Resistance Strategies
posted 2025-07 to 2025-09
A reading list (roughly in reverse chronological order) of contributions to the common pool of news/analysis/resources.
— a readers travelogue ::: to bear witness
When Protesting ICE, We Need Messengers Not Martyrs
As ICE fascists increase their violence against innocent people, a word of reflection on how we make progress
from Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid
"ICE Is Not Combatting Violence—They’re Creating It
"Let me start by reminding you that more than 93% of the people ICE fascists have rounded up have no violent criminal record. This alone shows how the claim that ICE is “protecting our communities from violent criminals” is demonstrably false. Instead, increasingly, ICE is initiating violence against innocent people.
"A law enforcement agency committed to upholding the law does not need to kidnap people. Instead, they follow the law, procure a judicial warrant, read people their rights, and ensure they are following the Constitutional guarantee of due process afforded to every person in this country without exception. ICE is doing none of this, and instead terrorizing innocent people.
"And finally, this is why I say we need messengers, not martyrs. Especially those of us who are U.S. citizens, we must step up as messengers to tell these stories, so those who are traversing the increasingly impossible immigration system do not become martyrs."
The Twilight of Democracy
Reading recommendation
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy was published five years ago. In light of recent developments, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit the book as it was, when first published, a warning shot across the bow. It’s not just about authoritarianism’s rise in far-off places—it’s about how democratic backsliding is happening here, how it’s not just a problem of 'the masses,' but one being driven by elites who once stood for democracy but are now selling it out. Applebaum digs into how former allies—journalists, intellectuals, and political insiders—abandoned the principles they once championed in favor of nationalism, conspiracy theories, and authoritarian power plays. If we want to push back, we need to understand why this is happening and what we can do about it.
Authoritarianism Isn’t Just a Bottom-Up Movement—Elites Are Pushing It
"Too often, we talk about the rise of authoritarianism as if it’s a grassroots rebellion against democracy. That’s a mistake. The real danger isn’t just from the street-level extremists—it’s from the elites who make authoritarianism possible, who normalize it, who create a framework for oppression that others then enforce.
"Applebaum shows how political operatives, media figures, and intellectuals have drifted away from democratic ideals—not because they had a grand ideological epiphany, but because authoritarianism offers them something democracy doesn’t: certainty, power, and personal advantage. For some, it’s the lure of influence. For others, it’s nostalgia for a past where their values went unchallenged. And for many, it’s simply that they’ve found authoritarianism to be a more direct path to power and wealth."
Flipping the script on Trump
from Robert Hubbell
"In less than a week, Democrats and those who value democracy have flipped the script on Trump on multiple fronts. Trump is on his back foot, trying to spin defeats and retreats as victories, which makes Trump look pathetic, desperate, and weak.
"A week ago, Republicans were using the tragic killing of Charlie Kirk as a cudgel to censor Democrats. Through missteps and miscalculations, Trump converted that tragedy-fueled attack on Democrats to a petty vendetta against comedians who dared to criticize Trump. In the process, he managed to portray himself as a sore loser and provoked the ire of the American people, who felt that their free speech rights were under attack.
"The same dynamic is repeating itself on other issues: The weaponization of the DOJ against James Comey, the showdown over the economy, the release of the Epstein files, the scandal of Trump’s border czar accepting $50,000 in cash, the collapse of farm exports because of tariffs, and more."
I Debated A Trump Supporter—Here's How It Went
What started as a curse laden initial message unsurprisingly ended in a racist petty tirade with subtle threats and devoid of facts—but with a critical lesson learned
from Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid
This essay includes much of a back & forth debate between Rashid & a Trump supporter named Matthew regarding due process. It is a good example of debate skills that avoid "taking the bait."
"So what’s the lesson learned? Well, this conversation with Matthew shows that facts do not matter to propagandists. Evidence does not matter. The Constitution does not matter. What matters is reinforcing their own fears with Google searches, sound bites, and racist insults. But here’s the truth: due process is not a partisan idea. It is the bedrock of our Republic and Constitution. And when Trump supporters argue that immigrants don’t deserve due process, what they’re actually saying is that none of us deserve due process—because once you carve out exceptions, there is no limit to who can be stripped of their rights.
"I share this not because Matthew’s insults matter—they don’t—but because his view is a microcosm of what we face. A world that confuses cruelty for strength, ignorance for conviction, and propaganda for evidence. That is precisely how fascism takes hold.
"...Let this be a lesson—do not let propagandists advance the debate until they answer their initial claim. Their goal is to get you to run around in circles. Hold them accountable to answer one point before moving on. And that’s exactly what I did. Let’s return to the discussion."
A Guide to the Everyday Acts That Can Gum Up the Fascist Machine
Inspired by a Danish anti-Nazi list of 10 commandments, a group of artists and organizers made their own list to encourage ordinary people to resist the Trump administration
from The Nation
"When the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark in 1940, the Danes faced a choice: obey or resist. In an article in The Nation earlier this month, Sarah Sophie Flicker details the Danes’ everyday acts of disobedience in the face of the fascist regime. As the organizer and artist explains, the people of Denmark followed 'Ten Commandments for Danes'—a set of moral instructions created by 17-year-old Arne Sejr. The guidance was simple and included such rules as 'don’t work for the Nazis or support their businesses,' 'work slowly or do a bad job when you must work for the Germans,' and 'protect anyone who is ‘chased’ by Nazis.'
"In response to her article, a group of artists and organizers in the United States put together a '10 Commandments of Defiance,' inspired by the Danish list."
Calling People of Faith
The Time to Act is Now
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"We are living through what may be the most dangerous convergence in human history.
"According to the V-Dem Institute, authoritarianism now governs over 70% of the world's population. Freedom House, another global democracy watchdog, reports that only 20% of the people of the world live in countries they rate as 'free.'
"But there’s a second crisis unfolding simultaneously - one that receives far less attention but may be even more destabilizing. Across every major faith tradition - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism - deep divisions are growing as power hungry, financially motivated supremacists are exploiting the loneliness, fear, and anxiety that cultural displacement breeds, and drawing people into prophetic visions that justify purging society of perceived enemies of Christian dominion, taking over secular institutions, and replacing them with theocracy. Battlelines are being drawn, and violent rhetoric and violence itself is on the rise.
"There's a concept in sociology called "the sacred canopy"—the idea that religion creates a protective dome over communities, giving people shared meaning, shared values, and a sense of security about their place in the universe from cradle to grave. For most of human history, these canopies held...
"Here's what I've learned: fascists can hijack broken faith, but they cannot withstand a healthy faith. They can exploit spiritual crises, but they crumble before spiritual power.
"Look at history: People of faith led the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and the movements that brought down apartheid and toppled communist authoritarianism. Today, they are leading democracy movements worldwide.
"Why? Because authentic faith always calls us beyond ourselves. It demands we see the divine spark in others. It challenges us to build beloved communities rather than dominate and exclude."
Don't Be Afraid To Speak Up
Courage is contagious...and we're going to need it!
from Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
"Americans speaking up is precisely what this administration doesn’t want. They want us to be overwhelmed by all the stories about all the things. They want us to be intimidated from exercising our right to speak, lest we fall under attack too. So, our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. 'gCourage is contagious'g is becoming one of our mottos for this administration. Keep focusing on the truth. Keep speaking out. Keep going.
"We’re in this together,"
From Spark to Sustained Fire
How the No Kings Movement Can Reach the Tipping Point
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"The No Kings protests created momentum. Now we build the movement infrastructure that can sustain and escalate that momentum into sustained pressure. This requires treating the next six months as a movement-building period focused on reaching the 3.5% threshold and more, which is likely to be necessary in the U.S. today, through expanded participation and deeper organizational capacity."
This is a deep dive into what happened with No Kings 1 and what we can do moving into No Kings 2.
Beyond Resistance
Building the Democracy We've Never Had
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"We stand at the end of an era. The familiar landmarks of liberal democracy, the institutions, norms, and assumptions that have shaped our political landscape for generations, are crumbling before our eyes. The pace of global change has outstripped the adaptive capacity of democratic systems designed for a slower, more stable world. Extreme inequality, technological disruption, climate crisis, and mass migration have exposed democracy's vulnerabilities in ways that authoritarian movements exploit with devastating effectiveness.
"But this moment of crisis is also a moment of unprecedented possibility. We are not fighting to return to a democracy that never fully existed for most people. We are fighting to birth the democracy that has always been our deepest aspiration - one that finally lives up to its liberatory potential.
The False Choice of Restoration
'We are the ones we've been waiting for.' —June Jordan
"Too often, pro democracy forces in the U.S. frame their work as defending democracy against authoritarianism, as if democracy were a finished project under attack rather than an unfinished revolution waiting to be completed. This defensive posture accepts the premise that what we had before was good enough, that our task is preservation rather than transformation.
"The democracy we inherited was built with tools of exclusion, extraction, and domination. It was designed by and for white, property-owning men in a world of slavery, genocide, and the subjugation of women. Every expansion of democratic participation - from abolition to women's suffrage to civil rights - required breaking the rules of the existing system, not defending them.
"June Jordan understood this deeper truth, calling upon us to struggle as the women who helped lead the South African freedom movement did who recognized that "We are the ones we've been waiting for." We cannot wait for institutions to save us or for someone else to grant us the democracy we deserve. We must create it ourselves, right now, in the midst of crisis."
Indivisible’s Commitment to Nonviolence
From the start, we've been committed to non-violence as a guiding principle in everything we do: our protests, our organizing, and our advocacy.
from Indivisible
"We reject all forms of political violence and intimidation, no matter the source or the target. That’s not just a moral stance—it’s a strategic one. Movements that create lasting change do so by building trust, forging solidarity, and demonstrating discipline, even in the face of threats or attacks.
"Non-violence doesn’t mean backing down. It means standing firm in our values, channeling our anger and our hope into action, and refusing to become what we’re fighting against. We are up against a movement that feeds on fear and chaos. Our answer is a movement grounded in courage, solidarity, and the unshakable belief that a better, more just democracy is worth fighting for—together.
"Non-violence is our strength
"We are firmly committed to non-violence. That’s not just a moral stance—it’s how we build durable power. We reject political violence and intimidation in all forms. Our resistance is strategic, principled, and grounded in the knowledge that peaceful movements win."
Researchers Shift Tactics To Tackle Extremism as Public Health Threat
Researchers are framing increasing extremism, and people’s lack of awareness of it, as a public health issue
from the Minnesota Post
"Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 1,371 hate and extremist groups nationwide sowing unrest through a wide range of tactics, sometimes violent. Over the last several years, the group writes, the political right has increasingly shifted toward 'an authoritarian, patriarchal Christian supremacy dedicated to eroding the value of inclusive democracy and public institutions.'
"Researchers at American University’s Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab, or PERIL, say that in online spaces, 'hate is intersectional.' (For example, Pasha Dashtgard, PERIL’s director of research, explains, platforms dedicated to male supremacy are often also decidedly antisemitic.) Seemingly innocuous discussions erupt into vitriol: The release of 'A Minecraft Movie' prompted tirades against an alleged trend toward casting Black women and nonbinary people.
"The continued escalations drove staffers at PERIL and the Southern Poverty Law Center to approach the problem from a different angle: Treat extremism as a public health problem. Community Advisory, Resource, and Education Centers are now operating in Lansing, Michigan, and Athens, Georgia, offering training, support, referrals and resources to communities affected by hate, discrimination, and supremacist ideologies and to people susceptible to radicalization, with a focus on young people.
"The team defines extremism as the belief that one’s group is in direct and bitter conflict with another of a different identity — ideology, race, gender identity or expression — fomenting an us-versus-them mentality mired in the conviction that resolution can come only through separation, domination or extermination."
Immigrant Justice as Central to Anti-Authoritarian Resistance
A detailed analysis & deep dive into counter-strategies
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"Research consistently shows that "xenophobia, anti-immigration sentiments, nativism, ethno-nationalism are, in different ways, central elements in the ideologies, politics, and practices of right-wing populism and Extreme Right Wing Parties." This isn't merely correlation - xenophobia functions as what scholars call "the vicious circle of xenophobia" where "anti-immigrant rhetoric and populist policies lead to adverse immigrant selection" creating a "self-reinforcing dynamic process" that accelerates democratic breakdown."
The Future Is Coming and It's (Literally) Sunny
Notes on the Solar Revolution
from Meditations in an Emergency (Rebecca Solnit)
"Two things are striking about the Trump Adminstration's tying itself to fossil fuel and particularly to affirmative action for coal, welfare for coal, bailouts for coal. One is that it's a losing game in the long run, because renewable energy is just better in every way--profoundly cheaper, profoundly cleaner, more universally available, far quicker to install. More universally available means you can hook up your own house as people from Australia to Pakistan have done, and make your own power to run your home; you can achieve the kind of energy independence talked about as a national goal or make it a personal goal, even run your electric car off your roof.
"Propping up fossil fuel is like propping up white supremacy: the future of the USA is a nonwhite majority, and the future of the human race is renewable energy. You can batter it and badge it and try to roll time itself backward, but you can't in the long term stop the renewable revolution. You can just make things worse in the short term, so that some planet-destroyers can grab a few more dollars. Bill McKibben spoke about all this on tour for his exhilarating new book Here Comes the Sun, a glorious compendium of solar facts and possibilities, a big-picture overview of where we're at and where we could go.
"The solar revolution means that power can be decentralized, democratized, distributed far more justly. So it makes perfect and hideous sense, given the nostalgia of authoritarians for their version of a golden age (of exclusion, exploitation, and inequality ), to tie themselves to the past, with the heavy anchor of all fossil fuel's problems. Because the other reason team Trump loves fossil fuel is because it's so inherently anti-democratic (and deeply tied to authoritarian regimes from Russia to Saudi Arabia and some autocratic left regimes, such as the Maduro regime in Venezuela)."
Reflections on the Death of Charlie Kirk
"Empathy in a not so empathetic time is not a sign of weakness — but of humanity"
from Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid
"Hannah Arendt once wrote, 'The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.'
"That quote has echoed in my mind as I reflect on the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We’ve seen a disturbing cruelty take hold in our politics. I want to be clear: I extend empathy to Kirk and I pray for his family, not because of who he is, but because of who I am. I do so not because I find a single redeeming quality in his personality or character. I honestly don’t. But instead, because I care about how we move forward as a country when violence has tragically and increasingly become the norm? This is not sustainable.
"I know this is hard. We saw the cruelty of the MAGA right when MN Democratic State Senator Melissa Hortman was assassinated in a targeted attack. To this day Donald Trump never bothered to condemn that political violence or extend his sympathies.
"Why have empathy for those who show none?
"It gets even more difficult to have empathy when you recall that Kirk once sneered, 'I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage.' Moreover he falsely claimed 'guns save lives,' and even argued it was 'worth it' for some people to die from gun violence every year just so the Second Amendment could exist. He dehumanized immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, Black people, Palestinians, women, and more.
"Two things can be simultaneously true. I can detest what Kirk stood for and the hatred he spread and work ferociously to counter his hate. And, I can be sure to not allow Kirk’s injustices make me act like him. I will not allow his fear of the other infect my ability to see the humanity in every person.
"My standard is justice, always, and that will never change.
The American Kill List
Political violence is metastasizing from the ballot box to the front door and the system is teaching future attackers how to play the game
from Critical Resistance
"Today brought two headlines that capture the state of America: another school shooting in suburban Denver, leaving teenagers clinging to life — and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a university event in Utah.
"And none of this started today. Three months ago, in Minnesota, a man dressed as a police officer went door-to-door with a kill list of Democratic lawmakers and abortion providers. Two people were murdered in their home, two more shot, and dozens of names were found on the suspect’s list.
"And now, just three months later, the country is reeling again. Another school shooting has left children fighting for their lives. Charlie Kirk, who spent years telling Americans that gun deaths were an acceptable price of freedom, was assassinated mid-sentence while discussing mass shootings.
"If we only react to today’s events in isolation, we miss the pattern: political violence is metastasizing. It’s targeting classrooms, podiums, and private homes, and it’s feeding on a culture that treats opponents as enemies to be destroyed.
"And let’s be clear: this is not evenly distributed. Nearly every planned, ideologically motivated political killing or plot of the last decade has come from the right — driven by white supremacist, Christian nationalist, and anti-government movements that explicitly dehumanize political opponents. Data from the ADL, CSIS, and federal agencies are unequivocal: right-wing extremism accounts for the overwhelming majority of extremist murders and plots. When political leaders call their opponents 'vermin,' 'traitors,' or an 'enemy within,' they are not just firing up the base. They are naming targets.
Charlie Kirk and the Empathy Trap
from The New Republic
Comments in the aftermath: "Kamala Harris: 'Political violence has no place in America.' Hakeem Jeffries: 'Political violence of any kind and against any individual is unacceptable and completely incompatible with American values.' Gabby Giffords, herself a survivor of gun violence, said in a statement, 'We must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence.'
"These prim pronouncements are, if nothing else, hard to square with the images of the National Guard doing armed patrols through the streets of Washington, D.C., and threats by the President to send troops into other Democrat-governed cities.
"These denunciations of political violence are too tasteful for the moment. Piously expressing respect for Kirk’s work and incanting the importance of 'debate' are capitulations to Republicans’ invoking standards to which the right no longer pretends to adhere.
"Elizabeth Warren steered in the right direction yesterday when she refused to be cowed by a reporter who wanted to know if Democrats would be dialing back their rhetoric: 'Oh, please. Why don’t you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he’s posted and every ugly word.'"
Responding to Political Violence
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"From a strategic nonviolent resistance perspective, drawing from the Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence (HOPE-PV) framework available at endpoliticalviolence.org, this incident presents several critical considerations:
Potential Movement Impact
- Escalation Risk
- Narrative Battle
- Chilling Effect
Strategic Response Framework
- Immediate Backfire Strategy
- Prevent Authoritarian Exploitation
- Coalition Building
- Protect Democratic Space
- Strategic Communication
"The key insight from HOPE-PV is that 'the struggle to uphold democracy is ours, as a people. It is not just the government's job to counter political violence. It falls to all of us.' This incident, while tragic, regardless of Kirk’s policy positions and ideology, can either strengthen authoritarianism or help to build a stronger pro-democracy coalition - the outcome depends on how strategically pro-democracy forces respond."
Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence (HOPE-PV)
Ordinary people have always made it clear: together, we are powerful, and political violence ends here
from
"The HOPE guide is designed to help people across the United States counter political violence. It aims to empower individuals and strengthen communities to make political violence backfire against those who incite, threaten, and enact it.
"Community responses to political violence can both support victims and impose costs on those who incite and engage in abuse. We need to stand up to those who want to silence our voices, who try to deny us our rights, and who aim to bully their way into political influence through intimidation and violence."
The 'Backfire' Model
"The goal of the 'backfire' model is to make sure that when any kind of political violence takes place, perpetrators face high costs for their actions.
- Reveal
- Redeem
- Reframe
- Redirect
- Resist
Upgrade Your Activism
The Evidence-Based Path from Protest to Power
from The Existential Republic
"Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan compiled rigorous data from 323 major resistance campaigns between 1900 and 2006. Their research revealed the specific mechanisms that transform moral outrage into political victory. They documented which tactics succeed, which fail, and most importantly, why.
"The difference between movements that change history and those that become footnotes isn't passion or righteousness. It's strategic competence. And strategy can be learned.
"Gene Sharp documented 198 methods of nonviolent action. Successful campaigns use dozens simultaneously. These include economic boycotts and strikes, tax resistance, alternative institutions, civil disobedience, social non-cooperation, and parallel governance structures."
This essay goes on to explore successful past resistance movements and their underlying strategies and actions.
How to Protect People During ICE Raids
A Rapid Response Action Plan for Faith Communities
from Vote Common Good
"Faith traditions call us to welcome the stranger, protect the vulnerable, and love our neighbors.
"In the face of renewed ICE enforcement actions and immigration raids, we must be ready to act swiftly, courageously, and in solidarity.
"This action plan equips faith communities to respond immediately and meaningfully when immigration enforcement threatens the well-being of undocumented individuals and families in our communities."
Why Anti-Authoritarian, Pro-Freedom Forces Must Stay in the Fight Within Major Political Parties
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"Whether we like it or not, the two major political parties control the levers of power in the U.S.—from the presidency to Congress to local governments. The parties determine policy, set legislative agendas, confirm judicial appointments, and decide whether democracy itself survives or is eroded further.
"Political Parties Are Vehicles, Not Religious Doctrines:
One of the biggest mistakes people make is treating political parties as fixed ideological entities, rather than instruments of power that can be reshaped.
"The Democratic Party isn’t a savior—but it is a battlefield."
What Worked Overseas
Field Lessons We Can Use Tomorrow
from Will Robinson
"From the Baltic Way to Serbia’s Otpor to Sudan’s professionals, effective movements ran on three things: parallel institutions, dignified rituals, and visible defections."
"Principles that travel
- "Build a second civic spine. Poland’s Solidarity was not a protest but a network: workplace committees, strike funds, and an underground press that became 'a state within a state.'
- "Make culture the containeri. The Baltic Way (600 km human chain) and Estonia/Latvia’s Singing Revolution turned identity into strategy. Czechoslovakia’s keys made every participant a bell of liberation.
- "Engineer defections. Philippines, 1986: nuns handing flowers to soldiers produced a moral crisis for the regime. Serbia, 2000: months of student-led organizing split police and military loyalty. Soviet August Coup, 1991: refusal to fire collapsed the plot.
- "Train for nonviolence. Discipline isn’t vibes; it’s logistics—marshals, de-escalation scripts, clear run-of-show.
Filling sandbags
Nine wins to be thankful for
from If You Can Keep It
"To counter an incremental assault, we also need to work incrementally. Think of it like sandbags. On their own, grains of sand — or even a burlap sack full of them — do little against a flood. No matter what, sandbags are never going to prevent all water damage. But add up enough of them, fast enough, and they can redirect the flow and ward off the worst of a disaster. They give us the chance to rebuild.
"That’s the sandbag effect.
"We’re very much in the 'holding back the flood' phase of the project to defend our democracy. We’re going to be there for a while. And, yes, it’s still far from enough — but this week the sandbags are starting to pile up."
"Authoritarianism works, in part, by attacking everywhere. It tries to overwhelm a democracy with a wave of stories that will shock, numb, and demoralize its citizens into acquiescence. But that’s never the whole story — and the wins for democracy are often just as prevalent as the losses, albeit usually less shocking."
Circuses vs. Roses
Notes on Pleasure and Scold Culture
from Meditations in an Emergency (Rebecca Solnit)
"It is true that there are a lot of people paying attention to a lot of things besides the triple crisis of authoritarianism, the climate crisis, and Silicon Valley's sinister plans for us all. But it is also true that some of the people actually doing useful things about them may also have recreational moments here and there, whether they take a bubble bath or cook a luxurious dinner or watch a movie. Or snack on some pop gossip. We can do both."
Beyond Resistance
Reclaiming our nation for the workers who build it
Hosted by RUBI and partners
- When:
- September 10, 7:00pm ET
- Where:
- Online
- Featuring:
- Congressman Ro Khanna
"To preserve our democracy and to rebuild our fractured nation, we need to mobilize a much broader and more diverse base of people, including rural and working-class people across race and geography. To do this, we must offer a compelling vision that addresses the grievances of rural communities and working-class people."
We Can Push Back Now
Clatter in the Capital: Turning Pots and Pans into a Neighborhood Shield
from Will Robinson
"A cacerolazo—literally, a 'pots and pans protest'—is a simple, nonviolent act with deep roots around the world. Residents bang on metal cookware from their windows, balconies, or in the streets, creating a wall of sound that says, we see you, we’re together, and we won’t be quiet.
"It’s more than just noise. It’s a signal. It tells neighbors something is happening. It tells those in power they are being watched. And it tells the media—and anyone listening—that the community will not be silent in the face of intimidation."
Genocide, Neutrality and the University Sector
Neutrality as a colonial construct
from Rafeef Ziadah
"The ongoing destruction in Gaza demands urgent academic and ethical reckoning, exposing the complicity of universities and scholarly disciplines in sustaining settler-colonial violence. This essay interrogates the role of Sociology as a discipline and academic institutions in shaping, legitimising, or resisting systemic oppression, with a focus on institutional neutrality as a mechanism of erasure. Drawing on critical scholarship on settler colonialism, anti-Palestinian racism and neoliberal academia, the article examines how universities suppress Palestine advocacy through overt repression, bureaucratic silencing and material entanglements with the military-industrial complex. It critiques the discourse of neutrality and balance, demonstrating how these frameworks function to maintain dominant power structures. By tracing the complicity of Western academic institutions – from their partnerships with Israeli military research to their suppression of pro-Palestinian activism – the article argues that meaningful decolonisation requires a rejection of performative neutrality and an active dismantling of structures that sustain occupation and genocide."
We Teach Life, Sir
Ziadah recites the poem
from Rafeef Ziadah
"Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into soundbites and word limits."
"Civil rights activist Angela Davis says that Ziadah’s words 'hit you right in the heart. They are more powerful than any weapon.'"
Misperceptions of the Border: Migration, Race, and Class Today
from Adam Hanieh & Rafeef Ziadah
"In recent decades, a rich current of Marxist literature has insisted that categories of race and class under capitalism cannot be separated from one another, in either a theoretical or historical sense.1 The basic premise of this work is that processes of class formation are always racialised in specific, historically concrete ways; and that, likewise, racialised groups are necessarily marked by class inequalities and differences in social power.
"All of this has proven exceptionally invigorating to Marxism, and our argument in this paper draws heavily upon many of the insights generated by this existing literature (both new and old). In what follows, however, we single out one dimension of this work that we feel needs to be explored much more systematically: the role of global migration and the nature of national borders within the co-constitution of class and race. By this, we are not at all suggesting that migration, the migrant experience, and the crossing of borders have not figured centrally within Marxist analyses of race and class. There is a strong tradition, particularly exemplified in the work of some Black British writers,9 which has paid close attention to the intersection between racial formation, migration, and labour.10 This work has opened up critical insights into the relationship between migration, class, and processes of racialisation, particularly through the postwar period. However, in our opinion, this work often takes the national scale and its borders as an assumed given, and does not go far enough in problematising and demystifying the particular place of migrant labour and borders in global capitalism. In what follows, we seek to challenge these common-sense perceptions of national borders, and ask what can be learnt about the interconnections of race and class through more systematically foregrounding migration within the circuit of capital accumulation."
Solidarity in Action
Building Relationships & Coalitions w/ best-selling Author Cristina Jimenez
from Indivisible
"This session is part of our ongoing Solidarity in Action Learning series designed to series and connected to a collective reading of the authors book Dreaming of Home, How We Turn Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change. In this session, we explored how to form, manage and sustain powerful coalitions that amplify community support, social justice and advocacy efforts. Whether you’re working in a local neighborhood network, a national campaign, or an emerging grassroots group, this session equips you with the strategies and inspiration to build deep, values-based partnerships that can hold through conflict, adapt overtime and win change together."
Micro-Creator Training
from Indivisible
- When:
- Sep 30, 3:00pm
- Where:
- Virtual via Zoom
Join us for the kickoff of Indivisible’s brand-new Micro-Creator Training Series, a 4-part monthly program designed to turn local leaders into powerful digital storytellers.
Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine
from Politics Theory Other podcast
"Adam Hanieh, Rafeef Ziadah, and Robert Knox on their new co-authored book, 'Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine'. We spoke about the inadequacy of framing the question of Palestine and the Gaza genocide solely as a humanitarian issue and how the Israeli project of settler-colonialism has been part and parcel of the expansion of European and American capitalism."
The Fourth Estate
and Its Role in Democracy
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"The press is supposed to be the Fourth Estate; the watchdog that keeps the three branches of government in check. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches have formal checks and balances, but the media is supposed to function as the unofficial fourth pillar, making sure none of them get away with abusing power in the dark…
"This is why authoritarians, oligarchs, and corrupt elites hate independent journalism. It’s one of the only institutions that can meaningfully challenge their power. And this is also why they’ve spent decades trying to dismantle or co-opt it…
"Fighting back requires two things: protecting independent journalism from state repression and breaking corporate control of the media. Here’s how..."
Learning About Scripted Violence
from the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook (Scot Nakagawa)
"Chip Berlet’s work examines how political rhetoric, especially coded language, can incite violence by portraying certain groups as existential threats, thus encouraging individuals to take violent action. His analysis highlights the responsibility of political leaders, media figures, and activists in shaping discourse that either promotes or discourages violence."
Nakagawa always provides a clear breakdown of what is at stake, how authoritarianism works, and strategies to fight back.
Build your click-through agency by clicking on the link below. This practice is an act of resistance in an age of rising AI summaries that ask you to passively receive their generative text wthout clicking through to any original source of information — to accept them as a truth oraclei without the need for transparent logic or the citations behind their conclusions.
An important way to fight Trump fascism.
"The courts alone cannot thwart fascist rule. The media alone cannot do it. But large numbers of American citizens rising up to oppose this police state can. Sanctuary Communities provide a means of protecting the rule of law and salvaging our democracy."
from Robert Reich
"As you’re painfully aware, Trump’s ICE is rapidly morphing into a national police-state — targeting legal immigrants as well as the undocumented, some of them awaiting their asylum hearings, others working with approved green cards. Many have been hardworking members of their communities for decades.
"Soon, 10,000 more ICE agents will join the ranks of this federal police force — covering their faces with masks, wearing no identification badges, and driving unmarked cars — taking people from their homes and jobs and sending them to crowded and unsanitary prison camps like Florida’s new 'Alligator Alcatraz' or to prisons in other countries.
"How can we fight this? The Trump regime is threatening sanctuary cities and towns with loss of federal revenue. Some states, such as New Hampshire, have passed laws making it illegal for cities and towns to provide sanctuary for immigrants and others.
"But the Trump regime cannot prevent us from joining together with other citizens to become a Sanctuary Community — providing assistance to families whose lives and well-being are threatened by Trump’s federal police.
"Sanctuary Communities — which are being organized around the country — simply announce themselves publicly and take steps such as:
- monitoring and documenting ICE raids,
- establishing an early-warning system to announce where ICE is making arrests,
- witnessing and videotaping arrests and disappearances,
- providing information to national and state media,
- meeting with state and town officials to oppose local law enforcement collusion with ICE,
- speaking with community groups, houses of worship, libraries, hospitals and clinics, veterans groups, schools, and colleges about ICE mistreatment of citizens and immigrants,
- raising funds for emergency assistance, and
- joining other Sanctuary Communities across the nation to stand against the proliferation of police-state tactics that do not represent our shared values as Americans.
"Taking a stand against Trump’s emerging police state is not just about immigration and community. It’s a stand against fascism.
"The courts alone cannot thwart fascist rule. The media alone cannot do it. But large numbers of American citizens rising up to oppose this police state can. Sanctuary Communities provide a means of protecting the rule of law and salvaging our democracy."
Outside-Inside Power
from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
"Right now, Republicans are in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, which means that Democrats do not have control of committees, investigations, or ability to conduct oversight in the congressional sense.
"Now, where I have a departure with some others is that I'm a big believer in building outside power, outside organizing, etc.
"And to me, that means getting creative as a party.
"For example, we don't need Republicans to do hearings — Democrats can call shadow hearings where all Democrats invite a witness, talk about this, etc.
"I did this last year with Jamie Raskin on the Oversight Committee. We conducted a shadow hearing around the corruption in the Supreme Court, which led to my filing articles of impeachment on Justice Alito.
"One thing that I do think our party needs is a vision that's not just anti-Trump.
"This is a position I've long held: We actually need a positive, affirmative vision for this country, and be willing to take risks, and vote on real things, and actually tell people what we're fighting for."
National Voter Registration Day
from a partnership of thousands working on a nonpartisan civic holiday
- When:
- September 16
"In anticipation of over 100,000 state and local elections across the country this year, we’re building the nationwide Partner coalition that will help get America #VoteReady for their next trip to the ballot box."
We're Going to Win
from Chop Wood Carry Water (Jess Craven)
"I’m telling you, folks. We’re going to get through this. Trump grows more unpopular by the day (see above chart), we grow stronger, our voices get louder, and the tide continues to shift our way—partially because of your hard work!
"I’m not just blowing smoke. I feel certain that we will win. Our country may be in ruins by the time we do, but we know how to rebuild and if we must, we will, far better than before, too.
"The key thing is that we don’t give up. So let’s not."
Sadopopulism Is A Disturbing Policy, But We Need To Understand It
from Status Kuo (Jay Kuo)
"Jay Kuo explores this phenomenon of the modern right, what authoritarian expert Timothy Snyder calls 'sadopopulism.' That a strongman like Trump could win democratic elections on a platform of cruelty and pain may seem counterintuitive, but it is in fact part of a time-tested playbook. We need to first identify it for what it is, why it’s working, and how it’s driving the modern fascist MAGA ethos."
If You Want to Do More, Here Are Four Paths You Can Take
from Chris Bowers (Wolves and Sheep)
"Some folks who have repeatedly engaged in the basic suite of grassroots actions that I recommend—voting, donating, attending events/rallies, contacting elected officials, talking with acquaintances about politics, and helping to turn out voters—feel unsatisfied with the impact their actions have generated but have not lost their zeal for civic involvement. They are still willing to engage in politics, but they are unsure how to take their activism to the next level."
"Sign and send a letter to your U.S. senators, urging them to oppose "pocket rescissions" and protect congressional power over federal spending."
How you can stop Peter Thiel’s Palantir
from Robert Reich
"As I have written, Palantir is at the nexus of several worrisome realities: artificial intelligence, Trump’s use of the U.S. military on American civilians, his attack on immigrants, his collection of personal information on millions of Americans, and the parts of Silicon Valley dedicated to turning the U.S. from a democracy into a dictatorship led by tech bros.
"Palantir sells an AI-based platform that allows its users — among them, military and law enforcement agencies — to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information, and physical characteristics. These are used to identify and surveil individuals.
"In March, Trump signed an executive order requiring all agencies and departments of the federal government to share data on Americans. To get the job done, Trump chose Palantir Technologies.
"According to New York Times reporting, Palantir’s software may now be used to combine data gleaned from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the administration wants access to citizens’ and others’ bank account numbers and medical claims."
Signs of Solidarity
Canvassing Toolkit
from NO Kings
"When businesses and communities stand together, we send a powerful message: immigrants are essential and welcome here. This guide will help you organize locally, engage business owners, and build visible, united resistance.
"Download our printable signs — one designates a private area for employees that ICE cannot enter without a judicial warrant, and others show public solidarity with immigrants. Print them, bring them to businesses, and help send a clear message that our community stands together against fear and intimidation."
Use the following link to download your choice of high-resolution posters.
OutFront Policy & Organizing
from Outfront MN
"Last month, the Trump administration shut down the 988 Suicide & Crisis Hotline's LGBTQ+ youth services. This decision will have devastating impact on LGBTQ+ people of all ages as we continue to withstand attack after attack on our rights. But don't forget: there are always people ready to help. The following organizations are here to assist those in crisis:
- Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860
- LGBTQ National Youth Talkline: 1-800-246-7743
- The Trevor Project Youth Call Line: 1-866-488-7386
- The Trevor Project Yout Text Line: Text ‘START’ to 678-678
- Crisis Text Line: Text ‘HOME’ to 741741
- Black Trans Advocacy Coalition: 855-624-7715 "
DNC Chair Ken Martin Rallies With TX and IL Dems in Chicago
To Take on Trump and Republicans’ Corrupt Scheme To Rig the Congressional Maps
from DNC
"Yesterday, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, DNC Chair Ken Martin stood side by side with Texas Democrats and Illinois Democrats, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, to take on Donald Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s corrupt plan to discriminate against Texas voters and rig congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms while exploiting the pain of Texas flood victims. As Texas Republicans ignore the needs of their own constituents to bend the knee to Donald Trump and attempt to rig their congressional maps to cling to their razor-thin majority, Democrats are standing up for Texans and for democracy in America."
Thursday in the park with DNC Chair Ken Martin
from Chop Wood Carry Water
"Thanks to all who joined us 'in the park,' where Ken Martin and I had a frank talk about where the DNC is, what Democrats are doing, and where we need to go next."
My Undesirable Friends
a Staggering Portrait of Russian Journalists in Dissent
"In Julia Loktev’s epic documentary, filmed before, during, and after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, several courageous Moscow reporters see their worst fears realized."
Fighting the Firehose
How to Counter Right-Wing Disinformation Without Playing Their Game
"The modern right’s media strategy is built on volume, speed, emotion, and repetition.
"It borrows from Russian propaganda playbooks, supercharges them with American capitalism, and distributes it through everything from podcasts to Facebook groups to memes. It's powered by think tanks, billionaire donors, fringe influencers, and culture war entrepreneurs.
"The goal isn’t to persuade people logically — it’s to shape the entire information environment. To confuse, demoralize, distract, and isolate."
So how do we fight back?
"Not by shouting into the void. Not by trying to fact-check every lie. But by using strategic, tested, and community-driven techniques - many drawn from how Eastern European democracies pushed back against Russian disinformation without becoming authoritarian themselves."
SURJ Action Hours
Summer to Grow, Turn Up the Heat!
from SURJ
- When:
- Wednesdays, 7:00-8:00pm (CDT)
- Where:
- Online
"Join us on Wednesdays -- whether you are new to SURJ, or have been organizing with us for awhile -- to take action together.
"We do things like call and write representatives and make public comments on government websites.
"Each action hour will have a training portion so you'll have everything you need to plug in and make an impact. First-timers to SURJ will get an orientation in a Welcome Breakout.
"Join us on Wednesdays to take action together to show up against Trump's illegal, immoral agenda."
Organize in Solidarity
a 5-week training series on organizing our communities to resist ICE
from SURJ
- When:
- Tuesdays, Starting August 26, 7:00-8:45pm (CDT)
- Where:
- Online
"The 5-week solidarity organizing training program is focused on getting you the information, skills, and support you need to take action in your community right now to do something about the Trump regime’s terror campaign of brutality. Over the course of five weeks of training and coaching you will learn how to connect to, and speak from the heart about, why it matters to act courageously and stand in solidarity, to make a plan to speak to your peers and recruit them to join you, to run a campaign to make institutions in your life places of solidarity, and to stand up for your immigrant neighbors."
Forms of Resistance and Reasons to Believe It's Working
from Heather Cox Richardson
"We are entering a period, I believe, where you are seeing both Trump and the people around him him trying to cement as much power as it is possible to do as quickly as they can because they see that it's crumbling."
Duluth Man Walks Up To 12 Miles a Day
Checking in on people living on the streets
from MPR
"Kesti's days start as early as 6 a.m. He walks 10-12 miles most days, through downpours and blizzards, heat waves and cold snaps. He recently climbed 91 flights of stairs in a single day — almost as many stairs as in the Empire State Building."
You launch a power-grab when you fear your voters
from Ezra Levin — Indivisible
"You launch a power-grab when you fear your voters. Last month, Trump signed into law the most regressive and least popular bill in modern American history which, among other things, cut emergency response services nationwide. That same day, a massive flood hit central Texas, and both the local warning system and the state/federal response were so horrifically inadequate that more than 130 Texans -- including 37 children -- died...
"It's time to fight back. The fight for justice and democracy against an authoritarian force often starts this way. The options are few. The odds are long. It looks dicey. In moments like this, you need leaders with intense strategic clarity. You need someone like a Texas State Representative James Talarico to say: 'We are not fighting for the Democratic Party. We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand.'"
Urging an International AI Treaty: An Open Letter
"We call on governments worldwide to actively respond to the potentially catastrophic risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems to humanity, encompassing threats from misuse, systemic risks, and loss of control. We advocate for the development and ratification of an international AI treaty to reduce these risks, and ensure the benefits of AI for all."
Democrats Refuse to Flinch
from Robert Hubbell
"On Tuesday, US Senator John Cornyn and President Trump threatened to send the FBI to arrest Democratic state legislators who fled the state to break quorum in the Texas legislature. See Texas Public Radio, Donald Trump says FBI 'may have to' get involved in ending Texas quorum break. The threat was blatantly unconstitutional and pathetically desperate. Democrats refused to flinch. Indeed, the threats seemed only to embolden Democratic state legislators.
"As Democratic Texas legislator Texas Rep. Armando Walle said,
"'The price to pay [for breaking quorum] pales in comparison to the rights of everyday people, everyday constituents that we represent proudly. Not scared. Not scared at all. Come and take it.'"
Calling All Radical Artists
from Honor the Earth
"We're inviting Indigenous and Black artists across the globe to help us envision a Sovereign Indigenous Future — a future that has grown beyond colonization, genocide, imperialism, prisons, white supremacy, ableism and all the other modern systemic oppressions.
"We're collecting digital submissions of original artworks across various media that respond to this prompt: what does a Sovereign Indigenous Future look like?"
COPAL Resources
Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina
Essential Immigration Resources: Know Your Rights and Get Support
The Handbook for Constitutional Observers
Rapid Response Toolkit
Legal Aid Justice Center
"On this page you will find resources that will allow you to prevent and be prepared for immigration emergencies such as raids, ICE visits to your home, detention, or risk of deportation. Use the menu below to navigate between resources."
Rapid Response Plan if ICE Comes to Your Community
ACLU Oregon
"If you or someone you know is being deported"
This resource includes scripts for a number of different scenarios.
Signal — Getting Started
from Signal
Understand the basics of Signal on Android, iOS, and Desktop.
Capitalism is Illegal
from Progressive International
"This year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on 25 July—the date by which humanity has already used up more resources than the planet can regenerate in an entire year. Two days earlier, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a historic ruling: states are legally obliged to stop this planetary overshoot, and to hold those responsible to account. In effect, the world's highest court has confirmed what movements across the world have long insisted: the climate crisis is not just a political failure. It is an economic and a legal one. And the system driving it—capitalism—is, by every meaningful measure, illegal.
"In an unanimous advisory opinion issued on 23 July, the 15 judges of the ICJ found that: The 1.5°C limit is not just a target—it is a legal threshold; all states have binding legal obligations to prevent 'significant harm' to the environment; fossil fuel production, consumption, and subsidies may constitute 'internationally wrongful acts'; and wealthy countries have additional legal responsibilities to lead the fight against climate change.
"Importantly, the Court affirmed that climate inaction is a breach not only of environmental treaties but of general international law and human rights law. In the words of Professor Jorge Viñuales of Cambridge University, the Court 'essentially sided with the Global South and small island developing states.'"
Know Your Rights
Toolkits
from the ACLU
"Everyone has basic rights under the U.S. Constitution and civil rights laws. Learn more here about what your rights are, how to exercise them, and what to do when your rights are violated."
What Direct Action Does
from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & William J. Barber, II of Our Moral Moment
"In the spring of 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality organized a Freedom Ride from Washington, DC to New Orleans to challenge the illegal practice of racial segregation on interstate travel. It was a nonviolent direct action. White and black passengers boarded the bus and insisted on sitting together, no matter what the authorities said. They would nonviolently face whatever consequences came for their actions because they knew that what they were doing was right. John Lewis, who was 21 years old at the time, said the goal of the ride wasn't just to end segregation; it was to 'take the civil rights movement into the heart of the Deep South.'
"If you visit the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, today, there is a wall of hundreds of mug shots, mostly taken in Mississippi that summer of 1961, before Freedom Riders were sent to the notorious Parchman Prison. After Lewis and his riding partner, Jim Zwerg, were attacked by a mob at the bus depot in Montgomery, Alabama, and another bus was fire bombed in Aniston, Alabama, others came to continue the ride. When Lewis was released from the hospital, he insisted on joining them. They took their direct action to the heart of the Deep South and served 40-day sentences, transforming the Mississippi State Penitentiary into a school for American democracy. Their mug shots cover that wall as a monument to the power of direct action to inspire a moral movement."
"The moral witness of direct actions like the Freedom Rides interrupted everyone in a system that was more fragile than it seemed. It didn't change the minds of Southern governors or Mississippi jailers, but it did force the masses who'd gone along with the quiet violence of the system to decide whether they really believed it was justified.
"This is what direct action does. It exposes the moral bankruptcy of authoritarian regimes. It compels everyday citizens to choose a side in a moral struggle."
Elizabeth Castillo — Story of Courage
from WLRN
"They saw their neighbors taken away by ICE. Then they made a plan
"At first, Castillo was on her own with a megaphone. When she saw ICE vehicles in the streets she followed them in her car, honking and shouting to warn people that they were coming. She started getting up before dawn to patrol her apartment complex. Then she contacted the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which runs a nearby job center. Through it, she was plugged into a citywide network of people who are constantly tracking ICE's activities..."
Moral Monday with Rev Barber & Joy Reid
from Our Moral Moment
"I was glad to join my friend Joy-Ann Reid tonight for a Moral Monday on The Joy Reid Show, where she continues the important truth-telling she practiced at MSNBC, but now with more time and freedom. You can watch her new show and read her newsletter, Welcome to Joy's House! on Substack.
"Joy announced tonight that we're going to do a Moral Monday together once a month on her show, focusing on the moral issues in the news and the soul work that's needed to sustain ourselves in the long fight for justice. I hope you'll help us spread the word and make plans to join us. Our Moral Moment will deliver these episodes directly to our subscribers once a month."
Building Partnerships and Coalitions featuring, Cristina Jimenez
from Indivisible
- When:
- Monday, August 18, 6:00–7:30pm
- Where:
- Online
"Become equipped with strategies and best practices for forming, managing, and sustaining effective coalitions to amplify social, community support, and advocacy efforts."
One Million Rising
from No Kings partnership
"Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations, rollbacks of civil rights, weaponized courts, and full-scale attacks on our democracy. We don't have to wait until it's too late. We can stop this. But it'll take all of us—not just single days of mass action, but sustained organizing in our communities.
"That's why this summer, we're launching One Million Rising—a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design. This is how we build people power that can't be ignored. You're invited to join us—and lead."
The Big Picture
To Block Authoritarian Consolidation and Build a Robust Democracy, We Need To Understand Why We Are Where We Are Politically
from Scot Nakagawa
"We're in a systems failure moment disguised as a political crisis. What looks like partisan polarization is actually an effect of the breakdown of the institutional arrangements that have governed American democracy since the New Deal. We're experiencing the collision of four simultaneous crises:"
- Democratic infrastructure collapse
- Economic democracy deficit
- Information system breakdown
- Social capital erosion that has transformed political polarization into emotional polarization
"The meta-strategy: Understanding that political change requires social change. You can't have democratic politics without democratic social relationships, and you can't have democratic social relationships without institutions that create positive interdependence between people who disagree.
"This is why the authoritarian strategy focuses so heavily on social isolation and institutional destruction. They understand that democracy isn't just a political system, it's a social system that requires continuous relationship-building across differences. When those relationships break down, authoritarianism becomes not just possible but emotionally appealing as a way to resolve the anxiety and isolation that social capital collapse creates."
Advancing Our Values
A call to action for Indivisible members to rise together
"In a time of rising injustice and division, the Advancing Our Values campaign is a call to action for Indivisible members to rise together. Rooted in care, solidarity, and resistance, this campaign equips and supports groups to stand up for communities under attack through mutual aid, rapid response, and political education.
"We know that showing up in solidarity means doing so effectively, thoughtfully, and without causing harm. That's why this campaign is about learning and unlearning, listening deeply, and building trust as we take action together."
Messaging Guides
from Anat Shenker-Osorio
"Host of the Words to Win By podcast and Principal of ASO Communications, Anat Shenker-Osorio examines why certain messages falter where others deliver. She has led research for new messaging on issues ranging from freedom to join together in union to clean energy and from immigrant rights to reforming criminal justice. Anat's original approach through priming experiments, task-based testing and online dial surveys has led to progressive electoral and policy victories across the globe."
At UN conference states must prioritize ending Israel's genocide, unlawful occupation and apartheid
from Amnesty International
"The high-level UN conference to discuss a peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and implementation of the two-state solution next week must be centered around the immediate and effective application of international law, including states' obligations to prevent and punish genocide and apartheid and end Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory, said Amnesty International in an advocacy briefing published today."
Undaunted Search for the Truth
Julie Brown's essential reporting on Jeffrey Epstein must be commended
from the Contrarian
"If not for Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, we might never have learned anything about Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation, its implication of wealthy, powerful, influential men, and the existence of massive files documenting all of it. Absent her reporting, we also would not be seeing the first significant break in the MAGA protection racket that has shielded Trump from consequences for his lies, misconduct, incompetence, and cruel policies."
Why Are Oligarchs Turning to Authoritarianism Instead of Supporting Democracy?
from Scot Nakagawa — The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook
"For much of modern history, it was assumed that liberal democracy and capitalism went hand in hand; that free markets and free societies reinforced one another. But today, we're watching a global shift where oligarchs and corporate elites are increasingly embracing authoritarianism over democracy. Why?
- Democracy Is No Longer Necessary for Capitalist Stability
- Oligarchs Prefer Authoritarianism Because It Protects Their Wealth and Power
- Oligarchs Are Betting on Nationalism and Xenophobia to Keep the Public Distracted
- Authoritarianism Expands Their Control Over Data and Surveillance
- The Climate Crisis is Making Oligarchs Abandon Democracy
"The world's most powerful billionaires are choosing authoritarianism because they see democracy as a threat to their wealth and unchecked power. But this isn't inevitable.
"We are not just fighting against authoritarianism - we are fighting for a new vision of democracy. One that is more inclusive, more just, and more economically fair than the one oligarchs are trying to destroy.
"Their strategy is fear, division, and control. Ours must be solidarity, boldness, and direct action. Because if we don't fight for democracy now, we may not have another chance."
Politicize Everything — A Blueprint for a Party That Fights.
The Cycle (Rachel Bitecofer)
"The first rule is: you seize the frame or you lose the narrative. Republicans are already 20 tweets deep blaming "Democrat policies" before you even finish reading the news alert. They don't care if the accusation is coherent, much less accurate. The goal is to own the frame. And once they've set it, the public doesn't forget it."
The final tally for the Big Ugly Bill
from Robert Hubbell
"The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued its final report on the "cost" of the Big Ugly Bill. According to the CBO, the bill will increase the deficit by $3.4 trillion and result in 10 million Americans losing health coverage.
"...the shocking increase in the deficit was spent almost entirely on tax breaks for millionaires and grotesque increases in the budgets for ICE and the military. To the extent the deficit was offset, it was "paid for" by removing 10 million Americans from healthcare."
Please Shout Fire. This Theater Is Burning
Rebecca Solnit — Meditations in an Emergency
"The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn't making that clear."
Facing the Future
Getting Started On Our Long-Game
— Scot Nakagawa
"We are at a potentially paradigm-shifting moment in the history of global politics. The liberal assumption that, with the end of the Cold War, democracy would inevitably prevail was taken too literally, but it's not too late to make that prediction come true. We need to address the emergency at hand, and do so while developing a long-game through which to vet our immediate-term strategies and tactics."
Scot Nakagawa is a political strategist and organizer with more than four decades of experience exploring questions of structural racism, white supremacy, and social justice. He is the cofounder and director of the 22nd Century Initiative, a national strategy and action hub building power at the intersection of opposition to authoritarianism and expanding democratic governance in the US.
This article provides useful and specific srategies for moving forwards.
Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment
from the Poetry Foundation
Poetry is necessary and sought after during crises.
"Pithy and powerful, poetry is a popular art form at protests and rallies. From the civil rights and women's liberation movements to Black Lives Matter, poetry is commanding enough to gather crowds in a city square and compact enough to demand attention on social media. Speaking truth to power remains a crucial role of the poet in the face of political and media rhetoric designed to obscure, manipulate, or worse. The selection of poems below call out and talk back to the inhumane forces that threaten from above. They expose grim truths, raise consciousness, and build united fronts. Some insist, as Langston Hughes writes, "That all these walls oppression builds / Will have to go!" All rail against complacency and demonstrate why poetry is necessary and sought after in moments of political crisis."
Angela Davis — Tanner Lectures on Human Values
Held at Yale in April
"Angela Y. Davis is professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974) to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (2015). Her most recent books include Abolition. Feminism. Now., written with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, and a book of essays Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, vol. 1.
"She is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia, that works in solidarity with people in women's prisons.
"Like many educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a "prison industrial complex," she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a twenty-first-century abolitionist movement."
Keith Ellison is Standing Up
from Robert Hubbell
"Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison has consistently used the full scope of his role to defend Minnesotans from unconstitutional federal overreach and his actions set the standard for what bold leadership looks like in this moment.
"Earlier this year, he issued a formal legal opinion declaring that local law enforcement in Minnesota cannot legally detain individuals based solely on ICE detainers. He made it clear that such actions violate constitutional rights and expose agencies to civil liability. He has also joined multistate lawsuits challenging federal attempts to undermine birthright citizenship and other core protections.
"Following the ICE detention of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, he publicly condemned the act, stating:
"'When a government deports, threatens, [and] arrests people for First Amendment activity, that government is tyrannical. Mahmoud Khalil is being persecuted for his beliefs and free expression.'
"AG Ellison's swift legal positioning and vocal defense demonstrate precisely how AGs can wield both legal tools and public pressure to confront injustice. This is the kind of principled, aggressive leadership every state needs right now."
What's the Plan?
Indivisible weekly conversation
The tone of last Thursday's weekly conversation was markedly different. We are in a critical time for our democracy. Ezra & Leah from Indivisible national were quite articulate about that. We recommend folks watch the recording of their community call and join their upcoming "One Million Rising" training.
Each Thursday: Calls with Indivisible's Co-Founders
You can attend the weekly "What's the plan?" Zoom calls with Indivisible's co-founders Leah and Ezra each Thursday afternoon at 2pm Central Time.
The onslaught of news, the chaos coming out of the White House – it's all meant to overwhelm us. It's a deliberate strategy to sow confusion and make us believe we are powerless to fight back. The antidote: Coming together in community to process what's happening, to sift through what's important and what's just noise, and coalesce around strategies for fighting back. Join Indivisible co-founders Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin each week, as we carve out an hour to discuss what's happening and – more importantly – what's the plan.
History and Practice of Nonviolent Resistance
Erica Chenoweth
Political scientist Erica Chenoweth unpacks what makes a successful movement against authoritarianism, and how nonviolent resistance can be used to uphold democracy.
Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, explains that civil resistance is a nonviolent strategy where ordinary people coordinate to demand and protect democracy.
Successful movements typically rely on four key factors:
- Mass Participation & Momentum
- Broad-based, active involvement (often referred to with the "3.5% rule") helps build pressure and legitimacy.
- Loyalty Shifts
- Civil resistance works when it causes key supporters of a regime (e.g., military, business elites) to defect or withdraw support.
- Resilience Under Repression
- Movements must stay organized and peaceful, even when facing crackdowns, using tactics like the "backfire effect" to turn repression against the regime.
- Innovation in Tactics
- Successful campaigns go beyond protests, using strikes, boycotts, and other forms of noncooperation to sustain pressure.
Chenoweth emphasizes that nonviolence is inclusive and more likely to succeed because it allows widespread participation.
What Is A Mass Movement?
from Scot Nakagawa
"Mass social movements are large-scale, collective efforts by individuals and groups to bring about or resist social, political, or cultural change. They aren’t limited to just one or two specific issues or goals, though a single issue or social change goal may serve as the trigger to mass movement building. Instead, mass movements are, at base, founded on social and cultural shifts and changes that cause large numbers of people to start looking in the same approximate direction for explanations and answers related to triggering events and issues."
Nakagawa gives detailed examples of both anti-democratic and pro-democratic mass movements in the U.S. (highlighting their goals, characteristics, and impact).
As deportations of southeast Asians ramp up, community organizes response
from Minnesota Reformer
"More than 150 southeast Asians have been deported from Minnesota since May, according to MN8, a Southeast Asian political advocacy group. More are awaiting deportation at an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana.
"Many of those deported were brought to the U.S. as children as their parents fled the destruction of the Vietnam War and what’s known as the Secret War in Laos. The CIA recruited Hmong people in Laos to fight against the North Vietnamese army; many of the surviving soldiers fled with their families to the U.S. after the war.
"Activists gathered at the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul Sunday to call attention to the deportations and discuss how to respond."
New data shows No Kings was one of the largest days of protest in US history
The historic number of No Kings Day protesters and their expansive geographic spread are signs of a growing and durable pro-democracy movement.
from Waging Nonviolence
"No Kings Day on June 14 was one of the largest single days of protest in United States history, and it was probably the second-largest single day demonstration since Donald Trump first took office in January 2017. The number of participants and expansive geographic spread that day are both signs of the persistent popular opposition to the second Trump administration."
A Model for Successful Resistance
Free DC models effective resistance to Trump’s takeover
from Waging Nonviolence
"Washington, D.C. residents’ rapid response to Trump's National Guard deployment is a masterclass in how to prepare for crises and fight authoritarianism...
"On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered 800 National Guard troops to the nation’s capital — a move Princeton University professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad described as 'a slide towards fascism' and 'textbook' authoritarianism. Claiming emergency powers from the D.C. Home Rule Act, Trump also announced a takeover of the Metropolitan Police.
"As is typical with authoritarians, the pretense for these orders was an invented crime emergency...
"Free DC made clear, 'No single event or protest will fix this. What works is disciplined, connected organizing.' And they are already showing the way forward."
How to end the forever redistricting wars
from If You Can Keep It
"This week, America’s forever redistricting wars reached a new low — Texas Republicans and the White House are attempting an aggressive, mid-decade redraw of the state’s congressional map to try to keep the GOP in control of the House of Representatives in 2027.
"Most modern democracies don’t have legislative districts represented by only one legislator — which is why most don’t struggle with gerrymandering like we do. Instead, a majority of democracies today use proportional multimember districts (we’ll get back to what this means in a bit), which makes gerrymandering 'prohibitively difficult' in practice, in the words of that same study. Our decision to use single-member districts makes gerrymandering possible in the first place.
"The good news is that our Constitution doesn’t require them."
Pussy Riot's Cathedral Performance
Russia, 2012i — Another Lesson In Creative Cultural Resistance
from Scot Nakagawa
"In 2012, the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot staged a provocative protest performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Wearing colorful balaclavas and dresses, the group performed their "punk prayer," a chaotic and defiant act that criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church's complicity in authoritarianism and patriarchy. The performance lasted only minutes before security intervened, but its message echoed far beyond the walls of the cathedral.
"The performance became a flashpoint for global conversations about authoritarianism, sexism, and corruption. The harsh punishment meted out to the performers—long prison sentences for 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred'—underscored the regime's intolerance of dissent. At the same time, the event catalyzed international solidarity campaigns, brought attention to the intersection of art and activism, and made Pussy Riot an enduring symbol of resistance."
Pivoting From Defense to Offense
from The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook (Scot Nakagawa)
"Defense (necessary but insufficient):
- Protests: Express opposition but often reinforce the system by asking for permission and staying within prescribed boundaries
- Critique: Names the problem but doesn't disrupt power relations
- Legal challenges: Important but rely on institutions that authoritarians are capturing
- Electoral politics alone: Playing by rules that authoritarians are rewriting in order to assure they can’t lose elections
Offense (power-shifting):
- Mass noncooperation: Withdraws the consent and compliance that all governments require
- Economic disruption: Hits power where it matters most - profit and economic stability
- Joy and celebration: Creates magnetic alternative culture that draws people in
- Prefigurative organizing: Builds the democracy we want (diversity, pluralism, power-sharing, transparency) while fighting the authoritarianism we reject"
Epstein Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg: The Trump Protection Machine and the Epidemic of Violence Against Women
from Meditations in an Emergency (Rebecca Solnit)
"One reason this violence is so unacknowledged is that it is in the most literal sense not news – there are tides of hatred and violence against other groups that ebb and flow, but violence against women is global and enduring, a constant rather than an event. Another is that law enforcement and the legal system have often been more interested in protecting perpetrators, and society has often normalized and even celebrated violence against women.
"Imagine that we had no word for cancer and no recognition of the varieties of ways it manifests, so that we just had occasional lurid news stories about strange and sometimes fatal growths in various parts of various people, not connecting the versions in brains to the versions in prostates and breasts (and of course if we didn't recognize the common denominators we couldn't develop diagnoses and treatments or address root causes). Feminism has in fact offered a diagnosis, steadily, for decades and centuries: that the cause is misogyny and the violence is intended to perpetrate the inequality, exploitation, and subordination of women. But the one-case stories avoid this recognition by treating something ubiquitous as exceptional and isolated."
New Construction
Imagining a progressive era
from Wolves and Sheep
"If Trump’s destructive legacy will give us an opportunity to rebuild America, we first need to envision what we want to emerge from the rubble he leaves behind...
"Let’s start with the two drivers of change that led to the Trump reaction: economic inequality and the emerging majority minority America. Trump is exacerbating the former and resisting the latter. A progressive era would do the opposite. It would reverse economic inequality and embrace a diverse, multicultural nation...
"And a new foundation will need to be built. Because creating a country where rights are expanded and government works for those who can’t afford to purchase access to it requires more than simply winning an election. It requires an earthquake.
"An earthquake comparable to the one that enabled the expansion of rights after the Civil War.
"An earthquake that made possible the establishment of social welfare policies after the Depression."
The Basic Struggle Today
How to live a moral life in an age of bullies
from Robert Reich
"Throughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality by the powerful. Civilization is the opposite of brutality. A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutally treat the weak.
"Yet in my lifetime, I’ve witnessed a breakdown. I’ve seen a change occur — from support of decency and constraints on brutality, to tolerance of indecency and support for unconstrained cruelty.
"Trump is not the cause. He’s the culmination.
"So how do we lead moral lives in this age of bullies?"
ACLU in the Streets: Action Highlights
from ACLU
Immigration | ICE Detention
"Across the country, People Power Volunteers are fighting to stop 287(g) agreements: the harmful policies that deputize local law enforcement as ICE agents. In Minnesota, over 50 volunteers joined the ACLU of MN's first state-wide volunteer engagement call to learn about 287(g). The ACLU of MN also hosted a statewide community training on preventing 287(g) agreements, and 14 People Power activists joined MN community leaders to form an action team in Kandiyohi County, the most recent county to enter a 287(g) agreement."
Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action
from Rebecca Solnit
"This is the most dire moment in the history of the United States and no one should be on the sidelines, and no one should be undermining those who are showing up for justice, human rights, and environmental protection.
"There's a remarkable passage in the (highly recommended) book Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba. They write, 'As you develop your tactics and strategize, it's important to be aware of the pervasiveness of cynicism among many of those you may be trying to reach. Cynicism is a dominant force in today's political discourse, with some good reason and a favorite approach of the world's political hobbyists.' They quote another writer, Eitan Hersh, who calls people who follow and comment on politics without really participating 'political hobbyists' and Kaba and Hayes continue: 'It is important to understand the distinction between activists, organizers, and political hobbyists. Such hobbyists will often have very strict political standards, either around respectability or radicalism, to which few activists ever seem to rise.
"If you organize anything political, you are likely to attract the criticism of hobbyists, since for some people, critique is a pastime. Of course, organizers make genuine mistakes that political hobbyists may react to, but the fact is, making mistakes is a consequence of trying. The more you take action, the more errors and missteps you will make along the way. A person who has attempted nothing can easily point to the fact that they have never failed, but what have they built? What have they healed?'"
The Rev William Barber's ‘moral movement' confronts Trump's America.
from the Guardian
"Barber, the co-chair of the revived Poor People's campaign, a national movement to challenge inequality in all its forms through moral protest and policy change, has spent years preparing people for moments like this."
Stay on task: Overwhelm the opposition
from Robert Hubbell
"We must tune out the noise and continue to drive the outpouring of pro-democracy fervor that will eventually overwhelm Trump and his MAGA extremists. The mass movement of concerned citizens is gaining momentum and heft. We must make it unstoppable, irresistible, and inevitable.
"Pro-democracy rallies have been growing slowly and steadily since Inauguration Day. The No Kings Day rallies were the largest single-day protest in our nation's history. On July 17, 2025, there will be a continuation of the No Kings Day rallies under the banner of Good Trouble Lives On..."
How ICE’s Arrest of a High School Student Activated a Massachusetts Town
from Mother Jones
"The arrest of the Brazilian-native honors student has thrust Milford into the national spotlight, making it a flashpoint for President Donald Trump’s turbocharged immigration enforcement. It has also served as a catalyst for resistance in a town where dynamics around immigration have at times created fissures. 'It definitely brought the community much closer together,' said Coleen Greco, the mother of one of Gomes da Silva’s volleyball teammates. 'I hadn’t seen that kind of activation in the 22 years I’ve lived here. Nothing like it.'
"Word of Gomes da Silva’s detention spread quickly through Milford, a 30,000-person blue-collar town 40 miles southwest of Boston. When he didn’t show up to volleyball practice that Saturday morning, his teammates and coaches assumed he must have overslept. Then coach Andrew Mainini got a text from a player, an undocumented 17-year-old who was in the car with Gomes da Silva. ICE had let him go along with an exchange student from Spain, but held onto Gomes da Silva. Mainini recalled feeling shocked and helpless. 'We didn’t know what to do,' he said...
"The mobilization immediately after Gomes da Silva’s arrest struck Low as a 'pivotal moment' for Milford, where Trump won 42 percent of votes in 2024. 'It’s really the first time I can remember that there’s been a significant portion of the community speaking up on behalf of the immigrants who live here,' Low said, noting that he hadn’t heard a public official in the town espouse such a pro-immigrant stance in all his years of organizing work. 'I think that’s really important going forward.'"
America: A Work in Progress, Powered by the People
Laurie Woodward Garcia and People Power United
"We are builders and dreamers, inventors and caregivers. Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'—but only because people like us rise up and help bend it. From Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to Dolores Huerta shouting 'Sí se puede,' our history is shaped by the courage of ordinary people who refused to stay silent.
"We are not defined by our darkest moments, but by what we choose to do in their aftermath. We are not a nation that cowers to bullies or bows to fear. We rise. We speak out. We show up. We march forward."
Fighting Authoritarianism Resource Toolkit
from New Left Accelerator
"We are living through extraordinary times. Social justice and nonprofit work is increasingly taking place in a high-threat environment that is designed to sow fear and confusion, to increase risk to our organizations, people, structures, and to undermine the bold, powerful work organizations have been doing in the field.
"In this environment, it can be hard to know where to find trusted resources. NLA has created this toolkit to share vetted resources, tools, and trusted movement capacity-building partners that will help our communities remain vigilant, stay informed, and prepared for the hard work ahead. We will be updating the toolkit monthly, so save the link to your bookmarks and share with your team!"
History ...
from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
"History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery."
A Hero: The Senate Parliamentarian Has Reset The Game
From the Big Picture blog
"Rulings by Elizabeth MacDonough take big bites out of the GOP's 'Big Beautiful Bill'"
We Need 1,000 Melissa Hortmans Now
The leaders we are waiting for are us
Jeff Blodgett, formerly a senior aide, advisor and manager to the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, writes in a commentary that years ago we turned the Wellstone tragedy into something good, and we can do it again.
"So, just as with Wellstone two decades ago, we now need a thousand Melissa Hortmans. We need people to step up where she left off. People who get to climb on Melissa's shoulders, get in there, fight for people and make a difference," Blodgett writes.
"People who will volunteer to serve their neighbors, knock on doors, join a local board, march in a rally, and, yes, run for office. And, once in office, to lead with integrity and courage.
Will that be you?"
Signs of Fascism
from the Democracy Docket
"Don't fall asleep"
"In the musical 'Cabaret,' Cliff Bradshaw leaves the audience with this monologue: 'There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies. And there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. And it was the end of the world. And I was dancing with Sally Bowles, and we were both fast asleep...'"
Every action counts in the fight against ICE’s cruelty and the rise of state violence.
from Icebreaker News
- "ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings"
- "ICE memo outlines plan to deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens"
- "L.A.'s protest movement shifts tactics as ICE raids continue"
- "Protesters' most powerful weapon is rising"
- Read Icebreaker News for more ...
"From detentions to deportations, ICE continues to terrorize our communities. Read the latest news, share the truth, and join us to demand dignity, safety, and justice for all. Together, We Can Expose and Stop ICE's Cruelty."
2029 — Constitutional Revival: Keep Talking
Preserving minority rights while protecting majority rule
from Matt Kerbel (Wolves and Sheep)
"But like recalibrating the Supreme Court and eliminating the gerrymander, filibuster reform is a necessary but not sufficient condition for implementing a popular progressive agenda. If bold progressive legislation is ever to see the light of day, representatives will have to be incentivized to back programs with popular support that may be opposed by some of their biggest donors.
"That means addressing the elephant in the room. [money]"
Move to Amend Coalition
an exciting initiative
"Formed in September 2009, Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social, environmental and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests.
"We are calling for the #WeThePeopleAmendment to the US Constitution that unequivocally states that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and shall be regulated in political campaigns."
Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats How Not to Take the Bait
from the Intercept
"Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City was not just a win over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but also over a set of Islamophobic smear tactics that have become all too familiar — and will continue to dog him in the run-up to November."
2025-2026 Smart Justice Fellowship
ACLU
"The ACLU of Minnesota — in partnership with T.O.N.E. U.P. and the Minneapolis NAACP — is excited to announce our 2025-2026 Smart Justice Fellowship, the third iteration of this annual program!
"Through this ten-month hybrid fellowship opportunity, participants will (1) gain the organizing skills and experience necessary to engage with Justice-Impacted Minnesotans in communities across the state around criminal legal reform and immigration detention, (2) learn how to navigate and work in coalitions toward a common campaign goal, and (3) study policy solutions to shrink our carceral systems -- including immigration detention -- and reduce racial inequalities within these systems."
Superman: Movie Review
from Qasim Rashid
"I feel compelled to share a powerful work of art that speaks to the human rights issues I care so deeply about. Walking into the theatre I’d seen murmurings from MAGA pundits that the movie was 'woke' (used as a pejorative of course) and even 'anti-Israel.' Not only are these claims unfounded, in reality, the film demonstrates the power of storytelling, the need for justice, and makes us wonder—who are the real superheroes in our world today?"
What I Learned From John Lewis
from Our Moral Moment
"When Things Look Bad, Lean In. How Moral Movements Overcome Evil."
"I learned from John Lewis and the many SNCC veterans who invited us into the beloved community of their movement family that the Southern Freedom Movement never turned away from America’s darkness. They rode the Freedom Rides all the way to Mississippi’s Parchman Prison because they knew that was the deepest, darkest hole in the South. And if they could shine the light of freedom there, they could expose the lie of the whole filthy, rotten system.
"They didn’t try to avoid Bull Conner in Birmingham. They designed a campaign to confront his violence with moral courage - to expose the poison of white supremacy for all the world to see on their television screens."
To the Field First, Comrades!
from Drop Site News
"The NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has pulled off another stunning upset through Zohran Mamdani’s campaign. An insider shares DSA’s grassroots strategy"
"To the New York Times, Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent mayoral campaign was 'built from nothing in a matter of months.' For the Washington Post, he was 'a political upstart with fresh ideas coming out of nowhere.' Even MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who has covered left-wing movements more than most, told Ezra Klein that Mamdani 'genuinely came out of nowhere.'
"What makes these declarations of spontaneous inception so remarkable is not merely that they are wrong, but that they get it entirely backwards. While Mamdani’s ascent may have bypassed the traditional Democratic Party machinery, his campaign didn’t achieve this through individual genius, but through a decade of methodical collective effort."
ICEbreaker News has just launched!
from People Power United
"From mass detentions to forced deportations, ICE continues to terrorize families and communities across the country. Stay informed, spread the word, and take action. Together, we can expose and stop it."
How Do We Stop Trump, Thiel & Their Approaching AI Autocracy?
from Blue Amp
"Trump’s second term is already a constitutional demolition derby:
- ICE raiding sanctuary cities with no due process.
- Mass deportation orders streamlined through algorithmic 'targeting' lists.
- Tariff trade wars launched without congressional oversight—crashing small businesses, jacking up prices, creating global instability with no accountability.
- Militarized responses to protest and domestic surveillance of political opponents.
- A provision hidden in Trump’s budget bill making it easier for him to ignore court orders without being held in contempt.
- A DOJ that declared there is no Epstein client list after promising one existed—and nobody inside Trump World wants to talk about who’s protecting who…
And now? They want to plug AI into all of it."
5 Stories of Courage to Fight Fascism
from Qasim Rashid
- "In one of the most moving displays of integrity and patriotism, over 200 U.S. military veterans have banded together to protect Afghan asylum seekers — many of whom once served as interpreters or guides during America’s longest war."
- "Barbara Stone, a 71-year-old grandmother and U.S. citizen, was handcuffed by ICE fascists inside a San Diego immigration court. Why? Because she dared to show up and peacefully defend immigrants."
- "In an extraordinary and unprecedented move, several leading medical organizations — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — are suing HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr."
- "Mahmoud Khalil, the peaceful protester and American resident that Trump falsely imprisoned, has filed a $20 million lawsuit against Donald Trump and his regime."
- "Here’s some real policy inspiration: In 2022, Massachusetts raised taxes on millionaires by 4%."
"I can share several more examples, but I want to close with this important point. These stories aren’t just feel-good anecdotes — they are blueprints for how we resist. From veterans keeping their oath, to doctors defending science, to grandmas defying ICE thugs, to wrongly prosecuted Americans demanding Constitutional rights, to governments prioritizing working people over the wealthy — the front lines are everywhere. And no act of courage is too small.
"We are living through a moment that demands clarity, integrity, and defiance."
Letters from the Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in longhand the letter which follows. It was his response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College; attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, one of six black pupils among a hundred students, and the president of his class; and won a fellowship to Boston University for his Ph.D."