just another area in which they’re suffering one PR nightmare after another:
At the end of the Israeli performance, a man and a woman tried to get over a barrier onto the stage.
They were stopped. One of the two agitators threw paint and a crew member was hit. The crew member is fine and nobody was injured. The man and the woman were taken out of the venue and handed over to the police.
After the Holocaust, people said “never again.”
In 2025, 80 years after the Holocaust, Israel finishes second place in #Eurovision whilst committing the most documented genocide in history.
Raphael, who attended the Nova Festival which was attacked by Hamas in October 2023, sang a ballad titled New Day Will Rise. As those who support the boycott have pointed out, Palestine is facing one new day after another in which more of Gaza is reduced to rubble while Israel carries on as if that’s all normal:
Russia: banned from Eurovision, Olympics, global sports. Israel: accused of genocide by the ICJ, still getting standing ovations at song contests. So it’s not about war crimes. It’s about who’s allowed to commit them. Shame on you #Eurovision
Belgium’s broadcaster VRT appeared to make a U-turn during Saturday evening’s Eurovision final after their choice to air an anti-Israel, pro-Palestine VT during the semi-finals.
It comes after Spain risked a huge Eurovision fine by displaying a statement ahead before the show, showing a black screen with white text in both Spanish and an English translation about “justice for Palestine”.
Prior to the final, the Eurovision Broadcasting Union (EBU) had warned Spain’s broadcaster RTVE of “punitive fines” if their commentators repeated references of the Gaza conflict, as they had done during the semi-final on Thursday.
Another controversy comes from Israel allegedly running targeted ads for its own entry during the official stream – something which is pissing off people who take Eurovision seriously and people who take genocide seriously:
By the way, Israel PAID FOR ADVERTS to vote for them in the Final, DURING the final, on the official YouTube broadcast. This should outright be illegal. Their tele vote win was categorically unjust #Eurovisionpic.twitter.com/OkixomHoCc
#With Israel’s entry achieving second place, some are also accusing the nation’s far-right supporters of abusing the voting system:
"The UK voted for Israel", no the "UK" didn't, a bunch of far-right bellends hammered the phones. THIS is what the UK really thinks of Israel. #Eurovisionpic.twitter.com/UsMrChqxKi
Another point of interest was the accusation that Eurovision obscured the reaction to the Israeli performance:
Reminder that the Eurovision have: – anti-booing technology – turned off the audience mics for Israels performance – have fake cheering audio for Israels performance
“Not sure what you’re hearing at home, slightly mixed response in the hall” – Graham Norton after Israel’s performance. YEAH YOU EXPOSE THAT ANTI BOOING TECHNOLOGY FOR US GRAHAM #Eurovision#Eurovision2025
Let’s not forget that Israel is generating far worse headlines than those related to Eurovision. The following is the front page of Al Jazeera’s hub for Israel-Palestine news stories:
The Israeli military has killed at least 125 Palestinians, including children sleeping in tents, as it unleashed a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Sunday.
At least 36 people were killed and more than 100 wounded after Israeli warplanes bombed a tent camp sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
Horrific verified videos from the scene showed many bodies, including some on fire. The dead and wounded were taken to a nearby field hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex.
At least 125 people were killed on Sunday morning, including 42 in the heavily-bombarded northern parts of Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera Arabic. Three journalists were also among the victims.
The death toll has been rising sharply in the past four days, with hundreds massacred as the Israeli military prepares to significantly intensify its ground invasion of the Palestinian territory despite international criticism.
Israel overtly uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash, or artwash, its genocide in Gaza and underlying regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid, and military occupation over the Indigenous Palestinian people. Israel’s genocide has included a deliberate obliteration of archeological sites and cultural heritage across Gaza.
Just as South African anti-apartheid movements had called on international artists, writers and cultural institutions to culturally boycott South Africa, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urges international cultural workers and cultural organizations, including unions and associations, to boycott and/or work towards the cancellation of events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israel, its lobby groups or its complicit cultural institutions.
International venues and festivals are asked to reject funding and any form of sponsorship from the Israeli government or complicit entities. Since Israel’s cultural institutions are implicated in genocide, apartheid and military occupation, international artists and arts organizations have a profound ethical duty to do no harm to the Palestinian struggle by working to end links of complicity with those institutions. Accountability for Israel’s oppression against Palestinians is more urgent than ever.
Tens of thousands of artists across the world and a rapidly growing number of arts organizations have publicly endorsed the cultural boycott of apartheid Israel.
Why?
The case for a cultural boycott of Israel
Israeli government officials have summed up how Israel instrumentalizes culture to cover up its grave violations of international law. “We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank,” one official admitted, “and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture.”
Israel’s cultural institutions are part and parcel of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation against the Palestinian people. These institutions are clearly implicated, through their silence or active participation in supporting, justifying and whitewashing Israel’s systematic oppression and denial of Palestinian rights.
According to the BDS movement’s Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel, in order for Israeli cultural institutions to end their collusion in Israel’s regime of oppression and become non-boycottable, they must fulfill two basic conditions:
Publicly recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law (including the three basic rights in the 2005 BDS Call) and
End all forms of complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law,including discriminatory policies and practices as well as diverse roles in whitewashing or justifying Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.
When international artists perform at complicit Israeli cultural venues and institutions or at events sponsored by Israel, its lobby groups or its complicit institutions, they help to create the false impression that apartheid Israel is a “normal” state. The absolute majority of Palestinian writers, artists and cultural centers have endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel, and there is a growing number of anti-colonial Israelis who support BDS, including the cultural boycott of Israel.
Israel losing the culture war even at Eurovision
We’re at a point now where Israel has completely destroyed its reputation internationally. While it still enjoys the support of world government’s and institutions, those relationships are increasingly in peril, with even the United States showing some signs that it’s growing tired:
Trump's envoy: "We want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war. Israel is prolonging it.” So why isn't Trump arm twisting Netanyahu by suspending U.S. arms sales and military aid? https://t.co/eLDFZcekaU
It’s clear that history will not look kindly on those who turned a blind eye in this moment.
Hopefully Eurovision will come to understand this and get back to its original mission of spotlighting the worst music that Europe has to offer – not genocidal Israel
In the early hours of Wednesday 14 May, activists fromPalestine Action targeted Edwards Accountants in Birmingham, and JP Morgan at Victoria Embankment in London. The action drew attention to the two companies dripping in complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
JP Morgan and Edwards Accounting get the Palestine Action treatment
Activists covered both firms were covered in red paint. The dripping paint splatters were symbolic of the companies’ bloodstained complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide:
They also completely shattered the front glass doors of JP Morgan:
Activists sprayed messages to Edwards Accountants across its walls:
Financiers and accountants complicit in genocide
Both firms directly enable the operations of Israel’s biggest weapons producer, Elbit Systems. Edwards Accountants are the listed accountants for Elbit Systems UK and its subsidiaries. Meanwhile, JP Morgan hold Elbit shares worth over $22m.
On 12 May, financial reports showed JP Morgan had reduced their investment in Elbit Systems by over 53%. However, they still remain a major investor in the company which is a major supplier of weapons for the Israeli military, which is committing genocide in Gaza.
Elbit supplies over 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land based equipment, as well as missiles, bullets, targeting gear, digital warfare and surveillance technology. The Israeli weapons maker also market their weaponry as “battle-tested” on Palestinians, as they are first developed during attacks on Gaza.
Commenting on both actions, a Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Palestine Action is committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people. As part of our commitment, it is crucial to disable the operations of Elbit Systems, which involves targeting all those who profit from and enable the Israeli weapons maker. Our actions will cease against JP Morgan and Edwards Accountants once they end their ties to Elbit Systems.
On Wednesday 14 May, environmental groups including Extinction Rebellion met delegates at Europe’s largest insurance brokers conference in Manchester Central with a colourful and dramatic protest. They were there to demand the industry stops backing fossil fuel projects.
And what better way to call out flush fossil fuel financiers than to put a sinking Lamborghini at the event’s front door?
BIBA is an annual meeting that brings together insurance professionals from across Europe. It describes itself as:
Europe’s largest insurance broking event
The conference’s theme for 2025 is ‘A New Era’.
Amongst the guest speakers was the former manager of the England men’s football team, Gareth Southgate.
Activists have targeted the event for three consecutive years to call out the role that insurance plays in enabling large fossil fuel projects.
A new report by Boycott Bloody Insurance shows that there are 33 British insurance companies active in large fossil fuel projects. Just five companies had invested $6.5bn. In April, campaigners in Manchester celebrated the decision by Chubb to rule out backing the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). They had targeted Chubb’s offices in Manchester on several occasions. In 2023, Patience Nabukalu, a young activist from Uganda, joined them. Marsh McLennan, who are the insurance brokers for EACOP despite a backlash from their staff, attended BIBA.
Extinction Rebellion stage creative actions against the insurance industry
Extinction Rebellion organised the day of action as part of its Insure Our Survival campaign. It saw a collaboration with Friends of the Earth, Manchester Greenpeace, and other groups. The day featured a programme of dramatic and impactful visual activities, which they invited the delegates to engage with:
The creative disruption kicked off outside Manchester Central just after 8am with the arrival of a life-sized model of a Lamborghini sports car:
This was made to look as though it sinking in flood waters to highlight the danger of extreme weather events caused by the climate crisis:
The car had been converted into a James Corden style Karaoke booth where activists sung pop songs about extreme weather and encouraged delegates to join them, and to do the right thing and abandon ties with insurance companies enabling fossil fuel projects.
‘A New Era’? Not for fossil fuels, flooding, fires, and climate breakdown
Across the day, there were multiple creative demonstrations. There was a climate choir, samba drummers, street theatre, synchronised dance known as Discobedience, and testimonies by people affected by extreme weather.
The Oil Slicks, an Extinction Rebellion performance group, made an appearance. The group highlighted the fact that fossil fuels must be kept in the ground, and that urgent action is required to address the climate crisis locally and across the globe.
Activists chalked the pavements with the dates of major flooding events, and representations of flood victims:
Martin Porter, a spokesperson for the coalition who organised the disobedient reception party, said ahead of the event:
We look forward to welcoming the delegates back to Manchester and hope we will inspire them to take action. The insurance industry is well aware of the risk from climate change and cannot continue to ignore the issue. ‘Business as usual’ is not an option.
BIBA needs to decide if ‘A New Era’ means floods, fires, heatwaves and climate chaos, or one where brokers refuse to enable carbon bomb projects. We call on each and every one of the delegates to become climate heroes themselves and to help change their industry.
A mass protest by parents this week against the planned closure of a private school in northern China prompted a rare reversal by authorities, officials and parents said.
Video posted on social media showed hundreds of parents outside the Nangong municipal government building in Hebei province on Sunday, demanding Fengyi Elementary School stay open after learning it was set to close its doors.
The planned closure appeared to be part of a broader government effort that began several years ago to scale back private education and boost state-run schools.
In the video, posted on X by Yesterday, a project that documents mass protests in China, the demonstrators could be heard shouting “Disagree!” and “Leaders come out!”
Video: Mass protest by parents prompts reversal of private school closure in China
Witnesses told RFA that the protest continued into the night, and police were dispatched to maintain order.
A parent who did not want to be named for safety reasons told Radio Free Asia on Thursday that the school was well-regarded and parents would compete for placements for their children through a public lottery.
With the school’s closure, children were going to be sent instead to public schools with a reputation for chaotic management and high turnover of teachers, he said.
“They (the government) saw that the school had high educational quality and that parents with financial means sent their children to Fengyi Elementary School, so they wanted to close it down,” the parent said.
As well as being told the school would close, parents were told to choose a public school for their children. The video posted on X showed a form for them to fill out to list the priority of their school choices.
But following the protest, authorities reversed course.
An official from the Nangong City government office confirmed a “protest by thousands of parents a few days ago,” but said that “the problem has been resolved” and that “Fengyi Elementary School will not be closed.” The official said he wasn’t able to provide further details and the matter was being addressed by the Education Bureau.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to scale back private education and bring private schools under state control with the justification that it would promote fairness in education and reduce costs for parents. However, it has more recently eased restrictions on private tutoring.
According to statistics released by the Ministry of Education last October, the total number of private schools in the country has decreased by more than 20,000 in the past four years, and by more than 11,000 in 2023 alone. The data also showed that the current number of students enrolled in private schools stood at less than 50 million, down more than 3 million from 2023. In total, that represents nearly 17% of the total student population nationwide.
But private schools remain a first choice for many parents in China even as local governments have implemented policies to restrict the private education and narrow the gap in the quality with education offered in the public sector.
Jia Lingmin, a retired teacher from Zhengzhou, Henan, told RFA that as birth rates in China continue to decline, the number of children entering school is also decreasing year by year, and many public schools are facing the problem of insufficient enrollment and closure.
“Private schools have high education quality and a good teaching environment, and many parents are willing to send their children to private schools,” she said.
Yao Li, a parent in Handan, Hebei, said that although public schools offer free tuition for ages at which education is compulsory – from age 6 to 15 – parents still generally prefer private schools in terms of education, teacher quality and management methods.
The Nangong City Education Bureau Office did not respond to RFA’s call seeking comment.
Edited by Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.
Police have banned a regular protest by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) from gathering near genocide–supporting Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely’s residence in London. A letter from the group and a comment from a holocaust survivor have responded to the ban and the misinformation surrounding it.
IJAN: peaceful anti-genocide protests vs aggressive agitation from genocide-supporters
IJAN insisted that:
In almost 20 months of peaceful protesting, the International Jewish Antizionist Network has never “intimidated” anyone, Jewish or not, attending prayer services. As a Jewish organisation we would never do that. But the police have caved in to pressure from the Board of Deputies of British Jews who are well connected with Parliament and the Prime Minister. Any “hate speech” came from them.
It explained that:
As our outspoken, well-informed Jewish-led opposition to genocide grew in numbers, the Zionist establishment orchestrated provocative and threatening counter-demonstrations to shut us down. The Board of Deputies [BoD] called on Zionists to turn up and they did, shouting and dancing to loud music with banners claiming “There is no genocide in Gaza”! Holocaust denial would likely be prosecuted, but denying today’s genocide against Palestinians seems to be entirely acceptable. They are responsible for the police having to close the Finchley Road to move them away.
It accused the police of consulting with local people who objected to the protest while ignoring those who supported it. And it added:
The claim that Swiss Cottage is a Jewish area is also false. The most recent census shows: 27.7% Christian, 28.6% no religion, 16.4% Muslim and 8.5% Jewish.
‘Criminalising pro-Palestinian protest on behalf of the Zionist establishment’
Criticising prime minister Keir Starmer’s regime for its genocide apologism, IJAN stressed that:
This government, like the previous Tories, refuses to recognise the genocide in Gaza despite international pressure and court rulings so it can continue its lucrative arms sales and other support for Israel. They are determined to criminalise pro-Palestinian protest on behalf of the Zionist establishment. The BoD is even “investigating” dissent within its own ranks – 36 members objected to Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian children (after 18 months!) Financial Times (LINK).
And it insisted:
As Jews who remember the genocide against us, and like millions around the world, we will never be silenced about the genocide of Palestinians. Never.
Holocaust survivor says BoD agitation “made me anti-Zionist”
Jewish holocaust survivor Dr Agnes Kory, meanwhile, released a statement saying:
Prior to the Friday 2nd May 2025 protest, the Board of Deputies [of British Jews] issued a call to their members, allegedly asserting that these IJAN protests were anti-semitic. As a result of the Board of Deputies call, the twenty or so IJAN protesters were confronted by about sixty or more BOD protesters who shouted abuse at the small IJAN gathering, blocked Finchley Road and played amplified loud music to drown out IJAN speeches.
She argued that:
The undue influence of the Board of Deputies over the British police is likely to increase antisemitism.
And she said:
As a Jewish Holocaust survivor, by default I have been a life-long Zionist although critical of some of Israel’s policies. The abusive behaviour of the 2nd May 2025 BOD counter-protesters tipped the balance and made me anti-Zionist.
Leading trade unionists, MPs, and campaigners will take the Labour Party government to task over its austerity-riven budget and vicious Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cuts to disabled people’s benefits. The People’s Assembly is coordinating a major ‘Welfare not Warfare’ and ‘No To Austerity 2.0’ demonstration for 7 June.
No to austerity 2.0: groups gear up for another DWP Welfare not Warfare demo in June
Pressure is mounting on the government over its austerity 2 budget, and after it blamed migrants for the state of broken Britain on Monday.
Campaigners, activists, MPs, and trade unions are coming together. They will host what they are calling the first anti-austerity demo under a Labour government. In particular, they are gearing up to counter the latest attack on chronically ill and disabled people’s welfare entitlements. Starmerite Labour has firmly couched these plans in its rampant neoliberalist austerity ideology.
The protest is partly in response to the plans DWP boss Liz Kendall laid out in March to ‘reform’, that is – cut – chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits. It set this out in its Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working green paper.
Notably, the paper included a suite of regressive reforms to make it harder for people to claim disability benefits like Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The changes it’s proposing target neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders. Moreover, disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition, will no longer be eligible.
And revelations from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has also shown that the changes will disproportionately hit PIP claimants over 50 as well. Specifically, the criteria goalpost shifts will deny 1.09 million (nearly 70% of those who could lose out) the Daily Living component of PIP. Part of this cohort is obviously also people Labour is already hammering with the Winter Fuel Payment cuts.
Labour lies: time to call it out
Overall, Labour and the DWP have already lied about the number of people its Green Paper plans will affect. Research keeps exposing the devastating scale of the governments planned cuts. While its impact assessment calculated 370,000 current claimants, and 420,000 future ones would lose their DWP PIP entitlement, it’s likely to be much higher than this.
Another FOI made by a member of the public unearthed that around 209,000 people getting enhanced rate DWP PIP Daily Living will lose it. On top of this, around 1.1 million people getting the standard rate will lose it.
In total then, nearly 1.4 million people could, on reassessment, lose their Daily Living element of DWP PIP. However, as the Canary’s Steve Topple previously noted, this doesn’t tell us how many could lose their full PIP altogether. This is because the data does not show how many of these people get standard or enhanced Mobility Element of DWP PIP.
Nonetheless, it’s evident that the plans will be enormously detrimental for chronically ill and disabled people. And in early June, parliament is expected to vote on these plans.
It’s why the People’s Assembly ‘No To Austerity 2.0’ demo for Welfare not Warfare will bring together a wave of opposition. Together, they’ll call out the Labour’s cuts to disability benefits, Winter Fuel Payments, and proposed cuts to public services to fund increased arms spending. On 7 June, the People’s Assembly and its supporters will be uniting to demand Welfare not Warfare and No To Austerity 2.0.
Coming together to oppose the DWP cuts
Major trade unions, including NEU, PCS, RMT, UNISON, UNITE and others, along with NHS campaigners and disabled activists, have pledged to support the action.
Diane Abbott MP, who recently hosted a debate in parliament over the cuts, will speak out against the government’s plans. Trade union leaders from Unite the Union, PCS, NEU, RMT, alongside veteran campaigners from the anti-austerity movement, will speak about the need to defend welfare and public services and invest in education and good jobs.
Increased votes for Reform UK in local elections in England in May 2025 show Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ Austerity 2.0 is fuelling a right-wing backlash.
The People’s Assembly demo will hold Labour ministers’ feet to the fire over their shameless, careerist lurch to the right. They’ll make known that this Labour government can get away with its brutal scapegoating of marginalised communities no more.
As a disabled and chronically ill person, there is nothing worse than ableism: the blatant mix of classism, discrimination, and a basic belief that non-disabled people are superior to disabled people. But disablism – a more conscious and direct act of blatant discrimination or abuse directly aimed at a disabled person based on prejudice around disability and ideas of inferiority (often being more overt and intentional) – is potentially worse.
It is even worse when it’s being committed by another disabled person, especially when this is being committed by so-called disabled activists, organisations, and charities that are supposed to be protecting and supporting the disabled people that they claim to represent. You may think this doesn’t happen – but it does, and the number of people affected by it appears to be on the rise.
Ableism or disablism?
As a long time campaigner and activist, I was completely disgusted when I recently experienced this behaviour myself from a disabled people’s campaign group. This experience left me feeling upset, used, and incredibly insulted. It was very clear that the group had absolutely no consideration of the chronic conditions I lived with and that their method of organising wasn’t accessible for everyone who wanted to support them in both direct actions and online.
Along with the fact that there is so much of an assault on disabled and chronically ill people right now, under this Tory – sorry Labour – government, the last thing we need is for us to be attacking each other. So, I began to ask myself if this experience has happened to me, am I the only one that has been treated like this? And if so, what is going on here?
Disablism at its worst
I wanted to know if this was just a one-off experience for me. So, I decided to reach out on X to see if anyone else had experienced this type of behaviour within disabled and chronic illness communities. I was completely shocked at the number of responses I received both openly and via private message.
There was clearly a huge issue here, and it wasn’t just me:
After recent experiences…
Has anyone had any negative experiences with disability and disabled rights campaign groups…? Or have you felt gaslighted, excluded, or discriminated against…?
Along with many other disabled and chronically ill activists, campaigners, and organisers there was sadly a wave of responses. From disabled people’s campaign groups to established charities, the disablism was rife.
One of the people who responded to my post was journalist Melissa K. Parker. Melissa explained to me that:
When I started the online campaigning against assisted dying it was because, to me, there was a gap. There was no focus on online campaigning, and I couldn’t understand the lack of it because it felt like common sense.
When I reached out to certain organisations they would say “we have a plan, wait for that…” but it just never happened.
Let me be clear, I believed and still believe we are fighting for our lives. When I asked for help, a simple share, I was most often told ‘no’ by some of the most prominent organisations. I look back on that time – and I was going through it, a right state, wrecked – and just thinking that if I could get certain organisations behind it, I could do something. I think and believe this is backed by others experiences, and these organisations are disorganised, too concerned with upsetting those in power, hostile to new ideas, and slow to any kind of meaningful action.
It’s a shame because we need more hand-made protests like that. Why wouldn’t a disability rights organisation want that…? To me, it’s the kind of thing that Barbara Lisicki and others did. It’s become too polished and pristine, done just right. Who does that serve…?
Disability activist or careerist?
It was becoming quite clear that the same people who had mistreated me also had form. But it wasn’t just the campaign groups. This problem stretched deep into charities too:
The head of the MEAssociation wrote an article telling ME patients to get out of bed and do more. He resigned 4 months later but not after the entire organisation had defended him and no apology nor retraction has occurred.
Many chronically ill and disabled people were being let down, ignored, or removed because their needs don’t fit the narrative being offered. It was telling that there was an almost narcissistic need for some activists to be in total control of organisations. This even extended to people being removed from safe spaces and groups, with no apparent cause or reason. Controlling moderators were not sharing important articles and information to chronically ill and disabled people, due to their choice of disassociation.
When I started my petition against the government over their proposed disability benefit cuts, I didn’t think the biggest gatekeepers would be from my own community.
I didn’t expect unconditional support, but I didn’t think I would be excluded from spaces by other activists. I thought we all had the common aim of getting these proposals stopped – but obviously for some organisations, optics and keeping the status quo are more important.
It’s exhausting fighting the government – and that should be using all my energy. But sadly it’s more exhausting dealing with this childish pettiness, bullying, and passive aggression from organisations and activists who should know better.
There’s space for everyone in this fight back against these cuts, let’s not exclude people.
And this is just one example of one person trying to share a petition (which you can sign here). How many more chronically ill and disabled people are being pushed out of disabled activism by other disabled activists?
Fighting back against disabled disablism
There was clearly a major problem with how many disabled and chronically ill people were being treated like this. I remembered trying to get other organisations to support the campaign group the Chronic Collaboration I set up.
So, when I saw that there had been a “Disability Rebellion” recently set up for this very reason, I got in touch to ask the organiser, Atlanta, what her experience of discrimination and exclusion by other disabled people was. Atlanta told me:
So in setting up Disability Rebellion, I have tried to reach out to other movements/charities and have found that some have been unwilling to engage with me. One group in particular doesn’t seem keen on working with newer activists and on the few occasions they’ve interacted with me, it was to be critical over trivialities.
They showed no interest in working with Disability Rebellion. I didn’t realise until recently that other people faced the same issues and some have told me that they have encountered outright hostility from them.
Disability Rebellion is working with movements because we can make a bigger impact working together and I believe that gatekeeping fosters the very division that the government can use against us.
We do not believe in gatekeeping and we believe that we are stronger together. We also believe in organising protests online because many organisations are not utilising the power of online activism, which leaves out the disabled activists who cannot leave their home or get to protest in person.
A lot of disabled people have told me that they don’t feel represented because they can’t go and protest in person. We want activism to be accessible to all.
Calling out the disablism
There is clear gaslighting, gatekeeping, bullying, and discrimination against younger and newer activists – who are clearly being targeted by older, set-in-their-ways activists who also believe they have full ownership of disability activism and full control of what we can and can’t campaign about.
Shockingly, this is literally going on right now.
As I was writing this article, new campaign group Crips Against Cuts put out this statement over one of the organiser’s use of accessibility aids:
This, along with my own experiences, has been incredibly difficult for me to write about and go through – as it has for the others that have been affected by this behaviour.
Disability doesn’t discriminate – and yet we do
The last thing I want to do is to criticise the community I come from; the community I want to continue to support – especially at a time when we are already being targetted so much by our current government. But I cannot accept this behaviour from my community either.
This needs to be called out for what it is. Furthermore, we all need to look at our own behaviour. If this was an employee-employer situation, many of the cases I’ve mentioned here would constitute legal proceedings.
We know that disability doesn’t discriminate – so, neither should we. Otherwise we are letting the same rhetoric we are fighting divide and conquer us.
If this doesn’t change it will quite literally set back the fight and potentially change the progression of disability rights campaigning in this country.
As Canary columnist Rachel Charlton-Dailey has documented in her brilliant new book Ramping Up Rights, the history of fighting for the rights of chronically ill and disabled people has been hard enough as it is. Yet some people in our own communities seem determined to make it even harder.
Throughout May, courts will sentence 19 Just Stop Oil supporters for their planning of and participation in protests calling for a faster transition away from fossil fuels. All of them could face years in prison if previous sentencings are anything to go by.
Between them, they have already spent 91 months in prison on remand for these charges, an equivalent of 7 years and 7 months. This is despite the fact that courts have handed not a single one of them a custodial sentence yet.
Just Stop Oil: 19 supporters facing sentencing in May for peaceful protests
The 19 Just Stop Oil supporters will attend the following sentencing hearings:
M25 Gantry Conspiracy: Two separate trial groups will be sentenced for planning the climbing of gantries on the M25 in 2022. 9 May in Southwark Crown Court: Abigail Percy-Ratcliffe (25), Ian Bates (65). 15 May in Southwark Crown Court: Phoebe Plummer (24), David Mann (53).
M25 Gantry Climbing: One group will be sentenced for climbing gantries on the M25 in 2022. 9 May in Southwark Crown Court: Amy-Rose Friel O’Donnell (22), anonymous.
Heathrow Airport Conspiracy: One group will be sentenced for a conspiracy to cause disruption at Heathrow Airport. 16 May in Isleworth Crown Court: Hannah Schafer (61), Rosa Hicks (29), Sally Davidson (37), Luke Elson (32), William Goldring (27), Sean O’Callaghan (30), Luke Watson (35), Rory Wilson (25), Adam Beard (56).</li>
Manchester Airport Conspiracy: One group will be sentenced for a conspiracy to cause disruption at Manchester Airport. 23 May in Minshull Crown Court: Margaret Reid (54), Indigo Rumbelow (31), Ella Ward (22), Daniel Knorr (23).
These sentencing hearings will be among the first to take place since Just Stop Oil hung up the high vis in March.
Lord Walney effect: jail sentences for peaceful protest
Judges have previously argued that high sentences were required to deter others from taking similar action with Just Stop Oil. However, it is now unclear who this would deterred – and from what action – in the group’s absence.
Courts will hand the 19 defendants sentences for taking entirely nonviolent actions to demand that the government accelerate their transition away from fossil fuels. In the cases of the airport conspiracies, activists didn’t even carry out the planned actions.
All 19 were convicted in the months after the disgraced ‘Lord’ Walney, the paid oil and arms industry lobbyist, called for groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action, who oppose his clients’ interests, to be silenced and jailed. Prior to Lord Walney’s report in May 2024, jail sentences for peaceful protest in Britain remained extremely unusual.
Courts are carrying out the sentencings within the wider context of a prison overcrowding crisis. Prisons are releasing thousands of inmates early to avoid catastrophic prison conditions. Currently, 31 supporters of Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action, and HS2 Rebellion find themselves in UK prisons. The UN has previously described the excessive sentencing of UK protesters as ‘not acceptable in a democracy’.
M25 Gantry Conspiracy & Climbing
The charges against the M25 Gantry Conspiracy defendants are the same as those that led to courts handing down the unprecedented custodial sentences to the Whole Truth Five in 2024.
On 7 March, the Court of Appeal ruled that those sentences were “manifestly excessive”. It reduced them to three to four years. It suggested that treating earlier Just Stop Oil cases as a precedent for sentencing risked “undesirable and unwarranted sentence inflation”.
These sentencing hearings will show what this High Court ruling means for future protest cases.
Defendants include 24-year-old Phoebe Plummer. Plummer previously received a two-year sentence for throwing soup at the glass covering Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
Previous climbers of gantries received custodial sentences of up to two years.
Heathrow Airport and Just Stop Oil
Three of the nine defendants in the Heathrow Airport case have been in prison on remand since July 2024.
They are now potentially facing retrial after evidence emerged that jurors engaged in jury misconduct, making their guilty verdicts manifestly unsafe. Their judge also implied that the existence of a climate emergency is a matter of opinion. This provides further grounds for appeal.
However, the sentencing hearing of the Heathrow 9 will proceed despite the validity of their convictions being seriously called into question.
Manchester Airport
The four defendants in the Manchester Airport case have been held on remand since August 2024. Noah Crane (20), who spent half a year on remand on the basis of allegedly buying phones for fellow protesters, joined them during their trial. His jury unanimously found him not guilty.
The defendants include Indigo Rumbelow (31), one of the co-founders of Just Stop Oil.
Defend Our Juries spokesperson Tim Crosland said:
Labour is cutting corners wherever you look, from winter fuel payments to pensioners to disability benefits to flood protection. And yet, they somehow find the funding to imprison 19 peaceful climate protesters for almost eight years between them before they have even been sentenced. We are dreading seeing how many years will be added on top of that now that the days of their sentencing hearings have finally arrived. The courts of this country are serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry, not the interests of ordinary people who are scrambling to get by.