Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a particular group. When it is your country, your troops, your government and its officials committing genocide, many people will stubbornly refuse to acknowledge such a fact. Such is the propagandic effect of patriotism that it erodes critical thought processes and even causes people to overlook extreme evil.

On 28 July 2025, NPR wrote, “Two prominent Israeli rights groups on Monday said their country is committing genocide in Gaza, the first time that local Jewish-led organizations have made such accusations against Israel during nearly 22 months of war.”

The genocide is undeniable as Afkār noted, “Since October 7, 2023, Israeli cabinet ministers, political figures, military officers and media pundits have openly and endlessly incited for the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian inhabitants.”

Moreover, Israel is trying to spin this genocide as a necessary transfer of the Gazan population: “In recent months, Israel has shifted its messaging on Gaza, acknowledging that it has rendered the territory unlivable and is pushing for the removal of its surviving population. ”

What explains the thinking that leads to the carrying out of such a hideous crime?

Psychopathy is a personality disorder rooted in a lack of empathy and remorse, manipulation, and antisocial behavior. That clearly describes people committing genocide and people aiding and abetting genocide.

Thus, people perpetuating or enabling the commission of a genocide fit the definition of psychopaths.

It is undeniable that Israeli Jews are committing genocide in Palestine. Their prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is therefore a genocidaire and a psychopath, as well as the many supportive establishment types in Israel. (For more on this read Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery) The genocide of Gazans has much support among Jewish Israelis. This begs the question of whether psychopathology is widespread among Israeli Jews?

And, when a state or agency knowingly aids and abets Israeli Jews in committing genocide against the Palestinians, then such complicit governments and responsible authorities ought also to be considered genocidaires and psychopaths. Legally, as well:

… one can be held liable for aiding and abetting genocide, even if one does not share the specific genocidal intent of the principal perpetrator.

The Rome Statute contains a provision about criminal responsibility that is not found in either of the U.N. ad hoc tribunal statutes or the Genocide Convention but which further illuminates the mens rea of genocide. Under Article 30 of the Rome Statute, “knowledge” and “intent” are the two components of mens rea. A person has “intent” when the person “means to engage in the conduct” and “means to cause that consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.” (Grant Dawson and Rachel Boynton, “Reconciling Complicity in Genocide and Aiding and Abetting Genocide in the Jurisprudence of the United Nations Ad Hoc Tribunals,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, 21, 2008: 250.)

Consequently, Israel is not alone in executing its genocide of Palestinians. Countries are called upon to “Stop Arming Israel and Abetting Its Crimes.” Among those governments supplying armaments to Israel are the US and Europeans (“How top arms exporters have responded to the war in Gaza,” and that “European countries use 3rd-party countries to keep arming Israel: British journalist,” “Australia,” “Report suggests arms still flow from Canada to Israel despite denials,” “Infrastructure of genocide: the case confronting Dutch support for Israel’s war machine,” etc) giving political cover, the companies seeking profit from the genocide. Hence, their actions reveal them to be genocidaires.

Many of the common people in many of these countries are opposing the genocide-supporting stance of their governments; for example, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, even in the US, and worldwide. The leaders are out of touch with masses of their citizens.

Therefore, Canada’s Mark Carney, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Keir Starmer, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, and others are joining avowed Zionists Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Are Netanyahu and Trump really the people other country’s “leaders” should follow in making common cause to wipe Palestinians off the map?

Why is this psychopathy exhibited as a common trait among many Western government heads?

Worse, it seems to point to there being something inherently malevolent in the so-called democratic systems of these countries, such that it promotes psychopaths into leadership positions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

In the land of the Condor, near the base of the tallest mountain in the Western hemisphere, an Incan community lived. The people hunted, along the sheer hillsides, they farmed, they collected water from the river gushing from snowmelt. They had children, built families, and passed on traditions to generations of descendants.

The land was cold, inhospitable, but their village grew and their community thrived at the far Southern reaches of the vast Incan empire, in present-day Argentina. Today, centuries have passed, the people are gone, but the stones and dirt that made their homes remain. The stories and language of their ancestors have been lost to time. But their spirits remain. And the ruins remember.

This is episode 60 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

A note from Stories of Resistance host Michael Fox: 

If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

You can check out pictures of these Incan ruins in Argentina’s Andes Mountains, on Michael’s Patreon account

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting at patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

On the Northeastern Brazilian coast, in the region of Alcântara, Maranhão, there are dozens of traditional villages of Black communities. Their families have lived here for generations — farming and fishing. They are known as quilombos. These villages were founded by their ancestors, who were either freed or who escaped enslavement on the plantations of Brazil.

There are thousands of quilombos across Brazil. But only a small number have the titles to their lands. And many are under threat from development projects, resource extraction, Big Ag, and real estate. This was the story in Alcântara, where these communities have faced removal and threats from Brazil’s Alcântara Space Center. 

But they have fought back.

This is episode 59 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

A century ago there was no need for such a case to be made. Unions acted as the hammer of the working class, beating down the bosses and nailing down victory upon victory for workers. It is a sad day when the labor movement loses its militancy as that means that the working class has lost one of its weapons in the fight for its lot. As a class born out of contradiction and born into conflict, workers have deplorably few organizations representing their interests; unions are often the largest – spanning the most industries and amassing the highest membership. We have no other choice but unionization which means we have no other choice but to reinvigorate the militancy within the unions.

To be militant is to be open to and prepared for conflict in the aim of advancing a political goal. Our goal is to advance the cause of the working, and all other oppressed, masses. Are we so foolish as to suppress our own organs for carrying out that struggle? Unions were once home to close comrades in the struggle to noticeably improve their collective conditions, but now they are home to a class of labor lieutenants and aristocrats that, like the capitalists during the death of feudalism, have placed themselves outside and above the ranks of those they supposedly represent. By telling workers to “get organized” and join a union we may as well be selling them a shovel to dig their own grave with because that is what unionization in these dire and trying times amounts to. How far we have fallen when the organization that used to stand up to the bosses and demand more, demand something above bread crumbs, is now sitting at the table with the bosses, indeed, making backroom deals with them.

We need a return to militancy in the labor movement because that is what every landmark victory for working people was won on. Without a tough, militant labor movement there is no eight hour workday. Militancy proves to the working class that labor is innumerably more powerful than lobbying. These were movements that people could truly be proud of – that brought about meaningful change that we still feel today. Workers saw a grizzly bear that they knew would have their back, that they knew would say and do the things that they couldn’t say or to do to their greedy bosses; nowadays, workers see a lamb being led to slaughter by capitalists. According to Pew Research Center, over 40% of Americans hold that unions negatively affect the United States. This, of course, can not be chalked up to one reason definitively, but un-militant trade unions reflect a weakening in demands for labor-friendly legislation and education regarding worker organization.

How We Lost Our Way

We have abandoned workers. It is no surprise then that the workers have abandoned the organizations which have played a role in their own downturn. If we want to see a revitalized labor movement then we need to resuscitate the organization of the worker. More precisely, we must revive all that which is militant, strong, disciplined and revolutionary about the unions while firmly abandoning all that which is reactionary. Let’s be clear, the working class left unionization behind after unionization left us behind first. The reality remains that workers are sequestered from labor organizing while, in the United States at least, we are all victims of a fictitious two-party system where we are so lucky as we get to choose our oppressors. Looking at the history of the labor movement, we shouldn’t be surprised that when it comes down to bringing substantial change, the working class is on their own. It is time, no, rather it is long overdue, that we take back the organizations that make us strong in the fight for our rights. We can give unions their strength, their appeal, their working class tenacity back by reigniting the militant fire that sits at the very core of labor organizing.

Working people and their unions won massive victories for everyone by not being afraid of a fight, by not being afraid to stand up directly to employers, by not being afraid of things getting worse before they get better. How can unions be expected to stand up to employers when the union stewards are getting their pockets lined by the same folks they are supposed to be bargaining against? You cannot seriously expect workers to win against employers when the organization representing the workers takes bribes and backroom deals, yet it happens all the time. Labor racketeering may seem like a thing of the past, of the golden age of organized crime, but, sadly, this is not the case. Nowadays, threats of violence have been replaced by threats of retaliation against employees, but the effects are quite similar: the working class is screwed over, benefits are not received, and workers often end up in worse conditions than before “bargaining.” Unfortunately, our government has not noticed this problem, or more likely they have but they do not care to implement solutions.

The Path Forward

How do you get rid of bribery between employers and union officials in these organizations? There needs to be less incentive to take bribes and more incentive to report officials and incidents involving bribes. We must demand real consequences for corruption and real protections for those who expose it. On the other hand, I believe we need much greater incentive to speak up and speak out against this injustice. For that reason, I propose that whistleblowing in the labor movement be federally protected from retaliation and punishment. Workers need to know that it is not only their right but indeed their obligation to report such instances to the Labor Relations Board. But no working person, and rightfully so, is willing to put themselves in harm’s way to clean the unions; it isn’t their responsibility, they are likely to face whiplash, and they have zero incentive to do so when they feel truly powerless. A new labor movement that begins by cleaning its own ranks of those who only look out for themselves shows the working class a dedication to rebuilding a powerful, but clean and disciplined, labor movement willing to do whatever necessary for its workers, and indeed wanting all workers to take a much more active role in bargaining for better. We cannot revive militancy in the labor movement without first purging it of the corrupt elements that sap its strength and betray its mission.

At its core a union is a fighting organization. Hence, it must be willing and able to strike both figuratively and literally. Direct action such as employee walkouts, organized marches, picketing, rallies, etc. are how we project the strength and voice of workers everywhere. But militancy isn’t just about strikes and pickets, it’s about discipline, education, and mastery of the law. A sharp legal strategy can be just as powerful a weapon as a walkout. There is a severe lack of action being taken by unions because they fear a severe lack of discomfort and potential retaliation against them. Labor’s struggle is a protracted and vicious war against forces with better resources, connections, money, and influence. This is very clearly a guerilla war pitting the forces of David against a truly oppressive Goliath. Labor and law were once joined together in the fight, virtually inseparable from one another. Nowadays, labor occupies one side, the side of the working class, while law has found itself interlocking fingers with big business against workers. Unions have so much potential, but that potential cannot be fully realized, that is to say that the working class can not use its full power, unless they become experts on labor laws and rights. It’s quite like smithing a longsword but forgetting to sharpen it on the day of battle, we are blunting the revolutionary potential of working folks. A unified force of laborers and lawyers strikes fear into the hearts of exploitative capitalists. Our legal representation must be masters of their fields capable of fighting against expansive, and expensive, legal teams who do everything in their capabilities to firmly consolidate power into the hands of employers.

Unions were once the training grounds for the working class where they could become steeled in grassroots organization and labor politics. We must rebuild the labor movement around unions that are both prepared and willing to do whatever necessary to advance working causes. Unions will once again become revolutionary training grounds which take in the unorganized and give them the tools to unite as one against a more powerful enemy. Workers will rise from the unions as soldiers fighting on the side of labor. We are an unorganized, splintered, and, by all relativity, weak labor movement. We ought to study history and see that it is when militancy is introduced into the working class that we win victories once thought unimaginable. We only have to open our eyes to see that if we are not willing to be militant then our enemies certainly are. We cannot limit ourselves to a “parliamentarian” struggle against the very forces that dominate parliament and keep legislation from passing, or ever being introduced in the first place.

Let us learn from our labor forefathers that militancy is a great thing for an oppressed force to have. Change occurs when people are pushed past the limits of acceptance. Have we not been pushed past the limits of acceptance as we sit back and watch a dying labor movement that, in the United States, officially represents under 10% of workers? We run the dire risk of seeing the remnants of the labor movement, the movement that won us paid vacation, sick days, safe working conditions, an eight-hour workday, etc., reduced to ash. The solution to this might as well be slapping us in the face: get militant and get organized. Make unions a staple of the working class again. Make unionization the norm rather than a rarity. Make unions fighting organizations again. We have so much potential and untapped power, but we do the work of our opponents when we limit ourselves.

Let us become a class of fighters once more. Let us bring back the fight to employers!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Andrew Lehrer.

The fun began on July 17 when the country celebrates the day that the last Somoza president fled the country as well as most of the feared Somoza National Guard. It was clear that day that the Sandinista revolution had triumphed.

July 18 is filled with vigils in every neighborhood and town to welcome in July 19. At midnight beautiful fireworks displays are seen brightening the sky. I went to the vigils with family and friends first downtown to the Simon Bolivar avenue – named after the famous Venezuelan revolutionary leader whose dream was for all of Latin America to unify in order to resist colonizers like the United States and European nations. At the south end of the boulevard is a roundabout with a huge depiction of another Venezuelan revolutionary leader – Hugo Chavez – who came and spoke at a number of July 19 celebrations. I was fortunate to see him in 2004.

The atmosphere was like a huge party with dancing and singing and people just hanging out with family and friends. Then we went to another vigil nearby in the popular barrio known as San Antonio. They always go all out and this year was no exception. The Venezuelan band best known for Las Casas del Carton (the houses made out of cardboard) and No Basta Rezar (it’s not enough to pray) called the Guaraguao played at this vigil to thousands of people in this tiny neighborhood, filled up to overflowing with others like us who come to participate. Once again, at midnight there were fireworks everywhere.

July 19 begins with people all over the country carrying out “Dianas” which are car parades with FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) flags and signs and people chanting and singing. In every town and city there are festivities in commemoration of July 19 – the day celebrated as the culmination of the struggle against the Somoza (and US) dictatorship. The US supported 3 Somoza’s, a father and 2 sons, during 45 years of their governments’ imprisoning, torturing and killing anyone considered in opposition to their rule. My husband tells me that it was a crime to be a young man as the dictatorship assumed you were really a Sandinista.

As the 50,000 invited to the evening celebration are coming in by bus to the plaza down by lake Zolotlan, thousands of other people are lining roads – the roads that co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo will pass to get to the Plaza del Fe. I drove down with my son and parked by a television station then walked about a half mile. We joined in the contagious anticipation. Daniel always drives himself – of course there are police cars in front and in back and police lining the road – but not getting in the way of onlookers who want to see their co-presidents. About six o’clock they slowly passed with windows down waving at everyone. I was particularly excited, like a kid on Christmas morning (even though I’m 70) and ran down about four blocks to get in front of the caravan in order to see them a second time – and I did (there is definitely a groupie atmosphere around Daniel – he started fighting for a free country at age 14, he was imprisoned and tortured for seven years and he’s won five elections, the last with more than 75% of the vote)!! Then families continue their parade and picnic-like evening accompanying the celebration and watching it on huge screens placed around the country. I was impressed that at every event I mainly saw families and friends – very few drunks!

Probably most Sandinistas spend the evening of the 19th at home with their families watching the incredible views of 50,000 mainly youth, dancing to the first 90 minutes of familiar revolutionary music. Then some of the special guests were introduced and given time to share a message. One of the things that Ana Kuznetsova the chairwoman of the Russian Duma said was “Under the leadership of our President Vladimir Putin, Russia fully supports those who defend their Freedom, their Values, their Children, their Future.” Then there was a joyful address by Ma Hui, Vice Minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. He said “I would also like to convey the sincere greetings of all the 100 million members of the Communist Party of China to our Sandinista Compañeros and to the Heroic People of Nicaragua.” “In a world full of transformations and turbulence, the risks and challenges faced by all countries on the planet are growing. We are pleased to note that under the leadership of Co-Presidents Comandante Daniel Ortega and Compañera Rosario Murillo, the Nicaraguan people, closely grouped around the Sandinista National Liberation Front, firmly defend their Sovereignty and Dignity, and persist in following the path of development adapted to the realities of their own country, constantly reaching new achievements in your socio-economic development, for which we express our congratulations.” To read all the speeches, including those of the Co-presidents.

 Daniel spoke of many of the wars waged today by the US: “And that is no more nor less a plan, by [Israel], concocted with the Yankee government and with the complicity of the European governments to disappear the Palestinian State, as they have said it very clearly and openly. They are self-confessed criminals! There they are armed, given weapons by the Europeans, by the United States, because they want to take over the whole Region, and they are doing it….”

“They are murdering every day! Even media in the United States or in Europe are now beginning to report the crimes. And what does the United Nations do? The United Nations is nothing but an instrument of the imperialist countries which want to dominate the world, even if the World itself disappears with the risk of Humanity disappearing, because they have no qualms about bombing everywhere.”

“We have already seen how they launched the armed provocation, via a plan put together by the United States and Israel to bomb Iran on the pretext that what the Iranians were working on were atomic weapons. Iran is a huge nation, it used to be the Persian Empire, it has a population of 90 million inhabitants, it has great wealth, undertakes a great deal of work, with a lot of resources. And the Iranians, complying with the United Nations standards, had presented a plan so as to work the uranium and use it in peaceful activities as they have done so for some time and that’s why they have many plants generating nuclear energy with uranium, which are energy producing plants which are cheaper and safer than the plants that are installed via traditional networks.”

As always Co-President Ortega takes the opportunity to give a history lesson since so many attendees are teenagers. This time he talked about the Spaniards, the British and the United States; especially the invasion by William Walker and his men which was supported by the US government. Walker named himself president, reinstated slavery and made English the national language. Needless to say he was expelled with help from Nicaragua’s neighbors. Walker tried again a few years later and the Hondurans put him in front of a firing squad. This reminds me of a popular song written and sung often during the years of Reagan’s war against Nicaragua called El Yanqui se Va a Joder (the Yankees are going to get their butts kicked). In spite of US sanctions on Nicaragua which cut off much needed loans, the Nicaraguans overall support their government because it is the only one that has brought progress and development to the majority of the people with free education and healthcare; with 90% food security; with the best roads and infrastructure in the region, with one of the highest percentages of renewable energy in the world and 90.6% of the population have electricity; with parks and stadiums everywhere – a real emphasis on the right to recreation and sports and so much more. This country won’t be easy to beat through coup attempts like in 2018, hundreds of millions of dollars from US institutions like USAID, the NED, Freedom House going to the opposition to try to undermine the government. The Nicaraguan example will not easily be stopped and many countries will follow in its foot prints.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nan McCurdy.

The shift to post-industrialism was associated with the rise of a powerful new set of capitalist elites and new corporate centers of production, finance, and communication. In the 21st century, Silicon Valley became the symbol of the new post-industrial high-tech world. It would become the showcase of the new high-tech companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, which were becoming the first trillion-dollar companies, led by tycoons such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel, all fabulously wealthy members of the Big Tech power elite. Silicon Valley introduced itself as a modern miracle, bringing unprecedented new productivity and prosperity that would benefit both owners and workers, and contribute to the betterment of the general population with magical new products such as the personal computer, the iPhone, and the new internet-based world of online culture and communication on social media. This new world revolutionized the economic and social spheres, while also having major uses and implications for politics and the military. Because billions of people globally now have iPhones or personal computers, with access to the new online universe of the internet and social media, Silicon Valley seemed to open up not only a transformative new economy for entrepreneurs and knowledge workers but a transformed, newly connected world of online social communication and relationships.

This is not entirely an illusion. The online world does open up new social connections and political connections, with social media being a powerful new tool for the younger generation to build new friendships, communities, and politics. But Silicon Valley’s fantastic new array of electronic communications and online connections may also prove to be a gateway to weak social relations and ultimately the end of strong face-to-face social relationships, as well as democracy itself. We face a sociocidal transformation fueled by high tech, with Silicon Valley also proffering its own politics of authoritarianism. Sociocide is the process by which human connection is largely severed, and individuals are only concerned for themselves. A sociocidal society is one in which solidarity is nonexistent and meaningful human relationships are destroyed.

Several sociocidal forces emerge directly from the economic restructuring created by huge Big Tech firms, especially the “Magnificent Seven,” whose individual worth now reaches into the trillions:  Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Tesla. One is the interest of these corporate high-tech elites, much like their corporate counterparts in other spheres, in eroding the face-to-face workplace and social ties that can challenge their power. In the workplace, that translates into the intensified attack on secure employment, unionism, and a collective physical workplace. The intent is to weaken the social relations of workers in the workplace – and more broadly, to subvert the solidarity and face-to-face connections of people throughout society that can challenge authoritarianism in both work and politics.

Focusing first on the workplace, the Magnificent Seven play a special role here by creating and developing the technology – including the personal computer, iPhone, internet apps, AI, robots, and social media — that allows corporate elites to create a precariat of dispersed and contingent workers, increasingly separated from each other, while also replacing millions of workers and transferring their jobs to robots and other AI inventions.

The most rapid replacement of workers by robots and AI is in high-skill jobs. Matt Sigelman, president of the Human Resources Institute, summarized his Institute’s widely circulated report on AI, saying, “There’s no question the workers who will be most impacted are those with college degrees, and those are the people who always thought they were safe.” He indicates that: “Companies in finance, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, have some of the highest percentages of their payrolls likely to be disrupted by generative A.I. Not far behind are tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Meta.”

Tech workers, talented and highly trained, are developing the tools allowing their companies to eliminate many of their own jobs. Meanwhile, employers are also using robots to replace low-skill workers. The sociocidal tech impulse of Silicon Valley, as in other sectors, is embraced because of its profit-saving capacity. And the fastest way to increase profit is to reduce wages, usually by weakening relations among employees or busting unions.

The Magnificent Seven have used their overwhelming economic power to directly undermine unions, the most effective form of worker social relations and organization. In January 2024, Elon Musk, now legendary for his anti-union and broader right-wing views, filed a lawsuit in federal courts to declare unconstitutional the National Labor Relations Board, which protects and regulates workers’ right to organize. In August 2024, just before his re-election, Trump joked with Musk about firing workers, complimenting Musk during a two-hour conversation on X for firing Tesla workers who wanted to strike. “They go on strike,” Trump said to Musk, “and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone.’” Trump then added, “You’re the Greatest!” The UAW filed labor charges against both Trump and Musk for the unfair labor practices that the two had celebrated; Musk’s Tesla had clashed with union activists for years, and the NLRB in 2021 had found that the non-union Tesla violated labor laws when it fired a union organizer.

One of Musk’s Magnificent Seven compatriots, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, quickly joined in Trump and Musk’s union-busting party, filing a copycat suit to make the NLRB and unions unconstitutional. Here, we see the world’s two richest men, leaders of the High-Tech Robber Barons, exploiting economic size to reap the fruit of their technology’s economic power. They are seeking a revolutionary breakdown of workplace social relations, moving from the sociopathy of the first Gilded Age to the sociocide of today’s Gilded Age.

The Magnificent Seven’s power undercuts workplace social relations and fiercely attacks union solidarity in the name of free-spirited libertarianism running rampant in Silicon Valley. The broader corporate success in drastically weakening unions is key to sociocide in the entire US labor force and has been achieved not only by the anti-union fervor of corporations since the New Deal but also by the zeal of the Republican Party from Reagan through Trump to make the destruction of labor solidarity and unions a top political priority.

_________________________________________

The above is an excerpt from Charles Derber’s most recent book, Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Charles Derber.

Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war,” this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it won’t likely be resolved until one side decisively and totally prevails. Ditto for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Likely the same with Palestine, where the barbarity of war worsened to genocide. Meanwhile, since Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the empire is building up for war with China.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the empire’s war on the world assumes a hybrid form. The carnage is less apparent because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations. These can have the same lethal consequences as bombs, only less overt.

Making the world unsafe for socialism

Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua must take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that these countries pose “threats of a good example” to the empire. Each subsequent US president, from Obama on, has certified them as “extraordinary threats to US national security.” Accordingly, they are targeted with the harshest coercive measures.

In this war of attrition, historian Isaac Saney uses the example of Cuba to show how any misstep by the revolutionary government or societal deficiency is exaggerated and weaponized. The empire’s siege, he explains, is not merely an attempt to destabilize the economy but is a deliberate strategy of suffocation. The empire aims to instigate internal discontent, distort people’s perception of the government, and ultimately erode social gains.

While Cuba is affected the worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen the “humanitarian parole” for their migrants in the US come to an end. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also withdrawn for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The strain of returning migrants, along with cuts in the remittances they had sent (amounting to a quarter of Nicaragua’s GDP), further impacts their respective economies.

Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the screws have been tightened on the six-decade US blockade of Cuba with disastrous humanitarian consequences.

However, all three countries are fighting back. They are forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Providing relief to Cuba, Mexico has supplied oil, and China is installing solar panel farms to address the now-daily power outages. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully defeated one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens who had been incarcerated in El Salvador’s torturous CECOT prison.

Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognized the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo González the winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back González, de facto recognizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security has even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.

Troubled waters for the Pink Tide

The current progressive wave, the so-called Pink Tide, was initiated by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. His MORENA Party successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by an even greater margin in 2024. Mexico’s first woman president has proven to be perhaps the world’s most dignified and capable sparring partner with the buffoon in the White House, who has threatened tariffs, deportations, military interdictions, and more on his southern neighbor.

Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to a single term. Both have faced opposition-aligned legislatures and deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favored to advance to the second-round presidential election in November 2025, but will face a challenging final round if the right unifies, as is likely, around an extremist candidate.

As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidential tenure. He credibly accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him. However, the presidency could well revert to the right in the May 2026 elections.

Boric, Petro, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi, and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met in July as the region’s center-left presidents, with an agenda of dealing with Trump, promoting multilateralism, and (we can assume) keeping their distance from the region’s more left-wing governments.

With shaky popularity ratings, Lula will likely run for reelection in October 2026. As head of the region’s largest economy, Lula plays a world leadership role, chairing three global summits in a year. Yet, with less than a majority legislative backing, Lula has triangulated between Washington and the Global South, often capitulating to US interests (as in his veto of BRICS membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50% export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. So far, Trump’s actions have backfired, arousing anger among Brazilians. Lula commented that Trump was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”

In 2021, Honduran President Xiomara Castro took over a narcostate subservient to Washington and has tried to push the envelope to the left. Being constitutionally restricted to one term, Castro hands the Libre party candidacy in November’s election to former defense minister Rixi Moncada, who faces a tough contest with persistent US interference.

Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is embroiled in a self-destructive internal conflict between former President Evo Morales and his former protégé and current President, Luis Arce. The energized Bolivian right wing is spoiling for the August 17^th presidential election.

Israeli infiltration accompanies US military penetration

Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza to “take collective action grounded in international law.” On July 16, regional states – Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – endorsed the pledge to take measures in support of Palestine, with others likely to follow. Brazil will join South Africa’s ICJ complaint against Israel.

At the other end of the political spectrum are self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. As well as cozying up to Trump, they devotedly support Israel, which has been instrumental in enabling the most brutal reactionaries in the region. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”

In February, the US Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side.” The perceived danger is “methodical incursion” into our “neighborhood” by both Russia and China. Indeed, China has become the region’s second-largest trading partner after the US, and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardize their relations with Beijing. The empire’s solution is to “redouble our efforts to nest military engagement,” using humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool.”

Picking up where Biden left off, Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina. The pandemic of narcotics trafficking, itself a product of US-induced demand, has been a Trojan Horse for militarist US intervention in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, and threatened in Mexico.

In Panama, President José Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the NATO alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.” Colombia had been collaborating with NATO since 2013 and became the only Latin American global partner in 2017.

Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, his escalating coercion provokes resentment against Yankee influence. Resistance is growing, with new alliances bypassing Washington. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Perry and Roger D. Harris.

In the latest episode of Gaslit Nation, Jamila Raqib, the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution, delivers a masterclass in radical defiance without a single weapon raised. Raqib doesn’t just talk resistance. She teaches the art of war, the nonviolent kind, built on discipline, planning, and unshakeable conviction.

She carries forward the torch of Gene Sharp, the quiet revolutionary whose writings, like From Dictatorship to Democracy, which the Gaslit Nation Book Club read in March, have armed movements from Serbia to Syria. His ideas are dangerous, not because they incite chaos, but because they illuminate how to take power back without bloodshed. And dictators fear that more than any rifle.

This is militant nonviolence. It’s strategic. It’s disruptive. And when practiced with precision, it brings regimes to their knees.

Raqib outlines a crucial truth: power is not monolithic. It comes from the obedience of people, workers, civil servants, police, students. Withdraw that obedience, and even the strongest tyrant collapses.

Take Serbia. Take Bangladesh. The world keeps giving us proof that nonviolent action isn’t weak; it’s lethal to authoritarianism when wielded with discipline. These movements succeeded not because they were polite, but because they were strategic. Organized. Defiant.

This is how repression backfires. Every crackdown becomes fuel. Every jail cell, every bullet, every propaganda campaign becomes a rallying cry, if activists know how to use it.

Raqib reminds us that art is a weapon. Culture is armor. Community is infrastructure. And technology is a battlefield. Whether it empowers or undermines you depends on how well you understand it. Movements rise and fall on logistics, not just slogans.

Fear will always be there. That’s normal. But as Raqib insists, fear doesn’t mean stop. It means go smart. Fear is a compass, if it scares the regime, you're probably doing something right.

This conversation isn’t about kumbaya. It’s about battle-readiness. It’s about studying the terrain of power, exploiting the cracks, and toppling giants with the slow, grinding force of disciplined resistance.

Nonviolence doesn’t mean surrender. It means refusing to give your enemy the war they want. It means winning on your terms. And in a time of rising fascism, digital surveillance, and global despair, we must turn to the tools that have worked, again and again.

So study Gene Sharp. Listen to Raqib. Organize like your life depends on it, because it does.

This is not the time for feel-good hashtags. This is the time for public education, mass mobilization, and strategic action. Nonviolent resistance is not soft. It’s the hardest fight there is.

But it’s the one that wins.

EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:

• NEW DATE! Thursday July 31 4pm ET – the Gaslit Nation Book Club discusses Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince written in the U.S. during America First. 

• Minnesota Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other, available on Patreon. 

• Vermont Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other, available on Patreon. 

• Arizona-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to connect, available on Patreon. 

• Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available on Patreon. 

• Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available on Patreon. 

• Have you taken Gaslit Nation’s HyperNormalization Survey Yet?

• Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and the first ~40 minutes are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit for our community

Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

The post Systems of Control, Histories of Resistance appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

Nobody has a bad word to say about the French Resistance in the Second World War, right?  Who would criticise a group confronting fascism, right?

Yet this month the UK group Palestine Action has been proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation by their government for their non-violent direct action against UK-based industries supplying technology to fuel Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people.

Are they terrorists or the very best of us in the West?

• READ MORE: Palestine Action: What has the group done, as it faces a ban?
• Other Israel’s Gaza genocide reports

Stéphane Hessel, a leading member of the French Resistance, survived time in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. After the war he was one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a pillar of international law to this day.

The Declaration affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. In later years Hessel (d. 2013), who was Jewish, saw the treatment of the Palestinians as an affront to this and repeatedly called Israel out for crimes against humanity.

Hessel argued people needed to be outraged just as he and his fellow fighters had been during the war.

In 2010, he said: “Today, my strongest feeling of indignation is over Palestine, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The starting point of my outrage was the appeal launched by courageous Israelis to the Diaspora: you, our older siblings, come and see where our leaders are taking this country and how they are forgetting the fundamental human values of Judaism.”

In his book Indignez-vous (Time for Outrage!) he called for a “peaceful insurrection” and pointed to some of the non-violent forms of protests Palestinians had used over the years.

“The Israeli authorities have described these marches as ‘nonviolent terrorism’. Not bad . . .  One would have to be Israeli to describe nonviolence as terrorism.”

How wrong Stéphane Hessel was on this point. The British Parliament has just proscribed Palestine Action as “terrorists” despite them having never attacked anyone, never used weapons, but only undertaken destruction of property linked to the arms industry.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

Thousands on the streets of Brazil, Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue packed, angry and protesting US President Donald Trump and his imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazilian products. Trump’s new tariffs on Brazil are in response to the country’s trial against Trump ally, former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

Bolsonaro is accused of leading a “criminal organization” that looked to stop his successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from assuming the presidency after he won the 2022 elections. The Brazilian courts will decide. Trump has other plans. But Brazilian leaders say they won’t back down. 

“If there’s one thing a government cannot tolerate, it’s interference by one country in the sovereignty of another,” said Brazilian President Lula. “And even more seriously, interference by a president of another country in the Brazilian justice system.”

This is episode 57 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

RESOURCES

• Brazil on Fire podcast
• Episode: An autopsy of Bolsonaro’s failed coup

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Thousands on the streets of Brazil, Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue packed, angry and protesting US President Donald Trump and his imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazilian products. Trump’s new tariffs on Brazil are in response to the country’s trial against Trump ally, former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

Bolsonaro is accused of leading a “criminal organization” that looked to stop his successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from assuming the presidency after he won the 2022 elections. The Brazilian courts will decide. Trump has other plans. But Brazilian leaders say they won’t back down. 

“If there’s one thing a government cannot tolerate, it’s interference by one country in the sovereignty of another,” said Brazilian President Lula. “And even more seriously, interference by a president of another country in the Brazilian justice system.”

This is episode 57 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

RESOURCES

• Brazil on Fire podcast
• Episode: An autopsy of Bolsonaro’s failed coup

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

There are less than a hundred members of the Karipuna tribe. They live on their land in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. Their territory is demarcated, which means that it’s legally theirs.

But many outsiders don’t care. Land invaders have been pushing in, hauling off hardwood and big trees and carving out pieces of their land, and dividing them up to sell.

The Karipuna are resisting.

This is episode 56 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

You can see exclusive pictures of the Mapuche community playing palín in this story on Michael’s Patreon. Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

• Brazil on Fire Episode 6: Amazon up in smoke
• Lula empowers Brazil’s Indigenous peoples with their own ministry. But environmental protection remains a key concern
• For more on protecting the Amazon Rainforest, you can visit Amazon Watch.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Visualizing Palestine.

Over the last two and a half centuries people in the US have used July 4 to make their stand against injustice, inequality, and oppression, and demand their rights. From an infamous speech by Frederick Douglass to women suffragists demanding the right to vote, civil rights protests, and a historic farm workers’ march, today we look at moments of July 4 resistance.

This is episode 55 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, videos and interviews from these stories and follow Michael Fox’s work. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Most of these stories were taken from the Zinn Education Project. We highly recommend you check it out.

• People’s History of Fourth of July
• Frederick Douglass: “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”
• Danny Glover Reads Frederick Douglass
• Suffragists Protest on Independence Day
• Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of the Rights of the Woman of the U.S. July 4, 1876

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Faramarz Farbod.

In the U.S., the Fourth of July comes with fireworks, parades, and an almost unquestioned belief in the righteousness of the revolution it commemorates. However, in Venezuela, July 5th evokes different thoughts. It is not just a break from colonial rule but the beginning of a long, unfinished struggle to define freedom on our own terms. It’s not something we inherited. It’s something we’re still fighting for.

And now, from where I stand, I can’t help but see the contradictions. One country celebrates independence while denying it to others. The other fights for sovereignty while being punished for it.

The story of Venezuela’s independence is part of a much longer, bloodier history. The entire region of Latin America and the Caribbean erupted into revolutionary movements more than two centuries ago, not out of ambition, but as a response to some of the worst atrocities in human history. Colonization, slavery, forced conversions to Catholicism, cultural erasure, and resource extraction didn’t just leave economic scars; they tore at the heart of our collective humanity. As Eduardo Galeano wrote, “Our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others.” Independence wasn’t a beginning; it was a resistance and a demand to reclaim everything that had been stolen, silenced, and buried.

In Venezuela, the independence process was shaped by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the revolutions in France, the U.S., and Haiti. But Simón Bolívar, our “Liberator,” wanted something more than a flag or a change in rulers. He envisioned a republic built on justice, not just sovereignty. A society where slavery would be abolished, land would be redistributed, and governance would belong to the people. Speaking before the Congress of Angostura in 1819, Bolívar declared: “The most perfect system of government is that which produces the greatest possible amount of happiness, social security, and political stability.” This wasn’t about replacing a crown with a new president. It was about reimagining society itself, building a nation rooted in dignity, equality, and the well-being of all.

It was a vision far ahead of its time. And it came at a devastating cost. Venezuela lost half of its population during the wars of independence. But as Bolívar said, the other half would have given its life, too, to make freedom real.

Venezuela became free from Spain, but not from exploitation.

After the discovery of oil beginning in the 1920s, the country became a new kind of colony, one shaped by foreign corporations and U.S. geopolitical interests. While oil profits filled the pockets of multinational companies and domestic elites, the majority of Venezuelans lived in poverty, with no access to healthcare, education, or housing.

That began to change in 1998, when Hugo Chávez, invoking the legacy of Bolívar, won the presidency and launched what became known as the Bolivarian Revolution. He called on the people to reclaim democracy, not just through elections, but through participatory structures, economic justice, and sovereignty. For many who had long been shut out of the system, it was the first time they saw themselves reflected in their own government.

It was transformative. And it was deeply threatening to the powers that had always treated Venezuela as a resource, not a republic.

The Bolivarian Revolution was perceived as a threat to U.S. imperial interests from the outset. From the moment Hugo Chávez took office in 1999 and began redirecting Venezuela’s oil wealth toward social programs, land reform, and regional integration, the backlash began. He refused to follow the neoliberal script written in Washington, and for that, he was targeted.

In 2002, the U.S. backed a coup attempt against Chávez, which briefly removed him from power before a massive popular uprising brought him back. But the attacks didn’t stop. Economic sabotage, disinformation campaigns, and diplomatic isolation escalated over the years.

After he died in 2013, the campaign intensified. Under Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela was hit with the full spectrum of economic warfare: hundreds of unilateral coercive measures, the freezing of billions in international assets, restrictions on food and medicine imports, and open support for regime change—a war without bombs.

This is daily life for Venezuelans. And yet, we’re told these policies are meant to help us. You don’t help people by starving them. You don’t “defend democracy” by trying to force another country to its knees.

Here in the U.S., it’s easy to treat independence as something that was achieved once and for all in 1776. But if that were true, why is our country still trying to control the fate of others? Why do we claim to stand for freedom while undermining it abroad through sanctions, coups, and endless wars? And even more urgently: why are so many people in the U.S. still struggling just to survive?

Empire comes at a cost, not only to the people we target, but to the people right here at home. While the U.S. government spends trillions on foreign wars and military bases, our communities are told there’s “not enough” for universal healthcare, housing, or public education. The same officials who lecture the world about freedom are the ones lining up to vote for the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a package that bankrolls war and delivers massive tax breaks to billionaires while dismantling the programs that keep people housed, fed, and alive.

We’re told to celebrate freedom while immigrants are deported, unhoused people are criminalized, and Palestinian solidarity is silenced. We’re told we live in the greatest country on Earth, even as life expectancy drops and student debt skyrockets.

So when I hear U.S. leaders talk about spreading democracy, I can’t help but ask: Whose democracy? Whose freedom?

You can’t claim to support democracy and starve a population at the same time. You can’t celebrate independence while trying to overthrow other governments. And you can’t speak of justice if your policies enforce inequality on a global scale.

As a Venezuelan-American, I’m proud of the history that Venezuela has fought for. And I want to be proud of the United States, the country I also call home. But that will only be possible when the U.S. chooses respect over domination, when it ends the sanctions, when it stops weaponizing aid, democracy, and freedom to serve its own economic interests.

Venezuela’s July 5th is not about fireworks. It’s about survival, resistance, and the ongoing struggle to build a future rooted in dignity.

So while the U.S. celebrates its independence this week, I hope more people take a moment to ask: What are we really celebrating? And at what cost?

True independence isn’t about flags or anthems. It’s about the right to choose your own path without being punished for it. If we’re serious about “liberty and justice for all,” then we have to mean it. Not just here, but everywhere.

Real freedom doesn’t come wrapped in patriotic speeches or military parades; it comes through struggle, sacrifice, and the refusal to bow to empire, no matter what form it takes. Whether in Venezuela or the United States, the fight for dignity continues. Eduardo Blanco captured this truth in Venezuela Heroica, when he wrote: “To restrain the passions of people when they’ve been pushed beyond reason is harder than stopping the sea itself.”

And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing in every mobilization, every boycott, every refusal to accept injustice as normal.

Borders, bullets, or decrees can’t contain the tides of liberation. Not in Venezuela. Not in Gaza. Not in the United States. Not anywhere.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michelle Ellner.

Chile’s Indigenous Mapuche people have played their own version of field hockey for countless generations. Roughly 2 million Mapuche Indigenous people live across Chile and Argentina. Many have moved from their ancestral lands to the city. But they have not forgotten their past. They are using their ancestral sport, palín, to breathe life into their culture and traditions. Using their sport as a type of resistance. 

This is episode 54 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

You can see exclusive pictures of the Mapuche community playing palín in this story on Michael’s Patreon.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

RESOURCES: 

Mapuche sports help Indigenous Chileans revive culture

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Stonewall. They say it was the spark that set the fire ablaze. The start of the modern LGBTQ movement. Protests and riots that lasted for days in defense of gay rights. And from it, came gay pride parades, gay pride months, days, and celebrations far from the United States, in cities around the world. 

This is episode 53 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

You can see exclusive pictures, videos, and interviews on many of Michael Fox’s stories on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Beyond Stonewall: Exploring LGBTQ+ History Through the Smithsonian Archives. Smithsonian Channel

Stonewall Riots: A Revolution Born From Tragedy

Remembering Stonewall: Radio documentary on the birth of a movement. Narrated by Michael Schirker; Produced by David Isay.

National march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights actualities (Part 1 of 4)

Marsha P. Johnson y Sylvia Rivera. Historias de protectores y resistencias

La notte di Stonewall: la testimonianza di Sylvia Rivera

Discurso de Sylvia Rivera en la Marcha del Orgullo de 1973 – Nueva York La activista trans Sylvia Rae Rivera, miembro fundadora del

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

On June 28, 2009, Honduras exploded and the people took to the streets after the president was overthrown in a coup. One radio show followed them, reported from the protests, and became the voice of the resistance: Felix Molina’s Resistencia—Resistance.

This is episode 52 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen. 

You can see exclusive pictures, videos, and interviews on many of Michael Fox’s stories on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox. 

Resources

• Under the Shadow Podcast
• Honduras, 2009. La Resistencia | Under the Shadow, Episode 7, Part 1
• Honduras, 2009. Legacy of a coup | Under the Shadow, Episode 7, Part 2
• Jesse Freeston’s documentary “Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley”

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

The year is 1968. Summertime. Washington, DC. And covering the National Mall are endless rows of shacks built by hundreds of poor families from across the United States. It’s called Resurrection City, and they have come to Washington to demand an end to poverty and a new economic bill of rights… for the poor. 

This was Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The Poor People’s Campaign is what he’d been working for in the months before he was killed in April 1968.

The city would last for six weeks. It would inspire thousands. Its legacy would last for decades.

This is episode 51 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

You can listen to Michael Fox’s full interview with Marc Steiner on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures of many of his stories, follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

RESOURCES

Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/

Camp life in Resurrection City 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjsQ7IWszRE

Senate listens to people of Resurrection City 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4hrSkTnXes

Resurrection City closed down, Abernathy jailed 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpBlIKJDyA

#MLK on the Poor People’s Campaign, Nonviolence and Social Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWcD4xt7Mnk

Poor Peoples Campaign June 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCcKpVFz32c

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

The world-destabilizing horrors we see on the news today (and the many forms of resistance we don’t see) can easily make us feel overwhelmed and hopeless about the state of the world. But as Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back have seen firsthand organizing with poor and working-class communities around the US, “there’s amazing grassroots organizing led by poor and dispossessed people that’s happening right now… there’s kind of an awakening happening, but I think instead of looking to our political leaders or looking to some of the more established folks out there.” In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Theoharis and Sandweiss-Back about their new book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons From the Movement to End Poverty.
Guests:

• The Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis is an anti-poverty activist, pastor, theologian, and author. She is the executive director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Rev. Dr. Theoharis has been organizing in poor and low-income communities for the past thirty-plus years.
• Noam Sandweiss-Back is an organizer and a writer born in Jerusalem and raised in New Jersey. He has spent a decade organizing among the poor and dispossessed, including with the Kairos Center and the Poor People’s Campaign.

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: David Hebden
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

The July 2024 presidential election was followed by the election for National Assembly deputies and all 24 governorships of Venezuela’s federal structure on 25 May 2025. Venezuela’s US-funded far-right opposition, led by Machado boycotted the vote. Corporate media outlets –including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, El País, the BBC, and others – framed their coverage by labelling the election “divisive” and extensively quoting Machado’s claim that “85% of the electorate did not obey the regime and said no.” In reality, she falsely portrayed the opposition’s boycott as a political victory, implying widespread voter rejection.

Unlike the July 2024 presidential election –when the far-right factions instigated street violence resulting in 27 deaths at the hands of armed thugs, including two armed attacks on the presidential palace –, the 25 May 2025 legislative and gubernatorial elections (Venezuela’s 32nd electoral process), proceeded calmly and peacefully. However, the far-right’s boycott was never merely a peaceful protest against an election organized by a government they refuse to recognise. Their actions went far beyond that.

On 28 May, Venezuela’s Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, reported the arrest of over 70 individuals of various nationalities (Venezuelan, Colombian, American, Argentine, Spanish, Ecuadorian, Serbian, Albanian and others). Several foreign-funded ‘NGOs’ appeared implicated in the plot. Authorities seized explosives, assault rifles, and other military equipment intended for attacks on foreign embassies, hospitals, emergency services, electricity substations, police stations, and high-profile political figures – particularly those from the opposition who participated in the election. The suspects had entered Venezuela via Colombia. Cabello also revealed that Venezuela’s armed forces had thwarted nearly 60 attacks on oil installations in the preceding ten days. Evidence indicated the terrorist group was led by Venezuela’s far-right leaders.

This was not their first attempt. The government has also reported the arrest of mercenaries coming from Trinidad and Tobago with ties to a broader network trained in Ecuador – a country now reportedly a hub of cocaine exports. A glance at a map reveals Venezuela’s encirclement by US-aligned hostile forces: Guyana, Ecuador, Colombian narcotraffickers, and SOUTHCOM to its north and beyond.

Machado’s boycott strategy backfired, fracturing her already divided coalition further when several former boycotters decided to stand as candidates and urged their supporters to vote. The result? Chavismo secured 253 of 285 for the National Assembly and 23 of 24 governorships, including the election of a governor for Guayana Esequiba –a territory Venezuela claims. The sole governorship not won by Chavismo, Cojedes, went to Alberto Galíndez, an opposition politician who recognises Maduro’s legitimacy and accepted the overall results. Moreover, Chavismo gained 1.3 million more votes than in the 2021 elections, demonstrating growing support. With this victory, President Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution now hold not only the presidency until 2031, but also commanding majorities in the National Assembly and among governorships.

The May 2025 election results marked a resounding triumph for the Bolivarian government and a stinging defeat for the Trump administration –particularly with the election of Chavista, Admiral Neil Villamizar as governor for Guayana Esequiba. On 23 May, the Guardian quoted Guyana’s president Irfaan Ali,  who denounced the election in this state as an “assault on Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Yet, the report conveniently omitted any mention of the 1966 Geneva Agreement, which underpins Venezuela’s claim.[2]

In collusion with Guyana, the US has transformed Guyana into a military enclave, using it as a base for regular military provocations against Venezuela since 2021. Strangely, just one day after the election, on 26 May 2025, the Guardian wrote an exhaustively researched feature with stunning photographs –not on Venezuela’s election, but on…the Orinoco crocodile.

Beyond their self-defeating abstentionism, Machado and the far-right further eroded their credibility by enthusiastically endorsing U.S. sanctions –effectively advocating for Venezuela’s economic strangulation – and cheering Trump’s brutal deportation policies targeting Latin Americans, especially Venezuelans whom he falsely labels as “government-controlled criminals.

When asked whether she supported Trump’s deeply unpopular policy of deporting Latino and Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison –a facility notorious for torture– Machado replied “Absolutely!” –uncritically parroting Trump’s baseless claims.

The record of Venezuela’s far-right opposition is simply appalling. Not only have they been heavily involved with Colombian narco-traffickers to carry out terrorist acts against their own country, but their leader, Juan Guaidó, even proclaimed himself “interim president” on a Caracas street in 2019. Worse still, this claim was recognized by the U.S.-led Collective West. They colluded with Western powers to facilitate the confiscation of Venezuelan assets—including gold, bank accounts, and property—in actions that amount to nothing less than high treason.

With the backing of the Collective West, they prolonged the farce of the 2015 National Assembly’s legitimacy—where they once held a majority—long after its mandate expired in 2020. In fact, they still falsely claim legitimacy in 2025, five years after the end of their constitutional term, while continuing to pay monthly U.S. dollar “emoluments” to their obsolete lawmakers.

Under the guise of a humanitarian effort to bring food by force across the Colombian border, they even attempted a military incursion with Colombian paramilitaries, aiming to seize control of a Venezuelan city and install a “provisional government” to be recognized by the U.S. and the Collective West.

The Venezuelan opposition’s actions are indefensible. They have been linked to multiple assassination attempts against President Maduro, including plots to decapitate Venezuela’s political and military leadership using explosives. They organized a mercenary incursion aimed at violently overthrowing the Bolivarian government, with the explicit goal of assassinating Maduro and as many Bolivarian leaders as possible. They have enthusiastically supported the U.S. blockade’s economic asphyxiation—which remains in place—while sabotaging every election since 2013 through violent disruptions.

Repeatedly, they have called on the military to revolt, urging the overthrow of Venezuela’s democratically elected governments (under both Chávez and Maduro). Their tactics include systematic infrastructure sabotage, consistently timed to coincide with elections. They have exacerbated U.S. sanctions by promoting hoarding, artificially inflating prices, and engineering shortages of basic goods—deliberately inflicting severe hardship on the population. Even worse, they manipulated Venezuela’s currency crisis through DolarToday, a platform that daily published inflated exchange rates to fuel hyperinflation.

The opposition’s transgressions go even further. On multiple occasions they have enlisted the services of mercenary Erik Prince, even launching a crowdfunding campaign (Ya Casi Venezuela) to finance his proposed violent overthrow of President Maduro’s government. They are currently under FBI investigation for large-scale corruption, accused of embezzling nearly US$1 billion in humanitarian aid meant for Venezuelans abroad – of which mere 2% as properly allocated). Worse still, they have fraudulently managed over US$40 billion in Venezuelan assets through shady contracts with Miami-based firms, exchanging national resources for personal bribes. Their attempt to replicate the DolarToday scheme was swiftly  crushed by the government, which acted decisively to shut it down.

This brazen subversion aligns with broader U.S. imperial ambitions. In a blatant reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine, SOUTHCOM commander Admiral Alvin Holsey declared before the Senate Armed Services Committee (13 February 2025) that the U.S. must prevail in the “strategic competition with China in the Western Hemisphere” and counter “Russia’s malign agenda” – naming Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as their conduits. Thus Washington now openly frames its assault on Bolivarian Revolution as part of its geopolitical competition with China and Russia. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth underscored this stance on 6 June 2025, bluntly stating “We are preparing for war with China.”

Yet, despite 12 years of relentless aggression since Comandante Chávez’s passing, the Venezuelan people have shown extraordinary resilience, defying predictions of inevitable collapse. The government’s response? Deepening democracy. Ahead of upcoming municipal and mayoral elections (27 July 2025), Venezuela is intensifying its participatory democracy model, empowering the comunas –grassroots, self-managed councils where communities directly decide and implement projects to improve their living standards: direct democracy.

President Maduro has announced the “creation of the Communal Portfolio Fund of the national budget” that will directly allocate resources to projects developed by local communities. These funds will be managed through communal circuits, with spending priorities democratically decided by commune inhabitants themselves.

In revealing interview (7 June 2025), Jesús Faría, PSUV Vice Minister of Productive Economy of the PSUV, emphasized the urgent need to accelerate the expansion of Communal direct democracy and consolidate people’s power. Faría made a critical observation: the PSUV must take the lead in advancing the commune system. With tens of thousands of grassroots organizations across Venezuela, the PSUV maintains a Gramscian hegemony –not by imposition but by organically articulating this vibrant social ecosystem into a cohesive for socialism. Its structural bonds with them enable it to harmonize and mobilize this rich social universe towards socialist construction.

Thus, even as U.S. imperialism doubles down on its fanatical crusade to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela is fortifying its socialist foundations. By empowering communes, deepening participatory democracy, and strengthening the PSUV’s vanguard role, the revolution is building unshakable resilience—proving that people’s power, not imperial aggression, will shape Venezuela’s future.

• First published at Countercurrents. Image from Workers World.

ENDNOTES:

[1] If we take December 1999 as the start, of the Bolivarian Revolution is 25 years old; the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign was founded on 25 May 2005, thus making 20 years old. We pay homage to the Bolivarian process for keeping alive and fulfilling humanity’s dream of a better world.

[2] On the details of the Venezuela-Guyana dispute.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Francisco Dominguez and Roger D. Harris.

For hundreds of years, the Spanish banned the Incan Festival of the Sun—the Andean New Year. But since the middle of the 20th century, Inti Raymi has been back. 

Today, communities, cities, towns and even universities hold Inti Raymi celebrations. They make offerings, light fires and incense. They say prayers to Pachamama and Inti, the sun. They sing and dance. 

And it’s not just a celebration. It is an act of resistance.

This is episode 50 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

To see exclusive pictures and video of Inti Raymi celebrations in Quito, Ecuador, you can visit Michael Fox’s Patreon: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

In honor of the 50th episode of Stories of Resistance, we would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has worked hard to make this podcast happen and to all of those who have supported this podcast series. 

In particular, Michael and Nadia Murphy, Sam Dodge, Ben Dangl, Kevin Zolitor, Hallo Pip!, Marc Becker, Jennifer from ASAP Manufacturing, Todd Haydel, Phil and Sue Cortese, Supapan Kanti, Michael and Maryann Fox, Josh Weinberg, Dot Goodman, Gary Tempus Jr, Tom Fox, Eric Kinzler, Jim Chomas, and Greg Wilpert. Also, a particularly huge shout out to Grahame Russell, Cara Orscheln, Judy Hughes, and Global Exchange for your tremendous support.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

During Nixon’s first term, from 1969 to 1973, he oversaw the use of government agencies to attempt to destroy groups like the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement and the Young Lords, including armed attacks by police that resulted in deaths. Newly enacted conspiracy laws were used to indict leaders of the peace movement and other movements. An entirely illegal and clandestine apparatus was created to sabotage the campaigns of his political opponents in the Democratic Party, leading to the midnight break-in at the Watergate Hotel that eventually led to the exposure of this apparatus and Nixon’s forced resignation from office in 1974.

I learned several things during those Nixon years about how to deal with government repression. Unfortunately, given Trump/MAGA’s attempts to replace US democracy with a fascist regime, those are very relevant lessons for today.

One critical lesson is that there is a disparity in the government treatment of people of color—Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and Asian—compared with the treatment of people of European descent—white people. The historical realities of settler military aggression, broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow segregation, assumed white dominance, and institutionalized racism continue to have their negative, discriminatory impacts.

We are seeing this play out right now with the Trumpist arrests of Brown and Black immigrants, over 90% of whom, according to AI, have no criminal record. There can be little doubt that the intention is to use this racist campaign to establish a wholly new “justice” system which will increasingly come after not just immigrants but anyone who is consistently resisting their efforts to overturn democracy and install an authoritarian, repressive regime.

Those of us of European descent must be conscious of these realities and act accordingly, prioritizing right now the defense of immigrant rights. Very big numbers of us are stepping up, demonstrating and engaging in nonviolent action, risking and getting arrested, in opposition to what is happening with ICE in particular.

Government repression can’t be allowed to paralyze or divide organizations or movements. This is one of the objectives of an unjust government trying to repress those who challenge its policies and practices. That is one of the reasons why we need to be about the development of a movement culture that is respectful and healthy. Such a supportive cultural environment can help us weather this storm we are in and emerge from it stronger and better both as individual activists and organizers and as a mass progressive movement.

This is one of the necessary elements for successful resistance to government repression.

When I say “successful” I don’t mean that there won’t be casualties on our side, people behind bars, some for months or years, or people physically attacked and injured or worse, or deportation, job losses or greater economic hardship. It is clear that under a Trump/MAGA regime this is already happening and will continue and likely get worse, particularly for immigrants, people of color and low-income people generally.

Other things which can defend our rights and our movements are these:

-effective legal representation in court. It is good to see the way that many lawyers and progressive legal organizations are stepping up to defend immigrants and challenge the Trump executive orders issued so far;

-broad community support when repression happens. There are instances when ICE has attempted to arrest people and, on the spot, neighbors and others have prevented those arrests or, by their actions, have brought media attention to what is being attempted and, over time, have gotten people released from jail. It is a fact that there is a strong and extensive network of organizations nationally which is having an impact.

All of this can immediately or over time serve to undercut support for the Trumpists, strengthen our justice movement and hasten the time when the power of the organized people overcomes them on the way to the worldwide social, economic, environmental and cultural changes needed for humanity and all life forms to avoid ecosystem and societal breakdown.

Ultimately, what I have learned is that government repression can have a disruptive impact on our work, but we can turn a negative into a positive. The extent to which we can creatively, intelligently, and fearlessly demonstrate the truth of what we are about when responding to what they are doing to us is the extent to which we can have confidence that yes, we will win. Si, se puede!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

All those who have been wondering when mass resistance to Trump 2.0 would materialize need wait no longer. It is here. It is happening. It is now.

In truth, the new wave of defiance has been swelling for some time.

Following last November’s presidential election, media outlets such as the New York Times steadily pushed a story of progressive demobilization. The narrative went something like this: back in 2016, Trump opponents were fired up and ready to fight back, but this time around, in 2024, those who voted against his return were merely dispirited and resigned, hardly in the mood to take to the streets again. Oftentimes, commentators piled on by expressing skepticism about whether protesting was even worth it to begin with.

This story was flawed from the start.

Sure, in the immediate aftermath of the election, progressives took time to grieve Trump’s return. But already in November, mass organizing calls led by groups including the Working Families Party were drawing upwards 50,000 participants. (I don’t know about you, but for me anything over 10,000 people counts as being larger than my typical Zoom session.)

Within a week after Trump’s inauguration, protests were fomenting in earnest. We saw rallies outside of federal buildings and weekly boycott vigils at Tesla dealerships. Soon, there were calls for nationwide days of action, first taking the form of the 50501 protests in February. Then, on April 5, the Hand’s Off rallies took place at locations across the 50 states.

Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman, leaders of an effort called the Crowd Counting Consortium, reported in March that “our research shows that street protests today are far more numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest.” They also noted that in February “we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.” Last week, they released an updated tally, stating that “protest has been surging” since then and that “Overall, 2017’s numbers pale in comparison to the scale and scope of mobilization in 2025 — a fact often unnoticed in the public discourse about the response to Trump’s actions.”

All of this came before the events of the past two weeks, which further augmented the size and scale of anti-Trump mobilization. First came large demonstrations in Los Angeles against ICE immigration raids and the deployment of the National Guard. (Manuel Pastor has a very nice report from the frontlines of the protests over at Dissent.) Then came the No Kings actions last Saturday, which were massive and took place at as many as 2,000 locations, organizers told NPR. Data journalist G. Elliot Morris, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, estimated the total number of participants at No Kings events between 4 and 6 million.

These are historic numbers.

By way of comparison, gigantic protests against the Iraq War on February 15, 2003 drew possibly 3 million demonstrators in the U.S. (along with between 12 and 30 million worldwide). The Crowd Counting Consortium estimated that the original Women’s March on January 21, 2017, acknowledged as a gargantuan mobilization, attracted between 3.3 million and 5.6 million protestors. In another historic deployment, Black Lives Matter protests may have drawn many millions more in 2020, but with the caveat that actions were spread out over multiple weeks.

In terms of single-day events, No Kings may not have reached the heights of the first Earth Day celebration, in 1970, which is sometimes cited as the largest day of action in U.S. history, but it’s up there with all the big ones.

Our team witnessed strong turnout in Philadelphia (around 80,000) and in New York City (upwards of 100,000). Organizers reported crowds of as many as 500,000 in Boston, 70,000 in Seattle, 200,000 in Los Angeles, and 100,000 in Chicago, among gatherings in other major cities. On his Facebook page, organizer Chris Crass did a wonderful job of compiling photos of No Kings protests from around the country. The images are inspiring: People swarming intersections in Evanston, Illinois, braving the rain in Little Rock, Arkansas, filling Liberty Plaza outside the state capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, and lining roads in Indianapolis, Indiana and Gainesville, Florida. All this stood in stark contrast to Trump’s gloomy, expensive, and under-attended military parade the same weekend.

Now, if you will allow a digression, there are a variety of quirks to consider when talking about the size of any mobilization. Crowd-counting numbers can be notoriously flexible and politicized. In Armies of the Night, his Pulitzer Prize winning “history as a novel” narrating a fall 1967 March on the Pentagon, author Norman Mailer jokingly suggested a rule of thumb for triangulating protest attendance: “[T]he police estimate multiplied by four might be as close to the real number as the Left Wing estimate divided by two and a half,” he wrote. “Thus a real crowd of 200,000 people would be described as 50,000 by police and a half million by the sponsors.”

Even when the numbers are reliable, comparisons between protests are not always apples to apples. For at least five decades after the 1963 March on Washington, the dominant model for a national day of action was to try to get everyone to a single location, often Washington, DC. Success was measured by how many people you could rally in that one spot. In some instances, such as the 2003 Iraq war protests, there might be one leading location on the West Coast (say, San Francisco) and another in the East (New York City), but the general model held. If the protest was to be a success, organizers needed to spend a lot of time thinking about filling buses and transporting people significant distances to join in a collective mass gathering.

By the time of the Women’s March in 2017, this dominant model was being replaced with something different. There was indeed a large central event in Washington, DC for the Women’s March. But there were also sizable events in other big cities such as New York City and Philadelphia, and even gatherings in smaller cities like Harrisburg and many points in between. Previously, the going wisdom had been that sending people by bus to the main event would be mutually exclusive with getting decent turnout locally. But that was not the case for the Women’s March. The big numbers in DC did not really seem to eat into crowds in smaller cities. Success was no longer measured by the numbers of people who showed up in one location, but how many events across the country could be hosted and what the cumulative attendance might be.

As it turns out, having protests everywhere is conducive to participation. Regarding last weekend’s No Kings demonstrations, famed Rabbi Arthur Waskow wrote about attending a modest event in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia:

“Why did my beloved life-partner… and I choose to join about 200 people at the Lovett Library to say ‘No Kings!’ Instead of 80,000 demonstrators downtown where they swallowed up and liberated whole neighborhoods? Because I am 91 years old and my life partner is 82. We were sure that the massive downtown crowd, impressive as it was for demanding change, would make it impossible for the two of us to navigate. The library was one of countless small gatherings across the country and in big and even middle size cities the turnout was enormous.”

Lowering the bar for participation is undoubtedly positive in this respect. Of course, there are trade-offs. Because it’s easier to show up to your local town square than it is to spend a day or a weekend bussing back and forth to DC, participants are investing less time in the collective experience of traveling and assembling with others, things that can be good for cultivating further commitment. And, as I have written elsewhere with my brother Paul, the success of civil resistance often involves demonstrating the hardship voluntarily taken on movement participants—meaning that actions which require people to make higher levels of sacrifice can have their own benefits.

All this is to say that the size of any given crowd is not the only thing that matters.

In some ways, a variety of the smaller No Kings gatherings may have been more politically significant than the largest metropolitan ones. A friend of mine estimated that upwards of 5000 people turned out in his South Jersey town of Collingswood, a huge number for that area—arguably more impressive as drawing twenty times as many in nearby Philadelphia. Another organizer friend went to a protest in a small Pennsylvania town about an hour outside of Philly’s blue bubble. There, she reported, between 500 to 700 people lined a major roadway for a long stretch, encouraging passing drivers to sound their car horns in support. The steady, if intermittent, stream of honks gave courage to neighbors whose town borders a county that went solidly for Trump in 2024.

In Jacobin, Branco Marcetic argued that the presence of events deep into MAGA country signals a notable shifting of political energies. “[There is an] important point to be made here,” he wrote:

“The turnout in liberal cities and even in Trump-voting towns and counties doesn’t necessarily mean that anti-Trump voters outnumber the president’s supporters in these areas or their states—in many cases, they don’t. But it does suggest that voters opposed to Trump’s agenda—who across the country were met with few to no counterprotesters, even in deep red parts of the country—are vastly more energized than his supporters, and that despite his having won the popular vote…that Trump’s public support is a lot softer and more passive than his 2024 victory made it seem.”

In an article a couple of months ago, Paul and I outlined the key characteristics that define “moments of the whirlwind”—or periods of intensified social movement upsurge. It is clear that the current moment exhibits these qualities: Demonstrations are sparked by highly publicized “trigger events” (think ICE raids at Home Depot or a U.S. Senator in handcuffs), and participation is decentralized, not driven through pre-established organizational structures. The No Kings events of last weekend were led or sponsored by groups including Indivisible, the American Federation of Teachers, and the ACLU. All of the 200 organizations that signed on for the protests, especially the more established ones, deserve credit for refusing to bow to the authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration—especially when we have seen some leading law firms, media organizations, and universities fail to muster such bravery. Nevertheless, recruitment of the millions of people to the protests did not come through organizational phone trees or people’s individual relationships with organizers, but through momentum driven by widespread outrage at Trump’s actions.

Wired magazine published an article this week contending that defiance this time around, aided by new technologies, is far more decentralized than the Women’s March in 2017 and other resistance in Trump’s first term. The article reflects the magazine’s techno-fetishism, and its argument is a bit comical, given that the Women’s March itself was no august and long-standing institution but rather an ad hoc formation that swiftly coalesced in the whirlwind following Trump’s first election. Nevertheless, the article showed how abundant dissident energy is bubbling up in countless places and often has yet to be absorbed by formal organizations.

The article also pointed to a third common trait of whirlwinds: In addition to drawing in new participants from unexpected quarters, these moments spur a wealth of activity among these newcomers that is not dictated by any centralized command. As Wired reported, “the Tesla Takedown protests began with a single Bluesky post that exploded in large part thanks to social media posts, including protesters’ pictures and videos outside dealerships.” (Even Elon Musk himself ultimately acknowledged the success of demonstrations in shrinking Tesla’s earnings, although he blamed the impact on “paid protesters.”)

Or, as another example, the magazine profiled a couple in the Deep South that got involved by creating a website that allows people to order free stickers that they can post in high-traffic areas in their neighborhoods. The stickers display a QR code that directs users to resources about the warning signs of fascism: “What began with 500 stickers posted all over their small town,” reporter David Gilbert wrote, “quickly grew—with the help of an appeal on Reddit—to a campaign that has so far seen the couple and their children send 750,000 stickers to more than 1,000 people in all 50 states.”

All this raises the question: What should we do now that the whirlwind has arrived?

Paul and I hope to write on this in more depth, but there are many things that can be noted at least in passing: First, people should contribute however they can, and they should work to convince organizations that they are a part of to join in as well. Many established groups are still hesitant to throw down, yet the addition of their credibility and resources can make an important difference. It is hardly too late to get started: The most sweeping whirlwinds form not when a single trigger event gives rise to protest, but when a succession of triggers result in a series of escalating civil resistance. Along these lines, we can be sure that Trump will present more provocations, giving more opportunities for creative responses.

Protests are polarizing, meaning that they make people who might otherwise have been undecided or inattentive choose a side. Movements should focus on maximizing positive polarization and minimizing the negative. As we have previously argued, this means being smart in framing the demands of an action, highlighting sympathetic protagonists and unsympathetic oppressors, and heightening the contrast between the inventiveness and determination of resistance and the repressive violence of the state.

Trump is unpopular. There is clear evidence—from public opinion polling to pushback on the streets—that he is wildly overreaching his mandate. It is important to remember that Trump’s 2024 election victory was a narrow one: he carried 49.8% of the popular vote, as opposed to 48.3% for Kamala Harris (and even his electoral college win was nowhere close to the commanding totals amassed by Ronald Reagan in 1984, Richard Nixon in 1972, or LBJ in 1964). Since November, Trump’s popularity has tanked, even on issues where he once enjoyed an edge, such as the economy and immigration. The rank cruelty of his ICE raids is becoming increasingly clear, and Republicans have touched a third rail of American politics by slashing programs like Medicare.

Civil resistance plays an important role in solidifying this unpopularity and—as Trump perpetually lies about the impact of his policies—in educating the public about what is really going on. It helps to generate momentum for backlash at the polls, not just in the midterms or the next presidential elections, but in a plethora of state and local contests already taking place. And, in the interim, mass demonstrations encourage noncooperation at many levels that make the implementation of the White House agenda more difficult.

In short, popular resistance boosts the costs of overreach. Let us hope that we can watch the defiance grow.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mark Engler.

If you walk down the street in Paraguay, you will hear people speaking Spanish, the official language of most of the countries of Latin America. But, particularly if you are in the countryside, you will also hear something else: Guaraní.

It’s one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in the Americas. A mother tongue of roughly six and half million people—in particular, in Paraguay. There, most Paraguayans speak Guaraní or a mixture of Guaraní and Spanish, regardless of whether or not they are Indigenous Guaraní, mestizo, or white.

The language has been preserved and passed down from generation to generation. Family to family. Paraguay is the only country in the Americas where a Native American language has resisted assimilation into Spanish or Portuguese, and where its very use was an act of resistance.

From 1864 through 1870, South America was embroiled in the bloodiest war of its history. It was called the Triple Alliance war. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay duked it out with tiny landlocked Paraguay. Those countries invaded. The fighting raged for years. Hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans were killed. By 1870, roughly two thirds of the Paraguayan population was dead, most of them men.

Guaraní was the language of resistance against the invading forces; against the foreign troops that remained and occupied the country. 

“As a question of survival, the women who were left would only speak Guaraní,” says campesino leader Tomas Zayas. “They passed it on to their children.” And it has continued to be passed on, particularly in the countryside. Until he was in his twenties, Zayas spoke only Guaraní.

“For me, Guaraní is identity,” he says. “It’s happiness. It’s beauty. Because a joke in Spanish isn’t funny at all.”

Guaraní has remained a language of resistance. Under the brutal dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, which lasted until the late 1980s, Guaraní was banned in Paraguay. Still it survived, spoken in homes and in rural communities. Though it has also been stigmatized as a language of the poor, there are still Guaraní language schools. And it is the language of the heart. The spirit of Paraguay. The language of resistance.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. I did some reporting about Guaraní in Paraguay for The World last year. I’ll include a link to that story in the show notes.

This is episode 49 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, you can check out exclusive pictures for many of these stories on my Patreon account: Patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Visit Michael Fox’s Patreon: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Here is Michael Fox’s reporting for The World on Guaraní: https://theworld.org/stories/2024/10/01/guarani-is-identity-how-an-indigenous-paraguayan-language-has-endured-through-the-ages

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

A torrent of water rushes underneath, gray and angry. Wind whips. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Clouds threaten rain. And before you is a bridge.

But it is not just any bridge. It spans from one rocky cliff to the other, and it is strung together by rope and twine, bound and rebound for generations. Eternity. 

This is Q’eswachaka. The last Incan Bridge. It stands over 12,000 feet above sea level and spans 30 meters over the Apurimac River down in a majestic canyon never found by the Spanish.

It was once an important passage along the Qhapaq Ñan, a network of roads stretching more than 2,000 kilometers across the Incan empire, from present day Colombia all the way down to Chile and Argentina.

The bridge has lasted here for more than six centuries. But that is only possible because it is rebuilt every year. 

In early June, the residents of four Quechua communities hold a three-day-long festival, where they rebuild the bridge from scratch. First, they cut down the old one and let it drop into the water below. Then the women beat and work the straw they have brought from the highlands. They begin to weave it. Transform it into the fibers and the rope for the new bridge. The men build the rope flooring and the railings. Slowly, the bridge is built anew.

This is not just a task to be done, but an ancestral ceremony with song and dance, ritual. An ancient art passed down from generation to generation. Their own offering to Pachamama, Madre Tierra—Mother Earth.

The communal building of bridges like this was once cherished and embraced, and carried out by communities across the Incan Empire. But this, they say, is the last. And these communities are holding on, like the very bridge itself.

More than a river crossing, and a connection between two roads, this is a symbol of the community’s connection to their past, to their ancestors, to their culture, their traditions, to the next generations, to the land… and to Mother Earth.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

The Q’eswachaka festival is happening right now in the Peruvian mountains south of Cuzco. 

It was an honor to visit the location earlier this year. 

You can check out some exclusive pictures and drone footage that I shot on my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast.

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

Q’eswachaka is the last Incan rope bridge. It’s located down in a valley in the Andes mountains of Peru. And in early June, the residents of four Quechua communities hold a three-day-long festival, where they rebuild the bridge from scratch.

This is not just a task to be done, but an ancestral ceremony. A means of holding on to their traditions and the story—resisting modernity and the passage of time, by preserving this piece of their history and their culture.

The bridge itself is a symbol of the community’s connection to their past, to their ancestors, to the next generations, to the land… and to Mother Earth.

This is episode 48 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

To see exclusive pictures and video of the last Incan rope bridge, you can visit Michael Fox’s Patreon: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

The Boss has never shied away from expressing his political views. 

And he’s not gonna back down now. 

“In America, they are persecuting people for using they right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They’re abandoning our great allies. And siding with dictators.”

“In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

Those were his words at a concert in Europe last month. Donald Trump responded over Truth Social, calling him a “pushy, obnoxious jerk” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.”

The president of the United States also posted a fake video of himself golfing on social media appearing to knock Bruce Springsteen over with a golf ball.

How low can you go?

###

In dark times, music and song gives us hope. It can inspire us. The soundtracks to resistance, to change, to standing up for each other, to defending our rights. 

###

Bruce Springsteen, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, or Woody Guthrie, is one of those musicians who has often led the way with songs for the downtrodden. Songs for the working class, for hardworking Americans, for immigrants, for justice and freedom…

But not Trump-style freedom.

And right now, others have Bruce Springteen’s back.

“You know, when a hero like Bruce Springsteen brings up issues and make his thoughts be known,”  Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder defended The Boss during a show in May, “and uses his microphone to speak for those who don’t have a voice, sometimes. Certainly not an amplified one. And I just want to point out that he brought up issues. He brought up that residents are being removed off of American streets and being deported without due process of law. And thinking that they’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideologies, as Bruce said.”

“Now look, I appreciate you listening and I bring it up because the response to all of that and him using the microphone. The response had nothing to do with the issues. They didn’t talk about one of those issues. They didn’t have a conversation about one of those issues. Ddin’t debate any one of those issues. All that we heard were personal attacks and threats that nobody else should even try to use their microphone or use their voice in public or they will be shut down. No that is not allowed in this country that we call America. Am I right or am I right?”

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello performed before a backdrop covered with huge oversized buttons spelling out the words “FUCK TRUMP.” “FUCK ICE” was written on the back of his guitar. He too spoke out in defense of Bruce Springsteen.

“Alright this next tune, I’m gonna dedicate to my friend Bruce Springsteen. He got in a tussle with the president lately. And you know Bruce is going after Trump. Because Bruce his whole life he’s been about truth, justice, democracy, equality. And Trump’s mad at him cause Bruce draws a much bigger audience. Fuck that guy.” 

This is not the first time Tom Morello has raged against the current US president. And it will not be the last. Almost a decade ago, even before Trump’s first term in office, Morello performed with Ani DiFranco on folk singer Ryan Harvey’s song, “Old Man Trump.”

That song was actually written by Woody Guthrie in 1954, about the racist discriminatory housing practices of his landlord, Fred Trump—Donald Trump’s dad. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Other musicians are also standing up. Folk singer David Rovics is prolific, with new songs each week. And many others have defended Bruce Springsteen.

In his show in Manchester, England, in mid-May, the Boss spoke to the audience. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American spirit to rise with us, raise your voices and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

###

Bruce Springsteen’s powerful words have been included on his latest album, Land of Hope and Dreams.

It was released on May 20. 

You can find it on Spotify or wherever you listen. I’ll add a link in the show notes.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I have long been an huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. If you’ve heard my podcast Under the Shadow, you know I grew up in Virginia, but I spent weeks every summer with family at the Jersey Shore, a couple of towns over from where Springsteen grew up. He is an icon, still.

Bruce Springsteen has never shied away from expressing his political views. And he’s not gonna back down now. 

“In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” he told a crowd at a concert in Europe, in May.

Donald Trump responded over Truth Social, calling him a “pushy, obnoxious jerk” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.”

In dark times, music and song gives us hope. Bruce Springsteen, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, or Woody Guthrie is one of those musicians who has often led the way with songs for the downtrodden. Songs for the working class, for hardworking Americans, for immigrants. For justice and freedom. And other famous rock idols have got the Boss’s back.

This is episode 47 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Clip of Bruce Springsteen criticizing Trump/Bruce Springsteen critica a Trump: “En mi país se ponen del lado de los dictadores”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bT24hOXcQ

Here is the link to Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, “Land of Hope and Dreams”: https://open.spotify.com/album/1wWm7MPHSIpBX7Wiw8LAAq

“Eddie Denounces Trump’s Policies & Backs Springsteen & Rockin”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxZIVAkrq0Q

Tom Morello – 11 The Ghost of Tom Joad – Boston Calling May 25th 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGkwcO8sZns

Ryan Harvey’s Old Man Trump (ft. Ani DiFranco & Tom Morello): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmZnlGBhwKg

You can hear more from Ryan Harvey here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1bdxYCSsYEJga10wHzcqeu

You can subscribe to David Rovics’s newsletter and hear his most recent songs at: https://www.davidrovics.com/

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Unlike the Palestinian message, the Israeli message is not global, but very much a localised cry for help: get us out of Gaza.

This is not your typical video. The event itself might be similar to numerous other events in Gaza — a fighter emerging from a tunnel, placing a bomb under an Israeli Merkava tank, and returning to his tunnel before a massive explosion takes place.

This is what is called an operation from zero distance. But the video, this time, is different, as it was not released by the Al-Qassam Brigades or any other group.

• READ MORE: Iran hits Israel with retaliatory strikes after nuclear site attacks
• ‘Hamas has defeated us’ – Ret. Israeli Major General Brik speaks of ‘collective suicide’
• Other Israeli aggression in the Middle East reports

There is no foreboding music in the background, no slick edits, no red triangles. The reason? The video was released by the Israeli army itself.

This raises many questions, including why the Israeli army would report the bravery of a Palestinian fighter and the successful blowing up of the pride and joy of the Israeli military  — the Merkava.

The answer might lie in the sense of despair in the Israeli military, an army that knows well that it has lost the war or, at best, is unable to clinch victory, even after it laid Gaza to waste and exterminated nearly 10 percent of its 2.3 million population (between the killed, wounded, and missing).

This sentiment is now very well-known among Israelis, as Israeli media, which initially touted the idea of “total victory”, is now the one promoting a version of Israel’s own total defeat.

On verge of ‘collective suicide’
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, retired Major-General Itzhak Brik said that Israel was on the verge of “collective suicide” and that the army has effectively been defeated by Hamas in Gaza.

“With a political and military echelon of this type, there is no need for external enemies; they will bring disaster upon us in their stupidity,” he warned, adding:

“We may soon reach a point of no return, and the only thing left for us to do is pray to our God to come to our aid, and then we will all become messiahs who pray for miracles.”

General Brik can no longer be accused of being the detached former soldier who is horribly misreading the situation on the ground. Even those on the ground are expressing the exact same sentiment.

مقاوم فلسطيني خرج فجأة من بين الأنقاض، وثبّت عبوة ناسفة على دبابة إسرائيلية من مسافة صفر، ثم عاد إلى مخبئه قبل أن تنفجر .

في غزة للصفر قيمة. pic.twitter.com/OvNwKZwago

— Tamer | تامر (@tamerqdh) June 10, 2025

On Tuesday, June 4, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted an Israeli infantry soldier who expressed a feeling of brokenness after returning to fighting in Gaza, stating that “everyone is exhausted and uncertain”.

The Israeli soldier reportedly added that he feelt there was no appreciation for the lives of soldiers fighting in Gaza and that they had moved from offence to defence, noting that the soldiers “doubt the objectives of the war”.

‘Hamas has Defeated Us’ – Ret. Israeli Maj. Gen. Brik Speaks of ‘Collective Suicide’

Dominant global narrative
Many in the pro-Palestine circle, which now represents the dominant global narrative on the war, are celebrating the bravery of the young men in the video and, by extension, the bravery of Gaza, deeply wounded but still fighting — in fact, winning.

But there is more to the story than this. The fact that a tank belonging to the 401st Brigade would be blown up in such a way, under the watchful eye of Israeli drones, which could only report the event without being able to change it, is telling us something.

But unlike the Palestinian message, the Israeli message is not global, but very much a localised cry for help — get us out of Gaza.

Whether Israeli politicians, lead among them the master of political survival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will listen or not, that is a completely different question.

Republished with permission from The Palestine Chronicle.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

He was not a very likely kid to become an icon for revolutionary change—a beacon for social justice, in defense of the Americas, against imperialism, authoritarianism, and foreign oppression.

But he did anyway.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born on June 14, 1928. 

An asthmatic child raised by a well-to-do family in the hills of Argentina, he would study medicine, grow to be a doctor. But Ernesto Guevara heard another calling: humanity. He wanted to heal not just the sick and the tired, but the reason for their oppression, their poverty, the root of their suffering and exploitation.

Ernesto Guevara learned this over time. In his early 20s, he was a traveler. A wanderer. A self-described vagabond, journeying with his doctor friend, Alberto Granado, across South America on the back of their 1939 Norton 500cc motorcycle, “la poderosa.”

He would have many journeys… and through them he could not escape the haunting shadow plaguing the many countries of the Americas. A shadow of poverty, of inequality, of oppression and injustice, where people’s hands toil just to barely survive, and life is worth little alongside the power and the wealth of the foreign mines, and the US banana companies, and the American troops. Where people worked in near-slave conditions for pennies, and if you stood up you were beaten or locked away. The feudal colonial system imposed centuries before to keep the Indigenous peoples down, and the campesinos working the fields, and the riches flowing into the coffers of foreign countries far away was still intact, only with new rulers at the top.

Ernesto Guevara saw it all.

You might think that his resistance came with the Cuban revolution, when he sailed on the yacht known as the Granma, picked up arms, fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra and liberated the island of Cuba…

Or when he denounced capitalism at the United Nations…

Or when he helped to lead Cuba and make it self-sufficient, despite the US embargo that still exists today…

Or when he left it all behind to try and spark a revolution in Bolivia.

But Ernesto Guevara’s resistance—Che’s resistance—began long before all of that. It began when he traveled, when he wandered the land, when he saw the unjust global system all around him. A caste system imposed on the countries of Latin America where the wealthy were at the top and everyone else fought over the miserable crumbs. 

And Che Guevara refused to obey. Che vowed to do everything he could to fight it, resist it. And resist he did, with every vein of his existence…

####

Che was born this week, in 1928. 

He was killed on October 9, 1967, in La Higuera, Bolivia, after being captured while trying to spark a revolution there.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I had a really hard time with this story. Che is such an revolutionary icon. Larger than life. How do you attempt to do something about his life that does justice and also does not repeat the old tropes? This was my attempt. I hope you liked it. As you probably noticed, I did not even try to get into all of the details of his life, or else this story could easily have been an hour long.

That said, I am developing a future podcast that in a way goes in search of Che, follows some of his footsteps here in Latin America as a young man, and tries to look at who he was and what he means still today. Keep an eye out for that here at The Real News. I hope to have it out later this year.

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 46 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Resistance….

Sometimes it’s quiet. Even silent. Sometimes it’s sustained over long years… 

And sometimes, it explodes like a corked bottle, and continues for days, or weeks, or much, much longer… 

Pushing back against injustice. Pushing back in defense of people’s lives, and their families, their friends, and their loved ones…

That is what we’re seeing right now in Los Angeles and across California as Donald Trump’s ICE officers have unleashed a crackdown on immigrant communities, and people have taken to the streets to say, “No.”

Despite what you’ve likely heard, most of the protests have been peaceful. Thousands have marched. They’ve chanted. They’ve sang. People have waved the Mexican flag. A sign of resistance. A sign in defense of those who are being ripped from their homes…

ICE has detained and arrested more than 100,000 people since Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump claims to be arresting criminals. In reality, he is detaining hard working family members. In reality, he is destroying families.

Many people who have been detained are in the country legally. Some are being arrested after appearing for scheduled asylum hearings. Parents pulled from their children. Babies taken from their mother’s arms. 

In recent days, the Trump administration has ramped up arrests to 2,000 people a day. ICE agents in armor and military-style camo gear ambush city streets like military operatives in foreign countries, or military police from supposedly bygone days of authoritarian governments who pick people from off the street, throw them into the back of a car, and disappear them…

But people are fighting back. 

After ICE officers detained more than 100 undocumented immigrants in raids across Los Angeles on Friday, protesters took to the streets. They’ve stayed there for days. They’ve shut down highways. They’ve shouted “No.”

Trump has responded, calling in the national guard. 2,000 troops. It’s the first time a president has unilaterally called in the national guard, despite objections from local state officials, in 60 years. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s suing Trump for illegally deploying federal troops and “flaming the fires.”

“You’re creating the conditions that you say you’re solving and you’re putting real people’s lives at risk.”

Police have arrested dozens in protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They’ve hit unarmed protesters in the head with rubber bullets. They’ve shot at journalists at point blank range. And still people have promised to resist. More protests are planned for today…

And there is clearly more on the horizon for Los Angeles and elsewhere, in defense of families, in defense of loved ones. In defense of immigrants across the United States.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I don’t always get to do reporting for this series on issues that are happening right now. But this is one of those moments. And it is really important. 

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

If you like what you hear, you can sign up for the specific Stories of Resistance podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.

As always, you can follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Protester Shot in the Head by LA Riot Police: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TxTfdRe7oGQ

Australian journalist hit by ‘rubber bullet’ while reporting from LA: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c98p008kxn1o

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Resistance….

Sometimes it’s quiet. Even silent. Sometimes it’s sustained over long years… 

And sometimes, it explodes like a corked bottle, and continues for days, or weeks, or much, much longer… 

Pushing back against injustice. Pushing back in defense of people’s lives, and their families, their friends, and their loved ones…

That is what we’re seeing right now in Los Angeles and across California as Donald Trump’s ICE officers have unleashed a crackdown on immigrant communities, and people have taken to the streets to say, “No.”

Despite what you’ve likely heard, most of the protests have been peaceful. Thousands have marched. They’ve chanted. They’ve sang. People have waved the Mexican flag. A sign of resistance. A sign in defense of those who are being ripped from their homes…

ICE has detained and arrested more than 100,000 people since Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump claims to be arresting criminals. In reality, he is detaining hard working family members. In reality, he is destroying families.

Many people who have been detained are in the country legally. Some are being arrested after appearing for scheduled asylum hearings. Parents pulled from their children. Babies taken from their mother’s arms. 

In recent days, the Trump administration has ramped up arrests to 2,000 people a day. ICE agents in armor and military-style camo gear ambush city streets like military operatives in foreign countries, or military police from supposedly bygone days of authoritarian governments who pick people from off the street, throw them into the back of a car, and disappear them…

But people are fighting back. 

After ICE officers detained more than 100 undocumented immigrants in raids across Los Angeles on Friday, protesters took to the streets. They’ve stayed there for days. They’ve shut down highways. They’ve shouted “No.”

Trump has responded, calling in the national guard. 2,000 troops. It’s the first time a president has unilaterally called in the national guard, despite objections from local state officials, in 60 years. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s suing Trump for illegally deploying federal troops and “flaming the fires.”

“You’re creating the conditions that you say you’re solving and you’re putting real people’s lives at risk.”

Police have arrested dozens in protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They’ve hit unarmed protesters in the head with rubber bullets. They’ve shot at journalists at point blank range. And still people have promised to resist. More protests are planned for today…

And there is clearly more on the horizon for Los Angeles and elsewhere, in defense of families, in defense of loved ones. In defense of immigrants across the United States.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I don’t always get to do reporting for this series on issues that are happening right now. But this is one of those moments. And it is really important. 

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

If you like what you hear, you can sign up for the specific Stories of Resistance podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.

As always, you can follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Protester Shot in the Head by LA Riot Police: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TxTfdRe7oGQ

Australian journalist hit by ‘rubber bullet’ while reporting from LA: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c98p008kxn1o

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, his spoke novels. He was Steinbeck, Tolstoy, and Tolkien… all in one. His images capture the spirit of the poor and working classes.

And they grip the viewer. Refusing to let your eyes peal from the picture before you. Pictures in black and white. Pictures that seem to have been painted by brush strokes, but which are as real as the camera equipment he used.

Sebastião Salgado was an artist, and he was a documentarian, capturing the plight of the downtrodden, but also their soul. Their beauty.

He was criticized for this. They said he glorified poverty. He responded that the poor deserve just as good a picture as the rich. Probably even better.

Sebastião Salgado was born February 8, 1944, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He trained as a Marxist economist. Joined the movement against Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960s, and went into exile in France in August 1969 with his wife.

“I arrived in France with Lélia, my wife, at the end of the 1960s as an exiled person, fleeing the system of deep repression that existed at the time in Brazil,” he posted on Instagram almost two years ago. “Soon afterwards, the Brazilian military dictatorship withdrew our passports and we had to file an injunction to get them back. We became refugees here in France, and then immigrants. When I did a piece of work on refugees and immigrants, I already knew this story, in my own way I had lived it. For years, I had been looking for people who had been displaced from their place of origin and were in transit, looking for another point of stability. They left either for economic reasons, climate change or because of conflict. I realised a body of work called “Exodus”. In reality, I was photographing a part of my own life, portrayed in other people, some of them in slightly better situations than I had, and the vast majority in much worse conditions. It was a very important moment in my life, of identifying with these people, and of feeling deeply what I was photographing,” he wrote.

He first began taking pictures in the early 1970s with his wife’s Leica. By 1973, he had quit his job at the International Coffee Organization and became a freelance photographer. He traveled the world. Worked for several photography agencies. 

He was covering the first 100 days of Ronald Reagan in 1981, when he was one of the only photographers to capture the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life.

Salgado sold the pictures to finance his first major photography trip to Africa. 

Salgado’s projects would span the world. He would travel to 120 different countries on his photography trips. His pictures are big. Larger than life. Epic. Like the landscape photographer Ansel Adams’, but with grit. Portraying humanity…

The best and the worst.

And at their heart, revealing truth, struggle, the fight to survive, to exist. And the underpinnings of an unjust, unequal global system where so many have so little and so few have so much.

Like his 1986 pictures of the Serra Pelada Gold Mine, in Brazil. They seem like something from a dystopian future, or a long-forgotten past. Thousands of workers in shorts and t-shirts climbing through the mud on rickety ladders in near-slave conditions.

“He always had the idea that things are always going to get better, that we are on the path for development and somehow if he could create a warning, he could contribute to this process of social progress in society,” his son, filmmaker Juliano Salgado would later say.

Salgado shot masterpiece collections of pictures of workers. Of the fight for land and land reform. Of nature. The Amazon. Climate change. And when he visited communities, land occupations, or groups like Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, he didn’t just drop in, shoot and leave, like news agencies photographers then and now. He stayed for days. He documented it. He experienced it. He lived it.

Sebastião Salgado’s photography spoke volumes, portraying deep and profound truth, shining light on the problems and the injustices of the world in exquisite images that one simply cannot ignore. 

###

Sebastiao Salgado passed away on May 23, 2025, at the age of 81.

His legacy lives on. 

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I have been a huge fan of Sebastiao Salgado for years. I’m happy I was able to do this short story on his tremendous life and work.

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, you can find follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at Patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 43 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Here is Sebastião Salgado’s Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/sebastiaosalgadooficial

Here is a beautiful written piece about Sebastião Salgado’s work on workers: https://www.holdenluntz.com/magazine/new-arrival/sebastiao-salgados-workers-an-archeology-of-the-industrial-age/

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

There is a boat sailing to Gaza right now. It carries aid for the people of Palestine. And it is called the Freedom Flotilla.

It is a sign of solidarity. A sign of resistance. Against Israel’s war on the people of Palestine. Against the death, and destruction and pain. A sign of international resistance against the Israeli genocide.

On board is Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, and 11 others from around the world.

“12 people are here on board, to break the siege and to create a people’s humanitarian corridor. To take whatever aid we can carry. And to say that we do not accept a genocide. We do not accept ethnic cleansing. And we will not stay silent.”

That’s Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila.

The goal is to break Israel’s siege of Gaza and deliver much needed humanitarian aid. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, strictly controlling the entry of supplies, goods, and aid into the region.

On board the ship is rice, flour, baby formula, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, and medical supplies.

This is not the first time they have tried to sail to Gaza.

One month ago, another ship, also sailing as part of the Freedom Flotilla, was attacked by drones. 15 years ago, another group of ships were attacked. Israeli forces killed 10 people on board. Injured dozens. And arrested everyone.

Greta Thunberg spoke to the public shortly before they set sail on June 1.

“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And no matter how dangerous this mission is. It is no where near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of a live-streamed genocide.”

“We just want to say that this isn’t just about getting food into Gaza. It’s also about breaking the medical seizure of doctors. Bringing in doctors and medical equipment. And I just have a few messages to all of the doctors and nurses in Gaza that are doing amazing work. Not just the local doctors, but the international doctors. We see you. We see the work that you’re doing on there and the reporting that you’re doing on the ground.”

The Freedom Flotilla left from Sicily, Italy, on June 1. It’s a seven-day voyage. If all goes as planned, they will arrive to Gaza this weekend.

“We need you to keep all eyes on deck. To follow the mission. And to keep putting pressure on your respective governments and institutions to demand an end to the genocide and occupation in Palestine.”

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.

I have no words to describe the dire situation in Gaza. We’ll be following the progress of the Freedom Flotilla closely over the coming days.

If you liked this story, please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I’ll add links in the show notes.

You can support my work and this podcast, plus check out exclusive pictures, videos and stories on my Patreon. That’s Patreon.com/mfox.

This is Episode 42 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

###

“We know that for 78 years, not a single bottle of water, not a single piece of bread enters Gaza. So we are going on a small boat called Madleen that fits 10-12 people, carrying whatever humanitarian aid we can carry, carrying all the people that wants to go there, and go into Gaza, not because we think that a few boxes we will be able to take will make a difference… we know that this is just a drop in the ocean, but we are going to open a people’s humanitarian corridor.”

This is episode 42 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

You can find more information on the Freedom Flotilla at https://freedomflotilla.org/
On their Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gazafreedomflotilla
Or X: https://x.com/GazaFFlotilla

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Protests over ICE raids are continuing across the United States as agents arrest immigrants at courthouses, from their workplaces, on the way to school and more. Immigration and human rights advocate Adriana Jasso with Unión del Barrio describes protests that met a massive raid in San Diego at a popular restaurant, the targeting of farmworkers, and how her organization has been conducting ICE patrols to alert the community.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Thousands of fans erupt in the stadium. 

But this is not just a game. And they are rooting for not just any soccer team. This team has an identity. It has a mission. A sporting team that is synonymous with resistance. Synonymous with the struggle for Palestine…

And the Palestinian people.

This is Club Deportivo Palestino, Palestine Sporting Club. A soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile.

Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people.

The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Their slogan is: “More than a team, it is an entire people.”

That slogan breathes true for fans in the stadium.

11-year-old Kamal Haddad is in the crowd with his father and his grandfather. Their family emigrated from Palestine during the First World War. They say this team is a way of keeping their traditions alive.

“This is a team that’s defending a Palestinian identity here in Chile,” says Kamal Haddad. That’s why we use the slogan ‘Gaza resists.’”

His grandfather, beside him, says his father brought him to his first Palestino game 50 years ago. Now he’s there with his son and his grandson. Three generations of one family, cheering on Palestine — the team, the country, and the people.

“This is so important,” he says. “It’s like our identity. and it’s a way of maintaining our traditions. With my family. With my children.”

The team, the players, and the fans have remained outspoken in defense of Palestine. Their history. Their people. And outspoken against the violence in Gaza.

Before a game in May last year, the players walked onto the field wearing black jackets to protest the children killed by Israel in Gaza. The team has taken the field in Palestinian scarves and waved anti-war banners. Among the chants in the crowd is “Gaza resists/Palestine exists.”

And the Palestino Soccer Club is an inspiration abroad, with nearly a million followers on Instagram. Games are televised in refugee camps in the Middle East. 

They are a symbol. An inspiration of resistance, standing in defense of the Palestinian cause even so far away from Palestine, so far away from the violence in Gaza. 

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I attended a Palestino game last year in Santiago, Chile. You can check out exclusive pictures of the team and the fans on my Patreon. That’s Patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast.

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

Chile’s Club Deportivo Palestino is a soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile. Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people.

The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Their slogan is: “More than a team, it is an entire people.”

The team, the players, and the fans have remained outspoken in defense of Palestine. And outspoken against the violence in Gaza. 

This is episode 40 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can see exclusive pictures of Club Deportivo Palestino in Michael Fox’s Patreon account: patreon.com/posts/chiles-soccer-in-130263594. 

There you can also follow his reporting and support his work at Patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Now in their twilight years, these are the warriors who mounted a united campaign from the 1950s through to the mid-1970s against the Chinese occupation of their homeland. They live quiet, spiritual lives far removed from the days of gathering intelligence and ambushing Chinese military convoys.

Many of these fighters were trained by the CIA. They bear experiences that few outside their circle can fathom. Their stories are filled with code names, secret camps, clandestine border crossings, and survival in brutal conditions. They played a pivotal role in helping Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, escape into exile.

(Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative)

Today they have a sedate existence. Most live in retirement homes, in settlements like Jampaling and Paljorling that are scattered around Nepal’s second largest city, Pokhara. A select, more affluent, few live around the capital Kathmandu.

But they have an important and urgent message they want to share with future generations, rooted in the beliefs that drove them when they took up arms up to seven decades ago: to stick together to defend the Tibetan way of life.

“The idea of ‘Tibet’ is no longer a question of geography — it’s about the resolve and readiness to sacrifice everything for the greater purpose of serving the cause,” said Ugen Tsering, 87, also known as Utse Ugen, one of the former fighters who now runs a successful Tibetan restaurant in the heart of Kathmandu’s bustling tourist district, Thamel.

As their numbers dwindle, the former resistance fighters are eager to share their little-known stories.

(RFA Tibetan)

Their armed struggle against China began with a grassroots force, the Chushi Gangdruk or Four Rivers, Six Ranges, that was later known as the Tensung Dhanglang Magar, or the Voluntary Force for the Defense of Buddhism. The movement then received covert financing, training, and weaponry support from the CIA, which code-named the project ST CIRCUS – running it for over a decade from 1957 until U.S. support for the Tibetan resistance ended in 1969.

Ultimately, their goal to regain control of Tibet that had been occupied by China in the early 1950s was unrealized. But they had successes – not least in forming a movement that overcame regional, religious and linguistic differences that have often divided Tibetans who have inhabited the vast Tibetan plateau for millennia.

“There were young Tibetans from the three provinces (of U-Tsang, Kham, and Amdo) alongside us – all committed to the cause and willing to sacrifice our lives,” said Phenpo Gyaltsen, 93. “I never heard any distinctions being made based on our regions. The only message we ever received was that we are all the same and whether in joy or in suffering, we stand together.”

“Our generation is both unfortunate and fortunate,” said Ugen, referring to the first generation of Tibetans who witnessed China’s annexation of Tibet in 1950. “We faced tremendous difficulties in our time, but we also had the opportunity to take action and strive to overcome them.”

(Passang Tsering/RFA Tibetan)

Ugen – code-named “Bob” – was one of the hundreds who received training at the secret training facility the CIA ran in Camp Hale, Colorado, in 1958-1964.

Hailing from the central Tibetan region of Gyangtse, Ugen was assigned in 1958 by Gyalo Thondup – the Dalai Lama’s elder brother who died in February 2025 – to travel to Tibet’s capital Lhasa to serve as a messenger between Andruk Gonpo Tashi, the founder of the resistance, and high-ranking officials in the Tibetan government, such as the Lord Chamberlain Thupten Phalha, who organized the Dalai Lama’s escape to exile in March 1959.

(The Tibet Museum; AFP)

The Dalai Lama’s escape

The Chushi Gangdruk fighters’ role in escorting the Dalai Lama safely from Lhasa to the Indian border is to this day regarded as one of the movement’s most pivotal achievements and contributions to the Tibetan cause.

In the Dalai Lama’s personal autobiography, “My Land, My People,” and his latest book, “Voice for the Voiceless,” he acknowledged the bravery of the Tibetan freedom fighters who accompanied him undercover into exile.

“In spite of my beliefs, I very much admired their courage and their determination to carry on the grim battle they had started for our freedom, culture, and religion,” he wrote.

(AP)

“I feel we accomplished what needed to be done during our time,” said Lobsang Monlam, who was one of the fighters tasked with blocking Chinese forces from entering Lhasa while their compatriots safely escorted the Dalai Lama to exile.

“I have no regrets. Joining the Chushi Gangdruk guerrilla movement was a matter of desperation, not choice. There was no other way to safeguard Tibetan Buddhism and our nation,” Monlam told RFA.

Monlam, 100, is the lone centenarian among a handful of former fighters who reside in the old-aged home in Jampaling village, one of the settlements established in 1975 to house the thousands of veterans of the Mustang guerrilla movement after they were forced to give up arms and surrender to the Nepalese army. The needs of the veterans have since been met by the Lo-drig organization, a welfare association founded by Mustang guerilla leaders, including Lhamo Tsering.

(Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative)

A former monk from Chamdo, Monlam renounced his monastic vows to join the Chushi Gangdruk in Tibet. After his escape into exile, he, like thousands of other newly arrived Tibetan refugees, toiled on road construction projects in the mountains of northeastern Indian border states like Arunachal Pradesh in exchange for food.

There, in 1960, he learned that hundreds of Tibetans were making their way to then-Kingdom of Lo, now Upper Mustang, where the fighters had set up a military base to continue their resistance. Monlam followed, making the difficult journey to join the movement, which swelled from a few hundred fighters to more than 2,000 that year.

The initial months were brutal. “We barely survived,” Monlam recalls.

(Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films)

The fighters endured harsh weather and living conditions at high altitude. They lived in extreme poverty and battled food shortages, even boiling their boots and saddlebags to eat the leather to fend off their hunger.

But by March 1961, the CIA supplied arms and aid. And over time, the leaders of the resistance - which included Lhamo Tsering, the right hand man of Thondup - organized the army into 15 battalions, each with 100 fighters.

They recognized the strategic advantages of their location. It was close to the Tibetan border but also remote enough to serve as a hub for covert operations and to limit the influence of the Nepalese government. They established an elaborate network of bases, with Kelsang Camp as their headquarters.

(STCIRCUS Archive of Tibetan Resistance via Hoover Institution Library & Archives)

An intelligence coup

Tsering and fellow Mustang guerrilla army generals Baba Kelsang Yeshe and Gyato Wangdu tasked the different regiments to gather intelligence, conduct sabotage, ambush Chinese military convoys, scout routes, and weed out any internal spies.

The training that many of the fighters received at Camp Hale — in surveillance, map-reading, radio and communications skills, codes, and guerrilla tactics – proved vital to their success in covert operations.

(Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films/Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films)

Ninety-year-old Tashi Dhondup, Ugen, 87, and Phenpo Gyaltsen, 93, were among their number.

Gyaltsen was tasked with collecting information and documenting the brutal treatment of Tibetans inside Tibet. Like him, Ugen was assigned by Thondup to track Chinese military movements and troop buildups around Lhasa, while reporting on the living conditions and struggles of ordinary Tibetans. Dhondup served as a military training instructor in Mustang for 11 years after his training in Camp Hale and used his map-reading skills to navigate troops during raids at the border.

(CIA Museum and the Center for the Study of Intelligence)

In one notably successful raid in October 1961, 30 Tibetan fighters crossed into Tibet and ambushed a Chinese convoy and secured a pouch from a People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, commander. It yielded what top CIA officials at the time called the “best intelligence coup since the Korean War.”

The pouch contained more than 1,600 classified documents with rare and valuable intelligence about China. The documents revealed internal problems within the Chinese military and the Chinese Communist Party and details of the large-scale famine resulting from China’s failed Great Leap Forward.

While the Americans prioritized intelligence-gathering, the Tibetans valued acts of resistance. Guerrilla units rotated across the border into Tibet, conducting raids and targeted missions — though many ultimately failed.

Reke Samten, who was code-named “Stuart,” was in one group deployed by Lhamo Tsering after his training at Camp Hale. He and two other fighters, code-named “Terry” and “Marv,” were sent to Kongpo, now Nyingtri Prefecture, to form and lead a rebel outfit.

(Passang Tsering/RFA Tibetan)

But Samten was forced to retreat after two months, when no reinforcements arrived. He embarked on a perilous three-month journey back across the border — hiding to avoid capture by Chinese forces and enduring the cold and hunger, with little to eat and little to cover himself at night.

His companions were even less fortunate. Both were captured by the Chinese. “Terry” was imprisoned for 17 years, suffering torture and harsh interrogations until his release and escape to Nepal and India, where he and Samten were reunited. “Marv” died in captivity, Samten said.

Importance of unity

Sitting atop the terrace of his home in the outskirts of Kathmandu, Samten said he had no regrets about devoting his prime years to pursuing an impossible fight. That’s a sentiment shared by all the fighters RFA interviewed.

“Now, at 90 years old, I am in the final phase of my life and have dedicated myself entirely to religious practice,” said Samten, who was clad in maroon, a color associated with Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns.

“As I look back on my life, I feel it has been meaningful … but it is important for more Tibetans to learn about our struggle — one that has often gone unnoticed,” he said.

(Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative)

Gyaltsen was tasked with collecting information and documenting the brutal treatment of Tibetans inside Tibet. Like him, Ugen was assigned by Thondup to track Chinese military movements and troop buildups around Lhasa, while reporting on the living conditions and struggles of ordinary Tibetans. Dhondup served as a military training instructor in Mustang for 11 years after his training in Camp Hale and used his map-reading skills to navigate troops during raids at the border.

(Passang Tsering/RFA Tibetan)

Before his death in 1999, Lhamo Tsering, one of the leaders of the resistance who wrote eight volumes of books on the history of the resistance, said the armed struggle must be looked at as “one chapter in our continuing struggle for freedom, one that still has some meaning.”

It’s now more than 50 years since they were forced to shut down the resistance’s last stronghold in Mustang and disband. The goal for the next generation of Tibetans, the veterans say, must be a united commitment to preserving Tibetan culture and resisting Chinese government attempts to erase their identity.

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said we need to save and preserve Tibetan Buddhism, not just for Tibetans but for the benefit of the world,” said Dhondup.

“Young people should pay attention to His Holiness’s teachings and consider the sacrifices made by the elders from the three provinces of Tibet over the past six decades. Most of them have passed away, but we should learn from their struggles and achievements,” said Gyaltsen.

(Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films)

One critical lesson from the past, noted Ugen, is understanding “the perils of regionalism and religious divisions and importance of unity to accomplish our goal of seeing a free Tibet.”

Observers of Tibetan affairs say divisions based on regional origins have surfaced again with social media usage. The political exploitation of these differences have also played out in parliamentary proceedings of the exiled Tibetan government and among the diaspora.

Those developments have raised uncomfortable questions about the community’s ability to maintain cohesion, as the Dalai Lama, a revered figure, turns 90 this year, and China looks to undermine not just Tibetan identity, but solidarity among its people.

“My hope for the younger generation is that we remain united across all three provinces. If we are united, we will have a movement the world has never seen,” said Tashi Tsepel, 75, who resides in Jampaling.

(RFA Tibetan)

To be sure, these aging warriors know their physical battle ended long ago.

But they hope that the spirit of unity and defiance that drove them into the mountains of Mustang will continue to inspire future generations — a final act of resistance against the forces of time, oppression, and division.

For these veterans, perhaps that would be victory enough in the twilight of their extraordinary lives.

Reporting by Dorjee Damdul, Lobsang Gelek, Passang Tsering, and Abby Seiff in Mustang, Pokhara, Kathmandu in Nepal, and Tenzin Pema and Passang Dhonden in Washington.

Edited by Mat Pennington. Contributing editors: Kalden Lodoe, Boer Deng, and Jim Snyder.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema, Dorjee Damdul, Lobsang Gelek, Passang Tsering, Abby Seiff, Passang Dhonden for RFA.

Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru. 

It’s far from the highway, along a winding dirt road that’s carved along harrowing precipices. 

Up here, the air is cool…  and their town of adobe and cinderblock homes is nestled on the side of the mountain. 

As are their fields of duraznos. Peach trees, which cover the terraced hillsides down into the valley and up toward the craggy peaks.

This has been their home and the life-blood for generations. The people here are simple. Humble. They hold on to tradition. Women wear colorful dresses, the same sewed and worn by their grandmothers before them. Men’s hands are calloused and strong from long days toiling in the fields.

It only rains during the rainy months, which turn the hillsides green. And then, slowly they fade to brown throughout the year. The residents of Parán get their water for their homes and their peaches from the precious springs that dot the mountain.

Life slows down, here.

But they have had to battle.

In 2012, the Canadian mining company Lupaka Gold acquired an old mine and set to turn it back on. They called it the Invicta Mine.

Lupaka Gold would extract precious minerals. Gold and silver.

The company met with other nearby communities. It made agreements. But not with the people of Parán… even though Parán had the most to lose. 

See, Parán sits down the mountain from the entrance to the mine and on the outside of the mountain where the mine is operated. When the mine workers blast, at night in particular, the people of Parán feel it. Their homes shake and rumble. They awake from their dreams. 

And the residents of Parán fear the upgraded mine will contaminate their only water source—the springs that flow from the mountain that feed both their groves of peach trees and their families. The springs that flow from the very mountain where the mine is located.

And so, when the Invicta mine opened and its trucks began to rumble up and down the windy roads with precious metals extracted from deep inside, the people of Parán said, “no.” 

They blockaded the road leading to and from the mine. They hauled logs and rocks onto it, and refused to move. Day and night they remained. The mine trucks sat idle. So Invicta took action. They sent in thugs to attack the roadblock. And attack they did. Firing live rounds. The Parán protesters fled down the mountain to their homes. 

But if this act was meant to scare, all it did was unite Parán unanimously that they would fight. 

They held a community meeting. Everyone decided. All adult men and women, that they would join in the roadblock. They split into teams of 30 to 40 people each. And they returned to the roadblock even stronger. Each team would spend 24 hours there. They would camp overnight, then the next team would arrive and they would switch. Day after day. Month after month. Together, the Parán people stood. 

But the mine pushed back. As did the Peruvian police. In the beginning of 2019, they sent in a brigade of 200 officers that was meant to end the roadblock once and for all. 

Still the people of Parán resisted. But at a great toll. During the operation, a police officer shot a man. A community member. The nephew of one of the community leaders.

Nehemías Román Narvaste.

A great loss.

But finally, also, came victory… The community held on. Lupaka Gold agreed that their losses due to the Parán roadblock and the mine shutdown were too great and that they would close the mine.

The people of Parán had won.

“Yes, whenever, there’s a problem, everyone participates, women and men,” says community leader Leonel Roman Palomares. “We decide what to do in a meeting. And everyone decides together with one voice.

“In that sense, we’re very united,” he says. “Whenever there’s anything that may harm the community. We are very, very united. And this community has been through a lot.”

###

In 2020, Lupaka Gold took the state of Peru to court under the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement for lost profits. It is demanding the state pay it $100 million in lost profits for the closure of the mine. The decision is expected in the coming weeks. 

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening.

I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I visited Parán last month, spoke with residents and shot some pretty incredible drone footage of the community and their surrounding peach fields.  You can also check out exclusive video and photos of the community on my patreon. Patreon.com/mfox. I’ll add a link in the show notes. 

This is episode 39 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru. They are peach farmers. Their orchards line the mountainside. The same mountain where a new Canadian mine, known as Invictus, was beginning to operate. They feared for their future and that the mine would contaminate their precious springs, their only source of fresh water for their town and their peach trees.

In 2018, they began an around-the-clock roadblock against a new mine. When they were attacked by armed thugs, they held a community meeting and the entire village—all adult men and women—agreed to participate in the protest against the mine. 

They were finally successful.

This is episode 39 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can see exclusive pictures, drone footage, and pictures of the Parán community in Michael Fox’s Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

You can find out more about Lupaka Gold’s case against Peru through the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement over the Invicta Mine here: https://gtwaction.org/egregious-isds-cases/#lupakagoldvperu

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones.

Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes.

Searching and hoping. 

The crunch of the ground beneath their feet. The harsh wind whipping at their clothes. The hot sun on their faces.

“For us there was no wind, there was no cold, there was no heat, there was no hunger,” Violeta Berríos says.

Her partner, Mario Argüelles Toro, was a taxi driver and a local leader in the Socialist Party. It was his death sentence. 

Mario Argüelles Toro was detained and tortured just weeks after the September 1973 coup d’état by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.

On October 19, 1973, Mario was taken from prison, executed, and disappeared alongside 25 others for their support for the former democratically elected President Salvador Allende.

Executed during what they called the Chilean army’s “Caravan of Death.”

The men’s partners and mothers responded, transforming their sadness into action. 

They founded the Group of Family Members of the Politically Executed and Disappeared Detainees of Calama.

They took to the desert, scratching at it each day, demanding that it reveal its secrets.

And after years, finally, it did.

In 1990, in a place called Quebrada del Buitre, or Vultures Gorge, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth.

This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years. But most of their bodies were no longer there. 

Just as the women were getting closer, General Augusto Pinochet had ordered their remains dug up, removed and buried someplace else. An evil scavenger hunt, in which the rules are rigged and the dice are staked.

Between 1990 and 2003, the women would find the partial remains of 21 of the victims.

Today, a memorial lives on a hillside just off highway 23, heading east out of Calama. 

This was once barren desert for miles, but it now lies beneath a sea of wind turbines. The sun burns overhead. The wind threatens to knock you over.

The memorial is in the shape of a circle. Almost like a small amphitheater, with stairs leading down. In the middle is a patch of dry Atacama earth. Rocks and small marble stones are laid there in the shape of a cross. Pink and red flowers have been placed throughout. Pink concrete columns rise into the air. Each of them bears a name inscribed on a little plaque. The name of each of those who was detained, tortured, executed and disappeared here in the Atacama desert.

This is the location of the mass grave, where the women of Calama finally found the fragments of bones that proved their loved ones had been here.

Behind the memorial is a crater in the ground, where the grave was opened, and where they exhumed what they could. Rocks, in piles or in tiny circles, mark the locations where parts of their loved ones were found.

The memorial is a sentinel in the desert. A beacon of memory. Memory of lives lost. Of the horror and the pain of the past. But also the memory of the women’s determination. Their hope and struggle. Their resistance in the desert…

The women are still searching for and demanding justice.

For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones — their husbands and partners who were ripped from them, detained, tortured, executed, and disappeared in the weeks following Chile’s US-backed 1973 coup d’état.

Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes, searching and hoping. 

And finally, in 1990, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth. This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years. 

This is the May Week of the Disappeared — a week to remember and honor those who have been forcibly disappeared and the fight for truth and justice for their families.

This is episode 38 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Filmmaker Patricio Guzman’s masterpiece of a documentary, Nostalgia for the Light: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556190

Spanish singer Victory Manuel wrote a song for the Women of Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkzzsK-uuA

Mujer de Calama Afeddep Calama Dictadura Chile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hG5m3BYhw

Acto de conmemoración de Afeddep a 45 años del paso de la Caravana de la Muerte por Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__pUZR-68OE

Memorial for the Disappeared Detainees of Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2D6-es9Nnw

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

The feeling of cooling tensions induced an air of complacency. Groups such as the TRF, along with a fruit salad of insurgent outfits – the Kashmir Tigers, the People’s Anti-Fascist Front, and the United Liberation Front of Kashmir – were all spawned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August 2019 revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted Kashmir singular autonomy. TRF has been particularly and violently opposed to the resettlement of the Kashmiri pandits, which they see as an effort to alter the region’s demography.

The murderous incident raised the obvious question: Would Modi pay lip service to the 1972 Shimla Agreement, one that divided Kashmir into two zones of administration separated by a Line of Control? (A vital feature of that agreement is an understanding that both powers resolve their disputes without the need for third parties.)

The answers came promptly enough. First came India’s suspension of the vital Indus Water Treaty, a crucial agreement governing the distribution of water from India to Pakistan. Pakistan reciprocated firmly by suspending the Shimla Agreement, expelling Indian military diplomats, halting visa exemptions for Indian citizens, and closing the Wagah border for trade.

Hindu nationalism proved particularly stirred, and Modi duly fed its cravings. On May 7, India commenced Operation Sindoor, involving what were purportedly precision missile attacks on nine militant camps in Pakistan and the Jammu and Kashmir area controlled by Islamabad. The operation itself had a scent of gendered manipulation, named after the vermillion used by married Hindu women to symbolise the durable existence of their husbands. Two female military officers – Colonel Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh – were tasked with managing the media pack.

The Indian briefings celebrated the accuracy of the strikes on what were said to be the sites of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen. Thirty-one suspected terrorists were said to have perished, though Pakistan insisted that civilians had been killed in this apparent feast of forensic precision. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh would have none of it: Indian forces had only “struck only those who harmed our innocents”.

The next day, it was operations against Pakistan’s air defence systems in Lahore that stole the show. The inevitable Pakistani retaliation followed on May 10, with the Indian return serve against 11 Pakistani air bases. What followed is one version: Pakistan’s military broke into a sweat. A cessation of hostilities was sought and achieved. Armchair pundits on the Indian side celebrated: India had successfully targeted the terrorist cells supported by Pakistan. If one is to read Anubhav Shankar Goswami seriously, Operation Sindoor was a stroke of genius, threatening “the Pakistan Army’s strategic shield against terrorists”.

More accurately, this was a lovely little spilling of blood with weaponry between callow sibling throats, a pattern familiar since 1947. The two countries have fought four full-blown conflicts, two over Kashmir. Along the way, they have made the world a lot safer by acquiring nuclear weapons.

There was something for everyone in this retaliatory and counter-retaliatory feast. India claimed strategic proficiency, keeping censorship on the matter tight. Pakistan could claim some prowess in shooting down five Indian jets, using Chinese weaponry, including the J-10.  With pride and pomp, they could even appoint Pakistani Army chief Asim Munir to the post of Field Marshal, an absurdly ceremonial gesture that gave the impression that the army had restored its tattered pride. It was to be expected that this was ample reward for his, in the words of the government, “strategic leadership and decisive role” in defeating India.

The only ones to be notably ignored in this display of subcontinental machismo were the Kashmiris themselves, who face, in both the Pakistan and Indian administered zones, oppressive anti-terrorism laws, discriminatory practices, and suppression of dissent and free speech.

Ultimately, the bickering children were convinced to end their playground antics. The fact that the overbearing headmaster, the unlikely US President Donald Trump, eventually brought himself to bear on proceedings must have irritated them. After four days of conflict, the US role in defusing matters between the powers became evident. Kashmir, which India has long hoped to keep in museum-like storage, away from the international stage, had been enlivened.  Trump even offered his services to enable New Delhi and Islamabad a chance to reach a more enduring peace. Praise for the president followed, notably from those wishing to see the Kashmir conflict resolved.

In one sense, there seems to be little reason to worry. These are countries seemingly linked to sandpit grievances, scrapping, gouging, and complaining about their lot. Even amidst juvenile spats, they can bicker yet still sign enduring ceasefires. In February 2021, for instance, the militaries of both countries cobbled together a ceasefire which ended four months of cross-border skirmishes. A mere two violations of the agreement (how proud they must have been) was recorded for the rest of the year. In 2022, a solitary incident of violation was noted.

A needlessly florid emphasis was made on the conflict by Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Meta.  This was an encounter lacking a “decisive victory and no clear political end”. It merely reinstated “the India-Pakistan hyphenation”. In one sense, this element of hyphenation – the international perception of two subcontinental powers in an eternal, immature squabble – was something India seemed to be marching away from. But Prime Minister Modi, despite his grander visions for India, is a sectarian fanatic. History shows that fanaticism tends to shrink, rather than enlarge, the mind. In that sense, he is in good company with those other uniformed fanatics in uniform.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The year is 2006. 

Oaxaca, Mexico. A city that will unexpectedly become ground zero for one of the most radical movements Mexico has seen in the 21st century.

May 22.

Teachers strike across the state, against dismal resources for schools, kids, and themselves. 

They are met with widespread repression. At least 90 people are injured by police forces. 

So, backed by community members and organized over community radio stations, they found APPO, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca.

They start holding people’s assemblies. They take over the city. Their movement is compared to the Paris commune. It’s been called the first popular revolt of the 21st century.

Roadblocks line city streets. A clip from a documentary from the time, Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad, “A little bit of so much truth,” says roughly a thousand barricades cover the city each night for more than two months.

And they also take their fight to Mexico’s capital. A group of teachers go on a hunger strike, demanding respect and the resignation of the Oaxacan state governor.

Police and armed gunmen respond. They unleash widespread repression, attacks, disappearances, killings.

Among those killed is Brad Will, a US documentary filmmaker and indy media activist. He’s shot filming a protest in a street just east of Oaxaca City on October 27, 2006. The footage you’re hearing is from the camera he was holding at the time. 

The month after Will is killed, the federal police surround the APPO encampment, cracking down and detaining hundreds. Many are tortured. Some are disappeared.

“It was a really repressive environment,” says human rights defender Aline Castellanos Jurado. “You never knew if they would raid your home. Or where the disappeared were. Or what they were doing to the detained.”

Arrest warrants are issued for hundreds. Many go into hiding. Some flee the country. 

By the end of the year, the local government had largely crushed the physical resistance…

But their spirit remained. They would inspire others in Mexico and abroad. And within a decade, Oaxacan teachers would again be in the streets. Organizing, protesting. Marching for their right to teach. 

For their children’s and their students’ rights to education.

Resistance in the name of the peoples’ right to learn, and the teachers’ right to be compensated fairly and respected.

On May 22. 2006, teachers struck across the Mexican state of Oaxaca against dismal resources for schools, kids, and themselves. They were met with widespread repression. It would kick off months of protests that would unexpectedly turn Oaxaca into ground zero for one of the most radical movements Mexico has seen in the 21st century.

They started holding people’s assemblies. They set up barricades across the city. Teachers, housewives, Indigenous organizers, health workers, and students took over 14 different radio stations to defend their struggle.

This is episode 37 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Oaxacan teachers strike against Governor, 2006: https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/oaxacan-teachers-strike-against-governor-2006

The Long Struggle of Mexican Teachers: https://jacobin.com/2016/08/mexico-teacher-union-strikes-oaxaca

Documentary: Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad (Many of the clips in this episode came from this documentary):

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

In early February, a few weeks into this time of testing, I identified our objectives over the next two years as “making as many advances as we can on local and state levels while preventing as much damage as possible to the primary MAGA targets: US democracy, human and civil rights, including internationally, organized labor and programs that benefit low- and moderate-income working people, and the natural environment on which all life depends.” I put forward five areas of focus, five tactics, that I thought were critical for successful resistance: street heat, local/state/federal government, courts, media and publicity, and outreach.

I think the most important development over these months has been the emergence of massive, repeated, and geographically widespread street heat, millions of us demonstrating in state capitols, in DC, at Tesla dealerships, in thousands of towns in every single state. The high point so far was three and a half million of us in the streets for the April 5 “Hands Off” actions, but the many other national days of action, beginning with 50501’s February 5 mobilization, have all been critical to building a widespread spirit of resistance.

June 14, No Kings Day, is the next major nationwide action, and with 880  actions already on the calendar, there is reason to believe this will be bigger than April 5. We should all do whatever we can to make it so!

These actions have undoubtedly strengthened those of us taking part in them and others: law firms, Harvard and other major universities, judges, media figures, faith leaders, and more. Indeed, courage is contagious, and on that front, we should feel good about what we have accomplished so far.

As far as the courts, according to the Associated Press, as of today, 158 Trump executive orders, or 76% of them, have either been blocked or are pending, with 49, or 24%, taking effect. These are not good numbers for the Trumpfascists and a sign that they are going to have a hard time doing all that they want to do.

It’s also significant that the Supreme Court has, in several cases, refused to do Trump’s bidding. There are clear signs that not just the three liberal judges but also some conservatives, especially Roberts and Barrett, have substantial concerns about Trump’s efforts to dominate both Congress and the courts.

What about Congress? As I write, the Republicans who run the House of Representatives with a tiny majority struggle to pass the reconciliation bill, ridiculously named the “Big Beautiful Bill,” they have been working on for months. If eventually passed, and that’s a definite “if,” the Republican-run Senate is by no means ready to approve what the House comes up with. There are many internal differences, some strongly felt, both within the overall House and on the part of more than a few Senators in relation to how and what the House is doing.

That is why many groups, right now, are organizing to mobilize massive pressure on members of the House. All of us should be flooding House members demanding, if Democrats, that they speak out and do whatever they can to frustrate MAGA plans. Even more important, pressure is needed on Republicans, especially those who are in Congressional districts that are expected to be competitive in 2026.

As far as media and publicity, our actions in the streets and the growing willingness of people and organized groups from a broad mix of backgrounds to speak up and resist have had an impact on more than the usual progressive media sources. The Wall Street Journal (!), as one big example, has been very critical of Trump, mainly for his poor leadership when it comes to the economy, especially the tariff debacle. Every once in a while, Fox News people have had specific criticisms of what the Trump Administration is doing. Overall, in no way has the mass media, and certainly not progressive media, including social media, been cowed into silence and submission.

There are other indicators that the progressive resistance should take heart and keep on with our absolutely essential work:

-Where have the MAGAs been when we have demonstrated repeatedly in the streets, including the streets in deep red states? I’ve heard of very, very few instances of any substantive, MAGA, in-person street opposition. This has to be in part because, as polls have shown, there is a lot of discontent among a significant percentage of Trump voters about his handling of the economy, particularly the tariff debacle.

-Bernie Sanders and AOC deserve a loud shout-out for the leadership they gave with their Fight Oligarchy tour of mainly red states, drawing thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people to their rallies. That’s a huge example of the kind of outreach much needed over the coming months and years.

There is something special about this demonstration of the power of age and youth joining together, which has also been reflected in many of the street actions. Bernie and AOC are showing in action how to take on the MAGAs in a way that also builds a strong, independent people’s movement not controlled by the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party.

-And what about Pope Leo 14? The Catholic Church, as male-dominated and hierarchical as it still is, has decided to continue the more progressive direction that the late Pope Francis worked to advance. We now have a new Pope from Chicago, an American who has already made clear he will speak out for those whom the Trumpists are demonizing and deporting, criminalizing, and hurting. For those who believe in a higher power, it could be seen as a sign that, despite Trump, despite Gaza, despite so many reasons not to have hope, there is hope.

It really is true that there ain’t no power like the power of the people, organized, and the power of the people doesn’t stop.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t education reform. It’s economic sabotage by design, not accident, as evidenced by the billion-dollar diversion from the public to the private sector with no public oversight. It’s a calculated attempt to shrink public institutions and turn education into a product, reserved for those who can already afford access. Despite the confetti statements from the Governor’s office, no, this is not a win for “parent choice.” It’s a win for privatization, and Texans—especially those in rural, immigrant, and working-class communities—will be paying the price.

Vouchers Passed, but Who’s Buying?

SB2 establishes a $1 billion Education Savings Account (ESA) program, giving qualifying families about $10,000 yearly to cover private school tuition, homeschool costs, transportation, textbooks, and therapy. On paper, it’s being sold as a lifeline for underserved students, but let’s not get distracted by the branding.

That $10,000 doesn’t come close to covering the actual cost of elite private schools in Texas, which average more than $11,000 annually and climb much higher in urban centers. More importantly, private schools participating in the ESA program aren’t required to accept anyone. They can—and will—cherry-pick their enrollees. That means students with disabilities, discipline histories, or families who can’t foot the rest of the bill will be left behind. Unlike public schools, these private institutions don’t have to abide by federal protections like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

To top it off, SB2 bars undocumented students from participating altogether. That’s right—while public schools remain constitutionally obligated to educate all students, the state is now writing checks that explicitly exclude immigrant families. So much for “choice.”

Rural Reality Check 

Take it from Hazel, a Students Organized for a Real Shot (SORS) organizer and student in rural North Texas: “There’s no ‘choice’ where I live. My public school is the only school. And now they want to take money from it?”

That’s the reality for thousands of families across Texas. Public schools in small towns aren’t just classrooms—they’re lifelines. They’re often the largest employers, food hubs, and mental health support systems in the entire community. Gutting them doesn’t create opportunity. It hollows out the very infrastructure that keeps these places alive.

Some conservatives have recognized this contradiction. Though when it came time to vote, only two Republicans, former House Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Gary VanDeaver, dared to oppose SB2. The rest folded under pressure from Governor Abbott and the powerful voucher machine which includes groups like the American Federation for Children and Texas-based mega-donors (like Dick Uihlein and Jeff Yass) who’ve spent millions reshaping the Legislature through targeted primary campaigns. Make no mistake: This wasn’t just a policy fight. It was a hostile takeover.

What About Public Schools?

While many lawmakers were busy high-fiving over vouchers, public schools continued to drown under outdated funding formulas and chronic disinvestment. Texas still ranks in the bottom third of states for per-pupil spending, and even after the Legislature approved a $7.7 billion education package through House Bill 2, many districts are still facing budget shortfalls and teacher shortages.

Sure, HB2 raises the basic allotment from $6,160 to $6,555, and ties future increases to property value growth. But educators on the ground know it’s not enough. The funding doesn’t account for years of inflation or meet the rising costs of special education, staffing, and school maintenance. It’s a start, but it’s far from transformative, and lawmakers knew that when they passed it.

Meanwhile, teachers continue to leave the profession in staggering numbers. According to the Texas American Federation of Teachers, more than 66 percent considered quitting in 2022. Instead of offering competitive salaries or mental health support, this Legislature gave them censorship bills like Senate Bill 13, which would authorize politically-appointed parents to make sweeping decisionsabout what books students will be able to find in their school libraries, coupled with gestapo-like legal action against teachers deemed to have violated Texas state law by “teaching woke critical race theory.” Because nothing says “thank you for your service” quite like criminalizing your curriculum.

Manufactured Crisis, Manufactured Choice

First, they failed to fund us. Then, they blamed us for failing.

That’s the playbook. The state basic allotment per pupil hasn’t budged since 2019, starving school districts of resources. Yet when STAAR test scores dip, schools are cast as the problem, and the Texas Education Agency swoops in with state-mandated takeovers. That’s the manufactured crisis. Lawmakers are selling “choice” as the solution, but it’s a trapdoor, not a lifeline.

Jakiyla, a Students Organized for a Real Shot (SORS) Dallas-Fort Worth area organizer, noted, “After COVID, our schools were already struggling. And now with this voucher bill, we’re being told we don’t even deserve recovery. We’re just collateral damage in someone else’s agenda.” Jakiyla’s words speak to what countless students across Texas are feeling. Let’s not pretend vouchers are happening in a vacuum. They’re part of a broader campaign to destabilize and delegitimize public education.

Since 2021, Texas has passed multiple laws banning so-called “divisive topics,” cracked down on libraries, and launched attacks on curriculum deemed too inclusive. The state even flirted with legislation this session that would allow politicians to micromanage schoolbook collections—because apparently, To Kill a Mockingbird is a bigger threat than poverty or crumbling campuses.

This isn’t about helping kids. It’s about consolidating power and controlling what students learn and how they learn it. It’s about shifting accountability away from the public and into the hands of private actors with no obligation to serve all students, uphold civil rights, or even report outcomes.

What Happens After Sine Die?

As we approach June 2, the focus will shift to the implementation of these programs, legal challenges to SB2’s more extreme provisions (like its citizenship clause), and the behind-closed-doors conference committee process to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. Expect behind-closed-door negotiations over who gets priority for vouchers, what oversight looks like, and how funding rules may shift over time. Generally, expect more spin, but the facts don’t lie. Texas educates more than 5.4 million public school students, and each one deserves a fully funded, fully staffed, censorship-free education. That’s not some radical demand —it’s a moral and constitutional imperative.

Yet, with the passage of SB2, the Legislature made a choice to invest in exclusion instead of equity and privatization instead of the public good.

This Is How We Fight Back

This legislative session was billed as a turning point—a chance to “reinvest in Texas kids.” Instead, lawmakers handed our future over to lobbyists and political donors, making it clear that public schools are not their priority. Unless we organize, speak out, and hold them accountable, this billion-dollar heist will be just the beginning.

Charter expansions are next. Teacher “accountability” bills are on the horizon. More manufactured outrage over library and classroom content is guaranteed. The goal isn’t excellence—it’s control.

But here’s what they don’t expect: resistance. From rural towns to big cities, from high schoolers to retired educators, Texans are waking up. We know what’s being taken from us. And we’re not going quiet.

If Texas has taught us anything, it’s that underdogs don’t stay quiet—and when we rise, we raise hell, and we’re just getting started.

This article originally appeared on https://www.projectcensored.org/texas-billion-heist-public-education/

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Da’Taeveyon Daniels.

They called him the world’s poorest, or humblest, president. 

He was often seen driving himself in his 1987 baby blue VW bug. 

Memes have gone viral recently showing him giving Noam Chomsky a ride.

He lived on a farm.

His clothes were simple.

So were his words and his actions. 

Yet he created tremendous change and left an indelible mark on the tiny country of Uruguay and the entire region of Latin America.

When Pepe Mujica passed, tens of thousands of supporters arrived to pay their respects. 

As his body was driven through the streets, huge crowds lined the sides of the road and applauded. Others marched alongside his coffin, which was draped with the flags of Uruguay and his party, Frente Amplio.

He was cremated, as he had requested. His ashes were scattered beneath a tree on his farm.

Pepe Mujica was an extraordinary person. 

He showed that anyone could become president.

Even elderly farmers,

Former guerrilla fighters,

Former political prisoners. 

“They say I’m a poor president. No, I’m not a poor president,” he said in an interview several years ago. “The poor people are the ones that always want more. Because they are always on an infinite race. They don’t have time to live.”

When he spoke, he did so with the wisdom of someone who had fought,

Faced the worst,

Seen it all,

And still believed in humanity,

And in political struggle,

And the possibility of change… 

Late last year, during the 2024 electoral campaign, he said goodbye on stage. 

“I’m an old man who is very close to beginning a journey from which you do not return,” he told a packed crowd of supporters. “But I am happy, because you are here. Because when my arms go, there will be thousands of arms lifting up this struggle and all of my life, I always said that the best leaders are those that leave a group of people that is even greater than themselves. And there you are!”

Pepe Mujica led Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, with the leftist coalition Frente Amplio. 

His was one of the most progressive governments in the country’s history.

Mujica helped to lift thousands out of poverty. 

Inequality reached a record low in Uruguay. 

Unemployment dropped below 7%. 

Same-sex marriage was legalized, as was abortion and marajuana.

When he left office, he had an approval rating close to 70%.

During his speech at the UN under his presidency, he said, “We have the necessary resources to ensure that everyone on the planet can live with dignity, but they are in the predatory waste of our civilization.”

Mujica had come a long way. 

In the mid-1960s, Mujica had joined the urban guerrilla movement, the Tupamaros, to fight against the country’s authoritarian government.

Government repression was on the rise.

Within a few years, the government would suspend rights and constitutional guarantees.

The Tupamaros and Pepe Mujica fought back. 

In 1970, Mujica was shot by police six times and nearly died. 

He was arrested. Escaped. Arrested again. Escaped again. 

And finally, in 1972, he was arrested for good. 

He would spend the next 13 years in jail. 

The entirety of the country’s military dictatorship. 

He was tortured. Continuously.

And held in inhumane conditions.

Most of his time in jail he spent in solitary confinement. 

But Mujica survived. He continued. 

For the military and conservatives, he represented all that was wrong in the country. 

For everyone else, he was a hero.

When he was released in 1985, he dove back into politics. 

He was elected congressman. 

Then senator.

Then appointed to be a minister. 

Mujica’s resolve against such great odds would lead him to the presidency, and into the hearts of people across Uruguay and the world. 

###

Today would have been the 90th birthday of Pepe Mujica. 

He passed just last week, on May 13, 2025, after a battle with cancer.

In his final months, he was busy saying goodbye to old friends, and even traveling to meet with the new generations of activists in his political party.

On the day of Pepe Mujica’s funeral, people held many signs in his honor in the streets. One of them read:

“Your legacy will endure.”

José “Pepe” Mujica was a former political prisoner who suffered more than a decade of prison and torture under Uruguay’s military dictatorship. He rose to become the country’s president from 2010 through 2015. 

They called him the world’s humblest president. He was often seen driving himself in his 1987 baby blue VW bug. He lived on a farm. His clothes were simple. So were his words and his actions. Yet he created tremendous change and left an indelible mark on the tiny country of Uruguay and the entire region of Latin America.

This is episode 36 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Below are some excellent videos in Spanish:

Las frases más memorables de Mujica

PEPE MUJICA se despide por sorpresa: “Hasta siempre, les doy mi corazón”

Here is a video of people staying goodbye to Mujica on the streets of Uruguay.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

“And the injustice that has been inflicted upon negros in this country by Uncle Sam is criminal. Don’t blame a cracker in Georgia for your injustices. The government is responsible for the injustices. The government can bring these injustices to a halt.”

Malcolm X.

Revolutionary. Muslim minister.

Black civil rights leader.

Human rights activist.

Black nationalist 

“We want freedom, by any means necessary. We want justice, by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We want it now, or we don’t think anyone should have it.”

He is one of the most radical and revolutionary US figures of the 20th century.

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. 

His parents were supporters of Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey.

They were often threatened, harassed and attacked by white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.

When his father was killed in a street car accident 

His mother believed it was white supremacists. 

Four of Malcolm X’s uncles were killed by white violence.

Malcolm and his siblings grew up in and out of foster homes when his mother was committed to a mental institute after a nervous breakdown.

Malcolm X dropped out of high school after a teacher told him he had no future.

He lived in Boston with a half-sister. And then Harlem, NY. 

He got involved in drug dealing, gambling and robbery. 

In 1946, he was arrested and sentenced to eight to ten years at Charlestown State Prison for theft.

Prison would be the beginning of his transformation…

He joined the Nation of Islam, a muslim Black Nationalist religious organization.

He stopped smoking and eating pork. He began to pray to “Allah”

He changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. 

The X symbolized his true African family’s name, which he would never know because it had been lost when his ancestors were brought to the Americas as slaves.

When he left prison in 1952, he began to work as a minister in the Nation of Islam mosques

Slowly rising through the ranks. He helped to found and expand mosques in Boston and Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta, Georgia.

He led the temple in Harlem, New York.

In 1955, he married Betty Sanders, who would change her name to Betty Shabazz. 

The Nation of Islam membership grew exponentially. 

Even boxer Muhammad Ali joined.

Racist violence was rife throughout the United States

And Malcolm X stood against it.

The Civil Rights movement was rippling across the country. 

The 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. 

But Malcolm X disagreed with Martin Luther King Jr.’s calls for non-violent activism: 

“We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us. But we are not non-violent with anyone who is violent with us.”

He said African Americans should stand up for themselves. 

He called for them to free themselves from the self-hate implanted by white society.

“Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extense that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of yourself to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don’t be around each other. No… before you come asking Mr. Mohammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God gave you?”

Malcolm X stood against racism and police brutality. 

“Every case of police brutality against a negro follows the same pattern. They attack you. Bust you all upside your mouth and then take you to court and charge you with assault. What kind of demoracy is that? What kind of freedom is that? What kind of social or political system is it when a black man has no voice in court? Has nothing on his side other than what the white man chooses to give him? My brothers and sisters we have to put a stop to this and it will never be stopped until we stop it ourselves…  This is American justice. This is American democracy. And those of you that are familiar with it, know that in America democracy is hypocrisy. Now, if I’m wrong put me in jail. But if you can’t prove that democracy is not hypocrisy. Then don’t put your hands on me.”

When a member of his temple was brutally beaten by police in 1957…

Malcolm X arrived to the police precinct with hundreds of supporters and demanded he receive medical attention. 

Malcolm X later sued New York City for police brutality and won.

“We are oppressed. We are exploited. We are downtrodden. We are denied not only civil rights, but even human rights. So the only way we are going to get some of this oppression and exploitation away from us or aside from us is to come together against a common enemy.” 

In the 1960 UN General Assembly in New York he met with African leaders 

And even Cuba’s newly victorious leader Fidel Castro.

As his name grew, he became ever more outspoken.

“The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.”

But Malcolm X also faced racist violence, death threats…

In 1962, Malcolm X’s relationship with the Nation of Islam soured 

When he learned that the group’s leader Elijah Muhammad was having affairs with young secretaries, Malcolm X went public.

He broke with the Nation of Islam. 

He converted to Sunni Islam and went on pilgrimage to Mecca. 

He traveled abroad. Speaking in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. 

The Nigerian Muslim Students Association gave him the honorary Yoruba name Omowale, which means ‘the son who has come home’.

He said it was his most treasured honor.

In the United States, he started his own group — the Organization of Afro-American Unity. 

“To bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere and first here in the United States and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That’s our motto.” 

He continued to speak at University campuses. 

But he faced increasing death threats from Nation of Islam leaders 

For his break and outspokenness against them…

There were attempts on his life. His house was firebombed.

And on February 21, 1965, he was ambushed, shot and killed in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom just before speaking to members of his new organization.

Thousands attended his funeral, including prominent civil rights leaders. 

Martin Luther King wrote to Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz: 

“While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem,” he wrote, “I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.”

Malcolm X was one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in the history of the United States.

His speeches and his words continue to inspire, even 60 years after his assassination. 

This is episode 35 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

• Malcolm X’s Fiery Speech Addressing Police Brutality
• Malcolm X Message To The Grassroots | House Negro/Field Negro
• Malcolm X Speech “Democracy is Hypocrisy”
• Malcolm X Fiery Speeches – Inspiring Words of a Revolutionary
• “By Any Means Necessary”: Watch Malcolm X’s Speech on Racism & Self-Defense at Audubon Ballroom
• Malcolm X – Interview At Berkeley (1963)
• Malcolm X on Front Page Challenge, 1965: CBC Archives | CBC

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

In the central park in Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, there is a statue of a man. 

He’s dressed in working man’s clothes of the 20th century. Long-brimmed hat. Jacket and boots. His hands are clasped around his belt buckle. He stares ahead… determined.

His name is Augusto Sandino.

The man who would lead the six-year rebellion against the US occupation of Nicaragua. 

The man who would become a legend across the country… and also far from the shores of Central America.

Sandino was born on May 18, 1895.

The so-called illegitimate son of a wealthy coffee merchant and his indigenous servant. 

Sandino lived with his mother until he was nine years old, and then his father took him in and arranged for his education.

He helped his dad. Learned the coffee merchant business and started buying and selling on his own. 

As he grew, he became a successful small-time merchant himself, selling grains, beans, and rice. 

But in his mid-20s, something went wrong.

There was a dispute over a business deal.

They say he shot someone and had to flee. An illegitimate son would be hauled in on charges.

So he traveled to Honduras and Guatemala. He worked for the US banana juggernaut United Fruit.

He lived in Mexico on the heels of the Mexican Revolution. He met radical labor groups. Anarchists and communist revolutionaries. He became inspired.

But in 1926, a civil war broke out in Nicaragua, and he returned home. 

He joined the Liberal Army. He became a general. 

And when the civil war ended the following year, Sandino was one of the only liberal generals who refused to lay down his weapons. He had 29 men.

See… Nicaragua was still under US occupation. At the time, the United States had occupied the country for roughly 15 years. 

The United States said it was helping Nicaragua maintain political stability.

In reality, the US sought two things. One, dollar diplomacy. The US government was doing the bidding of US corporations, looking to bank off of Nicaragua’s natural resources. And two, the United States had built the Panama Canal. And it didn’t want a foreign power challenging the US shipping dominance and building another one in neighboring Nicaragua.

And so, when the United States imposed the terms of the agreement to end Nicaragua’s Civil War… Sandino said no.

He wanted the US Marines out of Nicaragua.

“I will not sell out, nor will I give up,” he said. “I want Patria o muerte—a free country or death.”

His guerrilla war for Nicaragua’s freedom against the United States would become the stuff of legends across the world.

Sandino took his army to the Segovias, the mountains of northwestern Nicaragua, and began his insurgency.

Small, but powerful.

Tactical hits and runs against the US marines. 

They attacked US-owned mines. US-owned plantations. 

Peasants and miners joined. The insurgency grew. 

And the US began to use airplanes to support troops on the ground.

But they could not catch Sandino. 

In one message sent secretly by Sandino in 1929, he says, “I will not abandon my resistance until the pirate invaders… assassins of weak peoples are expelled from my country. I will make them realize that their crimes will cost them dear… Nicaragua shall not be the patrimony of Imperialists. I will fight for my cause as long as my heart beats.”

The United States called him a bandit. Much of Latin America called him a hero.

One of the world’s first anti-imperialist heroes of the 20th century. 

There were pro-Sandino movements across the world.

When Chinese nationalists fought their own war in the late ’20s against a puppet regime, they marched with portraits of Sandino.

And he won.

After a protracted guerrilla war, the United States withdrew the last US marines from the country in early 1933.

But the following year, Sandino traveled to Managua for talks with president Juan Bautista Sacasa. 

After the meeting, his car was ambushed, and Sandino, his brother, and two of his top generals were killed by members of the US-trained National Guard. 

They were acting on orders from General Anastasio Somoza García. 

Two years later, Somoza Garcia would stage a coup and install a US-backed dictatorship and family dynasty that would rule Nicaragua for more than four decades.

Sandino, the man, the legend, and his revolutionary struggle, would continue to inspire.

And that is why his name was chosen for the Sandinistas, Nicaragua’s revolutionary guerrilla army that would fight and finally defeat the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.

###

Augusto Sandino was born May 18, 1895. 130 years go. 

His legacy lives on.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I’ve included some links in the show notes to reporting from my podcast Under the Shadow about Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolution and the US backlash. Definitely check them out.

Also, you can check out exclusive pictures from Sandino’s hometown, Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, in my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox. 

This is episode 34 of Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 34 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can check out exclusive pictures from Sandino’s hometown, Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, in Michael Fox’s Patreon. There you can also follow his reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Below are links to Michael’s episodes on Nicaragua from his podcast Under the Shadow.

THE GRINGO WHO TRIED TO RULE CENTRAL AMERICA | UNDER THE SHADOW, EPISODE 8: https://therealnews.com/nicaragua-william-walker-under-the-shadow-episode-8

NICARAGUA. SANDINO | UNDER THE SHADOW, EPISODE 9: https://therealnews.com/nicaragua-sandino-under-the-shadow-episode-9

NICARAGUA, 1980S. REVOLUTION | UNDER THE SHADOW, EPISODE 10, PART 1: https://therealnews.com/nicaragua-1980s-revolution-under-the-shadow-episode-10-part-1

NICARAGUA, 1980S. CONTRA WAR | UNDER THE SHADOW, EPISODE 10, PART 2: https://therealnews.com/nicaragua-reagan-iran-contra-sandinista-revolution

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

African peoples, along with indigenous communities, across Our Americas bear the brunt of U.S.-led militarism, often with deadly interactions between state forces and armed groups in poor neighborhoods leading to fatal consequences for the masses, as part of a broader effort to expand militarism in the region. This must be framed as an escalation of war on Africans, colonized and poor communities at large by US imperialist forces to maintain its hegemony over the region, particularly against what it sees as threats to its interests from Russia and China.

The State Department’s recent designation of armed paramilitary groups in Haiti as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists to use as the justification to continue violating the sovereignty of the Haitian people, clear out and occupy land, and operate with even more impunity. The  U.S.-orchestrated Multinational Security Service Mission (MSS) in Haiti that has only further degraded safety and violated national sovereignty has not slowed down any of this violence, in fact it has increased. Now, declaring Haitian armed paramilitary groups as terrorists will only serve as justification for further militarized assaults on the nation and its people, with little regard for their wellbeing. Amidst a three month long teachers strike, the Executive Board of National Union of Haitian Educators (UNNOH) wrote, “in the current context of cynically manufactured chaos—orchestrated by powerful international criminals and their local collaborators—” and call for international mobilization amid a “silent genocide.”

Looking at another assault on Africans in Our Americas, on April 13 in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa declared himself president in a still contested run off election amidst heavy militarization at the polls, which the Revolución Ciudadana opposing candidate Luisa Gonzalez has publicly denounced.  Despite attempts to limit international observers , the North South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, in partnership with Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano and Global Black, were able to observe intentional oppressive tactics by Ecuadorian state forces leading up to and throughout the electoral process that have not subsided post-election.

Furthermore, cases like the Guayaquil Four become all too normalized as the war on poor African communities in Ecuador intensifies through US-led militarism as President Noboa changes the constitution to allow foreign military bases, along with reaching a “strategic alliance” with private mercenary Blackwater’s Erik Prince to “fight organized crime.” Prince also negotiated contracts in Haiti last month to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang unit. The increase in violence in the region also means profits for the private mercenaries, not to actually address violence against African peoples throughout the region, including in the United States, but to use as a proxy to intervene and support their geopolitical and imperialist interests.

The expanding role of SOUTHCOM not just in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean but throughout the region, particularly through joint military exercises such as Operation Tradewinds with militaries in the region under the command of the US and NATO and increased military bases, from the Panama Canal down the Pacific Coast, is not unrelated to this expanding crisis of violence throughout the region. The war on crime, war on drugs and war on terror have exposed the parallels behind the use of state violence as a trojan horse for resource extraction whether in West Asia, including the genocidal onslaught in Palestine, violence against Yemen, Lebanon and the people of Syria, or the expanding use of violence in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana or Suriname for resource extraction of fossil fuels. US imperialism is using the same playbook to justify its presence, expansion and full spectrum dominance.

While member states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have condemned the intervention in Haiti, they do so while also upholding the Kingston Declaration , continuing a historic trend in the region of supporting neocolonialism in Haiti led by Brazil. Whether officially sanctioned as a UN mission or not, Western interventions have never been the answer for the Haitian people. More importantly, the lack of solidarity with Haiti undermines the sovereignty of all nations as Haiti is used as a laboratory for the rest of the region. It was precisely the lack of solidarity with Haiti that Nicaragua highlighted as to why they did not sign the Tegucigalpa Declaration – “[the text must] reject the extortions against and express unequivocal solidarity with the brotherly people of Haiti without external interventions.”

BAP invites organizations and individuals to join the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network as a platform to collectively develop regional Pan-Africanist strategy to oppose intervention in Haiti, a core demand of the Zone of Peace campaign, through mass based popular struggle. As Haitian Flag Day approaches on May 18th, we call for renewed and strengthened solidarity with the people of Haiti, in connection with all African peoples, oppressed peoples, and popular movements of Our Americas struggling to free our region of US military and economic dictates.

The Black Alliance for Peace asserts the right of African/Black peoples across Our Americas to self defense and organized resistance in response to this escalating imperialist war against the masses of our people, whether in Port au Prince, Guayaquil, or Los Angeles. No compromise, no retreat!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

The year is 1973.

Santiago, Chile.

Ana Maria’s father runs a liquor store just down the street from their house. Every night when he goes to lock up, pairs of feet follow him. Feet in tired shoes. Nervous feet. Wanted feet. Feet on the run. 

He guides them into the basement of his shop and maybe rolls out a blanket or two. They lie, alongside cases of the Chilean beer Escudo, or Shield, and hope that it will protect them. Sometimes they even try a bottle. They whisper to each other in the darkness. They develop plans. They talk of fighting. Or fleeing the country. Or they reminisce of better times. Times only just past. 

They sleep beside the Escudo… under the watchful eye of rows of Chilean Pisco, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Syrah.

They have restless, agitated dreams. Dreams they cannot run from. Dark dreams that descended on Chile in September, 1973, and enveloped the country in a thick grey fog. A fog that will not go away. A fog that plucked people from off the street and removed them, never to be seen again. 

But these feet are survivors.

In the morning, Ana Maria’s father comes to open the shop. He brings food. A large bowl of cazuela. Bread. Sandwiches. His wife cooks.

“I’m famished,” he tells her every morning. “So hungry.” It’s hard to tell if she knows why.

The feet eat quickly and quietly. Then they lace their shoes, grab their bag and slide out the back door into the empty street.

Thrushes and sparrows dart from tree to tree, singing their early morning song. The sun hasn’t yet crested the Andes. 

The feet walk quickly. Determined. They have no other choice. They have to… before the fog descends again. Sometimes, in 1973 Chile, it’s hard to tell which is worse, the bad dreams or the reality.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. 

In honor of this episode, I’ll be posting a series of pictures of the Museum of Memory in Santiago, Chile. It’s a powerful museum focused on remembering the victims of the country’s 1973 coup, the Pinochet dictatorship, and the resistance against it, like this. Those are available exclusively for my supporters on Patreon. There you can also follow my reporting www.patreon.com/mfox. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 33 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

It’s the early 1980s.

US-backed wars are wreaking havoc across Central America.

And, in particular, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Authoritarian governments have unleashed waves of violence on their populations.

Trained death squads disappeared thousands.

There are raids. US-backed massacres. 

One after the next. 

And so tens of thousands of people begin to flee to the one place they believe they may be safe…

The United States.

The very country helping to instigate the violence in their homelands.

But the United States says they are not welcome.

President Ronald Reagan refuses to admit that these thousands are fleeing abuses and government repression back home, because it will bar the US from funneling more support to the authoritarian Central American regimes… 

So Reagan calls them “economic migrants.” 

Fleeing not violence, but poverty.

And this bars them from receiving asylum.

But if the US government will not respond, others will stand up… 

“…A government that has failed in its responsibility to society, so other institutions must act.”

Local residents in Tucson, Arizona, begin to provide aid and assistance to the waves of Central American migrants that are arriving to the US border.

In March 1982, on the second anniversary of the killing of El Salvador’s Archbishop Óscar Romero, Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church declared itself a sanctuary for migrants in need. 

They hang a banner outside the church. It reads: “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of Central America.”

John Fife was the minister of that church and one of the founders of the Sanctuary Movement.

“Basic human rights had been violated in systematic ways. And every other possibility had been exhausted… And so the church in Tucson, Arizona remembered that God had given the communities of faith an ancient gift called sanctuary. That the church was given that gift by God to save lives, to keep families intact, to say to the government you have absolutely failed in your responsibility to do justice and therefore that failure means that the community of faith has been given a gift by God to stand up and in nonviolent direct ways say no to more deportations. No to more devastation of families.”

Other churches joined Southside Presbyterian. They would take in migrants and refugees. They would shelter them against government agents and border patrol. 

A new underground railroad for Central Americans fleeing US-backed violence abroad. 

It quickly became a national movement.

Within three years, 500 churches, synagogues and university campuses had joined and were actively protecting Central American migrants.

Good samaritans standing for their Central American brothers and sisters.

“On any given night there might be from two to 25 [refugees] sleeping in the church,” said one member of Southside Presbyterian. “The congregation set up a one-room apartment for them behind the chapel. When that was full, they slept on foam pads in the Sunday school wing.”

The US government responded. The Justice Department indicted 16 people for aiding undocumented immigrants.

“If I am guilty of anything, I am guilty of the Gospel,” said one defendant.

People protested at immigration departments in numerous cities. 

Half of those indicted were found guilty of human smuggling. Most received light sentences.

Finally, in 1990, Congress approved temporary protected status to Central Americans in need.

A tremendous victory that would benefit hundreds of thousands… millions of people. 

But the struggle continues. 

In recent decades, a New Sanctuary Movement has begun to fight to end injustices against immigrants regardless of immigration status.

Under Donald Trump’s first administration, the concept of sanctuary cities arose to respond to government policies that pushed deportations and immigrant crackdowns.

All of this is more important than ever… NOW.

Whereas in the past police and immigration officials were instructed not to arrest people in sensitive places, like churches. That policy has now been overturned.

Trump has unleashed a war on US immigrants… suspending visas and green cards and removing resident status at will.

But people are pushing back.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This is episode 32 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 32 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Below are several short videos about the Sanctuary Movement. 

This link includes an excellent talk from Presbyterian minister John Fife, which we used part of for the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwHOACm3Yaw

Sanctuary Movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUzhG8kp8E8

1980′ Sanctuary Movement was about Politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NM8NsDpDGE

The Sanctuary Movement (Part 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZwfdVbhsYM

Sanctuary Movement / Central Americans Refugees 1981: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0N_shkAOcc

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

From Samori Touré to Thomas Sankara [left], our ancestors chose resistance. Now, we must choose: either we fight for sovereignty, or we remain slaves to neo-colonialism.

— captain Ibrahim Traoré [right], Interview with Radio Omega FM, November 2023

A young, by political standards, military captain, now an acting president has captured widespread admiration in Burkina Faso and across Africa. The legend of Ibrahim Traoré appears to be growing by leaps and bounds.

But to understand from whence captain Traoré comes, one should be cognizant of the young revolutionary Marxist leader captain Thomas Sankara who served the people of Burkina Faso (Land of Upright People) before Traoré. Tragically, Sankara was assassinated in a hail of gunfire, betrayed by his close friend Blaise Compaore.

African Hub calls Thomas Sankara the best president in Africa’s history. During Sanakara’s four years as leader he:

Empowered women.

Increased literacy from 13-73% refused aids and made his country self reliant.

Renamed his country to Burkina Faso (meaning Land of the Upright People)

Vaccinated 2M kids.

Reduced all public servants salaries including his.

Built 350 schools, roads, railways without foreign aid

Increased literacy rate by 60%

Banned forced marriages

Gave poor people land

Planted 10 million trees

Appointed females to high governmental positions, encouraged them to work, recruited them into the military, and granted pregnancy leave

Sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers.

He reduced the salaries of all public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets.

As President, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.

He opposed foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.”

Drove out French imperialism & withdrew Burkina Faso from the IMF.

He was later killed in a French backed coup in 1987.

Thomas Sankara, the man, was killed, but his ideals live on. Into the fore another revolutionary has stepped. Ibrahim Traoré is serving the Burkinabé. African Hub calls Traoré, “The youngest and most loved President in the world.”

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin seems to have recognized this appeal and invited Traoré to Moscow. Nigeria’s Igbere Television reported on the dignified transportation accorded to Burkina Faso’s acting president for the 80th Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on 9 May:

Russia didn’t just invite President Ibrahim Traoré to Moscow — they sent a state aircraft to personally pick him up from Burkina Faso. That’s not diplomacy. That’s respect.

That’s symbolism. In a world where African leaders are often summoned like subordinates, this moment flips the script. It tells a new story: of African sovereignty being recognized, of alliances built on mutual interest — not colonial residue.

The security provided for the distinguished guest reportedly included two accompanying Su27 fighter jets.

Given the history of what happened to Sankara and the threats posed by imperialist operatives, the high level of security is understandable, especially given that Traoré is said to have survived 19 assassination attempts.

Traoré himself came to power through a coup against another coup leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba who fled to Togo. Traoré was disillusioned by Damiba’s failure at handling the “jihadist” insurgency in his country. Armed jihadist groups, purportedly linked to Al Qaeda, are fighting Burkinabè government forces.

*****

Since coming to power in 2022, Traoré has quickly burnished his anti-imperialist and socialist convictions. Burkina Faso is a resource-rich but economically impoverished country. Traoré seeks to overturn that economic contradiction by removing the colonialists who exploited Burkina Faso. Traoré is quoted as saying: “We have been receiving French aid for 63 years, yet our country has not developed, so cutting it off from us now will not kill us, rather it will motivate us to work and rely on ourselves.” (Quoted by Qiraat Africa, published by the South Sahara Research Center, UK)

Yet the West still has strings to pull on. Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali were suspended from the western-backed Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Subsequently, the three countries formed their own anti-imperialist grouping as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

It won’t be easy going, as the former French colonies use the CFA franc, an international currency set at a fixed rate against the euro. This renders the African states economically dependent on France which holds a veto over the monetary policies of the CFA franc.

Aware of this currency bind, Africa Reloaded quotes Traoré saying, “Perhaps everything we’ve done has surprised you, hasn’t it? Don’t worry more changes are coming that might still surprise you. We will break every tie that has kept us in slavery.”

In 2023, French troops were ordered to leave Burkina Faso. The French embassy in the capital Ouagadougou is closed and French diplomats have been expelled. Some French passport holders have been detained on suspicion of espionage.

Russian troops have since arrived to help Burkina Faso bolster its security. Nigeria’s Afro Page also reports the “arrival of 1700 Russian commandos, armed, coordinated, and highly trained” in Burkina Faso “not in secret … but boldly in broad daylight…. This is a message from the Kremlin to Washington.” In addition, 700 North Korean troops are said to have arrived in Burkina Faso.

Gaining control over the resources of Burkina Faso is also underway. Burkina Faso has started to nationalize resources, particularly its gold mining sector. Burkina Faso’s prime minister Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo realizes, “Our gold represents our greatest opportunity for economic resilience during these challenging times.”

Africa Hub quotes Traoré: “We will mine our gold ourselves not for France, but for our people!”

To achieve this, Traoré’s proposal is: “Targeting foreign exploitation, particularly by France, Traore has pushed to nationalize gold mines, like Boungou and Wahgnion, and approved a state-owned gold refinery in 2023 to process 400 kg daily, aiming to retain profits for local development.”

The national transformation planned by Traoré government includes:

1. sweeping reforms redirecting government funds from inflated salaries to crucial development projects
2. launching ambitious industrialization projects
3. unprecedented mechanization of the agricultural sector, including introduction of modern farming techniques and equipment that have significantly increased crop yields and farmer incomes
4. implementing rapid response protocols to counter security threats and dismantle terrorist networks
5. bringing about unprecedented levels of national unity and mobilizing citizens behind a shared vision of progress
6. demonstrating that African nations can chart their own paths to development
7. a deep commitment to public service and national development that focuses on tangible results rather than procedural democracy

Back in 2023, Traoré spoke of the aims of the AES partnership: “We really want to look at other horizons, because we want win-win partnerships.” Security was addressed as a need: “If we can’t afford to buy military equipment in one country, we’ll go to other countries to buy it.”

*****

Meanwhile, the United States stirs the imperialist pot against Burkina Faso. On 3 April, US general Michael Langley, commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), accused Traoré of misusing the country’s substantial gold reserves for the military instead of benefiting the nation’s 23 million citizens. If Langley (whose basic pay is estimated by Deepseek at $203,700 per year) had done his homework, instead of making unsubstantiated accusations, he would know that Traoré revealed his net worth at $128,566. He might also know that Traoré refused a presidential salary, continuing instead to receive the same salary he earned as a soldier. Malawi24 was impressed: “Traore’s decision is a stark contrast to the actions of his predecessors, signaling a new era of leadership focused on public service rather than personal enrichment.”

Langley’s comments brought Burkinabé into the streets in support of Traoré and his government.

It is abundantly evident that Traoré has the support of the people, as did Sankara. Despite Traoré having reportedly booted out French and American media from Burkina Faso, even the BCC, a media organ of empire, admits that Traoré “has captured hearts and minds around the world.”

Traoré represents a tangible hope, a hope that is more than an abstraction, it is a hope that, given time and momentum, could ignite a revolution to topple an empire.

Until defeated, empire will not rest. As long as revolutionary men and women are committed, above all, to serving the people, they will pose a threat to empire.

The lives of humans are finite, but the ideals of good people can outlive them and continue to represent a threat to empires until they fall.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

Fresh, stringent security measures have been imposed in New Caledonia following aborted political talks last week and ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in damages.

On Sunday, the French High Commission in Nouméa announced that from Monday, May 12, to Friday, May 15, all public marches and demonstrations will be banned in the Greater Nouméa Area.

Restrictions have also been imposed on the sale of firearms, ammunition, and takeaway alcoholic drinks.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia’s political talks – no outcome after three days of ‘conclave’
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The measures aim to “ensure public security”.

In the wake of the May 2024 civil unrest, a state of emergency and a curfew had been imposed and had since been gradually lifted.

The decision also comes as “confrontations” between law enforcement agencies and violent groups took place mid-last week, especially in the township of Dumbéa — on the outskirts of Nouméa — where there were attempts to erect fresh roadblocks, High Commissioner Jacques Billant said.

The clashes, including incidents of arson, stone-throwing and vehicles being set on fire, are reported to have involved a group of about 50 individuals and occurred near Médipôle, New Caledonia’s main hospital, and a shopping mall.

Clashes also occurred in other parts of New Caledonia, including outside the capital Nouméa.

It adds another reason for the measures is the “anniversary date of the beginning of the 2024 riots”.

Law and order stepped up
French authorities have also announced that in view of the first anniversary of the start of the riots tomorrow, law and order reinforcements have been significantly increased in New Caledonia until further notice.

This includes a total of 2600 officers from the Gendarmerie, police, as well as reinforcements from special elite SWAT squads and units equipped with 16 Centaur armoured vehicles.

Drones are also included.

The aim is to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy against “urban violence” through a permanent deployment “night and day”, with a priority to stop any attempt to blockade roads, especially in Greater Nouméa, to preserve freedom of movement.

One particularly sensitive focus would be placed on the township of Saint-Louis in Mont-Dore often described as a pro-independence stronghold which was a hot spot and the scene of violent and deadly clashes at the height of the 2024 riots.

“We’ll be present wherever and whenever required. We are much stronger than we were in 2024,” High Commissioner Billant told local media during a joint inspection with French gendarmes commander General Nicolas Matthéos and Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas.

Dupas said that over the past few months the bulk of criminal acts was regarded as “delinquency” — nothing that could be likened to a coordinated preparation for fresh public unrest similar to last year’s.

Billant said that, depending on how the situation evolves in the next few days, he could also rely on additional “potential reinforcements” from mainland France if needed.

New Zealand ANZAC war memorial set alight
A New Zealand ANZAC war memorial in the small rural town of Boulouparis (west coast of the main island of Grande Terre) was found vandalised last Friday evening.

The monument, inaugurated just one year ago at last year’s ANZAC Day to commemorate the sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers during world wars in the 20th century, was set alight by unidentified people, police said.

Tyres were used to keep the fire burning.

An investigation into the circumstances of the incident is underway, the Nouméa Public Prosecutor’s office said, invoking charges of wilful damage.

Australia, New Zealand travel warnings
In the neighbouring Pacific, two of New Caledonia’s main tourism source markets, Australia and New Zealand, are maintaining a high level or increased caution advisory.

The main identified cause is an “ongoing risk of civil unrest”.

In its latest travel advisory, the Australian brief says “demonstrations and protests may increase in the days leading up to and on days of national or commemorative significance, including the anniversary of the start of civil unrest on May 13.

“Avoid demonstrations and public gatherings. Demonstrations and protests may turn violent at short notice.”

Inconclusive talks
Last Thursday, May 8, French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who had managed to gather all political parties around the same table for negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, finally left the French Pacific territory. He admitted no agreement could be found at this stage.

In the final stage of the talks, the “conclave” on May 5-7, he had put on the table a project for New Caledonia’s accession to a “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France.

This option was not opposed by pro-independence groups, including the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front).

But the pro-France movement, in support of New Caledonia remaining a part of France, said it could not approve this.

The main pillar of their argument remained that after three self-determination referendums held between 2018 and 2021, a majority of voters had rejected independence (even though the last referendum, in December 2021, was massively boycotted by the pro-independence camp because of the covid-19 pandemic).

The anti-independence block had repeatedly stated that they would not accept any suggestion that New Caledonia could endorse a status bringing it closer to independence.

New Caledonia’s pro-France MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, told local media at this stage, his camp was de facto in opposition to Valls, “but not with the pro-independence camp”.

Metzdorf said a number of issues could very well be settled by talking to the pro-independence camp.

Electoral roll issue sensitive
This included the very sensitive issue of New Caledonia’s electoral roll, and conditions of eligibility at the next provincial elections.

Mesures administratives

À l’approche de la date d’anniversaire du début des émeutes de 2024, le Haut-commissaire, en lien avec les élus et responsables du monde économique, annonce les mesures suivante du 12 au 15 mai 2025 :

Interdiction de vente d’alcool à emporter… pic.twitter.com/LzoFuiqgRj

— Haut-commissariat en Nouvelle-Calédonie (@HC98800) May 10, 2025

Direct contacts with Macron
Both Metzdorf and Backès also said during interviews with local media that in the midst of their “conclave” negotiations, they had had contacts as high as French President Emmanuel Macron, asking him whether he was aware of the “sovereignty with France” plan and if he endorsed it.

Another pro-France leader, Virginie Ruffenach (Le Rassemblement-Les Républicains), also confirmed she had similar exchanges, through her party Les Républicains, with French Minister of Home Affairs Bruno Retailleau, from the same right-wing party.

As Minister of Home Affairs, Retailleau would have to be involved later in the New Caledonian issue.

Divided reactions
Since minister Valls’s departure, reactions were still flowing at the weekend from across New Caledonia’s political chessboard.

“We have to admit frankly that no agreement was struck”, Valls said last week during a media conference.

“Maybe the minds were not mature yet.”

But he said France would now appoint a “follow up committee” to keep working on the “positive points” already identified between all parties.

During numerous press conferences and interviews, anti-independence leaders have consistently maintained that the draft compromise put to them by Minister Valls during the latest round of negotiations last week, was not acceptable.

They said this was because it contained several elements of “independence-association”, including the transfer of key powers from Paris to Nouméa, a project of “dual citizenship” and possibly a seat at the United Nations.

“In proposing this solution, minister [Valls] was biased and blocked the negotiations. So he has prevented the advent of an agreement”, pro-France Les Loyalistes and Southern Province President leader Sonia Backès told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on Sunday.

“For us, an independence association was out of the question because the majority of [New] Caledonians voted three time against independence,” she said.

More provincial power plan
Instead, the Le Rassemblement-LR and Les Loyalistes bloc were advocating a project that would provide more powers to each of the three provinces, including in terms of tax revenue collection.

The project, often described as a de facto partition, however, was not retained in the latest phases of the negotiations, because it contravened France’s constitutional principle of a united and indivisible nation.

“But no agreement does not mean chaos”, Backès said.

On the contrary, she believes that by not agreeing to the French minister’s deal plan, her camp had “averted disaster for New Caledonia”.

“Tomorrow, there will be another minister . . . and another project”, she said, implicitly betting on Valls’s departure.

On the pro-independence front, a moderate “UNI” (National Union For Independence) said a in a statement even though negotiations did not eventuate into a comprehensive agreement, the French State’s commitment and method had allowed to offer “clear and transparent terms of negotiations on New Caledonia’s institutional and political future”.

The main FLNKS group, mainly consisting of pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC) party, also said that even though no agreement could be found as a result of the latest round of talks, the whole project could be regarded as “advances” and “one more step . . . not a failure” in New Caledonia’s decolonisation, as specified in the 1998 Nouméa Accord, FLNKS chief negotiator and UC party president Emmanuel Tjibaou said.

Deplored the empty outcome
Other parties involved in the talks, including Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble, have deplored the empty outcome of talks last week.

They called it a “collective failure” and stressed that above all, reaching a consensual solution was the only way forward, and that the forthcoming elections and the preceding campaign could bear the risk of further radicalisation and potential violence.

In the economic and business sector, the conclave’s inconclusive outcome has brought more anxiety and uncertainty.

“What businesses need, now, is political stability, confidence. But without a political agreement that many of us were hoping for, the confidence and visibility is not there, there’s no investment”, New Caledonia’s MEDEF-NC (Business Leaders Union) vice-president Bertrand Courte told NC La Première.

As a result of the May 2024 riots, more than 600 businesses, mainly in Nouméa, were destroyed, causing the loss of more than 10,000 jobs.

Over the past 12 months, New Caledonia GDP (gross domestic product) has shrunk by an estimated 10 to 15 percent, according to the latest figures produced by New Caledonia statistical institute ISEE.

What next? Crucial provincial elections
As no agreement was found, the next course of action for New Caledonia was to hold provincial elections no later than 30 November 2025, under the existing system, which still restricts the list of persons eligible to vote at those local elections.

The makeup of the electoral roll for local polls was the very issue that triggered the May 2024 riots, as the French Parliament, at the time, had endorsed a Constitutional amendment to push through opening the list.

At the time, the pro-independence camp argued the changes to eligibility conditions would eventually “dilute” their votes and make indigenous Kanaks a minority in their own country.

The Constitutional bill was abandoned after the May 2024 rots.

The sensitive issue remains part of the comprehensive pact that Valls had been working on for the past four months.

The provincial elections are crucial in that they also determine the proportional makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress and its government and president.

The provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, and later in December 2024, and finally no later than 30 November 2025, were already postponed twice.

Even if the provincial elections are held later this year (under the current “frozen” rules), the anti-independence camp has already announced it would contest its result.

According to the anti-independence camp, the current restrictions on New Caledonia’s electoral roll contradict democratic principles and have to be “unfrozen” and opened up to any citizen residing for more than 10 uninterrupted years.

The present electoral roll is “frozen”, which means it only allows citizens who have have been livingin New Caledonia before November 1998 to cast their vote at local elections.

The case could be brought to the French Constitutional Council, or even higher, to a European or international level, said pro-France politicians.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Revolutionary
Poet
Salvadoran
Roque Dalton was all three.
Profoundly all three.
Born on May 14, 1935.
He grew up in San Salvador 
Studied law at the University of Chile 
And later at the University of El Salvador
There he formed a writer’s group 
of up-and-coming poets and authors…
He was inspired by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Mexican painter Diego Rivera. 
Communism and revolutionary causes.

His poems are pure art
Mixing politics with poetry 
Blending verse and prose 
Humor and reality
History and current events.
Beautiful lines alongside anger at the suffering plight of humanity 
And above all… that of the downtrodden and poor of El Salvador…
Like his poem, COMO TÚ, “like you”:

“I, like you,” he writes
“love love, life, the sweet charm
of things, the celestial landscape
of January days.
My blood also boils,
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the spring of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful,
that poetry is like bread, for everyone.
And that my veins end not in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who fight for life,
love,
things,
the landscape, and bread,
the poetry of everyone.”

His poems and prose have punchlines 
innuendo
Heart and depth

“Poetry,” he wrote, “Forgive me for helping you understand
that you are not made only of words.”

His poems have humor, as he displays the tragic hypocrisies of the world
And seems to almost be winking at you.
But they are also profoundly serious.

“In the middle of the sea a whale sighs,” he writes, “and in its sigh it says: love with hunger does not satisfy.”

He writes of the past and the very, very present
Foreign invaders from forgotten times.
And the current ones… bearing gifts, wrapped in red, white and blue 
With promises of riches and so-called freedom granted by Washington… and foreign corporations.
And he was clear that, together with a group of other Latin American poets, he was trying to develop a new style of radical poetry, rooted in politics and social struggle. 

This is one of the few recordings of Roque Dalton I’ve been able to find.
In it, he says… 

“Instead of singing, our poetry poses problems. Presents conflicts. Presents ideas, which are much more effective than hymns at making people conscious of the problems in the fight for the freedom of our peoples.”

But Roque Dalton did not just write words. 
He lived them.
He attended the world youth festival in Russia
He traveled, met and spoke out against injustices
He was imprisoned. Escaped. He traveled. He lived in Czechoslovakia.
Exiled in Mexico. Exiled in Cuba. 
And trained to fight there.

In the 1970s, El Salvador was ruled by a brutal US-backed dictatorship. Repressive. Violent Hundreds of people disappeared each month.
He joined the ERP, the People’s Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla movement that would fight against the government.
But he and the leadership differed over the direction their movement would take. 
He remained outspoken. He said they needed to build their base.
And in an unthinkably treacherous crime…

The leaders of his guerrilla army killed Roque Dalton on May 10, 1975
Just four days before his 40th birthday. 
As an excuse, his murderers claimed he was a CIA agent.
And they disappeared his body.

But Roque Dalton continues to inspire even 50 years after his killing.
His poems. His books breath with life as if they were written yesterday. 
As if he were still here. 
And in a way, he still is…  continuing to inspire inside and outside El Salvador.

I once asked Santiago, the head of the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador and the former director of Radio Venceremos, El Salvador’s guerrilla radio, what his favorite poem was. His answer was this:

Alta hora de la noche (In the Dead of the Night), by Roque Dalton.

I found this version of it online, read by none other than the iconic Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, a close friend of Roque Dalton’s.

When you learn that I have died, do not pronounce my name
because it will hold back my death and rest.

Your voice, which is the sounding of the five senses,
would be the dim beacon sought by my mist.

When you learn that I have died, whisper strange syllables.
Pronounce flower, bee, teardrop, bread, storm.

Do not let your lips find my eleven letters.
I have dreams, I loved, I have earned my silence.

Do not pronounce my name when you learn that I have died
from the dark earth I would come for your voice.

Do not pronounce my name, do not say my name
When you learn that I have died, do not pronounce my name.

Roque Dalton left a wife and three sons, who also joined in the struggle against the bloody, US-backed Salvadoran government of the 1970s and ’80s. And who have continued to demand justice and the truth about their father’s death.

Roque Dalton’s words, actions and memory still inspire… 
So many years later.

One last thing to add. Remember this song… Unicorno Azul, Blue Unicorn, by Cuba’s celebrated singer songwriter Silvio Rodriguez. Well, lyrics talk about a lost blue unicorn. Silvio Rodriguez wrote it for Roque Dalton in the years following his death.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I’ll be honest, this episode really touched me. Roque Dalton has long been one of my favorite poets and there are just so many layers here. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll add some links in the show notes to more of his poetry, Julio Cortazar reading Alta hora de la noche and the clip of him speaking about developing a new radical poetry for Latin America.

I’ll also include links for my stories from my podcast Under the Shadow about El Salvador’s Civil War in the 1980s and the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador.

This is Episode 30 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 30 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

HABLA ROQUE DALTON SOBRE SU OBRA POÉTICA, UNA JOYA DE VIDEO

Roque Dalton – Dolores de Cabeza

Alta hora de la noche (Roque Dalton) Recitado por Cortázar

Other Roque Dalton poems, read by Julio Cortazar

Under the Shadow:

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Ricardo Jones and his wife, Neusa,
are from the Southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
Birth is their calling. 
But not just any birth. 
Home birth. Natural birth.
Humanized birth, where the mothers and their babies come first,
Where the mothers are embraced and supported,
Where they’re empowered.
Because birth is not a sickness.
It’s not an illness. It’s not a problem.
It is a gift. A passage.
It is, perhaps, the most sacred moment of a mother’s and a family’s life,
And women have been giving birth since the dawn of the human race. 
Ric Jones and his wife Neusa work together.
He is an obstetrician. Neusa is an obstetrics nurse.
But they embrace the ancestral knowledge of midwives.
And they are running uphill
Amid a system that is stacked against them. 
In Brazil… nearly 60% of births are c-sections. 
In fact, it’s one of the countries with the highest c-section rate in the world.
That is, in part, because doctors can charge more for c-sections, and they can do more births in a day.
In private hospitals, the c-section rate is even higher — around 90%.
The World Health Organization says c-section rates should be closer to 15%… 
Because in some cases, c-sections are necessary. They can save lives.
But when they aren’t necessary, more medical intervention costs more money and leads to higher risks.
Three times the risk of disease or death, over a normal birth.
Ric Jones and his wife have tried to do things the other way…
Naturally. Minimal intervention, unless it is needed.
Ric Jones and his wife, Neusa, have delivered more than 2,000 babies.
Some babies who are now parents of their own.

But for their work, Ric and Neusa Jones are under attack. 
On March 27, 2025, Ric Jones was convicted of first-degree murder, 
15 years after one of the thousands of babies he delivered died of congenital pneumonia in the hospital, 24 hours  after the child was born at home.
Ric Jones received a sentence of 14 years in prison. 
His wife, 11 years.
Ric Jones spent three weeks in prison. 
He is now out while they await the decision over the appeal…

But a movement has grown in their defense. 
Parents, midwives, doulas, birth activists are standing up.
They’ve denounced the case against them. 
They’ve denounced Ric Jones’s imprisonment.
They are demanding justice 
For Ric and Neusa Jones.
They say that for their care and their love,
And their outspokenness in defense of humanized birth,
Brazil’s medical establishment is trying to make an example out of them.
And Ric and Neusa Jones are not the only health professionals and natural-birth midwives being criminalized.
In Europe, the United States, and Latin America 
lawyers are taking midwives to court 
To try to end their work forever,
And leave the birthing to the hospitals.

Ricardo Jones says, “The criminalization of natural childbirth is an international phenomenon and is in line with the interests of the medical industry, which controls childbirth care in the West, and hospital institutions, the pharmaceutical industry, etc. that profit from longer hospital stays, drug use, beds, dressings, health insurance, ICU stays, etc. In other words, all those who profit from the “wheel of fortune” of capitalism involved in healthcare. The risk we run is the complete artificialization of birth, where no child will be born through the efforts and determination of his or her mother, but through the time and skills of a third party, who will do it according to their interests.”

But mothers, midwives, doulas, and birth activists will not go silently. 
They are speaking out.
From Brazil and across the planet, women are demanding their right to birth whenever, wherever and however they want…
Be it in a hospital or in their home. 
To birth is not just their right. It is an honor and a gift.
And it should not be up to the busy high-paid doctors and the medical establishment 
To decide how each mother should bring her child into the world.
Their right to birth how they want is under attack,
As are midwives across the planet.
But they will not go silently.
They are fighting.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening.

Today, May 5th is the Day of the Midwife. It’s really pretty surprising the number of lawsuits against midwives and natural-birth obstetricians in countries across the world that are trying to stop these powerful men and women from doing their job, and continuing with their calling.

If you’d like to learn more, I’ve included some links in the show notes.

As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 29 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources: 

Each country has its own rules, laws and legislation regarding home birth, natural birth, and humanized birth. 

Most of this episode is focused on Brazil, where caesarean section rates are some of the highest in the world, and natural-birth and home-birth midwives, obstetricians, and doulas say they have felt clear marginalization and abuse by mainstream health professionals.

In the United States, home births are actually on the rise, with more midwives and doulas being certified, but as more and more states move to legalize homebirth, it’s also created a legal grey area.

Overall, women and men carrying out these home and natural births in many countries say they feel targeted for their work.

Below is a small list of lawsuits against natural birth midwives in numerous countries. They say this is part of a movement to end humanized and home birth. In many of these cases, midwives were accused or convicted of manslaughter. Ric Jones was convicted of murder, intentionally killing the baby. 

Canada (2025): Midwife Gloria Lemay
Charged with manslaughter.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gloria-lemay-charged-manslaughter-1.7425173

Austria (2025): Midwife Margerete Wana
Convicted of causing the death of the baby. Supported by the baby’s mother.
https://www.instagram.com/thea.maillard/p/DGNHrG8sjSo/
https://www.theamaillard.com/post/charlotte

UK (2025): Manslaughter charges after homebirth.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/13/coffs-harbour-midwives-court-home-birth-death-baby-ntwnfb

Australia (2019): Lisa Barrett
Charged with manslaughter. Found not guilty.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/south-australian-midwife-found-not-guilty-of-manslaughter/1474102c-ccfc-4617-9f60-5be32d881b7a

United States (2019): Elizabeth Catlin
Arrested in 2019 and indicted on 95 felony accounts, including criminal homicide.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/04/arrest-the-midwife-documentary-film-review-laws-mennonite-new-york/

Germany (2014): Midwife Anna Rockel-Loenhoff 
Sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for manslaughter.
https://frauenfilmfest.com/en/event/hoerkino-tod-eines-neugeborenen-eine-hebamme-vor-gericht/

Hungary (2012): Conviction of midwife Agnes Gereb. Jailed, placed under house arrest and then granted clemency.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/agnes-gereb-persecuted-midwifery

United States (2017): Vickie Sorensen
Charged with manslaughter. Sentenced to prison.
https://apnews.com/general-news-7928ca64d42c4e67aae2c382609d296f

United States (2011): Karen Carr
Charged with manslaughter.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/midwife-karen-carr-pleads-guilty-felonies-babys-death/story?id=13583237

Here is a link to an article in English about the case against Ric Jones in Brazil, and how it fits into the larger international framework: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/midwifes-14-year-sentence-highlights-attacks-womens-autonomy-global-surge-unnecessary-c

Here is the link for the Instagram group in Brazil created in defense of Ric and Neusa Jones: https://www.instagram.com/freericjones

Here is a statement from the International Confederation of Midwives calling for an end to the criminalization of midwifery, from a decade ago: https://internationalmidwives.org/resources/statement-on-stopping-the-criminalisation-of-midwifery

An incredible resource from Ms. Magazine about midwives, midwifery in the United States, and a new documentary about a criminalized midwife and Mennonite women who supported her: https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/04/arrest-the-midwife-documentary-film-review-laws-mennonite-new-york/

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

The ceasefire established in the U.S.-Israeli genocidal war in Gaza has resulted in more war against Lebanon and U.S .attacks on Yemen with increasing threats of military action against Iran.  The fact that the U.S. Congress in 1987, committed to the Convention on Genocide appears to mean nothing to the war mongering U.S. government.

The U.S. President has threatened war with Greenland, Panama, Iran, and is actively preparing for war against the third largest nuclear power, China. The present policy of Peace through Strength means exactly what it did in the time of the Roman Empire—Peace through War.

WHEN THE LEADERS SPEAK OF PEACE
The common folk know
That war is coming.

When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.

— Bertolt Brecht, “From a German War Primer,” 1937, p 287

For decades the U.S. government has maintained a policy of world dominance, the sole right to rule the world.

1991—Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz stated, “Our policy… must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.”

1997—National security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski articulated the U.S. imperial strategy for global dominance, to make the U.S. “the world’s paramount power.”

The U.S. strategy to maintain world dominance involves the use of nuclear weapons. The Pentagon maintains a nuclear first strike policy to destroy other countries in the belief that the U.S. will survive and remain the dominant power. This strategy affirms that nuclear weapons can be used to achieve political and military ends. The U.S. Quest for Nuclear Primacy  Plans are now underway to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran and elsewhere

The war in Ukraine is one aspect of U.S. imperial strategy to maintain world dominance. The New York Times and the RAND Corporation made it clear that the war in Ukraine is a U.S. provoked war designed to destabilize, weaken, and subordinate Russia.

War on the Working Class

To prepare for this war of planetary annihilation, the top 1% has declared class war on those who work for wages, the working class. As in Europe, the working class is being made to pay the cost of a massive military buildup.  In the U.S. mass layoffs, cuts to Healthcare for Veterans, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Public Health, Public Education, Environmental Protection, and more will deprive the working class, the vast majority, of essential services. Funds for the military continue to increase, and the rich  benefit most from tax cuts while tariffs/sales taxes will increase prices for everybody.

The administration is stripping away the right to free speech. Unmarked cars and men in masks, arresting and abducting legal residents for their political views, and without charges taking them out of state or deporting them to unknown prisons and held without any rights.  These are the actions of a police state.

War and Domination or Peace and Social Needs

Workers can take matters into their own hands and organize against the warmongers and police state by building independent working class struggle for the needs and rights of the vast majority. The people have the right and duty to resist.

The Right to Rebellion is the RIGHT AND DUTY of people to alter or abolish a government that acts AGAINST THE COMMON INTERESTS or THREATENS THE SAFETY OF THE PEOPLE. The belief in this right has justified social uprisings for over one thousand years, including the American, French, and Russian Revolutions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nayvin Gordon.

Pete Seeger

Folk musician

Banjo player

Singer of songs of unity

He sang songs of joy 

He sang for the unions

For the workers and the downtrodden. 

He sang songs for change

Civil Rights songs. Folk songs.

He sang for the people 

And he also served his country

In the US military—a corporal during World War 2

Fighting Hitler, the Nazis, and the Fascists

And when he came home, he founded the Weavers

A folk music quartet, which rocketed to the top of the charts.

They sang for the unions. 

They sang for social justice and progressive politics

Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunts in Washington.

Hundreds of actors, artists, and musicians were blacklisted across the country.

That included the Weavers. They called them subversives.

They were watched by the FBI.

And they folded.

McCarthy dragged Pete Seeger in to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

He refused to answer. 

But was found guilty of contempt of court.

He was banned from playing on television and over the radio.

He was banned from performing almost anywhere.

But he played on. 

Performing for kids.

Performing in festivals.

He taught people to play the banjo. 

He recorded instruction videos and song books. 

He worked as a music teacher in schools and summer camps.

He traveled from university to university across the country 

Singing despite the protests from conservatives 

Because of the blacklist.

They said he was Un-American.

But he was more American than anyone.

Reviving the songs of old 

Re-singing the music that rang from the porches of weatherbeaten homes across the hillsides of America.

He recorded folk album after album.

He helped to transform “We Shall Overcome” into a civil rights anthem. He sang it on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 

He helped to inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. 

And he continued to play and sing throughout his life. 

His music and his legacy plays on.

Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. 

He died at the age of 94, in 2014.

This is episode 28 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Here is a great 2007 PBS documentary about Pete Seeger’s life. It’s called “The Power of Song”:

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Pete Seeger

Folk musician

Banjo player

Singer of songs of unity

He sang songs of joy 

He sang for the unions

For the workers and the downtrodden. 

He sang songs for change

Civil Rights songs. Folk songs.

He sang for the people 

And he also served his country

In the US military—a corporal during World War 2

Fighting Hitler, the Nazis, and the Fascists

And when he came home, he founded the Weavers

A folk music quartet, which rocketed to the top of the charts.

They sang for the unions. 

They sang for social justice and progressive politics

Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunts in Washington.

Hundreds of actors, artists, and musicians were blacklisted across the country.

That included the Weavers. They called them subversives.

They were watched by the FBI.

And they folded.

McCarthy dragged Pete Seeger in to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

He refused to answer. 

But was found guilty of contempt of court.

He was banned from playing on television and over the radio.

He was banned from performing almost anywhere.

But he played on. 

Performing for kids.

Performing in festivals.

He taught people to play the banjo. 

He recorded instruction videos and song books. 

He worked as a music teacher in schools and summer camps.

He traveled from university to university across the country 

Singing despite the protests from conservatives 

Because of the blacklist.

They said he was Un-American.

But he was more American than anyone.

Reviving the songs of old 

Re-singing the music that rang from the porches of weatherbeaten homes across the hillsides of America.

He recorded folk album after album.

He helped to transform “We Shall Overcome” into a civil rights anthem. He sang it on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 

He helped to inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. 

And he continued to play and sing throughout his life. 

His music and his legacy plays on.

Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. 

He died at the age of 94, in 2014.

This is episode 28 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources:

Here is a great 2007 PBS documentary about Pete Seeger’s life. It’s called “The Power of Song”:

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

It’s been called the most influential protest you’ve never heard about. 

50,000 people in the streets

Descended on Washington

Day after day of nonviolent protests

Blockading roads 

Shutting down streets

Standing up for one cause: End the war in Vietnam. 

The year was 1971. The height of the war overseas.

Anti-war activists and groups, such as the May Day Collective said they would shut down Washington to demand that the troops be sent home.

That is what president Richard Nixon had promised to do when he took office, but he had only expanded operations in Vietnam.

The name of the protests was a play on words. They would take place around May 1, May Day. 

But the word mayday also means “emergency” or “crisis.”

The first days of protests began in mid-April 

With an occupation of the National Mall by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

There were marches.

Big marches. Half a million people in the streets.

“Good evening… Marching behind flags and banners and picket signs demanding peace now, at least 200,000 anti-war protesters jammed the streets of Washington today in what was probably the biggest peace demonstration to be held since they began six years ago.”

Tent camps.

The protesters promised to disrupt activity in the city, make it impossible for politics and business to carry on as usual.

To stop government workers from getting to their jobs.

Their slogan: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

Richard Nixon responded with force. 

20,000 police officers, National Guard, US Marines, paratroopers and the calvary. 

One person who participated described it: “As protesters roamed downtown DC, dodging huge tear-gas barrages, they created small barricades, left disabled cars in roadways, or temporarily blocked intersections with mobile sit-ins.”

It was the quote, “Asymmetrical warfare of a guerilla force against a standing army. It was nearly impossible to defend against small decentralized bands who could shift on a dime, tie up police or troops at one spot, and then get to another place before the authorities could adjust.”

“Incredibly, the Supreme Court became involved in the camping permits. the capitol became a stage for guerrilla theater. Labor leaders and suburban mothers marched behind the leadership of hardcore anti-war activists. And thge final stages brought confrontation and vandalism in the name of peace… Every part of Washington seemed to be touched by some aspect of the intense three weeks.” 

But the police cracked down, making arrests, like the city, and the country, had never seen. 

7,000 people arrested in just one day—May 3. 

12,000 people arrested in total that week. 

It was and continues to be the largest mass arrest in the history of the United States.

Amid the dragnet, reporters and non-protesters were also ripped from the streets and locked up.

Protesters filled jails beyond capacity. People were detained in makeshift open-air prisons and in sporting arenas: The Washington Coliseum. The practice field for RFK Stadium.

They were held in deplorable conditions, often without much food, water, or bedding.

And in the end, years later, only a handful of people were convicted. 

The ACLU brought class action lawsuits.

Juries and judges awarded millions to thousands of those who were detained. 

They said their rights to free speech and due process had been violated. 

They said the arrests were unconstitutional.

Even Congress said the police and the federal government were in the wrong.

The US government’s use of preemptive mass arrests has continued as a means to clear streets, regardless if anything illegal has taken place…

…But so have the protests. 

50 years after the end of the Vietnam War, today, people are standing up in defense of Palestine. 

And they, too, have been targeted and detained, without doing anything wrong. For only exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.

And so long as there is injustice, so long as the United States is fueling violence and war abroad, there will be people in the streets.

People who will stand up. 

People who will resist. 

Like those who descended on Washington five decades ago.

On May Day 1971. 

With one demand:

“If the government won’t stop the war, we will stop the government.” 

This is episode 27 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

You can check out this excellent short documentary film about the protests:

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman covered the 50th anniversary of the protests and arrests in 2021:

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

The Estallido Social (or Social Explosion) was a popular uprising in the territories occupied by the Chilean state, sparked on October 18, 2019 by a fare hike of 30 pesos. What began with a student-led campaign of transit fare evasions quickly spread into a nationwide uprising that shook society to its very foundations.

This uprising was born out of the long history of revolt in so-called Chile. Unfortunately, as participant Yza reminds us, long histories of revolt are often due to long histories of repression. Repression in these lands goes back before the formation of the Chilean state, to the Spanish invasion and conquest. But the modern era begins with the 1973 coup that installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator. Years of neoliberal reforms produced a disillusioned and disorganized working class. InterRebellium traces the roots of the 2019 uprising to the student movements of the 2000s and feminist movements of the mid 2010s, as well as through Indigenous resistance throughout the history of colonial domination. The movement also took cues and tactics from revolts happening concurrently in Hong Kong and Ecuador.

For months, thousands of people fought pitched street battles with the cops and military, organized networks of support for the front line militants, created horizontally organized neighborhood assemblies, participated in general strikes and conducted acts of arson and sabotage against symbols of power and multinational corporations.

The Estallido was ultimately contained through a combination of brutal state repression, promises of reform and a new constitution, and an aesthetic face-lift on the old symbols of power with the election of the young Gabriel Boric of the new-left. As the riots subsided and many people became willing to work within the channels of state bureaucracy, Boric and the new left were free to build coalition with the same forces that were in power before the Estallido, leaving many of the worst perpetrators of state repression in their same roles. A handful of political prisoners from the Estallido remain behind bars to this day (April 2025)

InterRebellium will cover the global wave of revolts from 2018-2020. The title is from Latin for “between uprisings.” We believe it is important to take this time between waves relate our experiences on a worldwide scale, to study the last one so that we are better prepared for the next one.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.

Across the country, chairs sit empty around dinner tables.

Husbands, brothers, sons, mostly, are missing.

Caught up in a government dragnet that picked them off the streets.

Or took them from their homes. Or ripped them off of buses or from their workplaces.

The news gushes over how safe the country of El Salvador is today.

But for the thousands of families who’s innocent loved ones were taken from them 

And locked into high security prisons without a key…

This is not a paradise.

It’s a nightmare. 

In March 2022, President Nayib Bukele ordered a state of exception and unleashed raids that have locked up more than 70,000 people around the country. 

They are accused of being affiliated with gangs. 

Gangs that wreaked havoc in the country

with one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America (or the world).

People say they couldn’t leave their homes without fear of violence.

But in Bukele’s gang crackdown

he also picked up the innocent. 

Thousands. Tens of thousands of innocent people.

Police grabbed people with impunity. 

Without asking for proof, or a warrant.

And in jail, they are languishing. Most incommunicado from their families.

Incommunicado from a lawyer. 

Waiting for years.

And there are no charges. No court cases. No trials. No conviction. 

They are just held, indefinitely. 

Their crime: Being young. And male. And, in many cases, tattooed. 

And this system has the stamp of approval from the United States,

which is now openly participating, by sending Venezuelans to be housed in El Salvador’s jails. 

Also under the pretext of being gang members, even though many are not. 

The rule of law is dead. Habeaus corpus, buried.

Buried in the name of the war on gangs. 

Buried in the name of the United States. 

But people are fighting. 

Family members are marching. 

On May 1, International Workers Day, the family members of the detained lead the way. 

They carry signs of the loved ones who have been ripped from them. Husbands. Sons. Brothers. Breadwinners for their families, now languishing in prisons. 

They carry signs and images, strangely reminiscent of the pictures of those detained, killed, and disappeared during the 1970s and ’80s… in another time and another war, funded and backed by the United States. 

Those also kidnapped in the name of the United States.

But the Salvadorian relatives are not the only ones marching for their loved ones.

So are Venezuelans, standing up in Caracas and other cities against the illegal deportation of their compatriots to another country far away.

So are people in the United States.

But family members in El Salvador are leading the way.

They are marching. They are organizing. Demanding the freedom for their loved ones. 

Demanding to be allowed to speak to them. 

Demanding that there be justice.

Resisting, despite so much impunity.

Despite so much injustice.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

I was in El Salvador for the May 1 march a couple of years ago, and did some reporting on the situation in the country and the widespread dentition of innocent people. I’ll add links in the show notes for some of my stories for The Real News. 

This is episode 26 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

In El Salvador, thousands of innocent people have been locked up in Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. They have been held without due process for years. But family members are standing up. And on May 1 they march, carrying the pictures and the names of their innocent loved ones detained and held without rights, with the ever-increasing support of the United States. 

This is episode 26 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Below are some links to Michael Fox’s previous reporting on this issue with The Real News.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

A smooth velvet voice.

A voice that sang folk songs 

From the shores of the Caribbean.

But Harry Belafonte was so much more than that. 

He was born in Harlem, New York. 1927.

To parents from Jamaica. 

Growing up, he lived in Jamaica with his grandparents for several years before returning to the US and joining the Navy to fight in World War II.

When he returned, he worked as a janitor.

Got into theater. 

And began to sing to pay the bills. 

The Black activist and singer Paul Robeson took him under his wing. 

And Belafonte’s career took off. 

You know this song. It was the top track on Belafonte’s hit debut record, Calypso. 

That topped the charts for half a year.

And Harry Belafonte was transformed into the “King of Calypso,” a style of music which originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the late 1800s. 

He sang folk songs. Caribbean songs. Pop songs. Spiritual songs. And songs of resistance. 

His last studio album, in 1988, was a compilation of 10 protest songs against South African apartheid. 

He acted, performing in more than a dozen movies throughout his career. 

“I’m not a politician, I’m an artist, and if my art is done well, that in itself is a contribution.”

A contribution for change.

See, though Harry Belafonte was a great musician and actor, he was also, more than anything else, an activist. 

A fighter against racism and oppression, in the United States and around the world.

“As long as there is racism, I’m gonna be on fire,” he once said.

“Racismo in its subtlest and its most evil sense has worked its way into the fiber and the hearts and minds of many men and women. And with this going on, it’s had an incredible influence on my own life. I was born in the ghetto. My mother was a domestic worker. My father was a seaman. And I grew up in the West Indies. My uncles and aunts were farmers. Under British exploitation.”

He joined the civil rights movement. He marched alongside Martin Luther King. 

“To be a part of the movement that Dr. King led was the greatest moment of my life.”

He helped to fund civil rights organizing and groups. 

He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.

When Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders were jailed,

Harry Belafonte helped to bail them out. 

When he had a hard time renting an apartment in Manhattan, because he was Black.

He bought the building and helped other Black artists move in and find a home. 

He was a true American patriot. Ever fighting for justice and equality. 

Ever fighting to make the United States better. 

He also denounced the US abroad. He demanded an end to the endless wars, apartheid, and the US blockade on Cuba.

Here’s just one clip from an interview he did with the CBC in 1967:

“I fought in the Second World War. I was told then and I fought with the knowledge that this was the war to end all wars and we were going to defeat fascism and mankind could turn its attention to the best of us in man. And now I come and my son is 10 years old, and I will arm him with everything I can, so he can be free of any primitive medieval concepts about false patriotism, about boundaries and the meaning of flags. Mankind is much bigger than all these primitive symbols. And I don’t want to see my boy with his face stuck in some rice paddy off in Vietnam, or off in some other land, protecting the interests of the establishment and trying to reward their greed with his life. I’m opposed to it.”

Harry Belafonte stood up for justice and against oppression throughout his life. 

And he remained active into his ’90s, working for prison reform, denouncing the Iraq War, George W. Bush, Trump, and so much more.

Harry Belafonte passed away on April 25, 2023.

His work and his melodies sing on.

###

Hi folks. Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox. Like so many others I am grateful to my parents to have raised me listening to Harry Belafonte. And I was even more grateful when I learned what an incredible person and activist he was…. Using his music and his success for good.

This is episode 25 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 25 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Links for some old clips of Harry Belafonte:

Harry Belafonte Interview on Activism Through Art (1958)

Harry Belafonte on racism, patriotism & war, 1967: CBC Archives | CBC

Harry Belafonte’s Best Crime Thriller? Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) | BlackTree TV

Harry Belafonte in Concert (Japan, 1960)

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

BAP denounces this escalation of state repression and the targeting of Musa by the state, CBP, and collaborating agencies. We call on all of our fellow revolutionary, radical, and progressive organizations and comrades to heighten our capabilities and our work to respond to the ongoing escalatory attacks of the U.S. state and its allies. We also understand that we must view this targeted attack in connection with the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, the repression of pro-Palestine advocacy and all forms of radical organization, the decades-long war on the Cuban people, and the abduction of immigrants from our communities and universities. We must connect the various forms of repression that are ongoing and focus our organizing on building the power and proactive strategies to oppose these attacks on our people, our communities, and our movements.

As Musa recounts, this targeting was not random and is not unique, “[t]his experience is part of a broader pattern. Across administrations, CBP and DHS have operated as politically weaponized agencies to escalate surveillance, harassment, and criminalization of individuals involved in movements for justice. Now, we’re witnessing a dangerous heightening of this weaponization… While the repression of immigrants and foreign students is rightly drawing public attention, [Musa’s] experience reveals that U.S.-born citizens, especially Black and Muslim ones, are also targets.”

As we have always said in BAP, there is a constant and brutal war being waged against Africans/Black people in the U.S. and globally, which is an extension of the war on all the colonized peoples, working classes, and oppressed masses of the globe through imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and in this case specifically, state violence. In the U.S., the state, in obedience to the white supremacist capitalist ruling class, has long been at active war with radical organizers and activists, immigrants, and anyone who does not conform to the requirements of the empire. Under the current administration, the state is escalating its aggression against these groups and more to terrorize non-citizens, repress radical activism, and compel others into silence.

In response to this ongoing escalation, we emphasize Musa’s words of caution to the radical movement:  “Be strategic, brave, and smart in equal measures. Protect one another, because no part of this system nor what is to come is designed to protect us.” In this time of escalating repression, our call is for principled unity against all forms of imperialism, state violence, and oppression domestically and globally.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Josh Frank.

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet.

And one of the most inhospitable.

But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape and they have given life.

Laguna Chaxa lies in the salt flats, 7,500 feet above sea level. 

Its crystal waters reflect the horizon, the never-ending terrain of salt rocks. The rows of volcanoes that line the Andes mountains to the East. 

In this lagoon, two species thrive. Brine shrimp and flamingos. The miniature shrimp multiply quickly, feeding on the phytoplankton packed with beta carotene, like carrots. The flamingos feed on the shrimp, which colors their feathers pink.

Growing the flamingo’s family tree is harder.

Raising an egg under the incessant sun is not easy.

Like penguins in the frigid extremes, the flamingos here lay just one egg a year.

And there is a battle to see which predator will get to it first. The foxes, which creep down off the hillsides, or the heat of the sun, which can cook it if left to the elements. 

So the flamingos have learned to adapt.

They build bowl-shaped nests of mud and earth in the shallow waters of the lake. 

The salty waters keep the foxes away, and cool the egg, despite the hot sun.

The baby flamingo grows inside the half-submerged egg.

But even then the parents keep watch.

If the egg is too hot, they fan it with their wings or block the sun’s rays with their bodies, shading it.

They have only one young a year. It must count. 

“If it dies, the mother, heartbroken, walks into the desert and dies too,” says Ingrid, an Indigenous guide from the local Toconao community that keeps watch over the region.

And then the egg hatches, the white feathered baby breaks free into the salty waters that she and her family have called home for thousands of years.

Perfectly adapted and resisting in one of the harshest ecosystems on Earth.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This story might seem a little out of place for this podcast. But coming just days after Earth Day, I wanted to highlight this just incredible lifelong resistance from animals and ecosystems all around us, to adapt and hold on as best one can. I really like this one. Also… April 26 is Flamingo Day. So happy Flamingo Day. Seeing them in action in these incredibly harsh climates of Chile and Peru, I have new found respect for these big pink birds. They are NOT just Florida lawn decor.

This is episode 24 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

There you can also check out some exclusive pictures of the flamingos at Laguna Chaxa, taken both by myself and my daughter. I’ll add links in the show notes. 

See you next time.

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet, and one of the most inhospitable. But salt lagoons dot the barren landscape, and flamingos are one of a number of species that have adapted to live in this harsh environment, and are battling to survive.

This is episode 24 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. April 26 is also Flamingo Day. So, Happy Flamingo Day!

You can see exclusive pictures of the flamingos of the Atacama desert, in Michael Fox’s Patreon page. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

It is believed that Crazy Horse placed this signature on a bluff near Ash Creek just before the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876. The image depicts a snake, representing the enemy or the United States, pursuing a horse with a lightning bolt on its flank, the signature of Crazy Horse.

This is the first of several posts about Tasunka Witko, reflecting on Joseph Marshall III’s book, The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History. It is the most exemplary biography of Tasunka Witko. The narrative is presented from the perspective of the Lakota people and is derived from the oral histories of Lakota elders.

In recent months, I have focused on reexamining Lakota texts and influential figures who have significantly impacted my perspective. A recent podcast interview with Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa prompted me to revisit one of the most mythologized and often misunderstood leaders of Lakota resistance, Tasunka Witko—commonly referred to as “His Horse Is Crazy” or simply “Crazy Horse.”

The killing of Palestinian resistance leader Yahya Sinwar, as noted by Susan, bore similarities to historical figures like the Lakota war leader Tasunka Witko, known as Crazy Horse to his enemies. She reflected on how Sinwar endured days without food, continuously engaging in combat until his demise, which occurred after he launched grenades at enemy soldiers. In an act of ultimate defiance, he also threw a stick at a surveillance drone that recorded his final moments before a tank shell blew up the building, taking him with it.

Sinwar’s last days were marked by hardship; he did not seek refuge in a tunnel or remain surrounded by captives, as suggested by his adversaries. Instead, he faced his enemies directly, sometimes yards away. This sharply contrasts with the leaders of the opposing forces, who sought to eliminate him, as they have entrenched themselves in underground bunkers, shielded by the protective reach of the United States.

Susan mentioned that Crazy Horse also fasted, receiving spiritual guidance and a vision that contributed to the success of his battlefield exploits. He led his men not from the safety of the rear but by engaging the enemy, favoring his war club in close combat. However, their deaths differ: Sinwar was killed by an unknown enemy, while Crazy Horse fell to a fellow Lakota after he had previously surrendered.

What Sinwar and Crazy Horse hold most in common is their spirit of resistance as anti-colonial fighters, equally villainized and mystified by the forces that sought their annihilation. Their stature as myths reveals more about their colonizer than about their humanity. The culture of genocide makes a double move. While it demonizes the people it seeks to destroy as primitive savages, it also attributes superhuman powers to them.

The portrayals of brutality and depictions of merciless violence obscure the motives for resistance, thereby attempting to frame genocide as self-defense and a rational response to an irrational opponent. Anti-colonial resistance gets framed as led by “fundamentalists,” “hostiles,” “extremists,” or “terrorists” — that is, in other words, people who react and respond to their conditions in irrational or extreme ways beyond the bounds of what is considered “civilized.” This purposefully obscures the material and objective conditions of resistance. At the same time, the colonizer projects invulnerability and superiority. Starving Lakotas and Palestinians, without the weaponry and material wealth of their opponents, still represent an existential threat. Why? Because they continue to draw breath. Their heartbeats are constant reminders of the precarity of the settler project.

This analogy may resonate more with some in the context of Palestine. However, if Lakota people are not still viewed as a threat, why do we see such high levels of repression within our communities? There is evident political repression against Water Protectors. A slew of anti-protest and critical infrastructure laws have progressed through state legislatures, criminalizing Indigenous dissent in the aftermath of the 2016 Standing Rock movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Natali Sergovia, the executive director of the Water Protector Legal Collective, referred to the recent lawsuit against Greenpeace as a “proxy war” against Indigenous sovereignty. The less evident is the continued criminalization and punishment of ostensibly “non-political” acts.

It’s not just the high rates of incarceration among and police violence against Lakotas — and American Indian people, in general — but also the extremely low life expectancy. For example, 58 is the median life expectancy of American Indians from my home state, South Dakota, more than two decades shorter than that of white people. Such a severe disparity in other parts of the world might justify calls for “regime change” or “humanitarian intervention.” In our system, the overseers of such immiseration, like former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, are promoted to the highest levels of government, as head of the Department of Homeland Security. We can link these deaths to the conditions colonialism still imposes despite having moved away from industrial extermination and slaughter yet profoundly connected to the current regime of repression against pro-Palestinian students and university faculty and the intensified war against migrants.

This structural elimination of Lakota people today is directly linked to the same war waged against Crazy Horse during his day. This war has expanded with the U.S. empire and its homicidal alliance with zionism.

Crazy Horse may not have pursued the warrior’s path had the United States not invaded his homelands. He might have followed his father’s path as a spiritual leader and healer. Yet, there is something material and profound about the supposed supernatural powers received from his vision that guided his path as a resistance leader. In that dream, enemy bullets and arrows rained down Crazy Horse but were unable to harm him while he charged mounted on a horse. But the hands of his own people rose from behind him, grabbing and pulling him down.

The dream apparently granted him immunity from the weapons of his enemies but not from those of his own people. In today’s parlance, we might see Crazy Horse’s dream as envisioning the counterinsurgency campaign against the Lakotas. U.S. military leaders and Indian agents fomented and exploited divisions within Lakota society after imposing conditions of starvation, scarcity, and deprivation. Colonization wasn’t just an external enterprise that had to be forced upon recalcitrant Lakotas; it was internalized, turning relatives against each other.

Yahya Sinwar sitting in a chair atop the ruins of his home.

Yahya Sinwar sitting in a chair in the final moments before being killed.

The post Crazy Horse and Anti-Colonial Resistance appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nick Estes.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The trail leads across the vast horizon 

traversing sharp green slopes.

A row of travelers walks on an overgrown path of stone

chiseled half a millenium ago into the hillside.

Thousands of feet above the valley floor

thousands of feet above the snaking brown Urubamba River

craggy snow-covered 17-, 18-, 19,000-foot peaks reach toward the heavens.

They are not just mountains. 

They’re Apus. 

The word means “señor,” “elder,” or “the honored ones” in Quechua. 

For the Andean Quechuan people, the apus are spirits that embody the mountains.

Spirits that protect them and their harvests.

And this group of travelers is also going to pay their respects to the ancient ones.

The path takes a sharp ascent and winds up over a pass. 

And at the top they stop, 12,000 feet up.

Here…  the land was terraced hundreds of years ago, by ancient bygone people. 

Maybe the Incas. Maybe the Killke or Qotacalla people before them.

The land is still farmed today.

But it’s barren of trees and shrubs. They were long since cut, and cleared and used.

But people in the Andes of Peru are changing that.

The guide wears a traditional red woven Andean poncho.

He sets his llamas to graze on the lush green hillside

And pulls from their packs saplings. Tiny queñua trees — polylepis, in English.

They are native to Peru.

To the highlands and the hillsides here. They thrive in the high altitudes.

They help protect the soil. They conserve water.

They are sacred. And this team is here to plant them on the edge of the ridge where they will grow big and strong.

The team breaks into the ground with a pickaxe and shovel.

They pull out the rich moist earth. 

And then say prayers to the Apus

three coca leaves in hand, blowing sacred breaths to the mountain spirits. 

In every direction they turn, saying a prayer to the mighty summits that surround them… Pitusiray, Sahuasiray, Verónica, Chicón and all of the others, even those they cannot see.

In the base of each hole where the tree will be planted, they make an offering.

Coca leaves, crackers, candy, and other sweets. 

The things that humans like, they say, are the same to be offered to Pachamama, Mother Earth, and the Apus.

The items are arranged in a gorgeous multicolored design.

And then they pour in beer. It fizzes and mixes. 

More prayers in Quechua. A moment of silence.

They ask that these trees may grow roots.

Big and strong. That they may give life

and protect this sacred place. 

The tree is a metaphor for their own future.

That the Apus may bless these little saplings and also their path ahead.

Their community. Their families and endeavours.

And then… they gently fill up the holes with the rich dark earth 

llama dung for fertilizer

brown tufts of Andean grass to hold in the moisture.

More words of prayer on this ancient hillside.

Tiny trees being planted and born.

Dreams. Hope for what may come. 

Resisting on the high mountains of the Andes.

Planting trees for tomorrow. 

###

There has been a huge push to plant these trees and other native trees across the Andes in recent years. And it’s been a tremendous success.

In recent years, local organizations, together with dozens of Indigenous communities have planted more than 10 million trees up and down the Andes. Almost half of them in the Peruvian mountains around Cusco. Many of the tree species are threatened. And many of the ecosystems at risk.

The trees help to protect and preserve the local environments and ecosystems and in particular help retain water. The communities are also holding on to their local cultures, beliefs and religion. Making offerings and prayers to Pachamama and the Apus. Offerings for the resistance of their peoples on the hillsides of the Andes. Offerings for their children and their communities. Offerings for the future.

This is episode 23 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. So I thought this was a perfect story to highlight the incredible work Indigenous peoples and communities are doing in the highlands of Peru.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow my reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

This is episode 23 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

This week, we celebrate Earth Day, April 22. This is a perfect story to highlight the incredible work Indigenous peoples and communities are doing in the highlands of Peru.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Tamara writes. She writes in her tiny apartment in bustling Puebla, Mexico, where street vendors hawk vegetables and fruits, clothes, and electronics. Where their calls ring like birdsong and the sound of city traffic bellows low like a bassoon, or a didgeridoo. 

Tamara writes beautiful phrases, linking adjective and metaphor. Inventing words, painting pictures of alebrijes and butterflies and magic. But her stories are not fanciful. They are not fast-food fairy tales or strip-mall Coca-Cola Inc.-brand fables meant to lull you to sleep and to buy their products.

Tamara’s stories have an edge. They have a point, chiseled over years. They are stories of grit. They are stories of truth. Where the hero is not an impossibly brawny white uniform-wearing man, but an elderly migrant; a homeless grandmother, fleeing violence, picking her way forward, following the breadcrumbs left by an unjust system made not for her, but for the rich. For the elites. For the wealthy tourists, with their expensive cameras, who speak loudly in foreign languages in countries they only visit to say they’ve visited, and eat their food and buy their trinkets and return home to brag.

But Tamara’s protagonists also have their superpowers. They have magic. They see mystical creatures. They paint their own worlds, just like Tamara’s pen, or keyboard stroke.

Tamara writes of injustice. She writes of inequality. She writes of poverty. Then she volunteers at a migrant shelter. She marches with the Indigenous defending their homeland, fighting foreign water companies or mining corporations. She meets. She organizes. She speaks, softly. In a throng of people, she is often the one behind the lens of a camera. Tamara carries both powerful words and silence, in the same breath. This is her superpower. She knows both when to listen and to speak. A potent potion few heroes wield.

Global inequality is her Lex Luthor. Her Joker. Her Darth Vader. This system that permits some countries, and thereby some people, to hold so much power over the rest. This system that decides who needs to fight to survive and who gets to spend their days binge watching Netflix. Who will be educated. Who should travel. Who should live and who should die. All decided by what side of a fence they were born on. What mountainside. What distant shore. What tiny dot on the planet their mothers birthed and raised them.

This global caste system — that is her greatest antagonist. And she fights it daily the only way she knows how. With the very essence of her soul.

###

Tamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican writer and journalist. You can check out her work on her website ResistanceWords.com. I’ll add a link in the show notes.

Her latest novel, Eyes of the Earth, is a journey of magical realism about a 73-year-old homeless refugee in Mexico. Definitely check it out. 

As always, I’m your host Michael Fox. This is Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. 

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is Stories of Resistance—a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Check out Tamara Pearson’s original publications for The Real News Network here, and follow her work at resistancewords.com. She tweets at x.com/pajaritaroja.

You can find Tamara Pearson’s latest novel, Eyes of the Earth, at resistancewords.com/novel-the-eyes-of-the-earth/

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support at patreon.com/mfox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Federico Avalos is an Argentine poet. 

But he does not write the words. He recites them.

He walks the white sands, weaving through the sunbathing crowd that lays near the turquoise waters of the Atacama ocean.

“Would you like to roll the literary dice?” Federico asks.

He wears a large smile, behind a salt and pepper beard, a brimmed hat and a blue flowered shirt. 

He holds a large homemade die in his hand, numbers written on all sides. 

He hands it to a little girl who laughs and tosses it into the air. It lands on the number 6.

He opens a book with a black and white cover. The drawing of a silhouette of people marching. The words “Nunca Mas,” “Never Again,” written across it. 

He begins:

“If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating…

These are the opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” a poem about believing and hope. And making the impossible into reality.

It is cliche, but time stands still. The seagulls stop crying. The lapping of the water at the shore ceases. A boy kicks a soccer ball and it’s frozen in midair. The laughter from a group nearby pauses. 

All that is left are the words. And the images and ideas painted by Federico’s rich, deep voice. 

Federico’s arms move to the cadence of each line, as though he’s reciting to a crowd of thousands on a Victorian stage somewhere long ago, and far away.

This is both Federico’s job and his activism. A theatrical intervention. A temporal break from the digital monotony: The selfies, the tweets, the posts, the likes, the comments and the follows.

This is Federico’s resistance. Standing up to the cyber mayhem. 

Breathing art into the void. Magic. Reflection.

“I didn’t used to read much poetry,” he says. “I had a hard time. I was too distracted. In poetry, you can’t be thinking about something else. It needs your undivided attention.” 

“That’s what I like about it,” he says.

Not every poet is right for this occasion. Federico carries a book of poems by Jorge Luis Borges. But Borges is too heady. Too intellectual. Too hard to decipher under the hot sun after a glass, or two, of Chilean Pisco Sour, or while building a sand castle with your daughter.

Uruguayan great Mario Benedetti is more palatable. But there are so many. Ruben Dario, Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Joao Pessoa.

Federico’s repertoire shifts like the tides. Rising and falling. Growing and changing. He’s adding a collection of women authors.

Federico used to work in education. That was before his family planned a road trip, and the car broke down in another country, far from home. And they ran out of money to fix it. And now, they’re camped on the edge of town and he had to find a way to survive and he began reciting poems.

“I don’t usually have that many good ideas,” he says, tossing his die in the air. “This was one of them.”

“Would you like to roll the literary dice?” He asks.

###

Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.

This is episode 21 of Stories of Resistance, a new podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times.

April is National Poetry Month, in the United States. I am taking advantage of it to feature three stories of resistance about poets and authors this week.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review. You can support my work and find exclusive pictures and background information on my Patreon: patreon.com/mfox.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

This is episode 21 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

April is poetry month in the United States. We are taking advantage to feature three stories about poetry and writing this week. This is the second of those three.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

A man sits at a dark wooden table in a bar in the old city of Montevideo, Uruguay.

The bar is old. Historic. It’s been around for more than a hundred years. And it looks it. 

The decor hasn’t changed much since the 1870s.

Wooden walls. Wooden tables. Italian chairs.

The bar is called the Cafe Brasileiro.

And it was a favorite of more than a few Uruguayan poets and writers. 

Mario Benedetti, Idea Vilariño, José Enrique Rodó.

They say Juan Carlos Onetti wrote the first words of his first novel here in the 1930s.

But of them all, one man is remembered in the menu… 

Eduardo Galeano.

The ingredients of the Cafe Galeano are Amaretto, Cream and dulce de leche — caramel.

Galeano frequented the Cafe Brasileiro for decades. Chair leaned back against the wall. Sometimes a pencil or a pen in hand.

Titles cannot describe him. 

He was writer, reader, journalist, editor.

But he was also historian.

Catching stories in the air.

Writing and retelling them anew.

But he did not write for the stuffy halls of the elites or academia.

He wrote for the people.

He was a truth-teller.

A myth-maker.

An essayist.

A poet.

Polishing his craft

Honing his art

Chiseling his sculptures with words

Until they were perfectly symmetrical 

Beautifully balanced 

The least common denominator of language and meaning. 

Gorgeous bouquets of words.

He was a storyteller.

And his tales had morals

Points

Punchlines.

His vignettes — tiny packets of beauty 

That remind us who we are

And where we come from.

The immense injustices carried out by the powerful

And the profound insight of the people.

His most famous book, Open Veins of Latin America, was published in 1971. 

A hard-hitting examination of the gutting of the Americas by Europe and the United States since the arrival of Columbus.

But it reads like a novel.

They say the book was one of the few items writer Isabel Allende took with her when she fled Chile with her family following the brutal 1973 coup.

He too would have to flee in 1973, when the military took over Uruguay.

He went into exile first in Argentina, and then in Spain, when Argentina also fell into its own military dictatorship in 1976.

There, he wrote his Memories of Fire trilogy. 

“I’m a writer obsessed with remembering,” he wrote once. “With remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”

His were words of wisdom.

Upside-down words.

Words that celebrated the poor and working class.

Words that denounced the global injustices by stripping them of their fake façades and painting them anew… showing who they really were.

“What a paradox today’s world is,” he writes in his posthumous 2016 book, Hunter of Stories. “In the name of freedom, we are invited to choose between the same and the same, be it on the table or on television.”

Galeano passed away exactly 10 years ago — April 13, 2015.