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Introduction by Cara Romero, Executive Director, Bioneers and Director, Indigeneity Program.

In many North and Central American Indigenous peoples’ oral traditions the “Trickster Coyote” is a crucially important mythic ancestor, and the stories surrounding him illuminate vital truths. Julian Brave NoiseCat, activist, journalist, champion powwow dancer, co-director of the award-winning film Sugarcane, author of We Survived the Night, and multi-hyphenate storyteller and artist from the Secwépemc and St’at’imc nations, dramatically makes the ancient but ever potent “Coyote Story” archetype, one of the most significant oral traditions in human history, come to vivid life to shed light on our current situation and possible paths forward in these trying times.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Julian Brave NoiseCat (member, Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen, and descendant, Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie), formerly a political strategist, policy analyst and cultural organizer who played a major role, in, among other achievements, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation and getting Deb Haaland appointed Interior Secretary (the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history), is a writer, journalist, and the first Indigenous North American filmmaker ever nominated for an Academy Award (for his co-direction of Sugarcane). NoiseCat’s journalism has appeared in dozens of leading national publications and has been recognized with many awards. His first book, We Survived the Night, was a national bestseller in Canada and an indie bestseller in the U.S., and Julian is also a champion powwow dancer who played hockey for three of the oldest teams in the game: Columbia University, the Oxford University Blues and the Alkali Lake Braves.

EXPLORE MORE “Remembering Who We Are and Our Relations” with Julian Brave NoiseCat

In this episode of the Indigeneity Conversations podcast series, Julian Brave NoiseCat explores the importance of connection and relationship, to family, to history, to place and to culture, threading his own story throughout a larger narrative about the deep trauma Indigenous people have experienced through colonization and the resilience and power that is emerging as individuals, tribes and nations work to reclaim their own stories and landscapes.

Indigenous Rising: From Alcatraz to Standing Rock

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. From the historic Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969 to the fossil fuel fights throughout Canada and the U.S. today, Indigenous resistance illuminates an activism founded in a spiritual connection with the web of life and the human community. This podcast features Julian NoiseCat, Dr. LaNada War Jack and Clayton Thomas-Müller.

The post Julian Brave NoiseCat – The Epic Misadventures of the Trickster Coyote appeared first on Bioneers.

Kyle Trefny was 18 years old in 2020 when skies in the San Francisco Bay Area and much of the Pacific Coast turned orange with wildfire smoke. He shares how that moment led him to become a wildland firefighter and to join other youth in creating FireGeneration Collaborative (FireGen), dedicated to imagining and building a future beyond intense wildfires and their devastating health impacts, a future of healthy communities and livelihoods that recenters Indigenous leadership in land management. Kyle reflects upon the power of questions, of friendship, of breaking negative cycles, of art, of mentors and elders, and of taking leaps of faith in life.

This Young Leaders talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Kyle Trefny is an organizer, artist, wildland firefighter, and co-founder of FireGeneration Collaborative (FireGen), which started out with a GoFundMe campaign and a petition and became a dynamic, influential youth-led organization that has helped bring about the historic involvement of firefighters and Indigenous fire management practitioners in governance processes and engaged hundreds of young people in fire research. A faculty research assistant at the University of Oregon’s Ecosystem Workforce Program, Kyle is also active in movements for Indigenous sovereignty, queer rights, and climate justice and was a recipient of a 2025 Brower Youth Award.

Learn more about FireGen.

EXPLORE MORE Putting the Land First: A Candid Conversation on Climate, Conservation, and California’s Future

Three changemakers working at the intersection of policy, land, and climate share their perspectives on what it takes to scale nature-based solutions. Together, they explore the progress being made, the roadblocks still ahead, and why putting land first is essential to securing a just, livable future.

Nature’s Phoenix: Fire As Medicine

In this podcast episode with fire ecologists Chad Hanson and Frank Kanawha Lake, we learn how contemporary Western fire science is integrating what Indigenous Peoples discovered over thousands of years of observation, and trial and error: fire is key to optimizing forest vitality and biodiversity.

The post Kyle Trefny – When Orange Skies Clear appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Anna Lappé, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

As we today once again face the aggression of authoritarian oligarchy, there is a great deal we can learn from how food workers confronted fascism a century ago. Socialist and anarchist movements around the world gave birth to innovative solidarity strategies that permitted them to survive a fascist onslaught, care for their communities, and put food on the table in times of disease and war. Raj Patel, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable food systems and a tireless advocate for food justice, shares what his research about these inspiring movements tells us about how we too can draw on the best human impulses to build economic systems built on solidarity and mutual aid.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Raj Patel, an award-winning author, film-maker and academic, is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin who has worked for the World Bank and WTO but also protested against them around the world and testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US, UK and EU governments. A member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and of the council of Progressive International, he has written extensively for a range of scholarly journals in economics, philosophy, politics and public health and also contributes frequently to a range of other publications, including The Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, and Scientific American. He is the author of: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, and co-author of: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things and (with Rupa Marya) of: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and The Anatomy of Injustice. His first film, co-directed with Zak Piper, is the award-winning documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper. He also co-hosted the food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient.

EXPLORE MORE The Food Web Newsletter

Dive into the Food Web with Bioneers and learn more about how a transformed food system can be a source of community wealth, creative culture, and individual health, as well as a way to fulfill our sacred calling as humans for environmental stewardship.

Young Leaders Champion Food Sovereignty and Economic Equity in BIPOC Communities

Explore how young leaders are driving food sovereignty and economic equity in BIPOC communities, transforming lives and inspiring change.

The post Raj Patel – Food Solidarity vs Fascism appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Manuel Pastor, Director of the Equity Research Institute at USC.

With federal incursions tearing through communities from coast to coast and huge new detention centers coming online, it is understandable that many of us could feel overwhelmed and powerless in the light of such frightening, massive shows of force, but, as we’ve seen, some communities are courageously rising up to defend their neighbors. According to the nationally-recognized community organizer, bestselling author, Director of the Shared Future initiative, and co-founder of the national network of immigrant youth, United We Dream, Cristina Jiménez Moreta, this is a tipping point moment, and we need to draw from examples of historic change that started in the margins of society before conquering the mainstream to inspire us to join together and build a new consensus in our nation that celebrates immigrants’ enormous contributions and supports their rights.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference. Read a transcript of this talk here.

Cristina Jiménez Moreta, who came to the U.S. from Ecuador in 1998 and grew up undocumented in Queens, New York, is an award-winning community organizer, bestselling author, and leading social justice activist. Co-founder and former Executive Director of  United We Dream (UWD), the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, she has led multiple national and local campaigns for immigrant justice, including playing a leadership role in the campaign to win and implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA). A distinguished lecturer at the City University of New York, Jiménez was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and named one of Time 100’s most influential people. She is the author of a bestselling debut memoir Dreaming of Home (2025).

EXPLORE MORE Bioneers Interview with Cristina Jiménez Moreta

Cristina Jiménez Moreta discusses her life and work with Anneke Campbell.

The post Cristina Jiménez Moreta – Mass Deportations: A Tipping Point Moment for All of Us appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO.

Brett KenCairn, founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions, an early leader in community-based living systems regeneration, challenges the conventional understandings of the causes and solutions of climate change and its fixation on carbon and technology. He illustrates through both recent science and our own direct experience that it is the degradation of the living world that is at the center of both how we have destabilized the climate, and how we can solve not only the climate crisis, but also reverse biodiversity loss and regenerate healthy human communities. He shows that we are living on a planet operating at half its photosynthetic capability—illustrating both the dire reality of our current situation but also the foundation of hope. 

Pointing to numerous examples of human communities reversing large scale landscape degradation—including the reversal of the Dust Bowl in the U.S. in the 1930s, the restoration of the Rhode Island-sized Loess Plateau in China in the 1990s, and examples of similar activities taking place around the world now—Brett points to our ability to build a global movement, community-by-community, to harness nature’s power to regenerate landscapes at a scale.  Through coordinated community-based action, these efforts can stabilize climate, generate hundreds of millions of jobs, generate trillions of dollars in economic opportunity, reverse biodiversity loss, and reboot the biosphere’s productive capabilities.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference. Read a transcript of this talk here.

Brett KenCairn, founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions and Senior Division Manager for Nature-based Climate Solutions for the City of Boulder’s Climate Initiatives Department, has throughout his career supported community-based initiatives across the western U.S., particularly in rural, Native American, and other marginalized communities. He also co-founded several organizations, including: the Rogue River Institute for Ecology and Economy; Indigenous Community Enterprises; Veterans Green Jobs; and Community Energy Systems.

EXPLORE MORE Urban Forests: A Nature-Based Solution to Climate Breakdown and Inequality

In this podcast episode with Brett KenCairn and Samira Malone, learn how urban forestry is a nature-based solution that simultaneously addresses the parallel crises of climate change and wealth inequality.

The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

The post Brett KenCairn – Nature-based Climate Solutions—Centering Life to Heal the Planet appeared first on Bioneers.

Born of resistance, resilience, and ancestral strength, Indigenous women are rising, reclaiming leadership, re-aligning with nature, and challenging the imposed dysfunctions of colonial patriarchy. Jasmine Smith, 16, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee and founder and Chair of NAIWA Daughters, has lived this movement since birth, appearing before tribal and state legislatures all the way to the UN, embodying her refusal of the exclusion of Indigenous youth voices in the struggle for our collective future. She issues a bold call to restore Indigenous youth to their rightful place as valued leaders, knowledge-holders, and essential advocates for the living world.

This Young Leaders talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Jasmine Smith, 16, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, is an internationally recognized Indigenous youth leader, poet, and Founder and Chair of NAIWA Daughters, a youth-led nonprofit advancing Indigenous young women’s leadership, advocacy, and civic power. Jasmine has delivered keynote addresses at the Model United Nations Conference, working with Italian ambassadors, spoken before the Tennessee State Senate, working with Knox County representatives, and introduced the nation’s first all-female, second youth-led Rights of Nature resolution. A two-time Tennessee Civic Essay Award winner, she is a guest lecturer at the University of Tennessee, United World College in Costa Rica, and other academic institutions. Through her work, Jasmine bridges Indigenous knowledge, youth leadership, and environmental justice.

EXPLORE MORE Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Pass Historic Youth-Led Rights of Nature Resolution

An Eastern Band of Cherokee Tribal Council resolution affirms the rights of the stream system in the Great Smoky Mountains. Young Cherokee women representing the NAIWA Daughters testified before the Council about the challenges of witnessing the simultaneous erosion of culture and the decimation of the natural world, and urged the Council to trust the youth, who understand what is at stake.

The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

The post Jasmine Smith – Living Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams, While Being the Voice of the Voiceless appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Suzanne Simard, the Project Lead for The Mother Tree Project and Program.

Western science has long resisted and even ridiculed the idea that our planet is alive, but many scientists now recognize that Earth and life continually coevolve and that, together, they form a single, interconnected, living system. Ferris Jabr, NYT bestselling author and one of our most celebrated scientific writers, explains how, over billions of years, microbes, plants, fungi, and animals radically altered the continents, oceans, and atmosphere, transforming what was once a lump of orbiting rock into our cosmic oasis. Life breathed oxygen into the atmosphere, dyed the sky blue, made fire possible, converted barren crust into fertile soil, and perhaps even helped construct the continents. Over time, life became critical to the planet’s capacity to regulate its climate and maintain balance. Life is Earth and Earth is life.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Ferris Jabr, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of the bestselling Becoming Earth, which reviewers have described as an “infectiously poetic” “masterwork” that “earns its place alongside the best of today’s essential popular science books.” Ferris has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Scientific American and has received fellowships and grants from Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, the Pulitzer Center, and the Whiting Foundation. His work has been anthologized in four editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

Learn more at ferrisjabr.com

EXPLORE MORE Nature’s Genius

A Bioneers podcast series exploring how the symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution. 

The post Ferris Jabr – Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life appeared first on Bioneers.

After the largest dam removal project in U.S. history in which four out of six dams were removed from the Klamath River, an intertribal cohort of Indigenous youth became the first people in over a century to descend a 310-mile stretch of the river. In this talk, Coley shares her personal story of participating in that journey as one of the paddlers from the Klamath Tribes, while also raising the alarm about the imminent environmental issues facing her community, animal relatives, and sacred waters.

This Young Leaders talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Coley Kakols Miller, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes, is a Modoc and Klamath youth born and raised at the headwaters of the Klamath River watershed. A high school freshman living on her tribal territory in Southern Oregon and Northern California, Coley was among more than 30 young people who participated in the historic first descent of the Klamath River after the largest dam removal in history. She remains a passionate advocate for removing the last two dams on the Klamath River, working to ensure the Klamath Tribes’ treaty-protected resources are restored to provide for future generations.

EXPLORE MORE The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

Amy Bowers Cordalis – The Water Remembers: Year Zero

Amy Bowers Cordalis highlights the Indigenous values and lessons from the Klamath dam removals, showcasing nature-based solutions that heal the land, waters, and people while benefiting the economy.

The post Coley Kakols Miller – Undam the Klamath: The Fight Isn’t Over Yet appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Zephyr Teachout, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

Renowned science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” in 2022 to describe the degradation of online platforms. Drawing from his most recent nonfiction book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, he assures us that it’s not our imaginations: the internet does indeed suck now. And this isn’t the result of great historical forces or iron laws of economics: it’s caused by specific policy choices made in living memory by named individuals, but Cory argues that we aren’t helpless prisoners of the depraved foolishness of early 21st century policymakers. We can – and we must – break free of the prison they built for us, consigning their terrible ideas to the scrap-heap of history, so we can create a new, good internet that is fit to serve as the digital nervous system of this fraught young century.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Cory Doctorow, a renowned, award-winning science fiction author, activist, and journalist, is the author of dozens of books, most recently, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, (nonfiction); and the novels Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle. His other notable books include the “solar-punk” novels Walkaway and The Lost Cause, and the tech policy books The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism. Cory also: maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net; works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and is: an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science; and a co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.

EXPLORE MORE The Great Enshittening: How the Internet Got So Bad — and How We Can Fix It

Read an excerpt from Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

This Will All Be So Great If We Don’t Screw It Up

In this 2019 interview, Cory Doctorow dives deep into how monopoly power and deregulation paved the way for Big Tech’s dominance — and why restoring fairness and pluralism in technology begins with reclaiming public control.

The post Cory Doctorow – The “Enshittification” of Everything appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-founder and CEO.

John Warner, one of the co-founders of the entire field of “Green Chemistry” who co-authored its defining text and co-articulated its core principles, works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature. An inventor with over 300 patents who has received countless prestigious awards, he has also been, with his wife, Amy Cannon, a thought leader and prime mover of green chemistry education. In this talk, he shares his vision of how we can draw from the molecular design genius of nature, which has been running countless rigorous chemistry experiments for nearly 4 billion years, to create benign products and technologies that provide for human needs without contaminating the biosphere and endangering our health.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

John Warner and Amy Cannon are teaching a Bioneers Learning course from May 5 – 26, 2026:
Green Chemistry: Nature’s Molecules, Materials and Methods. This course is for anyone curious about how the world works at a molecular level — no science background required. Registration will remain open through May 11. Learn more and register.

John Warner, Ph.D., one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry who co-authored its defining text “Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice” (with Paul Anastas), is a chemistry inventor and entrepreneur who works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry. He holds over 350 industrial chemistry patents, and his inventions have served as the basis for several new companies in photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting, and cosmetics. John, who has received many prestigious awards from within the chemistry industry, government, academia and civil society organizations, has had a distinguished academic career, including as a tenured full-professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell. In 2007 he co-founded (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. He holds academic appointments at Monash University in Australia, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Somaiya University in India, University of Birmingham in the UK, Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, and Technical University of Berlin in Germany where they have named the “John Warner Center for Start Ups in Green Chemistry.” John also currently serves as CEO and CTO of Technology Greenhouse.

EXPLORE MORE Nature’s Genius

A Bioneers podcast series exploring how the symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. We can learn from the time-tested principles, processes, and dynamics that have allowed living systems to flourish during 3.8 billion years of evolution.

Deep Dive: Biomimicry

Biomimicry celebrates our kinship with life, unearthing untold treasures from nature’s playbook that we can emulate for our technological and industrial recipe book. Explore our media collection of fascinating examples from leaders in the field.

The post John Warner – Biomimicry at the Molecular Level—Inventing a Sustainable Future appeared first on Bioneers.

TORONTO — Countries across Asia and Europe are accelerating their shift to clean energy—a transition hastened by the war in Iran. But with the Ottawa–Alberta memorandum of understanding on climate and energy policy more than a month overdue, Canada is risking locking in policy signals that leave it out of step with this rapidly restructuring global energy economy, warn Clean Energy Canada’s Rachel Doran and other climate and clean energy experts.

In a joint letter sent today, the leaders of the Pembina Institute, Clean Energy Canada, Climate Action Network, Environmental Defence, Equiterre, and International Institute for Sustainable Development urge Prime Minister Mark Carney to finalize key elements of the agreement, warning that failure to do so risks a “consequential miscalculation” that would place too great a focus on the oil and gas industry at the expense of clean growth sectors.

“While countries across Asia and Europe engage in short-term energy rationing and longer-term restructuring of their economies away from oil and gas dependence and towards domestically produced clean electricity, here in Canada, we are stuck in an unhelpful feedback loop of discourse about the need for more oil and gas infrastructure and the loosening of environmental regulations on multi-billion dollar oil and gas companies,” reads the letter.

“Nowhere is this more evident than in the delay to the promised resolution of the Alberta-federal MOU on energy and climate policies.”

The letter urges specific outcomes on four key aspects of the MOU: industrial carbon pricing, clean electricity development, and methane rules for oil and gas producers. It refers to these, and the MOU more broadly, as the prime minister’s “most consequential opportunity” to turn “words into action” on building a strong, future-proofed Canadian economy.

KEY FACTS ON THE IRAN WAR AND ENERGY TRANSITION 

• Several countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Australia, South Korea, Germany, and Malaysia, have reported spiking sales or signs of elevated consumer interest in EVs since the war began. The surge has been particularly marked in Asia, where consumers are most exposed to the current oil supply shock.
• 1.75 million electric vehicles were sold globally in March 2026, a 66% increase on the previous month.
• Energy rationing is underway across the world, with the International Energy Agency tracking more than 40 countries where governments are urging citizens to take steps to conserve energy, such as limiting use of air conditioning in tropical climates or minimizing daily commutes.
• There are signs of countries rethinking previously approved oil and gas projects in light of the crisis. For example, plans for the construction of Vietnam’s largest-ever LNG import project are on pause, with investors citing the Iran war’s impact on global LNG supplies as a reason to consider switching to a renewable energy project instead.

Read the letter

The post New joint letter: We can’t ‘build Canada strong’ without robust Alberta MOU outcomes, warn Canadian clean energy experts appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

This article The Global Sumud Flotilla is a mission of mercy, met with cruelty was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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After a symbolic launch in Barcelona on April 12, the Global Sumud Flotilla set out across the Mediterranean Sea to bring aid to Gaza in what proved to be the largest civilian maritime convoy of its kind: 58 vessels, more than a thousand participants from over a hundred countries. Amnesty called on governments to guarantee safe passage. Greenpeace sent the Arctic Sunrise. And in the early hours of April 30, off the coast of Greece, Israeli naval forces moved in. 

There is something deeply affecting in the sight of everyday people rising to perform the simplest offices of mercy while states and institutions, created for hours of peril such as this, withdraw behind procedure and delay. Across the Mediterranean, men and women gathered what aid they could carry, along with the inward resolve such a voyage demands, and turned themselves toward Gaza. Great structures, swollen with authority and self-protection, were suddenly made to look small beside a few fragile boats moved by fellow feeling.

That, for me, is the true subject here. The values-led flotilla and the light of humiliation it casts upon the official power structures. When private citizens must hazard sea and reprisal in order to bring food and medicine to the trapped, the failure has entered the marrow of public life. Whole systems, immense in apparatus and loud in self regard, stand exposed by a handful of human beings willing to cross water for strangers. The Greeks gave us words for it: demos, the common people, and kratos, their strength. A flotilla is democracy at its source.

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In a relentless news cycle of death and destruction, there is something almost scriptural in the image of small craft setting out to relieve the besieged. A boat is a modest thing, rising and falling with the sea, vulnerable to delay, interception and fear. Perhaps that is why it can bear mercy so well. Mercy is among the most beloved names by which God is remembered in Islam, and these volunteers carried aid in their hold along with a quality of heart that official life has steadily thinned out.

The word sumud deepens the meaning further. For Palestinians, it has long meant steadfastness, a staying put in the face of erasure, a fidelity to land, memory and the human shape of one’s life. Here, steadfastness took to the sea. It left the olive grove and entered the waves. One remains steadfast by moving toward the wounded. One keeps faith by refusing distance.

By getting on those boats, the volunteers insisted that strangers are still our concern. A flotilla closes distance in the oldest human way, by drawing near, by consenting to inconvenience and risk because another people’s hunger has become unbearable to the soul.

To set out under such conditions is already a kind of testimony. One imagines the small practical gestures that attend such a voyage: the checking of ropes and provisions, subdued talk, private negotiations of fear, inward glances toward loved ones who would be left behind for a time. Heroism appears in a humble guise, the simple refusal to let danger relieve one of this duty. Those who boarded these vessels consented to exposure, and that consent lent the voyage its moral splendor.

There is something else that stirs the heart in such gatherings. The people who come together for a mission of mercy bring different languages, prayers and burdens of memory. Yet, for a brief and difficult passage they agreed to become answerable to one another and to those waiting beyond the horizon. This, too, is part of the beauty. A world daily instructed in difference and division still contains people capable of forming, under pressure, a fellowship. The boats carried supplies, certainly, though they also carried a living refutation of the lie that people are finally ruled by self-interest or tribe or fear.

Perhaps that is why maritime images can carry such spiritual force. The sea strips away illusion. No one sets out upon open water and remains wholly enclosed within self-regard. One enters a domain older than empires, where frailty and dependence are undeniable. To cross such waters in order to relieve the afflicted is to recover something ancient in the story, something older than diplomacy. It recalls the old belief that mercy is a labor asking something of the body. It must travel and bear fatigue and uncertainty. It must keep watch.

The greatness of the souls on this journey lies precisely in the fact that they remain recognizably human. They will be tired and perhaps seasick, maybe even afraid. They will carry their private griefs with them, along with the larger grief that summoned them to sea. Yet hope does not wait until the heart is free of trembling. It makes use of trembling and gathers what courage it can from love and shame, from prayer and the stubborn unwillingness to let the brutal terms of politics become the final measure of what is possible between us. Amid the daily grief, this is a welcome ray of light.  Hope as an act of resistance, with wet sleeves and a steady hand on the rope. Hope that has looked at the world and, despite every inducement to resignation, continues to choose the human bond.

Those who sailed in April had already paid for this cause. In October 2025, Israeli forces arrested over 450 participants from the last flotilla attempt, among them the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and Mandla Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela. Those survivors set out again, undeceived about what might await. Their willingness to return lent the voyage a grave authority. Events confirmed its cost.

The answer came in the early hours of April 30, in international waters west of Crete, 600 miles from Gaza. Israeli naval vessels surrounded the fleet, ordering activists to their knees at gunpoint. Twenty-two of the 58 boats were seized. One hundred and seventy-five people were held aboard an Israeli frigate for up to 40 hours, denied adequate food and water, the floor beneath them repeatedly and deliberately flooded. They were punched, kicked and dragged across the deck with hands bound. Shots were fired, live and rubber both. Thirty-four people were hospitalized in Crete with broken ribs, broken noses and serious neck injuries. Sixty went on hunger strike, before being released.

Two steering committee members were then taken separately to Israel: Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish Palestinian who had been on an observer boat that never planned to sail to Gaza, and Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila. Abu Keshek was forced to lie face-down from the moment of his seizure, kept hand-tied and blindfolded, his face and hands bruised. Ávila was dragged face-down across the floor and beaten so severely he lost consciousness twice. The Brazilian embassy, visiting under glass, observed visible marks on Ávila’s face and noted his significant pain. Both are in Shikma Prison in Ashkelon and still on a hunger strike. A court has now extended their detention until May 10.

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Spain called the detention illegal; Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly, saying his country would always protect its citizens and defend international law. Brazil stood with Spain. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called the interceptions an act of piracy. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called them a brazen violation of international law. The Trump administration called the flotilla pro-Hamas and threatened consequences for any who had offered support.

Power has answered mercy with boots and bound hands. One wants to call this a surprise, but it is more precisely a revelation: something that was always there, now brought into the open. What the interception has laid bare, beyond the suffering of those detained, is the shape of the blockade itself. What kind of order must travel 600 miles from shore to intercept civilian vessels that are carrying bandages? What does a law protect when it meets unarmed people at sea with firearms and drags them face-down across wet decks?

Thirty-two boats remain anchored in Crete, where the organizers are regrouping and considering their next steps. The flotilla was seized in part. It was not silenced. And that refusal has done what no press release could: made the condition of Gaza impossible to look away from, at a cost borne by those who were willing to bear it.

The boats are small enough to be dismissed by cynics, and large enough to shame the world. They carry the old lesson that power does not hold a monopoly on reality. Power cannot produce the moral beauty that appears when human beings gather themselves for the sake of others. That beauty remains one of the last unpurchased things.

I think, in these dark years, about the difference between authority and worth. The first may be conferred by the world; the second is earned in the secret place where the heart decides whether it will remain human. Those who set out from Barcelona hold no office at all. Even so, they carry more of the world’s honor than many governments assembled beneath their flags. They carry it at sea, in the dark, with their hands bound, still keeping watch.

The lantern is still on the water. Mercy has been met with force, and answered the force with the deeper testimony of the body’s willingness to remain. Thirty-two boats sail on. The heart still knows the way.

This article The Global Sumud Flotilla is a mission of mercy, met with cruelty was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

The campaigner challenging consent for lower-volume fracking in East Yorkshire has added a new ground to his case.

Photo: Used with the owner’s consent

Peter Lomas, from Hornsea, is taking the first legal steps against the Environment Agency (EA), over its issue of a permit at the West Newton-A site in Holderness.

The site operator, Rathlin Energy, had said lower-volume fracking is required to allow commercial exploitation of a well at the site.

The new ground is based on the Finch Ruling, a successful case at the Supreme Court brought by Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group on climate emissions from onshore oil and gas.

In a legal letter in early April, solicitors Leigh Day set out four grounds for Mr Lomas’s challenge:

• Risk of induced seismicity
• Risk to groundwater pollution
• Impact on the Lambwath Meadows site of special scientific interest
• Failure to consider international guidance on climate change

But a second letter has recently added that the EA failed, when making its decision on the permit, to consider and undertake a detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA).

The planning permission for production at West Newton-A was passed without an EIA, in March 2022.

This was more than two years before the Finch Ruling, which stated that decisionmakers must consider the downstream carbon emissions from using oil or gas produced onshore.

The Finch ruling also emphasised the importance of public participation in the EIA process and public understanding of the environmental impact of developments.

Mr Lomas’s lawyers argued there had been no environmental information about the downstream emissions from oil or gas produced at West Newton-A.

They said the EA was obliged to assess the environmental impact of oil and gas production resulting from lower-volume fracking.

Information was needed, they said, on emissions from using hydrocarbons from the well to ensure the public could properly participate in the process.

The lawyers have also revised the fourth ground in the case. It now argues that the EA failed to consider the impact of lower-volume fracking on climate change, under its duties in the Environment Act 1995.

Leigh Day has asked for further information from the EA on the first three grounds.

The company behind the suspended oil site that is subject of a landmark Supreme Court ruling has reported declining assets and revenue.

UK Oil & Gas plc (UKOG) revealed today in delayed annual accounts that it has interests in just one hydrocarbon site.

The value of the company’s total assets and its revenue both fell by more than 60% in the year to September 2025.

During the same period, the accounts show that UKOG gave up an onshore PEDL (production, exploration and development licence) and two exploration sites.

It also sold its stake in two more UK production sites in southern England and exited from its Turkish licence interests.

The company’s remaining oil and gas site at Horse Hill – once called the Gatwick Gusher – has been mothballed since October 2024. The Supreme Court stripped the site of its planning permission in what became known as the Finch Ruling in June 2024.

A separate statement this morning announced UKOG had submitted a retrospective planning application for the reinstatement of production consent at Horse Hill. The application announcement was not mentioned in the accounts and the details have not yet been published online.

But the accounts admitted:

“There is no certainty when consent will be reinstated or that production [at Horse Hill] will recommence.

“The Group continues to evaluate available technical data and maintain cost discipline; however, the timing, level and economic viability of any future production remain uncertain.”

Loss of oil and gas assets

The accounts confirmed that in June 2025 the company relinquished PEDL246, which included the Broadford Bridge oil exploration site in West Sussex and the planned Loxley gas site, near Dunsfold, in Surrey.

UKOG said it had plugged and abandoned the Broadford Bridge wells, BB-1/1z, in February 2026, despite discussions on their geothermal potential.

The company said:

“This milestone confirms the Company’s compliance with its regulatory obligations, demonstrating its continued commitment to responsible operations and asset stewardship during its transition into clean energy.”

But it did not mention the planning requirement to restore the site to farmland, which has not yet happened, nor the planning contravention notice issued against UKOG’s subsidiary, the site operator, and the landowner.

UKOG said it relinquished PEDL246 because representatives had failed to find a farm-in partner to drill at Loxley.

UKOG also sold its subsidiary, UK (GB) Ltd, which had stakes in the Horndean (10%) and Avington (5%) oil fields in Hampshire.

It exited its Turkish licence in October 2024 and later received a claim of $100,000 from its former partner, the accounts reveal. They said UKOG directors considered there was “no remaining formal legal or contractual basis for the claim”. To date, UKOG has received nothing further, the accounts added.

Finances

UKOG said the 2025 financial year “marked a period of strategic realignment for the Group as the Group continued its transition from legacy oil production towards hydrogen storage and clean energy infrastructure”.

But according to the accounts, the company remains largely dependent on revenue from hydrocarbon sales. The auditor noted a “material uncertainty exists that may cause significant doubt on the group’s ability to continue as a going concern”.

Revenue, entirely from Horse Hill and Horndean crude oil sales, fell to £432,000 in 2025, from £1.1m in 2024. The accounts said the decline reflected lower volumes from Horse Hill, which voluntarily suspended production in October 2024.

Total UKOG assets fell from £3.361m (restated) in 2024, to £1.136m in 2025. Cash and cash equivalents were down from £1m to £40,000.

Net liabilities rose from £2.471m in 2024 to £5.684m in 2025.

Total annual losses were reduced compared with 2024, when the balance sheet included £32.544m in impairment of oil and gas assets.

Key figures

Revenue: £432,000 (2024: £1.1m)

Cost of sales: £423,000 (2024: £912,000)

Gross loss: £20,000 (2024: £189,000)

Total comprehensive loss: £4.09m (2024: £38.490m)

Admin expenses: £2.636m (2024: £1.716m)

Decommissioning provision at 30 September 2025: £1.591m (2024: £1.253m). Of the £1.591m, £1.184m was for Horse Hill and £407,000 was for Broadford Bridge.

Non-current assets: £337,000 (2024: £1.705M)

Total assets: £1.136m (2024 restated: £3.361m)

Cash and cash equivalents: £40,000 (2024: £1m)

Total liabilities: £6.822m (2024: £5.832m)

Net liabilities: £5.684m (2024: £2.471m)

Operating loss: £3.9m (2024: £3.8m)

Loss before tax: £4.098m (2024: £38.490m)

Stephen Sanderson total earnings from UKOG: £243,000 (2024: £314,000

Total payments to directors: £504,000 (£457,000)

Loan interest payments: £152,000 (2024: £128,000)

Total finance cost: £202,000 (2024: £172,000)

Loans payable to non-controlling interests: £3.462m (2024: £3.310m)

Outstanding loan balances owed to HHDL shareholders at 30 September 2025: Alba Mineral Resources £2.8m (2024: £2.6m), Doriemus plc £0.6m (2024: £0.6m), UK Oil & Gas plc £18m (2024: £17.8m)

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has directed national recreation areas, seashores, wildlife refuges, and other public lands to immediately lift dozens of restrictions on hunting and trapping, according to internal documents reviewed by the New York Times.

The directive, which takes effect this week, targets rules at 76 Interior sites that allowed hunting but had restrictions designed to protect habitats or public safety, such as prohibitions on firing weapons across trails or cleaning game in public restrooms. Burgum ordered the changes in an April 21 memo, asserting that any restrictions not strictly required by law must be the “minimum necessary for public safety or resource protection.”

The Interior department framed the move as a way to expand access for sportsmen and women, but critics are concerned that the administration is bypassing environmental studies and public consultation to implement major rule changes, and warned against a “one size fits all” approach to land management. “What we’re really concerned about is, that memo didn’t say, ‘do analysis,'” said Stephanie Adams of the National Parks Conservation Association. “It didn’t say ‘engage the public,’ and it didn’t say to be sure to focus on that key part of the Organic Act, which is to manage in a way that leaves the parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Senator Ben Ray Luján: Reform the 154-year-old mining law

In a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján calls for an overhaul of the General Mining Act of 1872, arguing the law prioritizes industry over the safety of community drinking water. In a response to claims that permitting takes decades, Luján notes that the most delayed projects were due to the current law causing opposition and distrust with local communities and Tribal nations.

Quick hits Bison have grazed these lands for centuries. Trump wants to evict them

New York Times

June lease sale will offer over 150,000 acres in Colorado

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

These rural towns are banking on outdoor recreation to boost their economies

Deseret News

Trump administration falls behind on wildfire prevention with risky fire season ahead

NPR

How the rush to mine the metal of the future echoes America’s colonial past

Inside Climate News

Editorial: New tactic to come after public lands must be stopped

Arizona Daily Star

Twin Metals paid former Trump officials $380K. Their Boundary Waters mine is now advancing against public opinion

Outdoor Life

8 victories that give hope in the fight to protect public lands

Outside

Quote of the day

At a certain point, operating these mines and establishing these settlements stopped being about pure capitalism, pure greed, and it started to be about harming Indians. The wealth accumulated from all that extraction was a self-awarded prize for harming Indians, which was at the time, and possibly still is, the most American patriotic thing.”

—Lakota Sioux member Taylor Gunhammer, Inside Climate News

Picture This @yellowstonenps

“That’s no moon.” Actually, it is. We had a beautiful moonset this morning over Terrace Mountain in Mammoth Hot Springs. May the 4th be with you!

 

Featured photo: Mesa Trail at Curecanti National Recreation Area. mlhradio, CC BY-NC 2.0

The post Trump administration orders rapid end to some hunting rules on federal lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

This article May Day was even more important than you think was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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On May 1, organizers reported over 5,000 May Day Strong actions across the country — the most widespread distribution of U.S. May Day actions ever. Numbers are interesting — but they’re not nearly the whole story here. Because this May Day was even more important than you think.

With No Kings, millions were activated into the streets. May Day had another goal in mind — to stretch our mass mobilization skills to include more, to quote Martin Luther King Jr., “creative tension.” 

The need for escalation became all the more urgent in light of the MAGA Supreme Court’s ruling eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, the legal crown jewel of the civil rights movement. This heavy blow is aimed at the most reliable voting bloc for a just democracy in America — Black voters. So, in response, we have to return to risky tactics that wage struggle for our democracy.

So in New York, protesters with the Sunrise Movement shut down entrances to the New York Stock Exchange — a daring tactical escalation. In Raleigh, North Carolina, 20 school districts closed for the largest statewide teacher rally since 2019. In each of the thousands of May Day protests, people spoke to specific local conditions — North Carolina ranks 43rd in average teacher pay — but tied to the overall frame of workers over billionaires.

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At Kent State University in Ohio, students honored previous generations who braved bullets, standing in the rain and wind to protest the closing of DEI offices and scholarships. They were part of the fast-moving and underreported growth of students organizing against this regime: Sunrise estimates 100,000 students participated in this weekend’s May Day strikes.

It’s important to note what we saw. Escalated tactics were trialed — this wasn’t just sign-waving. The May Day Strong coalition was also consciously moving in a unique formation with National Nurses United, AAUP, NDWA and dozens of local unions, including SEIU, AFSCME and UNITE HERE locals, joining with the likes of Indivisible and 50501. 

But perhaps most importantly and consequentially, it was a structure test for future economic disruptions. In a structure test you’re testing to see who is with you — who is ready to move and who just says they’re ready to move. So in real time we get to assess which groups are ready for further boycotts, strikes and other kinds of economic disruption. These tactics are important to build up for because they are not symbolic, but have a material impact on the authoritarian regime.

As a wise group, this coalition was testing what capacity we have for this kind of collective power. And that capacity was significant (with room to grow!). All consciously organized by a group that has a vision for building to rolling, wildcat and general strikes.

Finding the right yardstick

One of the hazards of living under an authoritarian attempting to consolidate power is that most of our victories will not come from government interventions. As civil resistance scholar Hardy Merriman has observed, we are facing a leader who can wake up each morning and do something terrible — kidnap Nicolás Maduro, fire competent federal workers, bomb Iran, cancel contracts, tear down part of the White House — and in the immediate term, we are not able to stop it.

Therefore “Did we stop him today?” cannot be our yardstick for growth — though obviously, it is an ultimate aim.

So May Day did not stop the Iran war, despite May Day Strong’s strong antiwar demand. It did not fulfill its goal of taxing the rich or guarantee that Trump will honor the “hands off our vote” demand. That’s not the right yardstick.

Previous Coverage

What’s next after the historic No Kings protest?

A different yardstick could be numbers. But of course No Kings blows that out of the water with an impressive 8 million people taking action this March.

But No Work, No School, No Shopping is not sign-waving — it’s economic pressure. In preliminary data from the event, 89 percent of participants refused to shop that day, 14 percent didn’t go to school and 32 percent participated in “No work.” We’re now expanding our ability to materially disrupt the regime.

Yes, we need to go further. Yes, we need more than one-day actions. Yes, we need many more groups to participate, but critics don’t make movements — doers do. And the doers were off doing a lot of things.

They were turning out for public demonstration in small towns where showing up at all takes courage. Towns like Idaho Falls, Idaho, Lewisburg, West Virginia and the ranching town of Dillon, Montana.  

In San Francisco, as elsewhere, protesters were arrested doing direct action, among them  elected officials (and several vying for office). In their case, they blocked the airport — the site of a recent high-profile confrontation with ICE forcibly detaining a woman and her child. While being arrested, Sanjay Garla, first vice president at SEIU United Service Workers West, said, “It’s a good day for the movement. ICE out of SFO!”

Memphis showed up boldly. They now face the triple threat of an ongoing National Guard deployment, new redistricting due to the Supreme Court ruling and an enormous Elon Musk xAI data center. Protesters blocked the entrance to Musk’s Colossus I supercomputer, with its massive turbines polluting air and water. 

“We want xAI to turn the turbines off,” protester Jasmine Bernard told Channel 3 news in Memphis. “We know the consequences of xAI being here far outweigh any benefits that somebody may be able to conjure up.” In city after city, protesters were making visible the story of how billionaires are wrecking our lives — and making clear that we’re not going to put up with it.

In Washington, D.C., people blocked numerous intersections, demanding core values of democracy: no more attacks on workers, peace and the long-delayed D.C. home rule. Keya Chatterjee of Free DC explained where the escalation is headed in an AFSCME press release: “Millions of people across the country rose in solidarity today and that’s what it’s going to take to end this regime and their attacks for good. The next step is to flex our economic muscle.”

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And if you hadn’t heard much about May Day in your community, obviously that means there’s more to do. But also it’s a good sign, as it means people outside your immediate circle were organizing and moving things. If you’re reading this and realize you’re not yet in the boat, join May Day Strong’s list so they can reach you as they plan what comes next.

May Day Strong proved the organizing phenomenon that getting people in motion is difficult, but once people stay in motion, getting them into greater motion becomes easier. And that is a different kind of victory, measured by different instruments.

The research on what actually determines success in civil resistance makes a stark point: 83 percent of successful anti-authoritarian campaigns win when they have strong participation of labor — without labor, the percentage that wins plummets to 29 percent. 

May Day Strong put together one of the widest coalitions yet: a mix of national and locals of National Nurses United, AAUP, NDWA, NEA, AFT, SEIU, Chicago Teachers Union, Starbucks Workers United, the United Electrical Workers, and APWU, alongside Indivisible, 50501, DSA chapters, immigrant rights organizations, and hundreds of local groups. All under a broad set of sensible demands: 

• Tax the Rich: Our families, not their fortunes, come first.
• No ICE. No war. No private army serving authoritarian power.
• Expand democracy, not corporate power. Hands off our vote.

Movement research is also very clear on another point: Movements that wage economic disruption succeed at dramatically higher rates than those that stay in the realm of courts, elections, rallies and petitions alone.

That’s why testing out the operational capability of days of “No Work, No School, No Shopping” is critical. It may be needed in the future if there are attempts to steal elections or other inflection moments — so it’s important for us to get in shape now. 

It’s worth recalling this particular tactic’s history and what happened in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis gave us the blueprint

Operation Metro Surge placed 3,000 armed, masked federal agents throughout Minnesota, leading to ICE agents killing Renée Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. Families hid. Children were afraid to go to school. ICE agents unleashed chemical sprays on students and staff.

Out of that terror, something else was born. Unions, faith leaders and community organizations made a call: Jan. 23 would be a day of “No Work, No School, No Shopping.” We, as workers and students and consumers, would use our power to stop business as usual. 

The day started at a negative 40 degree wind chill. Despite that, over 100,000 people showed up in the streets. Notably, the action was backed by the executive board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. Subsequent polling found that nearly one in four Minnesota voters either participated or had a loved one who did.

At the AT&T call center in the Twin Cities, “they only have about 20-30 people, out of over 100, who are still working,” Lori Wolf, a CWA Local 7250 member, told Labor Notes. Across many sectors — SEIU 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, ATU bus drivers, IATSE stagehands, AFSCME municipal workers and OPEIU office workers — people made the choice to stay home.

I have written extensively about the “pillars of support” as a way to understand authoritarian power — the institutions whose cooperation an authoritarian needs to govern, and whose withdrawal of cooperation can crack that power open. On Jan. 23 in Minneapolis, we saw pillars from media to small businesses crack — not break, but crack — across almost every dimension at once. 

Over 1,000 businesses closed. The faith pillar moved, activating new national networks, with over 700 faith leaders participating and roughly 100 arrested in an action at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, blockading the departure lanes used for deportation flights. Across the country, police — long a backbone of state enforcement — began to break ranks, with chiefs publicly condemning ICE tactics and others moving beyond words to support legal distance from rogue, unaccountable and untrained agents. 

Minneapolis Federation of Educators showed up in force with their sea of blue hats — while the following week, University of Minnesota students called for a nationwide walkout. Tens of thousands of students were activated, and they helped spark thousands of largely unreported protests by students nationwide.

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This was not a spontaneous eruption. It drew on networks built after the murder of George Floyd, labor councils shaped by years of relationship, and immigrant rights organizations that had been organizing long before most people noticed. What Minneapolis gave us was not just inspiration. It was a blueprint — and a question. Could it spread?

A structure test

Much of the country does not have the resources, history of organizing and relatively healthy movement ecosystem that Minnesota has. We need more practice moving in more unity with each other. 

In that sense, this May Day was what unions call a structure test. A structure test is not an action you take because you’re ready. It is an action you take to find out whether you’re ready — and where you’re not.

In labor organizing, a structure test is any ask you make of people that is deliberately lower-stakes than the final big ask. It’s designed to reveal the real shape of your organization: who will put their name on a petition, who will wear a sticker to work, or who will attend a public meeting, before you ever ask anyone to walk a picket line. “In the lead up to today’s most successful strikes,” wrote the great Jane McAlevey, referring to historic 2018 teachers’ walkouts, “countless structure tests are conducted in advance of knowing a workplace or workplaces are actually ready to strike to win.” 

Her model of building to win requires doing small tests to both exert power and to identify organizing weaknesses. Each May Day locale hopefully is doing a debrief to assess what networks were activated. Nationally we can see groups who came on board and did turn out, and others who did not.

“We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives — as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” Leah Greenberg of Indivisible told The Guardian. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”

A structure test is very different than wishful thinking (“why can’t everyone just do a general strike?”) — it is testing the capability of institutions and their resolve. It is the practice of honesty about where you are. It is the act of asking, in public and under conditions of real pressure: Who is actually with us?

That question, asked in thousands of cities on May 1, is the most important thing that happened that day. Not because we have the final answer. But because now we know more about the shape of the answer than we did on April 30.

Power, unity, leadership: an honest accounting

Researchers often converge on some key measures to assess movements resisting authoritarianism: unity, planning and nonviolent discipline.

The scale of coordination — thousands of events, major national unions, official city holidays in Chicago, teacher actions statewide in North Carolina, airport actions in the Bay Area, nurses on strike in New Orleans — represented unity and planning, in a real and measurable expansion of what this movement can do. 

“The way we build power is by flexing power,” said Martha Grant, one of the May Day Strong organizers.

In Chicago, the birthplace of May Day, the Chicago Teachers Union recently won the concession that all public school children learn about May Day, creating what CTU president Stacy Davis Gates called “academic freedom for all of us to understand where our empowerment comes from.” Thousands rallied at Union Park alongside a day of economic blackout with SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, Indivisible Chicago and the Chicago Federation of Labor. 

Previous Coverage

What’s it going to take to get to mass strikes?

There are real tensions in any broad front. There are more groups that need to be brought in. And because institutions like unions have been so gutted, there are many more individuals that need to be connected, too — hence one reason organizers created “Strike Ready” to capture individuals wanting to participate who weren’t connected to some of the big organizations.

In Minneapolis this January, what was most striking was not the headline number but the distributed leadership underneath it: union shop stewards who had built trust over years, faith leaders who had organized their congregations, neighborhood organizers who knew every door on their block. 

May Day 2026 built some of that model into its design, encouraging people to register their own events and lead their own actions. But we also know that thousands of communities had nothing on the map: places where the networks are thin, where people are activated and angry but not organized. That gap is the next frontier. The work of the next months is not another rally. It is building into those communities — finding the people who will knock on the next door.

We are training for something larger

May Day 2026 was, in the language of Freedom Trainer’s Community Strike Readiness workshops, not just a day of action. It was one structure test — because we have some big inflection moments coming up. Perhaps the biggest test of this year may be preparing for enforcement of election results — something that the tactic of the strike is well suited for.

A general strike is not a valve we can just turn on and off. It requires groups ready to move in formation with each other — and May Day Strong is positioning itself to be the entity that tells us it’s time to strike if the election is stolen. This is critical.

Cliff Smith, a Roofers Local 36 official and May Day Strong organizer in Los Angeles, said plainly what many are saying privately: “We should not depend on the November midterm elections to provide us with any solutions to this problem. We should have contingency plans in the event that there are not free and fair elections.”

Of course, between now and the election we need a lot more public action and pressure. And the civil disobedience that May Day Strong incorporated is crucial. 

This is just a beginning. The May Day Strong campaign is hosting dozens of planning and debrief sessions and turning its attention towards defending the right to protest, right to vote and the right to have a free and fair election.

May Day 2026 wasn’t perfect — but it was a real exercise of power. We learned where we stand, not in theory but in motion. The muscles are there — maybe stiff, maybe uneven — but real, alive and ready to grow for more escalation, more economic disruption, more clarification of the billionaire opponents who are threatening the existence of all of us. That matters. Now we just have to keep building on it.

This article May Day was even more important than you think was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Workers Over Billionaires & Stop The War, Support Workers They Gave Us Weekends, Lady Liberty with Distressed US, Gay Pride, & Palestinian Flags, Morons Are Governing America.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 6-3 ruling, along partisan lines, ends 61 years of voter protections for African-Americans and…

UK Oil & Gas plc announced this morning it has submitted a revised planning application for its Horse Hill site , near Redhill, in Surrey.

The company said the retrospective application seeks to reinstate consent for oil production.

Horse Hill, Surrey, England. January 2026. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize

Planning permission for the Horse Hill site, now UKOG’s only hydrocarbon asset, was quashed by a landmark climate judgement, known as the Finch Ruling, at the Supreme Court in June 2024.

The court ruled that the planning permission granted by Surrey County Council in 2019 was unlawful. The judgement said the permission failed to take into account the climate impact of burning oil from the site.

Sarah Finch, who brought the challenge on behalf of the Weald Action Group, was last month awarded the leading international award, the Goldman Environmental Prize.

The Weald Action Group said this morning:

“This is an appalling but predictable move by UKOG. After repeatedly claiming they were transitioning away from fossil fuels, they have now submitted plans to Surrey County Council to restart oil production at Horse Hill, showing that they are still relying on this site as a financial lifeline.

“There is simply no room left in the rapidly dwindling global carbon budget for any more fossil fuel developments.  Instead, the site should be urgently decommissioned and fully restored. Given their disastrous financial position, with cash reserves reported at just £32,000, this application appears to be a way by which UKOG can further delay meeting these costly obligations.

“Enough is enough, this cannot be allowed to drag on any longer, and this application must be rejected.”

Immediately after the Supreme Court judgement, UKOG said it was working to reinstate planning permission.

This required a revised application with information on the carbon emissions from combustion, known as downstream or scope 3 emissions.

Surrey County Council reported in November 2024 it was waiting for this information.

Since then, UKOG has promised the details but repeatedly delayed submission.

At the time of writing, the new application was not listed on the county council planning register.

When the application has been validated, a public consultation is expected on the new information.

In a statement today, UKOG said:

“The Company has worked closely with its planning advisors and SCC to prepare the revised planning submission, which includes updated ecology, environmental and technical baseline studies and an assessment of downstream emissions in accordance with the Supreme Court judgment.

“A successful planning outcome would permit stable production at Horse Hill to resume, generating valuable revenues which would help support the Company’s ongoing transition to its announced clean energy projects in Dorset and Yorkshire.”

UKOG’s chief executive, Stephen Sanderson, said:

“This retrospective planning submission seeks to address the Supreme Court’s ruling on SCC’s 2019 Horse Hill planning consent in a thorough and transparent manner. Horse Hill remains a valuable UK onshore asset and, subject to planning consent, has the potential to generate revenues that can be responsibly reinvested to support the Company’s strategic transition towards hydrogen storage and other clean energy initiatives.

“The Company continues to pursue a balanced approach, managing its legacy oil and gas assets while actively investing in the UK’s energy transition and clean power future.”

UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) previously announced production had voluntarily ceased in October 2024.

More reaction

The local MP, Chris Coghlan (Lib Dem)

said:

“Last year I urged the government and Surrey County Council to ensure Horse Hill is restored to woodland. It’s no surprise that UKOG has now submitted a retrospective planning application, but with the company’s financial track record, I am worried they will not be able to deliver proper site restoration. Any decision by Surrey County Council must recognise residents’ concerns and guarantee that the site is fully returned to woodland.”

Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council said in a statement:

“In 2024, Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council supported local resident Sarah Finch in her ground-breaking legal challenge against Surrey County Council’s decision to extend planning permission for the oil drilling site at Horse Hill which is in our parish. Councillors recognised Sarah’s argument that the Environmental Impact Assessment failed to include the effects of emissions released from burning the extracted oil, assessing only emissions from the development itself.

“What began as a local campaign evolved into a five-year legal battle that climbed through the courts, culminating in a historic ruling by the UK Supreme Court in June 2024 and, crucially, the planning permission being overturned. The Parish Council was delighted to see Sarah Finch and her colleagues at the Weald Action Group recently being awarded the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe. Sarah’s landmark legal victory is already reshaping climate accountability across the UK and beyond.

“In August 2025, we also wrote to Tim Oliver, leader of Surrey County Council, expressing concern as to who will be responsible for restoration of the Horse Hill oil site in the event the UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) entered formal insolvency.

“The Parish Council has been advised on 5 May 2026 that UKOG will be submitting a retrospective planning application for reinstatement of production consent at the Horse Hill site. Once formally notified, Councillors will review all the new planning documents and make representation on the application on their merits including consideration of protection to our Green Belt and the local environment.”

• UKOG also announced today the month-long suspension of its shares had been lifted. Trading was suspended after the company missed the stock market deadline for publishing its accounts. The accounts, due to be published at the end of March 2026, were released this morning (5 May 2026). DrillOrDrop has reported on the contents of the accounts.

Disclaimer: This article is a satirical/tabloid-style deep dive based on reported facts and public sources. Spoof sections are clearly labelled. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Part 1 — Fact-Based Deep Dive

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Energy and Shell are pushing ahead with oil and gas exploration in the US Gulf, in a move that says plenty about where big energy capital now feels welcome — and where it does not.

According to The Times, Ineos Energy is teaming up with Shell to explore opportunities near Shell’s Appomattox platform in the Gulf of Mexico, after Ineos acquired a 21 per cent stake in the platform from China’s CNOOC. The partnership is focused on developing Shell’s Fort Sumter discovery, understood to hold more than 125 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, identifying further exploration wells, and assessing broader development opportunities in the area.

The geography matters. This is not a speculative punt in the middle of nowhere. Appomattox is already an operating deepwater production hub, Shell is the operator, and Ineos is now plugged into a basin where infrastructure, geology, capital discipline and regulatory predictability all converge. In oil-speak, that means one thing: if the rocks behave, the money has somewhere sensible to go.

Ineos has already had a taste of the prize. In December 2025, it announced a new Norphlet oil discovery at the Shell-operated Nashville well, where Ineos holds a 21 per cent working interest and Shell holds 79 per cent. The well was drilled more than five miles beneath the seabed, confirmed high-quality oil, and could be tied back to the nearby Appomattox platform.

That is the magic phrase in deepwater economics: tie-back. A discovery near existing infrastructure is not just a geological trophy; it can be a cheaper, faster, lower-risk production candidate than a standalone mega-project. Exploration still carries risk, but the Appomattox neighbourhood gives Ineos and Shell the sort of industrial springboard that makes boardrooms less twitchy.

Ineos’ American expansion did not begin offshore. In 2023, it entered US onshore oil and gas production by buying Chesapeake assets in the Eagle Ford shale for $1.4 billion, acquiring about 2,300 wells producing a net 36,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and leases across 172,000 net acres in south Texas.

Then came the Gulf. In April 2025, Ineos completed its acquisition of CNOOC’s US Gulf business, a deal it said increased its global production to more than 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and took its US energy capital spend above $3 billion. The assets included interests around Appomattox and Stampede, plus mature assets and supporting operations.

So the pattern is now obvious: Ratcliffe’s outfit is not dabbling in America. It is building a proper oil and gas platform there — onshore shale, offshore deepwater, LNG exposure, and a seat beside Shell in one of the world’s most important hydrocarbon provinces.

And now for the uncomfortable British bit.

The Times report frames Ineos’ US push against the backdrop of frustration with the UK’s oil and gas fiscal regime. Ineos Energy chief executive David Bucknall is reported as saying that America’s stable fiscal and regulatory environment is a key attraction, while UK policy volatility and high taxes make large domestic investment harder to justify.

That is not just corporate moaning into the Aberdeen drizzle. The UK government itself announced that the Energy Profits Levy would rise to 38 per cent from November 2024, taking the headline tax rate on upstream oil and gas activities to 78 per cent, with the levy extended to 31 March 2030.

For the North Sea, that is a brutal sales pitch: mature basin, declining reserves, political hostility, uncertain licensing, and a headline tax rate that screams “thanks for the cash, now please leave quietly.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the US Gulf offers scale, infrastructure and a government system that, whatever its political noise, still tends to treat oil and gas production as a strategic asset rather than a moral embarrassment.

This is the central irony. British companies are still perfectly willing to drill. They are just increasingly willing to drill somewhere else.

Shell’s role is equally revealing. Under Wael Sawan, Shell has been refocusing on shareholder returns, oil, gas and LNG after investor scepticism over earlier green-energy ambitions. A separate Times report notes that Shell’s recent strategy has emphasised buybacks, portfolio discipline and oil and gas, although the company still faces questions over reserve life and long-term growth compared with US rivals.

Put simply: Shell needs barrels. Ineos wants growth. The Gulf has rocks, rigs and rules that investors can understand. The North Sea has a tax regime that looks like it was designed by someone who wants the industry to stay just long enough to pay for its own funeral.

None of this removes the climate contradiction. Ineos says it is pursuing a dual-track approach: meeting current energy demand while investing in carbon storage, LNG, hydrogen and other transition technologies. Its own materials say it is active in oil, gas, power and carbon credits, while also investing in LNG and carbon capture and storage.

But the hard commercial reality is that hydrocarbons still dominate the cash machine. Carbon capture is the corporate hymn sheet; oil and gas are the till receipts.

The Nashville discovery, the Fort Sumter development push, and the Appomattox partnership show that Ineos is positioning itself not as a reluctant fossil-fuel legacy player, but as a serious transatlantic upstream operator. Shell, meanwhile, is doing what Shell does best: squeezing value from big, technically complex basins where it already has infrastructure and operating expertise.

The broader story is not “oil companies discover they like oil.” That was never in doubt. The real story is that Britain’s energy giants and industrial champions are voting with their capital. The UK can talk about energy security, transition jobs and industrial strategy all it likes; if the investment case is better in America, the rigs, engineers and future barrels will follow.

The North Sea is not dead. But it is being politically sedated.

And in the Gulf, Ineos and Shell have found exactly the sort of place where the industry still hears the magic words: drill, develop, produce, repeat.

Part 2 — Clearly Labelled Spoof PR / Spin Section

Official Statement From the Department of Making Everything Sound Fine

We welcome the exciting news that British-linked energy expertise is creating jobs, investment and production opportunities in… America.

This is clear evidence that the UK remains a world leader in exporting confidence, capital and drilling ambition to jurisdictions that have not yet decided to treat domestic oil and gas as a taxable sin bin.

The government’s 78 per cent headline tax rate should not be viewed as a deterrent. It should be viewed as an innovative industrial strategy encouraging companies to broaden their horizons, discover new continents, and support energy security somewhere with warmer water.

We remain fully committed to the North Sea, especially as a historic concept, a source of tax revenue, and a scenic backdrop for speeches about transition.

Official Statement From Big Oil’s Department of Polished Optimism

We are delighted to confirm that our latest deepwater activities demonstrate our unwavering commitment to reliable energy, responsible development, shareholder value, transition-compatible hydrocarbons, disciplined capital allocation, and phrases that make drilling sound like a yoga retreat.

The Gulf opportunity is attractive because it combines world-class geology with infrastructure and a fiscal regime that does not require a séance before every investment committee meeting.

We remain committed to the UK, subject to geology, economics, tax stability, regulatory clarity, political weather, coffee availability, and whether anyone in Whitehall can say “investment certainty” without laughing.

Part 3 — Spoof Bot-Reaction / Comment Section

@EnergyRealistBot:
British company drills in America because America likes energy. Analysts stunned by obvious thing.

@NorthSeaNostalgia:
Remember when the North Sea was a national asset? Anyway, it’s now a tax piñata wearing a hard hat.

@GreenwashDetector3000:
“Dual-track strategy” detected. Translation: oil now, carbon capture PowerPoint later.

@DividendGoblin:
Shell + Ineos + existing infrastructure = shareholders quietly sharpening their calculators.

@PolicyVolatilityBot:
UK: “Why won’t you invest?”
Also UK: “Here is a 78 per cent tax rate and a ministerial mood swing.”

@DeepwaterDrama:
Five miles beneath the seabed and still easier to navigate than British energy policy.

@AberdeenEngineer:
Can someone let us know whether we’re building the energy transition or attending the North Sea’s retirement party?

@FiscalRegimeFan:
America offered certainty. Britain offered vibes, levies and a consultation document. The rig chose certainty.

Ineos and Shell Drill Into America While Britain Taxes Its Own Basin Into the Sick Bay was first posted on May 4, 2026 at 8:17 pm.
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