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The situation in the province of Suweida, southern Syria is still unstable at the time of this writing despite an official ceasefire and the arrival of a first humanitarian aid convoy on July 20 in the provincial capital, the city of Suweida, which has a population of approximately 150,000. The devastated city continues to suffer from a siege by the central government in Damascus and pro-government armed groups, depriving Suweida’s population of water, electricity, and food. Attacks were ongoing in some villages in the province by armed groups supportive of the central authorities.

Following the conclusion of a ceasefire, Bedouin fighters and pro-government tribes withdrew from part of the city of Suweida. Local armed Druze factions have regained control. At the same time, U.S. officials claimed to have brokered a truce between Damascus and Tel Aviv. This agreement allowed the deployment of Syrian government forces in Suweida province, with the exception of the city of Suweida, which Israel had  initially rejected.

After more than a week of fighting, several thousand deaths have been recorded, of both civilians and combatants, and more than 140,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. The Suweida 24 news website recorded 36 destroyed and damaged villages, most of which are currently emptied of their inhabitants, while looting continues.

These latest events follow attacks by the Damascus government in April and May that left more than 100 dead. Damascus is seeking to achieve its political objectives by consolidating its power over a fragmented Syria, undermining Suweida’s autonomy, and disrupting democratic dynamics from below.

Attacks from all sides in deadly siege

Suweida province, with a majority Druze population, gained a degree of political autonomy during the Syrian popular uprising. After the fall of the Assad regime, many local armed forces and leading Druze religious leaders maintained contact with the new authorities in Damascus but refused to lay down their arms, due to the lack of a democratic and inclusive political transition or guarantees for Suweida province. However, the region has become a war zone since July 13, following the arrest and torture of a Druze merchant at a checkpoint stationed by Bedouin armed groups established following the April and May violence against the Druze population in Damascus and Suweida. This checkpoint on the Damascus-Suweida road is governed by Bedouin tribes from Al-Mutallah in the Al-Kiswah region of rural Damascus; these tribes are affiliated with the General Security of the Ministry of Interior. Despite repeatedly attacking Druze people, Damascus has used tribal clashes as a tool of political pressure against Suweida.

Damascus is seeking to achieve its political objectives by consolidating its power over a fragmented Syria, undermining Suweida’s autonomy, and disrupting democratic dynamics from below.

The Bedouin population represents approximately five percent of the population in the Suweida region and is primarily based in rural areas. Their military organization is limited and less centralized than that of the local Druze factions. Several Bedouin tribes exist in the south. The armed Druze factions, for their part, are divided into three major military entities (the Suweida Military Council, the Men of Dignity, and the Forces of Dignity). The Druze factions were not unified in their response to the new government in Damascus following the fall of Assad’s regime in December 2024. The Suweida Military Council, for example, has a more hostile stance toward the central authorities, while the Forces of Dignity have collaborated more closely with the presidency of Ahmed al-Shareh.

Following initial clashes between Bedouin and Druze armed factions, the Syrian interim government sent columns of armored vehicles from Damascus to Suweida in an attempt to assert control over the province, claiming to want to end the violence while fighting alongside Bedouin armed forces affiliated with the central government.

During the first days of military operations in Suweida province, the actions in Suweida of armed forces aligned with the Damascus government brought to mind images of the March massacre against Alawite populations in coastal areas; these resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians. We are witnessing the murder of civilians, sectarian and hateful speech, and scenes of humiliation of local residents–mustaches cut or shaved by fighters. These scenes of destruction and looting of infrastructure and civilian homes circulate on social media. As of July 18, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) recorded more than 200 deaths and several hundred wounded. At the same time, many civilians in Suweida have left homes close to the military clashes and fear the actions of pro-government fighters to seek refuge in safer areas of the province.

Despite their military superiority, government armed forces and pro-government militias were forced to withdraw from the captured areas due to resistance from local armed factions in Suweida, and especially to Israeli airstrikes against military headquarters in Damascus and convoys of the forces affiliated with or supportive of the government (see below).

Following these events, self-proclaimed Syrian President Ahmad al-Shareh announced on July 17 the transfer of responsibility for maintaining security in Suweida to local armed factions and Druze religious dignitaries. Attacks by Druze fighters against Bedouin civilians in Suweida province occurred.

Following these actions, a number of Sunni Arab tribes, often with ties to central government figures, from different regions of the country published appeals and statements on social media to help their Bedouin “brothers” in Suweida. This mobilization was further reinforced by media propaganda encouraged by the government and its allies, amplifying the violence against Bedouin civilians. A new offensive by tribal armed groups then took place the evening of July 18 in Suweida province, while hateful and sectarian calls against the Druze population multiplied through social media in different regions of the country.

Images then began to appear on social media of vehicles and armed men from different tribes mobilizing and heading towards Suweida province. Some of the tribal armed groups entered the western part of the city of Suweida, unopposed by government forces, and looted and burned dozens of houses, shops, and cars. Following this assault, the walls of these neighborhoods were covered with graffiti such as “Druze pigs” or “We are coming to slit your throats.”

Ahmed al-Shareh condemned the perpetrators of abuses against the Druze population in Suweida and affirmed that they “will be held accountable.” However, he made the same promise after the massacre on the Syrian coast against Alawite civilians, with no consequences for these perpetrators to date. The commission of inquiry established for these massacres was initially supposed to submit its report within 30 days of its creation; its mandate was then extended for three months on April 10. The report was finally submitted to President al-Shareh after more than 90 days, on July 20. Moreover, the commission of inquiry stated during its press conference on July 22 that no evidence existed to demonstrate the responsibility of senior state and military officials in the March massacres, contrary to a Reuters investigation conducted a few weeks earlier. Similarly, the committee announced that it had no information on the numerous cases of targeted kidnappings, disappearances, and gender-based violence against women and girls that occurred during the massacres, which have been ongoing since February 2025, particularly against Alawite women.

Furthermore, Al-Shareh primarily accused “outlaw groups”—the term used by the ruling authorities to refer to the local Druze armed factions in Suweida—of being primarily responsible for the violence in the province and of violating the ceasefire agreement by engaging in “horrific violence” against civilians, threatening civil peace by pushing the country toward chaos and a collapse of security. At the same time, the government praised the mobilizations of the Arab tribes and celebrated their “heroism” while calling on them to respect the ceasefire– a contradictory message, to say the least.

In fact, in the political strategy of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) central authorities, the mobilization of Sunni Arab tribes appeared to be a useful tool to compensate for the military weakness of the government armed forces in their offensives against Suweida and to obtain political concessions.

At the same time, the dominant media coverage in the country, particularly on the Syrian national television station “al-Ikhbariya,” echoed official state propaganda by encouraging a reading of the events in which Sheikh al-Hijri, a senior Druze religious dignitary, and armed Druze factions were primarily responsible for the violence, accusing them of being simultaneously “separatists,” “armed gangs,” “allies of the Zionists,” and so on.

These general attacks, both military and media-driven, against the province of Suweida have considerably reduced the differences that existed both between the various armed Druze groups, and also within the local Druze population. Faced with these threats, perceived as an offensive against the Druze population as a whole, the need for unity is felt on all sides.

Reflecting this dynamic, several trade unions and professional associations in Suweida have notably severed all contact with the trade union centers in Damascus in protest against the massacres perpetrated and hold the central government fully responsible for these human rights violations. The Council of the Bar of Suweida, for example, announced its resignation in its entirety, condemning “the terrorist acts, war crimes, sectarian cleansing, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed in the governorate of Suweida by the government through its military and auxiliary forces.”

The Suweida Engineers Association issued a statement mourning its murdered members and calling for the creation of a genuine national authority representing the people, and announced the cessation of coordination with the trade union center in Damascus. The Agricultural Engineers Union expressed its mourning for three of its members, “who died following the barbaric attack supported by the terrorist regime.” It stated that it would “suspend its contacts with the trade union center in Damascus until the situation changes and an authority representing the Syrian people is established, protecting their dignity and preserving their rights.”

The Veterinarians Union called these events a “crime against humanity” targeting civilians on sectarian grounds and denounced the role of the central authorities in inciting and directly supporting the violations. The union announced the suspension of its relations with the trade union center until “the de facto authority is removed and an authority representing the Syrian people is established,” in its words. The teachers’ union in Suweida, for its part, accused the authorities of being directly responsible for the massacres. The union reiterated its commitment to the message of education and democracy, affirming its rejection of the mobilization and calls for takfirism. It announced the cessation of its cooperation with the Damascus trade union center “until the elimination of the extremist ideology that monopolizes it.”

On July 28, massive demonstrations occurred throughout Suweida Governorate demanding the lifting of the siege in the province, condemning the massacres committed by the armed forces affiliated and supportive of the Syrian Interim government, requesting an international intervention to open humanitarian corridors, and calling for an independent international investigation into the recent events. They also denounced the security forces’ prevention of foreign media from entering the province and documenting the atrocities that occurred.

In many ways, the actions of the armed forces belonging to or supporting the Damascus government and their behavior toward the local population in Suweida recalled the dark memories of the entry of the former Assad regime into eastern Aleppo in late 2016 and into Ghouta, in the Damascus countryside, in the spring of 2018; and of the Turkish army and its Syrian proxies entry into Afrin, in the northwest of the country, the same year. In other words, all of these are forms of armed occupation rejected by the local population.

Sectarianism: a political tool of domination and control

These armed operations against Suweida province are part of a broader strategy by the Syrian government, led by HTS, to consolidate its power over a fragmented country.

To achieve this, it has primarily implemented a strategy based on external recognition and legitimization to consolidate its dominance within the country. Syrian President al-Shareh and his affiliates demonstrate a clear desire to anchor their country within a regional axis led by the United States and its regional allies such as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in order to consolidate their hold over Syria. In this context, the new government is also seeking a form of normalization with the Israeli state.

Building on this initial momentum, the new HTS-led government consolidated its dominance over state institutions, the army, security services, and social actors in the country. In the case of Suweida, after the fall of the Assad regime it was local networks and groups that elected longtime activist Muhsina al-Mahithawi to be governor of Suweida province. This result was rejected by Damascus, which appointed its own governor. More generally, Al-Shareh has appointed ministers, security officials, and regional governors affiliated with HTS or armed groups within the Syrian National Army (SNA), an alliance of Syrian armed opposition groups that has acted for years as a proxy for the Turkish government. For example, the new authorities have appointed some of the highest-ranking HTS commanders to the new Syrian army, including the new defense minister and longtime HTS commander, Mourhaf Abu Qasra, who was promoted to general. The reorganization of the Syrian army has been carried out by integrating only armed groups loyal to the new authorities in Damascus (HTS and SNA) and by recruiting new soldiers with similar loyalty-based dynamics.

At the same time, the new authorities in Damascus have accused armed Druze factions and others opposed to the central government of being “outlaw groups.” In contrast, other armed groups more favorable to the government are not worried by these accusations, such as the Sunni Arab tribes fighting in Sweida. While the unification of all armed groups into a new Syrian army does not raise opposition in itself, large sectors of the Druze population in Suweida and the Kurds in the northeast still oppose it, in the absence of certain guarantees, such as decentralization and a genuine democratic transition process. The actions and violence of pro-government armed groups have not calmed these fears–quite the contrary.

Similarly, key positions in the new transitional government are held by figures close to al-Shareh. In addition, parallel institutions composed of the Syrian presidency and figures affiliated with HTS have been established, such as the Syrian National Security Council, headed by al-Shareh and composed of his close associates (the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Interior, and the Director of General Intelligence). The National Security Council was created at the same time as the interim government to manage security and politics. The new Syrian authorities have also taken steps to consolidate their power over economic and social actors. For example, they have restructured the country’s chambers of commerce and industry by replacing the majority of their members with individuals appointed by Damascus. Several new board members are known for their close ties to HTS, such as the new president of the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce, Alaa Al-Ali, formerly president of the Idlib Chamber of Commerce and Industry, affiliated with HTS. Other members are prominent figures in the pre-2011 business world, such as Issam Ghreiwati, who now chairs the board. Issam Ghreiwati is the son of Zuhair Ghreiwati, founder of the Ghreiwati Group, one of Syria’s largest business conglomerates.

Furthermore, in mid-April, Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s brother, Maher Al-Sharaa, was appointed Secretary-General of the Presidency, responsible for managing the presidential administration and liaising between the presidency and state bodies. A recent Reuters investigation also revealed that Hazem al-Sharaa, along with others, is responsible for reshaping the Syrian economy through secret acquisitions of Assad-era companies.

At the same time, the authorities also appointed new leaders to unions and professional associations. In particular, they selected a union council for the Syrian Bar Association, composed of members of the Idlib Council of Free Bars. Syrian lawyers responded by launching a petition calling for democratic elections within the Bar Association.

Sectarian tensions and hatred are not due to ancient religious divisions, nor are they “rooted” in the region’s populations, nor are they supposedly dynamics rooted in the “revenge” of minorities against the Sunni Arab majority. Sectarianism and sectarian tensions are a product of modernity and have political roots and dynamics.

Finally, the new ruling authorities led by HTS have been using sectarianism as a tool of domination and control over the population. Clearly, sectarian tensions and hatred are not due to ancient religious divisions, nor are they “rooted” in the region’s populations, nor are they supposedly dynamics rooted in the “revenge” of minorities against the Sunni Arab majority. Sectarianism and sectarian tensions are a product of modernity and have political roots and dynamics.

More generally, the rise in sectarian rhetoric, tensions, and attacks by the ruling authorities, led by HTS and the armed forces supportive of the government, first against the Alawite populations, as demonstrated by the coastal massacres in March, and then against the Druze communities, aims to achieve three main objectives.

First, the exploitation of sectarian tensions and the discourse of “Mazlumiya Sunniya” (“Sunni injustice”) seeks to build a sense of popular belonging and unite large sections of the Sunni Arab population despite the many political, social, regional, and other differences within this community.

Second, these sectarian attacks and tensions aim to disrupt democratic space or dynamics from below. In this perspective, Suweida has been a symbol of popular resistance since the beginning of the popular uprising in 2011, including against the former Assad regime, with ongoing democratic actions, a vibrant local civil society, and attempts to create alternative unions and professional associations. For example, popular demonstrations and continuous strikes took place in the Suweida governorate, particularly after the outbreak of a relatively large protest movement since mid-August 2023, which highlighted the importance of Syrian unity, the release of political prisoners and social justice. Some local armed Druze factions also participated in the military offensive with other military groups in southern Syria against the Syrian Assad regime in its final days before its fall. And we must remember the support of local armed Druze factions for tens of thousands of young men from Suweida who refused to join the Syrian army loyal to the Assad regime and fight in its ranks since 2014.

In March, sectarian massacres in coastal areas had virtually put an end to the protests organized in January and February 2025 in various provinces by civil servants dismissed by the new government. Since December 2024, the Syrian authorities have laid off tens of thousands, if not more, of public sector employees. Following this decision, demonstrations by dismissed or suspended civil servants erupted across the country, including in Suweida. These protests were promising, as were attempts to create alternative unions or, at the very least, coordination structures. These new entities, in addition to opposing the mass layoffs, also demanded wage increases and rejected the government’s plans to privatize public assets. However, the consolidation of the protest movement was considerably weakened due to fears that armed groups close to the regime would respond with violence.

Finally, sectarian rhetoric and attacks have allowed the new authorities in Damascus to attempt to impose their total control over regions outside their control, such as in Suweida, or to consolidate their power, as in the coastal areas in March, by mobilizing segments of the population along sectarian lines.

Sectarianism acts as a powerful mechanism of social control, shaping the course of class struggle by fostering dependency between the popular classes and their ruling elites. As a result, the popular classes are deprived of any political independence and define themselves—and engage politically—through their sectarian identity. In this respect, the new government follows in the footsteps of the former Assad regime, continuing to use sectarian policies and practices as a means of governance, control, and social division.

Sectarianism acts as a powerful mechanism of social control, shaping the course of class struggle by fostering dependency between the popular classes and their ruling elites.

In this context, the armed abuses committed by affiliated and pro-government armed forces are not “simply” the result of “individual actions” or a “lack of professionalism” on the part of the army, whether during the March massacres against the Alawite population or today in Suweida. Indeed, the Reuters investigation has demonstrated that pro-government armed groups were directly involved in the violence perpetrated against Alawite civilians in March, with the knowledge and consent of the highest levels of the state. Moreover, the new authorities created the political conditions that made this violence possible. Indeed, human rights violations against individual Alawites, including kidnappings and assassinations, have increased in recent months, some of which—such as the Fahil massacre in late December 2024 and the Arzah massacre in early February 2025—resembled dress rehearsals for the coastal massacres in March. Moreover, Syrian officials have repeatedly portrayed the Alawite community as an instrument of the old regime against the Syrian people. For example, during his speech at the 9th Syria Donors’ Conference in Brussels, Belgium, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani stated, “54 years of minority rule have led to the displacement of 15 million Syrians”—implicitly suggesting that the Alawite community as a whole had ruled the country for decades, rather than a dictatorship controlled by the Assad family. While it is undeniable that Alawite figures held key positions within the former regime, particularly within its military and security apparatus, reducing the nature of the state and its dominant institutions to an “Alawite identity” or portraying the regime as favoring religious minorities while systematically discriminating against the Sunni Arab majority is both misleading and far removed from reality.

The authorities have also failed to establish a mechanism to promote a comprehensive transitional justice process aimed at punishing all individuals and groups involved in war crimes during the Syrian conflict. Such a mechanism could have played a crucial role in preventing acts of revenge and easing growing sectarian tensions. However, Ahmad al-Shareh and his allies have no interest in transitional justice, most likely fearing being tried for their own crimes and abuses committed against civilians. Moreover, on May 17, the Syrian transitional authorities announced presidential decrees establishing two new government bodies: the Transitional Justice Commission and the National Commission for the Missing. However, the mandate of the Transitional Justice Commission, as defined in the decree, is narrow and excludes many victims, including those of HTS and its allied armed groups such as the SNA. This selective justice is therefore highly problematic and risks provoking new political and sectarian tensions in the country. This is not to mention that certain figures affiliated with the Assad regime and guilty of committing crimes, or contributing to them, have been granted de facto immunity by the new authorities, such as Fadi Saqr, former commander of the National Defense Forces (NDF) affiliated with the previous Assad regime, or Muhammad Hamsho, a well-known businessman affiliated with Maher al-Assad.

Therefore, the strategy and actions of the Syrian government forces in Suweida province are part of these attempts to centralize power in the hands of the new ruling authority and consolidate their domination over society.

The risk of exclusive power with a central authority with limited capabilities can only lead to further political tensions in the country. This situation also further weakens the country’s sovereignty.

Israel’s Exploitation of Sectarian Tensions

At the same time, the Israeli government has sought to exploit recent human rights violations committed by pro-Damascus armed forces against the Druze population to fuel sectarian tensions in the country, presenting itself as the defender of the Druze population of southern Syria and threatening military intervention for their “protection.” Despite appeals to the Israeli government by Druze religious dignitary Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and greater openness among some segments of the Druze population toward Israel, particularly after the recent violence against them, there is a widespread rejection of any Israeli intervention by large segments of the Druze population in Suweida and other regions. They have also repeatedly reaffirmed their belonging to Syria and their support for the country’s unity.

But the defense of the Druze population is not, and never has been, the State of Israel’s priority. On the contrary, Tel Aviv is sending a clear message to Damascus: It will not tolerate any military presence in southern Syria, including in the provinces of Qunaytra, Deraa and Suweida, and aims for the demilitarization of these areas.

In this context, the Israeli occupation army launched new strikes in Damascus near the Syrian army headquarters and the Ministry of Defense, as well as in other areas of the country on July 16 and 17, following previous attacks.

In doing so, the colonial and racist Israeli state seeks to further weaken the Syrian state and obtain more political concessions from Damascus, which has demonstrated its willingness to normalize, directly or indirectly, its relations with Tel Aviv. The Syrian government, led by HTS, has confirmed the existence of negotiations and discussions with Israeli officials aimed at easing tensions between the two countries and finding forms of understanding. This is despite the Israeli occupation army’s incessant attacks on Syrian territories, particularly those occupied following the fall of the Assad regime in December, and the destruction of agricultural land and civilian infrastructure. Al-Shareh has repeatedly reiterated that his regime does not pose a threat to Israel and has also apparently told President Trump that it is willing to rejoin the Abraham Accords if the “appropriate conditions” are met.

This is also why Damascus has not condemned the massive Israeli strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather, it views Iran’s weakening positively, just as it does with Hezbollah in Lebanon. This position is not only linked to Iran’s role during the Syrian popular uprising and the hostility toward it among large sectors of the population, but also reflects, as explained above, the political orientation of the new ruling elite in Syria, which seeks to root the country within a US-led axis in order to consolidate its power internally.

This orientation has not changed despite recent events, and the United States is well aware of this. Washington does not want to see this new power in Damascus, which seeks to satisfy these regional political interests and ensure a degree of authoritarian stability there, further weakened. It was in this context that US leaders called on Tel Aviv to cease its bombing of Syrian government targets and to conclude a truce with Damascus. This truce agreement also allowed the deployment of Syrian government forces in the province of Suweida, with the exception of the city of Suweida, which Israel initially rejected.

Moreover, the military escalation in Suweida followed discussions in Baku, Azerbaijan between Syrian and Israeli officials, according to the Syria in Transition website. During these discussions, Syrian authorities, led by HTS, reportedly sought Tel Aviv’s approval for the reintegration of Suweida. While Israeli officials expressed openness to limited reintegration—that is, the restoration of public services and the deployment of a limited local security force—Damascus misinterpreted this decision as authorization for a large-scale military operation. Despite this misunderstanding, this decision by the Syrian authorities reveals a persistent tendency to rely on external validation and support to justify certain policies, including coercive measures against local populations, as in the case of Sweida, rather than encouraging political dialogue.

According to various sources, senior officials from the United States, Israel, and Syria met on Thursday, July 24 to reach a security agreement in southern Syria and prevent further crises.

In other words, international recognition, the pursuit of good relations with the United States and its regional allies, and the promotion of a possible normalization process with Israel are all aimed at consolidating HTS’s power over the country. The interests of the Syrian working class and their democratic aspirations are being ignored in this process.

In this context, the recent events in Suweida demonstrate, once again, that Syria is not experiencing a democratic and inclusive political transition. Rather, it is a process of establishing a new authoritarian regime, structured and led by HTS, under the guise of institutional and international legitimacy.

However, this process remains incomplete due to the weak political, economic, and military capabilities of the new authorities in power led by HTS, as demonstrated by the failure of its total control over Suweida. Despite this failure, the ruling authorities are unlikely to change their policies or make real concessions in favor of the political and socio-economic interests of the Syrian working classes in all their diversity without a shift in the balance of power and, above all, without the (re)construction and development of a counter power within society, bringing together democratic and progressive political and social networks and actors.

New political, social, and community groups and organizations have nevertheless emerged and are organizing, but have yet to develop into social forces rooted in the population capable of broader mobilizations in society. At the same time, collaboration between the different regions of Syria, including with Kurdish organizations present in northeast Syria, must be intensified.

Fourteen years of war and destruction, and more than 50 years of dictatorship, weigh heavily on this process.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Shadi Alashkar; modified by Tempest.

The post Suweida under fire appeared first on Tempest.

It’s the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight, while…

A recent analysis from the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts examines how food deserts in the United States are defined and how well common metrics capture the realities of food access. Drawing on federal and nonprofit data, Escoffier finds that widely used measures like Low-Income, Low-Access (LILA) scores and the Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI) values offer an incomplete picture, overlooking key drivers of food insecurity and health outcomes.

Escoffier uses data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Feeding America to examine how geography, infrastructure, and income shape food access and health—and how accurately LILA scores and RFEI values reflect those outcomes. Their key finding: food deserts are not a strong predictor of poor health outcomes.

Although the term “food desert” remains widely used by media, researchers, academics, policymakers, advocates, and public health agencies, the USDA has moved away from the term. Since 2013, the agency’s Economic Research Service has instead used “low-income, low-access” to describe areas with limited access to healthy food.

According to Escoffier, 18.8 million Americans, or about 6.1 percent of the U.S. population, live in LILA tracts, where residents are both low-income and geographically distant from a grocery store. But the analysis found little national correlation between LILA scores and public health outcomes.

Meanwhile, food insecurity—which Escoffier defines as limited or uncertain access to enough food due to economic constraints—meaningfully correlates with diabetes and obesity, suggesting that the ability to afford food may matter more than physical proximity to it.

Geography, an incomplete lens according to Escoffier, also doesn’t reflect whether people have the means of reaching nutritious foods, even if stores are nearby. The study scrutinizes RFEI values, a measure that compares the density of fast food and convenience stores to that of supermarkets and grocery outlets.

While LILA scores highlight geographic isolation, RFEI values reflect abundance—specifically, an oversupply of poor-quality food. A widely cited measure of the quality of food options, according to Escoffier, RFEI values show little correlation with LILA scores, meaning they often describe different places entirely.

Escoffier points to the presence of independent restaurants and access to fresh produce as more reliable indicators of a robust food ecosystem. But even these factors show limited connection to health outcomes—highlighting the complexity of the issue.

“Ultimately, our findings suggest that the reality of food deserts is far more complex than a simple lack of grocery stores—and that meaningful solutions would require an equally layered understanding of food access, affordability, and community context,” the analysis concludes.

By unpacking the interplay between infrastructure, income, and food culture, Escoffier’s findings underscore the need to move beyond outdated metrics in favor more nuanced, context-specific responses to food insecurity.

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Photo courtesy of Marcela Laskoski, Unsplash

The post Food Desert Metrics Miss the Full Picture, Says Escoffier appeared first on Food Tank.

Today, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) announced that the FBI has agreed to track down Texas state lawmakers who left the state to resist state Republicans’ efforts to ram through new gerrymandered electoral maps at President Trump’s demand.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“When politicians deploy federal law enforcement against state elected officials simply for opposing their agenda, they attack our system and put our American freedoms at risk.

“We stand with the patriotic legislators who are resisting this authoritarian overreach. This moment represents a deep-seated threat to our democracy as we know it.”

A second community group has asked for more time to comment on the environmental impact of fracturing plans in Yorkshire.

Rathlin Energy’s West Newton site.
Photo: DrillOrDrop

Last week, the Environment Agency (EA) extended the consultation period on lower-volume fracking at Burniston near Scarborough, after a request from Frack Free Coastal Communities

Today, West Newton Said No, a community campaign group in East Yorkshire, asked for more time to comment on a similar operation in at West Newton in Holderness.

The EA had said it was minded to approve the application by Rathlin Energy (EPR/BB3001FT/V006) to vary its environmental permit to carry out small-scale hydraulic fracturing at the West-Newton-A site.

The regulator set a deadline for final comments of 9 September 2025.

But West Newton Said No asked for a further month to comment until 9 October 2025.

The group said it was seeking the extension because new information in the application was complex and technical.

It said there was confusion about plans to carry out hydraulic fractures in a secondary fracture zone within the Kirkham Abbey.

It also said the permit imcluded no hydraulic fracturing plan and no details on how the process would be contained safely.

West Newton Said No complained that the consultation had been scheduled during the school summer holidays. The group said people who wanted to comment may be away for large parts of the consultation period and specialists could be unavailable to help.

It said:

“We understand that you respectfully listened to Frack Free Coastal Communities regarding Burniston and gave them an extension so I hope you can extend the same courtesy to the residents of East Yorkshire and beyond.”

It urged the EA to host a series of face-to-face public information events. It said a significant number of local people did not have internet access and the documents were complex.

“The public needs more clarity about the consultation directly from the Environment Agency so that they have the chance to ask pertinent questions before they make their comments.”

The group also called for several online question-and-answer events for people who could not attend face-to-face events.

West Newton Said No reminded the EA that it should follow government guidance on the duration, timing and accessibility of consultations.

Everywhere we look, AI is treated like an inevitability.

AI companies like ChatGPT and Open AI are expanding rapidly, and many Americans rely on AI assistants such as Alexa and Siri in their day-to-day lives. For some college students, not relying on AI can feel like a disadvantage.

Critics might be soothed by the idea that AI can be put to good use — such as in data modeling to better predict our changing climate, an idea that’s generated a lot of enthusiasm. But using AI to tackle climate change is like bombing a country in the name of peace.

AI is a driver of climate change, not a solution. According to the United Nations Environment Program, rapidly proliferating AI data centers “use massive amounts of electricity, spurring the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases,” as well as consuming enormous quantities of water and minerals.

ChatGPT, the popular AI software, is hardly worth the climate impact. One analyst, Sophie McLean, writing for Earth.org, explains, “For a simple conversation of 20-50 questions [to Chat GPT], the water consumed is equivalent to a 500ml bottle.” Spread across “billions of users,” that’s a “substantial” footprint.

AI is spreading so fast, we’ve hardly had an opportunity to consider its impact. Even the world’s most popular search engine, Google, started using AI by default. Each time you do a simple search, Google uses generative AI to offer an “AI overview” before listing its results.

Moreover, AI services like ChatGPT gobble up and regurgitate the work of humans. If plagiarism weren’t bad enough, they’re notorious for generating misinformation in fields such as medicine and computer programming.

Even for simple queries like searching for citations, AI programs often make up references that don’t exist. Experts are worried the technology’s propensity to “hallucinate” is so severe, it will never achieve high levels of accuracy.

Setting aside the prospect of massive job losses from AI and the troubling realization that AI models lie and proliferate misinformation, do we really want to push our climate to the brink because of a technology that offers convenience? AI is a technology foisted upon a society that doesn’t need it, and that faces very real harm because of it.

What’s needed at minimum is strict regulation, not only to protect information and jobs, but also people and the planet.

But as soon as he took office, President Donald Trump began dismantling the few, very modest government checks on AI. And the GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” included, alongside massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, a ban on states being able to regulate AI. (That provision was scrapped, but it may well return in another form.)

We need to demand better. Technology analysts Paul Scharre and Vivek Chilukuri argue for “a principles-based approach to regulation, instead of fixed technical standards that could be outdated before the ink dries.” They also suggest an independent regulatory agency dedicated to this powerful technology.

In the meantime, we as individuals should avoid using programs like ChatGPT. Not only does it diminish our own capabilities — researchers at MIT recently found that an over-reliance on programs such as ChatGPT significantly lowers brain activity — but because it actively fuels climate change.

Think of AI avoidance as mental exercise in the same way you might choose to walk instead of drive for physical well being.

Consider turning off Google’s AI Overviews. The tech company doesn’t make it easy for most people to figure out how to do it — and of course, it offers an AI overview that may or may not be accurate when you search for how to turn it off. After some digging, I found a human-generated answer that actually works.

If we want a safer world, protected from the dumbing down and waste associated with AI, we have to begin programming ourselves and our world to make choices that center human wellbeing.

This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Previously in The Revelator:

Why The Revelator Banned AI Articles and Art

The post Regulate AI — to Protect Jobs, Our Brains, and the Planet appeared first on The Revelator.

PHILADELPHIA (August 7, 2025), Clean Air Council launched its first-ever Emergency Ride Home Pilot program in partnership with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) on Tuesday, August 5th. This initiative is a pilot enhancement to DVRPC’s current Emergency Ride Home (ERH) program, which uses cost reimbursement to support transit riders when emergencies disrupt their commute plans: ERH serves those who live and/or work in southeastern Pennsylvania. The pilot is funded through a Travel Options Program (TOP) grant from DVRPC.

Clean Air Council’s Emergency Ride Home Pilot Program allows transit riders on four routes that access Fair Acres (SEPTA bus routes 110, 111, 114, & 117) to receive an Uber voucher of up to $50 during a qualifying emergency. Qualifying commuters—individuals dedicated to taking these Delaware and Philadelphia county bus lines at least twice a week to work or who live within the Fair Acres region— can redeem a voucher up to two times for the duration of the program. Transit is a sustainable way of getting around the area, and helps to lower carbon emissions. This Emergency Ride Home program seeks to help transit riders feel safer in the case of a qualifying emergency when transit is seriously delayed, canceled, or doesn’t reach the site of the emergency.

“Clean Air Council is excited to be launching this program as it helps to advance our sustainable transportation goals and will benefit residents living and working in the area”, said Titania Markland, Sustainable Transportation Program Manager at Clean Air Council. “Having a safety net during emergencies helps to remove a barrier that can prevent residents from taking public transit, which is a more sustainable way to commute and better for the environment.”

“The Travel Options Program (TOP) funds new, innovative programs and projects that help reduce drive-alone travel in the region, and improve access to a host of safe travel options. DVRPC is excited to support the Clean Air Council, who has been a long-time partner in promoting Transportation Demand Management (TDM) programs”, said Stacy Bartels, Manager, Office of TDM Strategy and Marketing at DVRPC. “This trial project will assess the ability of the region’s Emergency Ride Home (ERH) to be more widely available to anyone who signs up without incurring a cost to use it, minimizing a financial hurdle some riders may encounter and ensuring everyone has a way to get home safe.”

Clean Air Council’s Emergency Ride Home Pilot Program

The Emergency Ride Home Pilot Program provides a “safety net” for those who utilize SEPTA bus routes 110, 111, 114, or 117 to work at least two times per week.

In the event of an unexpected personal or family emergency or illness, unscheduled overtime, or if a rider cannot reach the site of the emergency via transit in a timely fashion, registered commuters can request a code for a free Uber ride home, to their car, or to the place of the emergency. Also if a rider’s regular bus route is delayed for over 30 minutes or cancelled, and this will cause an unsafe situation or undue expense for the rider (e.g. late fees for daycare or missed medical appointment), ERH can be considered.

How does the Emergency Ride Home Pilot Program work?

• Commuters can check their eligibility and register with Share-A-Ride here.
• When their Share-A-Ride profile is completed, commuters are eligible to request a free ride (up to $50) due to a qualifying emergency situation.
• When an ERH ride is requested through the Share-A-Ride website, the commuter will receive a unique code to use when paying through the Uber app and be on their way.
• Eligible and approved commuters must have or create an account with Uber to redeem the voucher code.

Issued: 7 August 2025 We, the undersigned members of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), stand in unwavering solidarity with the people of Palestine and denounce the deliberate use of food and water as weapons of war in Gaza. This is not only a humanitarian crisis, it is a crime against humanity, a […]

The post AFSA STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE first appeared on AFSA.

Sewage is not something most people want to give a second thought to, but it contains a trove of valuable nutrients. One of those is ammonia, a key ingredient of fertilizer.

Now, researchers report a way to use sunlight to recover ammonia from wastewater. The cheap, efficient process is a practical way to reuse the nutrient on farms and keep it from reaching the environment, where it can cause harm. The work appears in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Ammonia is a source of nitrogen in fertilizers. Around 240 million tons of ammonia are produced every year globally using the Haber-Bosch process. The method, while critical for feeding the world, takes huge amounts of energy and has a large carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the fertilizer farmers apply to their fields escapes into the ground as run-off. The excessive nitrogen reaches water bodies where it can harm aquatic life and lead to toxic algae blooms.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Designer bacteria clean wastewater and generate power—at the same time

 

Removing ammonia from wastewater is doable but the process is expensive so treatment plants mostly decompose ammonia into less harmful compounds. So researchers have been devising various techniques and developing novel materials to capture ammonia and other nutrients from wastewater.

Ning Xu and colleagues at Nanjing University came up with an efficient solar-driven method. They made a solar still—a container with a clear plastic or glass top—that uses the sun to purify water. The sun’s heat evaporates water in the sill, and the clean vapors are condensed and collected.

Because fertilizer runoff and industrial wastewater mostly contain ammonia in the form of ammonium, the team devised a way to convert the ammonium into ammonia. They coated a plastic sponge with a thin layer of a black, heat-absorbing substance called titanium carbide. Then they attached chemical groups called amino groups to the surface of the sponge.

Floating on the wastewater enclosed in the solar still, the black sponge absorbed heat while its amino groups converted the ammonium in wastewater into ammonia. The heat evaporated both the ammonia and water, which were condensed and captured for use.

Focusing sunlight on the sponge cleans it for reuse while producing another useful commodity: hydrochloric acid. The researchers analyzed the economics of the method in 24 different regions of China. Taking into account the cost of the specialty sponge materials, they found that it had “excellent economics benefit and revenue” generating a profit of $90 per square meter of the sponge, and a payback period of about 3.5 years.

Source: Qi Zhang et al. Solar-driven efficient and selective ammonia recovery from ammonium-containing wastewater. Nature Sustainability, 2025.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

Two mothballed gas sites in East Yorkshire could be used for cryptocurrency mining, company announcements revealed today.

Rathlin Energy’s West Newton-A site. Photo: DrillOrDrop

Partners in the West Newton sites in Holderness unveiled plans to use gas from the wells to generate electricity needed to mine Bitcoins. Links to announcements here and here

The operator, Rathlin Energy, has entered a non-binding agreement with the Texas-based company, 360 Energy Inc, to design what was called a Bitcoin mining solution.

Rathlin said last year that it did not have enough money to meet its drilling and abandonment commitments at West Newton.

Today’s announcements said the scheme offered “an innovative and significant near-term value generating opportunity, providing early production and cash flow in advance of any planned full gas field development decision”.

But there have been sceptical comments this morning from investors in Reabold Resources and West Newton’s other partner, Union Jack Oil.

According to the announcements, the plan would begin at West Newton-A, with an onsite data centre powered by electricity generated by burning gas from the A2 well. The project would later be rolled out for the West Newton-A1 well and at West Newton-B with the B1z well.

Rathlin Energy’s West Newton-B site. Photo: DrillOrDrop

The scheme is expected to need planning consents.

West Newton-A currently has permissions for 20 years of gas production but no work has been carried out at the site for six years. The site is currently seeking environmental consent for lower-volume hydraulic fracturing of the A-2 well.

At West Newton-B, there is planning permission for an additional well but not gas production. No work has been carried out at West Newton-B since December 2020.

Reabold Resources, which has a 79.8% shareholding in Rathlin Energy, said Bitcoin mining would “complement both the early production scheme and the full field development” at West Newton.

Sachin Oza, co-chief executive of Reabold Resources, said:

“We believe that the creation and accumulation of new Bitcoin through mining operations offers a significantly enhanced, sustainable return, and one which is superior to simple cash purchases and accumulation of Bitcoin on the balance sheet, popularly referred to as a Bitcoin treasury strategy.

“The accumulation of mined Bitcoin, taking advantage of Rathlin’s access to extremely low cost energy, is both a precursor and supplement to the unlocking of the substantial low-cost natural gas at West Newton, which we believe will play an invaluable role in UK energy security in the years ahead.”

He also suggested that West Newton’s low operating costs would make it “ideal” for powering artificial intelligence data centres.

Mr Oza and his co-chief executive, Stephen Williams, are directors of Kryptobyte Limited. It changed its name today from Yorkshire Data Centre Services Limited. Before that it was known as Reabold Investments UK Limited. In April 2025, the company filed accounts for a “dormant company”.

Union Jack, which has a 16.665% interest in the West Newton field, said:

“The relationship with 360 Energy has the potential to enable the Joint Venture partners to realise significant returns from natural gas volumes via wells that would not otherwise contribute to either the early production scheme or the full field development”.

Union Jack’s executive chairman, David Bramhill, said “regulatory uncertainty” had hampered progress at onshore projects, like West Newton. Onshore developers had been “forced to ‘think outside the box’ in order to make progress and deliver growth”, he said.

Last year, operators of a suspended oil site in West Sussex suggested geothermal heat could be used for tea production. (The scheme was not implemented and the site no longer has planning permission.)

Mr Bramhill added:

“The Board of Union Jack believes this proposed concept to produce Bitcoin through mining operations is innovative, offers strong scope for a sustainable return and could lead to the Company introducing a new Bitcoin Treasury strategy, on success.

“In addition, we believe that 360 Energy’s association with West Newton is complementary to Union Jack’s position as a profitable, transatlantic oil and gas business with production in both the UK and USA.”

“Pure theatre”

One Union Jack shareholder said “beware of the ‘Emperor’s new clothes”. Another described it as a “a gimmick”. Another said: “Gas-to-bitcoin will never happen, it’s pure theatre”.

Bitcoin mining – the validation of transactions in the cryptocurrency – demands large amounts of electricity

The IMF estimated a year ago that one Bitcoin transaction required about the same amount of electricity as the average person in Ghana or Pakistan consumes in three years.

One Union Jack investor questioned whether West Newton could generate enough electricity to meet demands.

Comments on Reabold Resources’ announcement were also sceptical. The company’s share price fell this morning from 0.06p to 0.052p. One comment said: “The market is understandably unimpressed.”

Another said: “more pie in the sky”.  Another said: “On the face of it this appears to be bandwagon stuff”. But the comment added that high demands for energy from AI could be a loophole for oil and gas companies through net zero policies.

Cryptocurrency is expected to generate greenhouse gas emissions. The IMF estimated crypto mining could generate 0.7% of global carbon dioxide emissions by 2027.

Rathlin Energy says on its website that it understands that climate change is a global concern but its gas project at West Newton “aligns with the UK’s commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050”.

The following are locations for selected Prisoners’ Justice Day events happening in Ontario on Sunday, August 10th: Toronto: Grange Park at 1:00 pm ETKingston: Grounds...

The post Cell Count: Amplifying the voice of prisoners through prose, poetry and art first appeared on Spring.

In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings, announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always are updates, fundraisers, and birthdays.

There’s a lot happening, so let’s dive right in!

Arrests Following Anti-ICE Protests in Texas Lead to Targeted State Repression

From the DFW Support Committee:

On the night of July 4th, local police arrested 10 people outside the ICE Prairieland detention facility in Alvarado, Texas after a noise demonstration in solidarity with those being kidnapped and detained by the Trump administration. Since then, 6 more people have been arrested in connection with the case.  We don’t know all of the circumstances leading to the arrests. We do know that popular outrage and resistance to deportations is growing across the country. Organizers, activists, and affected communities have spent the year organizing rallies and protests outside of detention centers just like the one in Alvarado. The 16 people arrested currently face serious charges aimed not only at ruining their lives, but signaling an authoritarian criminalization of dissent and protest against ICE. Local authorities have set bail at $10 million per person.

A website for the DFW Support Committee has now been set up and an Instagram account can be followed here. The Support Committee has organized several phone and email zaps regarding the abusive treatment of the defendants, and report:

We held a call in day on Monday and Tuesday of this week to address the continual violation and denial of the Prairieland Defendants Constitutional rights. The jail is conducting unnecessary and degrading strip searches of defendants multiple times a day even though they are being held in solitary confinement away from others. The jail is blocking defendants’ communication access then lying to defendants and deflecting the blame. None of these defendants have been formally charged with any crimes yet they are being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.

Here is a statement from one of the defendants about their conditions:

“Usually awoken by yelling of my name, I am ordered to strip completely naked. Bleary eyed I am ordered to hand my shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes through the single dirty metal mail slot that passes all of my food, books, trash, broom, toilet plunger. I am ordered to hold my mouth open with my fingers. I am ordered to lift and move my genitals with my hands. Turn around, squat and cough three times, make sure it’s forceful and loud.

Then I quickly dress and am handcuffed and taken out of my cell.

So all of my belongings can be tossed and picked through. Leaving random piles with no declaration or explanation. I can stress and search to find out if anything is taken.

Sometimes it’s all my food. Sometimes it’s my legally protected questions and notes for my attorneys.

Sometimes it’s a random poem or doodle. Sometimes nothing is taken.

This happens at any time, at all hours, without warning. Multiple times a day. Every day. Without reason or ever finding anything like contraband.”

For more information, check out this interview from the Final Straw Radio (also available in printable and screen-reading zine format) and this zine of information.

New statement posted to legal fundraiser for those arrested at #Texas anti-ICE rally: "These criminal charges are a dangerous stunt…the framing of the case by the government should be concerning to all…glaring inconsistencies and alarmist accusations…" www.givesendgo.com/supportdfwpr…

— It's Going Down (@igd.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T19:37:40.560Z

You can donate to their legal costs here. Numerous support events are being organized, such as at Monkeywrench Books in Austin, who are hosting regular letter-writing nights, and another one is planned on August 15th in Portland.

To keep up with the case, you can check the DFW Support Committee, Fire Ant Movement Defense, and Free Des pages, or email dfwsupportcommittee@hacari.com.

Jakhi McCray Issues Statement to Supporters

— Free Jakhi (@freejakhi.bsky.social) 2025-07-22T23:59:05.427Z

In New York, Jakhi McCray has issued a powerful statement (available as a zine here) after turning himself in to the police on charges of allegedly sabotaging 10 NYPD vehicles. From his statement:

Repression is the State trying to call our bluff. It is intense because it shows itself when our potential to disrupt genocides & capital becomes too grand to ignore. Millions of people, whether they consider themselves revolutionaries or not, that participated in the encampments, the anti-ICE street rebellions, & the George Floyd Uprising have helped create a social crisis in the last five years that continues to bring in millions more & fuel the need for liberation.

The constant effort it takes the State to oppress us is not manageable. It is already breaking, with the funding & hiring disasters in federal agencies, the infighting between the Trump administration & his base, & the complete political catastrophe over Israel. The harshness of the State’s eye on our movement is nothing more than a defensive reaction. a mask from their fear. This is as much of a make or break moment for them as it is for us. If we come out of this with our solidarity & our infrastructure intact, it is a monumental win for our communities & a devastation to our enemies.

Our greatest strength is each other-that we are not just coworkers maintaining appearances for the duration of a shift. We are comrades, & with that comes a promise to love, defend, & fight for one another. Because you are my comrades, I hold this promise towards all of you. I don’t know what will happen now, but I do know that I will never stop fighting & I will do my best wherever I find myself to be.

Jakhi has now been released on house arrest following a large demonstration outside of court in solidarity. See Free Jakhi on Bluesky and on Instagram for more information as the story develops.

Anti-ICE Protester Targeted by the FBI in Portland, OR

Surveillance technology is helping criminalize resistance

— Alissa Azar (@alissaazar.bsky.social) 2025-07-31T17:50:38.865Z

In Portland, Jacob Hoopes was arrested on July 25th for alleged participation in an ICE protest, with a mass show of support being organized for his public court hearing on the 28th. Alissa Azar has published an important article looking at how surveillance technology was used to bring the charges against Hoopes, and a post here covers some similar points. Rose City Counter-Info has also published a piece on the dangers of cameras.

From the article by Alissa Azar:

On June 14, 2025, federal authorities claim that someone threw a rock at a federal agent at the Portland ICE field office, where people have been protesting for nearly two months. The feds are calling it “assault on a federal officer.” But what they’re actually doing is criminalizing defiance, a political crackdown dressed in the language of law enforcement.

The FBI affidavit reads like a dystopian surveillance report: Subject 1 (“S1”) wore a long-sleeved black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a gas mask with bright pink filters, a visible tattoo on one forearm, and a bracelet on their left wrist. For the feds, that was enough.

Agents zoomed in on footage to identify tattoos, bracelets, shirt patterns, and even a blue cloth sticking out of a back pocket. No face was needed. Just patterns, posture, and color recognition. “Full-face masks with bright pink filter cups were far less common,” the affidavit states.

That’s not probable cause. That’s pattern-matching turned into criminal evidence. Surveillance enhanced by AI and weaponized by the state.

The affidavit is loaded with language that reads more like a surveillance tech brochure than a legal document: “I enlarged the images… I noted a tattoo… a bracelet… a grid pattern… a blue cloth…”

This is biometric tracking without the biometrics. It’s algorithmic identification based on non-unique visual data: clothing, accessories, posture, movement.

This same playbook was used during the 2020 uprisings, where facial recognition, AI tools, and OSINT (open-source intelligence) were used to identify Black Lives Matter protesters, many of whom were later charged federally for property damage or “civil disorder.”

The tactics being used against anti-ICE protesters today are direct descendants of strategies deployed during the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, particularly in Portland, Oregon, which became a federal testing ground for high-tech repression. Over 100 consecutive nights of protest against police brutality and racial injustice were met not only with tear gas and rubber bullets, but also with a surge of federal agents deployed under Operation Diligent Valor.

This Trump-era initiative blurred the line between local and national policing. Launched by the Department of Homeland Security in July 2020, the operation flooded Portland with agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Marshals Service, the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), and even agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). This was on top of the already active and violent presence from local police (State Troopers and the Portland Police Bureau). At the time, many operated out of unmarked vehicles and wore no identifying insignia, abducting protesters off the street without explanation or warrants. Videos showed masked officers dragging individuals blocks away from demonstrations, detaining them without charges, and releasing them hours later without any documentation. These tactics weren’t about public safety. They were about sending a message: We are watching you. We will identify you. And we can disappear you.

A report from a recent banner drop (see photo at the top of this column) in Portland, OR, posted by Alissa Azar stated:

For the last 8 weeks, we have watched violent assault after violent assault, some resulting in emergency hospitalizations and extensive surgeries, at the hands of the federal government, against the people of conscience in this city that have refused to bow down to their fascist reign.

Throughout the country, the masses rising up to defend their communities and protect their neighbors face a similar violent reality. In Los Angeles, federal prosecutors have filed a plethora of charges against protestors that they have labeled “violent,” because federal agents in military tactical gear have lied about assaults at the hands of protestors wearing hoodies and sunglasses.

An overwhelming number of these false charges have later gone on to be dismissed, after folks have already been dragged through a traumatic judicial system and been tormented by an authoritarian society that does *not* persume innocence before being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

For this reason, amongst many, we are fundamentally uninterested in questions of guilt or innocence in regards to our comrades facing state repression.

Since July 4th, 16 of our comrades from Dallas-Fort Worth have also faced inhumane treatment while being incarcerated, without so much as charges even being filed against them. The police are allowed to deprive these human beings of their basic “legal rights” because they know all they need to do is label people as “violent,” in order to justify their dehumanization.

Jacob Hoopes’ case marks a similar escalation by the fascist police state to squash repression here at home using similar tactics and rhetoric.

Read the full statement here.

Defend, Xóchitl, DACA Recipient Detained by ICE

A new campaign has been launched to free:

…Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a beloved community member, DACA recipient and long-time community organizer, was detained by Border Patrol on Sunday August 3, 2025 at an airport in El Paso, TX. As political repression increases across the country we must remember defending one person means defending all those facing repression!!!

Xóchitl was accosted by two Border Patrol agents around 4:00 AM MST as she was about to board a domestic flight for work. Despite presenting a valid DACA work authorization card offering proof of her protection from deportation in the U.S., Border Patrol abducted and detained her without warrant or cause.

From the crowdfunding campaign:

Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a beloved community member, DACA recipient and long-time community organizer, was detained by Border Patrol on Sunday August 3, 2025 at an airport in El Paso, TX.

Xóchitl was accosted by two Border Patrol agents around 4:00 AM MST as she was about to board a domestic flight for work. Despite presenting a valid DACA work authorization card offering proof of her protection from deportation in the U.S., Border Patrol abducted and detained her without warrant or cause.

She has been transferred to a processing facility in El Paso, and these funds will help to support her as we coordinate with her legal representation. We will share more updates soon on how to show your support and demand her immediate release.

We know that Xóchitl has made such a profound and powerful impact on so many loved friends and community members from Florida to Texas and beyond. Xotchitl has been working for over a decade for the dignity and respect of the immigrant community. She was a long-time volunteer organizer with Movimiento Cosecha and currently works supporting families in El Paso.

Now, we need to show up for her. Immigrant communities have been targeted for decades, and the Trump Administration is taking these fascist tactics to unprecedented levels.

This unexpected and cruel detainment will likely result in high legal fees alongside immeasurable emotional impact on her and her family. We are asking for support for her legal funds and post-release care and healing. Please give what you can to ensure that Xotchil has the resources needed to fight for her case, her ability to stay in the US with her family and community, and can take the time needed to recover from this traumatic experience after she is released. Thank you for your support!

Support and share the campaign here.

Political Prisoner News 

Former long-term Black Liberation prisoner Zolo Azania has launched a patreon. He writes:

On 06 February 2017, i was “FREED” (Released) from prison after 35 and a half years of captivity; more than 27 of those years were spent on Indiana’s death row. i use the word “freed” because it was beautiful people like you who supported me in my struggles and determination not to be murdered by the State or having to spend the rest of my life withering away in prison. i was (and still am) happy and grateful. Thank you for being you. But since i’ve been home i have not made or painted one picture; and since my release i have written only three (3) essays. i began to write a couple of books, one of them is my autobiography. While in prison i produced more work than that in a week. But after nearly 10 years of freedom on the outside of the cyclone fences, constantine wires and concrete walls i’ve done little of nothing but worked like a slave for someone else’s warehouses and other businesses like the railroad.

There is a popular rhythm and blues song titled, “Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay” written and sung by the late great Otis Redding. It is an emotional heartfelt song about introspection, reflection, and longing. Otis Redding used to sit quietly watching the various ships floating on the water and plowing through the waves in and out of the San Francisco Bay. He had come to a crossroads–reminiscing about his lowly humble beginnings to the meteoric rise in his life as a singer and a successful entertainer–and he put into words the feelings he felt what this picturesque metaphor must have meant to him. i, too, am at a “crossroads” in my life. And it doesn’t seem that i will be able to retire from working for the imperialists increasing their already bloated, exploitative, blood-sucking profits. i need people to support my artistic endeavors. i need support so that i may pursue my paralegal work helping people in prison, especially others facing death penalty cases. Moreover, my dilemma was compounded by the fact that on June 05, 2025 i got fired from my job at Remprex, an intermodal transportation subcontractor company.

A Curbfest event in support of political prisoners is being held in Washington DC on August 31st.

Long-term Black Liberation prisoner Kojo Bomani Sababu has made a call for people to contact FMC Butner to help him get medical care. From the Jericho Movement:

We are asking people to email, fax and call Butner FMC to inquire as to why they are not giving this serious medical situation the attention required to ascertain what exactly is causing this alarming problem. You can request to speak with his counselor. If that is not possible, please state your concern regarding this recurring medical problem. Be polite but firm in demanding that proper medical attention be provided to Kojo.

Kojo is 72 years old and has been in prison since 1975. He was originally transferred to Butner for a hip replacement, which was successful. Now we need to support our elder and ensure he gets the medical attention he needs.

You must refer to Kojo as Grailing Brown #39384-066.

Let us know what response you receive: nycjericho@gmail.com.

Email: BUX-ExecAssistant-S@bop.gov
Phone: 919-575-3900
Fax: 919-575-4801

NYC ABC have produced the latest edition of their regular political prisoner listings guide.

July 25th Marks Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners As Jesse “Tall Can” Comes Home

Today (Friday, July 25th) = The Int'l. Day of Solidarity w/ Antifa Prisoners. Proceeds from these SUPPORT ANTIFA PRISONERS shirts & hoodies (designed by former antifa prisoner) go to support our imprisoned friends & their families.Order here: bonfire.com/j25antifa#j25antifa, #freeallantifas

— Antifa International (@antifaintl.bsky.social) 2025-07-25T16:55:00.848Z

Antifa International and people across the world marked July 25th as an international day of solidarity with antifascist prisoners. Events and letter-writing nights were held in various cities, and Antifa International has posted up information on international prisoners to support, along with how to grab an amazing benefit t-shirt.

Also in some good news, antifascist prisoner Jesse “Tall Can” Cannon is now coming home! Supporters have set up a campaign to help him transition to life on the outside. They write:

Jesse WAS an antifascist political prisoner who was incarcerated for allegedly participating in militant community defense against American Guard, Proud Boys, and assorted right-wingers who descended upon the Pacific Beach are of San Diego, Kumeyaay land, for a day-long fascist rally on January 9, 2021.

Along with being an unapologetic defender of his community, TC is a nature enthusiast, father, and artist who needs our support after spending nearly two years risking his life fighting fires in so-called LA and throughout so-called California. Despite the SD DA’s best efforts to keep him caged for his convictions and his refusal to cooperate, TC has been released!

Support for our comrades inside doesn’t end when they’re out—and he needs our solidarity now more than ever as he settles back into his city, finds work, and helps raise his kid. Let’s show him some love and remind him how much he means to us. Please donate and share widely.

Venmo: pushingdownthewalls
Cashapp: $pushingdownthewalls
Include “TC” in the notes.

View more info here.

Running Down the Walls Events Announced for 2025

Running Down the Walls events are coming up soon in September! In 2024, the Anarchist Black Cross marked 25 years of the event taking place on both sides of the prison walls, writing:

2024 marks twenty-five-years in a row that political prisoners and supporters are participating in the annual event known as Running Down the Walls (RDTW), often running or walking simultaneously in many cities and prisons at once.

Running Down the Walls is a non-competitive 5K run/jog/walk/roll to raise awareness and funds for political prisoners as the primary fundraiser for the Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF) Warchest Program with a portion of funds raised also supporting local groups of the organizers’ choosing.

Over the years, the event has raised *tens of thousands* of dollars and lots of awareness around the struggle to free political prisoners in the U.S. We encourage you to attend a local event or participate remotely and ask your comrades, family, and friends to sponsor you to make the positive impact of the 25th anniversary bigger than ever!

Currently, Running Down the Walls events are taking place in various cities including:

• Eugene, OR
• Los Angeles, CA
• Chicago, IL
• Bloomington, IN
• Miami, FL
• Lowell, MA

Be sure to check the upcoming events tab on IGD for future updates.

Stop Cop City and Other Ongoing Cases

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied: Ayla King's "speedy" trial postponed again

— (@fireantmovement.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T00:46:14.231Z

The Cop City RICO trials have begun in Atlanta, with Jamie Marsicano appearing before a hearing and Ayla King’s case being declared a mistrial. The state is looking to set new dates for Ayla’s trial in the fall, while the defense is arguing that the case should be dropped. A recent article from the Atlanta Community Press Collective reported:

The speedy trial of “Cop City” racketeering defendant Ayla King resumed Monday after 18 months of delays, but after Judge Kevin Farmer declared a mistrial, the case was promptly put back on hold as the Georgia Court of Appeals rules on whether King faces double jeopardy.

“What I’m appealing right now is that my client has already been placed in jeopardy once,“ said King’s attorney, Surinder K. Chadha Jimenez, following Monday’s hearing. “And the Constitution guarantees that you cannot be placed in jeopardy twice.”

The Georgia State Constitution also provides additional protections against double jeopardy, Chadha Jimenez said.

There are exceptions to the double jeopardy clause, said Deputy Georgia Attorney General John Fowler, the lead prosecutor in the trial. “The Constitutional provision that precludes double jeopardy carves out an exception in the event of a mistrial.”

The Court of Appeals must now rule on the issue. The earliest that the trial would recommence is September or October, two years after the indictment against King and their codefendants.

If the defense is successful in its appeal, it will result in King’s acquittal.

Judge Farmer said he would move on to trials for the codefendants while the appeal is still pending.

Over the past several months, four other defendants—Jamie Marsicano, Spencer Liberto, Francis Carroll and Alex Papali—filed motions for speedy trials. One or some combination of those defendants will be the next to be tried, according to an order of trials submitted by the prosecution.

The next trial is not yet scheduled, as of the time of publishing.

Stop Cop City defendant Priscilla Grim is selling copies of a new book, No Cop City, No Cop World to raise money for her legal funds.

Casey Goonan’s sentencing is now scheduled for September 23rd. You can write to Casey at:

Casey Goonan #UMF227
Santa Rita Jail
5325 Border Blvd.
Dublin CA 94568

In the Pacific Northwest, Puget Sound Prisoner Support report that a Seattle activist was visited at home by DHS, while federal agents have arrested at least 9 people alleged to have taken part in a protest against ICE activity in Spokane, Washington. The Philadelphia Inquirer has more commentary on the Spokane arrests.

Free the Spokane 9Largely ignored in a small market, this week's federal indictment of 9 anti-ICE protesters in Washington state, including a former council president, shows how far the Trump regime will go to crush dissentThis was always the plan. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-…

— Will Bunch (@willbunch.bsky.social) 2025-07-17T16:08:05.955Z

In LA, following the mass resistance against ICE raids, Alejandro Orellana was facing conspiracy charges for distributing face shields, but the charges have now been dropped. Reports suggest that grand juries are refusing to move forward with cases against those involved in the resistance. An article in El Pais gives further information on the difficulties the prosecution are encountering when attempting to charge people.

The support page for Peppy and Krystal has been posting new updates on other prisoners that need support, including “Jaia Cruz, the 24-year–old transgender woman convicted of second-degree murder charges for defending herself against a transphobic attack..” Get more info here.

15 people are facing felony charges in Ohio after a protest against ICE in Cincinnati, where police violently beat people on a bridge.

Four people facing charges from a May Day protest in Frederick, MD, had a court date on July 3rd, with strong community support present in court. Further court dates are set to continue throughout August, on the 5th, 4th, 19th and 20th.

The Northumberland County DA quietly dropped the RICO charge against Celeste Legere & Cara Mitrano but both still face rarely-used charges of 'ecoterrorism' & face decades in prison after being accused of setting mink free at Pennsylvania's last fur farm: unicornriot.ninja/2025/rico-ch…

— Unicorn Riot (@unicornriot.bsky.social) 2025-07-29T18:59:16.046Z

The “Northumberland 2”, Cara and Celeste, have now had the RICO charge dropped from their case, which relates to an alleged animal liberation action against a mink farm in Pennsylvania. Unicorn Riot has a new article with updates:

Two women from Massachusetts and several dozen supporters from around the country traveled to a small central Pennsylvania town for the first major hearing in a felony case stemming from their arrest last November. The ‘Northumberland 2’ – Celeste Legere and Cara Mitrano – face a litany of PA state charges after being accused of an October 18-19, 2024 break-in at the Richard H. Stahl & Sons, Inc. fur farm in which 683 mink were released from their pens and breeding records were destroyed.

Monday’s hearing saw prosecutors drop the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charge leveled against both activists from Massachusetts. While each still face over a dozen counts and possibly decades in prison, their attorneys and supporters appeared cautiously optimistic as the state appeared to be holding a very weak hand when forced to show its cards.

“We hope the court sees through the prosecution’s gross overcharging of defendants accused of releasing animals who, with absolute certainty, would have suffered extreme torture and unconscionable death,” said Chris Carraway, a staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, which represents defendant Cara Mitrano. Mitrano is also being represented by Harrisburg attorney Natalie Burston; Celeste Legere is represented by Sunbury criminal defense lawyer Jim Best.

Pennsylvania State Police and Northumberland County District Attorney Mike O’Donnell initially charged Legere and Mitrano with RICO, Ecoterrorism, Agricultural Vandalism, Criminal Mischief, Theft, Burglary, Loitering and Prowling at Nighttime, Accidents Involving Damage to Attended Vehicle or Property, Recklessly Endangering Another Person, Cruelty to Animals, Agricultural Trespassing on Posted Land, and Depositing Waste on a Highway — as well as Conspiracy counts related to the Ecoterrorism, Agricultural Vandalism and Burglary charges.

Check out the full report here.

Hunger Strike Breaks Out at “Alligator Alcatraz” as Trump Pushes to Expand Use of Military on US Soil

As of early August, a hunger strike at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida was reported to have been going on for at least 10 days. You can read an interview with hunger striker Pedro Lorenzo Concepción here. A former guard has also come forward to describe the horrific conditions inside.

A hunger strike at a South Florida immigration detention center state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” enters its tenth day, as detainees protest what they call inhumane and dangerous living conditions.

— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 2025-08-01T22:20:17Z

Meanwhile, representatives of the Miccosukee tribe have joined a lawsuit against the facility, highlighting its impact on their traditional lands. For more on the struggle against “Alligator Alcatraz,” see this interview with Panagioti Tsolkas from Fight Toxic Prisons, which is also now available as a zine.

Resistance against ICE continues around the country, as highlighted in this IGD piece about an anti-ICE campaign of posters and banner drops coordinated across several states. Living & Fighting recently interviewed the Tucson Rapid Response Network about their work, and local resistance continues in locations such as the Philadelphia courthouse. Protests against airlines doing deportation flights, ICE contracts, and outside of detention facilities also are ongoing.

High-profile detainees such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Rümeysa Öztürk have now been able to submit testimony describing their horrific experiences. A new report from Human Rights Watch has highlighted abuses at detention centres across Florida.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is planning to build a new detention camp in El Paso, Texas, near the Mexican border, which will be able to hold 5,000 people, making the construction site an important target for those hoping to prevent the regime from building up the infrastructure for mass deportations. The Trumpian state is also pushing to expand the use of the National Guard and use Los Angeles as a model for the rest of the country, according to newly leaked DHS memo.

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson and UPROAR

The new prisoner support formation UPROAR is organizing an ongoing phone and email campaign for Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. They report the following as the latest update:

Rashid confirmed the prison threw him back in solitary (RHU) on  Friday 7/18/25 and that he is being held incommunicado — meaning no  access to his messages, calls, mail, or the media. The prison also  confiscated all of Rashid’s legal property (including all writing  supplies and stationery) until one of Rashid’s comrades contacted the  general counsel’s office and got the prison to release it back to him  on 7/24/25. This is clearly all a response to the publicity Rashid  brought to the prison when he was in Virginia.

On Friday 7/18/25, Warden Curtis Earley, Assistant  Warden Joseph Werts, Captain Carter, and Investigator Anderson called  Rashid to the Warden’s office. Rashid was sent to South Carolina under a  settlement agreement (which Rashid didn’t consent to), but one of the  settlement terms says Rashid must be in a single cell in general  population. The Warden said he was not going to honor that, and if  Rashid didn’t like that, the prison would put him back in  solitary. After that, they put him back in solitary for no reason.

The prison’s dentist and nurse practitioner have now refused to  give him more antibiotics since he was returned to solitary  on Friday 7/18/25. His face is still swollen, and he feels pressure in  his eye and ear as well. He still has not received treatment for the  dental abscess. He faced a similar situation when he had cancer — the  prison diagnosed him in 2021 but left him without treatment  for 1.5 years. It feels like they’re trying to let this infection spread  and potentially kill him.

We demand restoration of communication, immediate  medical care, and strict adherence to the settlement’s single‑cell  general‑population clause.

Rashid was recently able to publish an article on the effects of solitary confinement on South Carolina prisoners, and his recent interview on the 2016 prison strikes has now been formatted as a zine.

UPROAR is also organizing campaigns in support of Ekong Eshiet in the Indiana prison system, who’s been given a one-year solitary restriction, Randy Lassiter at Red Onion in Virginia, who launched a hunger strike after being assaulted by staff, Peter “Pitt” Kamau Mukuria at Jessup CI in Virginia, who is facing ongoing retaliation and medical neglect after being assaulted, and Dewaune Lane Jr at Red Onion, who is facing harsh retaliation for whistle-blowing.

Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) Conference

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee are fundraising to cover the costs of running their annual conference. They write:

We have many productive virtual meetings throughout the year. Our annual conference is a very meaningful experience for all attendees, but especially those who have suffered at the hands of criminal-legal systems the most. The same depth of meaning, learning, communication, relationship building and camaraderie is simply not possible through virtual events. Many formerly incarcerated members attend, and we typically make time for currently incarcerated members to call in and engage.

Donate to and share the campaign here.

Black August and General Prison News

This month marks the start of Black August, which commemorates Black liberation resistance inside and outside the prison walls. Anarchist and George Floyd uprising prisoner Malik recently wrote of Black August:

Black August starts soon. Usually I have others to participate with me, but since I don’t, I’m calling on those of you out there to get together in your cohorts, do 100 of something everyday with me for the month of August, and tell me how its going for you. Burpees, push-ups, sit-ups, a mile run/walk, 100 of some exercise for 31 days with me, that’d be rad! The key is unity, solidarity, so try to do them at least with one other person. You can split things up and make 100 squats into 50, plus its more fun together, and that’s what its about, what we can do together!

You can write to Malik here:

Malik Muhammad #23935744
Snake River Correctional Institution
777 Stanton Blvd
Ontario, OR 97914-8335

Black August is also being observed in prisons, upcoming film showings in Philadelphia, and an abolitionist block party is being held in NYC on August 10th.

Chicago Anti-Report have published an important update on prison censorship and mail scanning in the Illinois prison system.

On the subject of mail digitization, Bloomington ABC have shared an update that Sean Swain’s mailing address is changing from August as part of ongoing mail digitization projects in the Ohio prison system. You can see the official ODRC guideline page for more information on this subject. Write to Sean at:

Sean Swain A243-205
Mail Processing Center
884 Coitsville Hubbard Road
Youngstown, Ohio 44505

Prisoners Justice Day is observed, mainly in Canada on August 10th, and an event is being organized in Vancouver to mark 50 years of the tradition.

A fundraiser for the Greg Curry freedom campaign is being organized for August 24th in Detroit.

In August, there will be a support rally in Portland, OR for Brian “Hakiym” Simpson, who “was attacked by a coworker while working wildfire season in Oregon. He now faces years in prison after defending himself.” For more info on the rally on August 9th, go here.

Former anarchist political prisoner Eric King continues to do ongoing speaking events promoting his new book, A Clean Hell. Catch him in Reno, NV and at the upcoming Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair in October.

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak are helping to organize a parole campaign for Gene “Khalil” Scott, a prisoner being held in South Carolina under the interstate compact system who will not be allowed to speak at his own parole hearing.

A new report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has highlighted the brutal effects of shackles being used in the Federal prison system.

Oakland Abolition & Solidarity report that the California system lockdown has been lifted. They write:

As we reported in our last newsletter, CDCr had imposed a statewide lockdown on all Level III and IV yards citing an uptick in violence. Ever the opaque agency speaking in empty public relations code, CDCr of course didn’t bother substantiating or contextualizing that claim let alone explain how group punishment addresses the particularities of these violent incidents. In response to the blunt, statewide punishment, two yards at Salinas Valley State Prison initiated a mass hungerstrike within a day of the lockdown announcement.  (See their powerful demands and statement republished below). After three weeks of lockdown and flipping peoples cells en masse, CDCr reinstated normal programming across all effected yards.

Lockdowns and group punishments are a common tactic of CDCr and we can expect more in the future. In the meantime we need to stay tuned to help fight retaliations against those who resist. Retaliation is also a well worn piece of CDCr’s vile repertoire. As an ex-incarcerated compa quite familiar with CA’s prison regime said, “They usually wait for some time to let the dust settle. Retaliations will for sure come.”

We will update you all here with any information or calls to support as they arise.

Oakland A&S also highlight that the city of Oakland is planning to grow its police surveillance camera network.

Julio “Comrade Z” Zuniga has published a new article on the treatment of mentally ill prisoners in the Texas prison system at Mongoose Distro. Mongoose has also recently published new art by Federal prisoner Kit Brixton and an article by California prisoner Joadanus Olivas on his wrongful conviction.

International

Long-term Lebanese political prisoner Georges Abdallah has been released after having been held in the French prison system since 1982. The Samidoun network has published a statement on his release and reported on his return to Lebanon, and With Whatever Weapons has formatted his original trial statement from 1987 as a zine.

International repression against the Palestine solidarity movement continues, with Belgium now making moves to ban several climate action and Palestine solidarity groups, while Freedom has a report on the heavy repression ongoing in Germany. In the UK, the ban on Palestine Action as a terror group is now in effect, and July has seen a steady stream of people being arrested for publicly supporting the group. The courts have now given permission for a legal challenge against the ban to be heard, meaning that the ban could be overturned by November.

The Koukaki squat community in Athens are fundraising for legal costs, as three squatters are facing 6.5 years in prison on charges relating to a squat eviction in 2020. The final appeal hearing in the case will be heard on December 2, and there’s a call to the international squatting and anarchist movement for solidarity as that date approaches.

Greek anarchist prisoner Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis written a new article on the anniversaries of the deaths of Greek revolutionaries Christoforos Marinos and Vasos Tsironis and of Willem van Spronsen in the US.

The six, bakery workers in Gijón in Asturias and members of the CNT syndicalist union, were sentenced to three and a half years in prison after an extended legal campaign by the owner of La Suiza bakery, whom a worker accused of harassmentfreedomnews.org.uk/2025/07/11/s…

— Freedom Press (@freedompress.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T14:45:18.533Z

An international solidarity campaign is being launched for two Ukranian antifascists, Denys Matsola and Vladyslav Zhuravlyov, who have been held in Russian captivity for three years.  The Russian state has now banned all ABC groups, but the exiled ABC Moscow group continue their work, posting about the birthdays of political prisoners Lyubov Lizunova and Savely Frolov, and helping to fundraise for the legal defences of antifascist/antiwar prisoner Yuri Mikheev and the anarchist and antifascist defendants in the Tyumen case.

Italian anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito is reportedly facing a total mail ban, while Paolo Todde has now ended his hunger strike.

In Chile, the trial of Aldo and Lucas Hernandez has begun, and a number of other anarchist prisoners have made statements in solidarity with them.

In Spain, six bakery workers and members of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union have now begun their prison sentences, having been sentenced to three and a half years for their participation in a union campaign.

Police in Austria have carried out a raid against an antifascist youth camp.

Uprising Defendants

See Uprising Support for more info, and check out the Antirepression PDX site for updates from Portland cases. You can also check With Whatever Weapons for regularly-updated zines listing current prisoners. To the best of our knowledge they currently include:

Tyre Means 49981-086
USP Victorville
US Penitentiary
P.O. Box 3900
Adelanto, CA 92301

Margaret Channon 49955-086
FCI Tallahassee
P.O. Box 5000
Tallahassee, FL 32314

Malik Muhammad #23935744
Snake River Correctional
777 Stanton Blvd
Ontario, OR 97914

Montez Lee 22429-041
FCI Petersburg Medium
Federal Correctional Institution
PO Box 1000
Petersburg, VA 23804

Matthew Rupert #55013-424
USP Big Sandy
US Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224

José Felan #54146-380
FCI Terre Haute
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 33
Terre Haute, IN 47808

David Elmakayes 77782-066
FCI McKean
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 8000
Bradford, PA 16701

Khalif Miller #QQ9287
Camp Hill
PO Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733

Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho #08572-509
08572-509
FCI Beaumont Medium
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. Box 26040
Beaumont, TX 77720

Christopher Tindal 04392-509
FCI Cumberland
PO Box 1000
Cumberland, MD 21501

Upcoming Birthdays

The Political Prisoner Birthday Calendar project has been revived, and you can find the August calendar here.

Margaret Channon

Margaret was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to setting 5 cop cars on fire during the large protests in Downtown Seattle on May 29th, 2020.

The Federal system uses Corrlinks, a system where a prisoner must send a request to connect to someone on the outside before they can exchange emails, so if you’re not already connected to Margaret then you’re best off just sending her a card or a letter.

Birthday: August 1

Address:

Margaret Channon 49955-086
FCI Tallahassee
Federal Correctional Institution
PO Box 5000
Tallahassee, FL 32314

Bill Dunne

Long-term anarchist prisoner held since 1979 for attempting to free another comrade from imprisonment. Through the years Bill has also taught GED classes at almost every prison he has found himself at, helping many prisoners get their GED. Bill is generous, principled, full of integrity and has never wavered from his politics or convictions. Bill continues to stay active politically, helping edit and write 4Struggle Magazine, organizing the yearly Running Down the Walls 5K for political prisoners, and serves on the ABCF Prisoner Committee. You can read some of his writings here.

The Federal system uses Corrlinks, a system where a prisoner must send a request to connect to someone on the outside before they can exchange emails, so if you’re not already connected to Bill then you’re best off just sending him a card or a letter.

Birthday: August 3

Address:

Bill Dunne #10916-086
FMC Butner Medium II
PO Box 1600
Butner, North Carolina 27509

Hanif Shabazz Bey (Beaumont Gereau)

One of the Virgin Island 3, serving 8 consecutive life sentences after being tortured into a false confession then wrongly imprisoned since 2001 when his sentence was vacated.

Hanif is in an institution run by CoreCivic, and it appears that you can email him here.

Birthday: August 16

Address:

Beaumont Gereau #19-1952
Citrus County Detention Facility
c/o Securus Digital Mail Center
Post Office Box 20187
Tampa, Florida 33622

Christopher L Young

Queer anarchist prisoner/jailhouse lawyer in Kentucky wishing to start an anarchist book club and get more involved in organizing.

Kentucky uses Securus, so you can send him a message by creating an account at securustech.online, clicking “emessaging – launch account,” then searching his name while selecting “State: Kentucky, Inmate ID: 136515.”

Birthday: August 17

Address:

Christopher L Young #136515
Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex
200 Road to Justice
West Liberty, KY 41472

Ronald Reed

Black Liberation prisoner, convicted in 1995 for allegedly shooting a police officer in 1970.

Minnesota uses Jpay, so you can send him a message by going to jpay.com, clicking “inmate search,” then selecting “State: Minnesota, Inmate ID: 219531.”

Birthday: August 31

Address:

Ronald Reed #219531
Minnesota Correctional Facility-Lino Lakes, Minnesota
PO Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131

Headline News:

• “US Secretary Of Interior Announces End To Lava Ridge Wind Project In Idaho” • The Interior Department announced that the Lava Ridge Wind Project is being canceled. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said he would reverse approval of the large wind farm project that had been approved to be built outside of Twin Falls on BLM land. [Yahoo]

Wind farm in Power County, Idaho (US DOE image)

• “Failed US Government Wants To Dismantle Solar For All Program” • During Joe Biden’s term, as much as $7 billion was approved in the Inflation Reduction Act for the Solar For All program, intended to help homeowners install solar systems. Now the government want to stop that, as it shovels out $90 billion for tech centers. [CleanTechnica]
• “Record Coral Losses In Great Barrier Reef Spark Concern Over Escalating Climate Stress” • Parts of Australia’s iconic reef suffered their worst annual decline since records began almost 40 years ago. Back-to-back climate stressors have driven a sharp drop in coral cover – the percentage of a reef’s surface covered in live coral – in its three regions. [Euronews]
• “Critics Of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Argue It Should Be Shuttered Due To Environmental Concerns” • An eight-hour hearing on environmental concerns over the Florida migrant detention center called “Alligator Alcatraz” ended without even establishing who runs the controversial facility. We still do not know whether it is run by the state or federal government. [ABC News]
• “Tesla Shareholders Sue Elon Musk Over Autopilot And FSD Failures” • The $329 million jury verdict against Tesla last week was the last straw for several Tesla shareholders. They decided “Enough is enough!” and sued Tesla and Elon Musk personally for repeatedly overstating the effectiveness of and prospects for their autonomous driving technology. [CleanTechnica]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

In February 2025, I reported for Tempest on a controversy at the American Historical Association (AHA), the world’s largest association of history scholars and teachers. A motion brought to the annual business meeting in early January by Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), the “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” condemned Israel’s destruction of universities, schools, and cultural centers in Gaza, and the killing of students and teachers underwritten by the United States.

Following a contentious discussion, members in attendance overwhelmingly (428 to 88) passed the resolution. According to the AHA constitution, the executive council could accept the resolution as binding, submit it to a general membership vote, or veto it—if it believed the measure was “in violation of the Association’s constitution, the law, or financially or administratively infeasible.” In an interview after the meeting, resolution supporter Rebecca E. Karl predicted the council would submit the resolution to the membership, since while it was clear the council opposed the resolution a veto “would be absurd, given the landslide support it had at the meeting.”

Yet that is precisely what it did. In a short statement published on January 17, the executive council claimed the resolution contravened the AHA’s mission as outlined in the constitution, which is to promote “historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication,” including the “collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts” and the dissemination of historical knowledge among the general public. The resolution condemned the IDF’s destruction of Gaza’s archives, libraries, and other cultural centers–which clearly falls within the association’s remit. There is, moreover, readily available information concerning Israel’s destruction of Palestinian archives and libraries, going back to 1948 and accelerating after October 7, 2023.

A very different scene unfolded at the April annual business meeting of the Organization of American Historians’ (OAH), the largest historical association dedicated solely to the study of U.S. history, where HPAD brought a similar Scholasticide resolution. Like their colleagues at the AHA, attendees of the OAH conference voted for the resolution by a large margin, in this case 104 to 25. Unlike the AHA, however, the OAH executive council honored the vote as binding on the organization, and has agreed to set up a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza’s education system.

Members were not willing to let the issue die at the AHA. At the end of May HPAD, together with the Palestine Historians Group and Historians for Palestine, endorsed a slate of candidates for the annual AHA officer election. The candidates had to petition to get on the ballot, however, as nominations for the organization’s officers are chosen by a nominating committee. Notably, the right to get on the AHA ballot by petition has its origins in the turbulent 1969 annual meeting, when the Radical Historians’ Caucus led by Howard Zinn and the Committee on Women in the Historical Profession unsuccessfully attempted to pass anti-Vietnam War resolutions and elect Staughton Lynd to the presidency.

That controversy led then-president R.R. Palmer to acknowledge that the AHA was experiencing a major crisis, and reforms followed. It would not be going too far to say the association is experiencing another major crisis. At a time of severe rightwing reaction, as the Trump administration engages in a major offensive against all levels of education, academia in general is experiencing a crisis. It is an unfortunate irony that as it attempts to position itself as an important pillar of resistance to the new authoritarianism, the AHA has subverted democratic norms in its own organization. Notably, while candidates for office this year all vowed to defend history teaching and scholarship from the reactionary assault, only HPAD-endorsed candidates also emphasized the need for greater democracy within the AHA.

The Counteroffensive

The AHA establishment was determined to thwart the “Democratize the AHA” slate, however. Subscribers to at least two listservs for history professionals, H-France and the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), received a letter about the association’s election (then in process). The post was signed by 27 prominent scholars, with asterisks next to names indicating that 12 signatories were former presidents of the AHA—a clear demonstration that the message held institutional weight. The letter urged readers who belonged to the AHA, or who wished to join, to vote in the election.

Claiming this was a “moment of truth” for the AHA, the message was presented as part of an effort to combat the Trump administration’s assault on the institutions (National Archives, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, etc.) on which educators and researchers depend. The AHA’s current leadership had “valiantly” fought book bans and legislative efforts to limit the teaching of “divisive” topics—the right’s code word for teaching and curricula that acknowledge the U.S.’s racist past and present. These efforts were why, signers claimed, it was crucial to vote in the election.

While encouraging members of professional organizations to vote in elections might seem unobjectionable, the post in fact made little sense. What person running for AHA office would not vigorously defend the teaching and research of history from the attacks of Trump and the likes of the Heritage Foundation? Were the unprecedented exhortations to people in groups unrelated to the AHA, to vote in that organization’s internal elections, really be attributable solely to the current rightwing assault on academic freedom?

In fact, as Joan Scott pointed out on the blog of the American Association of University Professors, the letter was in reality a “stealth attack” against the Democratize the AHA slate. That the post was about defeating insurgent candidates rather than combatting MAGA attacks on educational institutions was obvious to anyone with an inkling of knowledge about the Scholasticide controversy. LAWCHA and H-France subscribers were not just encouraged to vote; they were urged to vote specifically for “those candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee.” Each year, listserv members were informed, the committee puts forward two candidates for each office, a “diverse mix of professors and history professionals” who are “judicious, responsible, and committed to the organization’s values.”

If, however, the two candidates put forward every year by the committee are equally judicious, responsible, and committed to the organization’s values, what, one might ask, is the point of the letter—or even of voting? If that weren’t enough, the message implored subscribers one more time “to vote for one of the two candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee (i.e. one of the first two listed).” The point could not be clearer: do NOT vote for candidates on the ballot by petition. The nominating committee knows who should be elected, and its wisdom and authority should not be questioned. No other interpretation makes sense.

Scott noted that the letter implicitly impugned the integrity and motives of those on the alternative slate, and suggested that they were outsiders not committed to the AHA’s values. Scott also acknowledged that some signers likely opposed the Scholasticide resolution on its merits, fearing that insurgents would force their criticism of Israel on the association, which could in turn bring the Trump administration’s wrath on the organization. It was possible that had there been an honest debate, and had the resolution been put to the general membership, it may not have passed. However, instead of an open debate, a call to arms commenced that purported to defend the association from the right, when in fact it was worried about an insurgency from the Left. This, Scott claimed, contradicted the democratic values that “ought to” guide the AHA.

The Response

The responses to Scott’s blog post in the comments section exemplify the divide between the AHA establishment “elders” and the rank and file. One of the signers opposing the Democratize slate, Claire Potter, wrote a long (and at times incoherent) response to Scott’s message that claimed the letter was completely independent of the AHA, and that “We are merely a group of concerned colleagues with a point of view.” Potter also asserted that the letter was not sent to any listservs, being circulated only in signers’ personal networks. The message’s motive was as it states: the AHA must be ready to meet the challenges of the Trump administration, so members should vote.

However, while claiming that the more members who participate “the greater our internal democracy as an organization” regardless of who wins the election, Potter also claimed—evidently unaware of any contradiction—that because they were “people deeply familiar with the work of the organization,” signers know that it is the nominating committee that is best suited to choose who will successfully promote and defend the historical profession. Potter evidently has a deferential democracy in mind, one in which the plebs defer to their betters but are rewarded with the democratic façade of choosing one of two candidates hand-picked by an elite committee.

In the past year alone…three AHA members—Raz Segal, Cemal Kafadar, and Rosie Bsheer—lost academic positions for speaking out on Gaza…The AHA’s silence in all these cases is as shameful as it is indefensible.

Commenters also pointed out that Potter’s response was flatly wrong. One scholar claimed to have received the letter via an AHA account, contrary to Potter’s assertion, and shamed the association and its signers for their attempt to undermine the election. Potter was forced to issue corrections about the assertion the letter was not sent to listservs, as it was obviously sent to both H-France and LAWCWA (and possibly more?). These errors, however, were excused by the claim that the “accepted risk of electronic documents is that they will find homes elsewhere.” More disturbingly, Potter attacked Scott personally and demanded evidence that signers “intended to do anything other than ask people to consider an institutionalist point of view hen [sic] they cast their votes”–an odd phrase that, like the actual alternative candidates, appears nowhere in the letter.

An anonymous historian of the Middle East lamented the message and Potter’s “smug condescension and contempt for both histories and historians of the Middle East.” They also called out the hypocrisy of the association’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and academic censorship in China while refusing to defend Middle East historians from attack in the U.S. In the past year alone, the commenter noted, three AHA members—Raz Segal, Cemal Kafadar, and Rosie Bsheer—lost academic positions for speaking out on Gaza. (The University of Minnesota rescinded an offer to Segal; Kafadar and Bsheer were dismissed by Harvard in that university’s disgraceful attempt to appease Trump.) The AHA’s silence in all these cases “is as shameful as it is indefensible.”

The Results

Election results were announced on July 21, and four of HPAD’s six endorsed candidates (Van Gosse, Karen Miller, Prasannan Parthasarathi, and Alexander Aviña) were victorious. Annalise Orleck, a Dartmouth professor arrested at a Gaza encampment in May of 2024, was unsuccessful in her bid for the position of president-elect, as was Sherene Seikaly, of UC-Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, in her bid for vice-president of the professional division. Nevertheless, the success of the alternative slate in winning four offices is an unambiguous demonstration of a rank-and-file desire for a more democratic and accountable association. Conversely, the establishment’s effort to manipulate the election can only be described as a shambolic failure.

Whether the association can truly be reformed is another question. The executive council and nominating committee (together with the executive director) have substantial control over the AHA, and in academic associations—as, unfortunately, in too many labor unions—changing bylaws in ways that facilitate member engagement are difficult by design. Perhaps usefully, however, recent controversies regarding Palestine in organizations like the AHA and Modern Language Association reveal the hypocrisy of liberal organizations that profess progressive and democratic values, but are willing to violate these principles when officials deem it necessary.

As we witness the first “livestreamed genocide,” it is worth asking at what point the AHA will reach out to Middle East experts for their views on what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) if it is truly committed to being relevant to an informed citizenry.

Back in 2015, AHA executive director (and opponent of the Scholasticide resolution) James Grossman introduced the hashtag #EverythingHasaHistory. This was done in the belief history “can inform our understanding of everything and historians’ voices are essential in conversations about current events.” As we witness the first “livestreamed genocide,” it is worth asking at what point the AHA will reach out to Middle East experts for their views on what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) if it is truly committed to being relevant to an informed citizenry. As members get weekly notifications for history workshops, talks, panels, and initiatives, and as a growing chorus of scholars and professional organizations recognize the genocide in Gaza, the AHA’s silence only grows louder.

There are analogies in the AHA’s current crisis with U.S. society more broadly. Like the Democratic Party, university administrations, and liberals generally, AHA institutionalists have refuted (and sought to subvert) the wishes of its base in an effort to maintain respectability and access to the halls of power. Such strategies, in the AHA as elsewhere, have succeeded only in generating demoralization and resentment among those it claims to represent. As should be clear to historians more than anyone else, grassroots organization from below, not deference to self-proclaimed authorities, makes social and political change. Given the stakes at every level, it is important that our voices both be heard and encouraged.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: United Nations Photo; modified by Tempest.

The post History without democracy appeared first on Tempest.

This article A veteran climate organizer’s new book shares lessons from the frontlines was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

One route to enhancing an activist’s power is to sign up for training sessions, where you can receive coaching on how to improve your organizing skills. There’s only one problem: Sometimes there aren’t enough trainers to meet the growing demand.

We learned this in the early 1960s, when the U.S. civil rights movement expanded too rapidly for available coaches to fill the need. As a result, Marty Oppenheimer and I published “A Manual for Direct Action.” When we ran out of copies, all we had to do was print more.

The current level of environmental crisis is no doubt increasing the need and demand for more activist coaching. Thankfully, Eileen Flanagan’s new book — “Common Ground: How the Crisis of the Earth Is Saving Us from our Illusion of Separation” — has arrived just in time to help out. (Flanagan is a longtime Waging Nonviolence contributor.)

Throughout the book, Flanagan’s knack for vivid description helps readers feel as though they are gaining first-hand experience. When, for example, a New Orleans environmentalist leader drives Flanagan around to see points of conflict, we readers seem to be in the car with her. We not only gain lessons drawn from powerful environmental activism, but we also feel a sense of personal comradeship with the people she interviewed and worked alongside.

Because Flanagan is a veteran activist and writer (and someone I have worked closely with over the years), she knows the questions readers want to ask — as well as the reassurance we might need at moments when the struggles we face feel overwhelming. What’s more, her writing style is more conversational and subtle than the typical activist manual, while also going quite a bit deeper in its analysis.

Anyone who digs into an issue for the years it takes to see progress made — or even a win — can feel that we know a whole lot about that particular fight. In the process, though, we may lose track of other important struggles the movement is waging, along with the associated lessons learned. One merit of Flanagan’s book is that she knows the questions we’d want to ask about the campaigns she describes — campaigns that vary widely in location and circumstance.

I didn’t know, for example, that Vietnamese youth in Louisiana were doing climate actions alongside Latinos, as well as Black and white people. Nor was I aware that Ojibwe people in Minnesota fought the installation of an oil pipeline that would damage ancestral lands.

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Flanagan doesn’t restrict herself to the U.S. either: In far-away India, she learned that activists succeeded in getting coal mining banned in a major forest — and through her interviews, we get the first-hand story of how they went about it. She also manages to link the story of a small rural settlement fighting pollution to the international climate treaty negotiations held in the Netherlands. The overall effect is one of feeling deeply connected to the victories of environmentalists all over the world, perhaps most particularly in places Americans rarely visit.

It’s not surprising that Flanagan succeeds in this way, having spent countless hours on far-away picket lines, in meetings and at organizers’ homes. Her writing skills show up in her ability to maintain the larger narrative wherever she goes: What’s working in this campaign? What are the challenges? How are activists meeting them?

Digging into victories — and challenges

Although this book offers the usefulness of a traditional activist manual, it offers so much more than that due to Flanagan’s remarkably personal style. For example, she shares the revealing moments when her own internalized racism was acted out. She then shares results of experiments she tried while working to unlearn that racism.

Previous Coverage

How a small Quaker group forced PNC Bank to stop financing mountaintop removal

Flanagan obviously enjoys describing victories, as when the Earth Quaker Action Team, or EQAT — a Philadelphia-based group she’s a member of — forced one of America’s largest banks to stop financing mountaintop removal coal mining. That victory, which made it harder for struggling coal companies to secure financing, helped to inspire more climate finance campaigns, resulting in more than 1,600 institutions committing to $40 trillion-plus worth of fossil fuel divestment.

In describing the campaign, Flanagan shares a strategy tool that helped guide it: the spectrum of allies. She then connects that tool to an environmental campaign she observes in Louisiana, offering enough detail so that readers can pick up the tool and use it themselves.

As with any environmental book, “Common Ground” has plenty of information about facts and trends that may influence our strategic thinking. However, I was struck by Flanagan’s low-key way of relating environmental facts. She knows her readers: Most of us don’t need more motivation to act — we want to know how to act more effectively.

Importantly, Flanagan shares lessons from previous movements where grassroots campaigns won against seemingly overwhelming odds. In one example, she shows how the Baton Rouge bus boycott’s partial victory in 1953 in turn spurred the Montgomery campaign’s big win a couple of years later. It’s helpful to see environmental struggles in that larger context and know that we, too, can learn from and inspire each other.

Race, class and the value of coalition

Flanagan’s combination of big-picture skills and personal journalistic details show up over and over when describing activist coalition-building challenges. She’s unusually class- and race-aware, offering an example to activists of how to extend ourselves in such ways. She tells the story of her own ancestry (working-class Irish American) and describes how that was incorporated historically into U.S. white supremacy. She then uses that example to offer suggestions to readers for whom it might be relevant.

Basing her discussion on her own experience, as well as an interview with campaign strategist Daniel Hunter, Flanagan describes four models of campaign organizing in relation to race. She then passes along what works for building common ground within the group.

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One of her most profound learnings came from an Indigenous confrontation in Minnesota over the installation of a $4 billion oil pipeline project threatening to damage ancestral lands. She describes the confrontation:

In the long skirt I had been taught to wear for ceremonies, I prayed fiercely, holding one of six thin wooden shields that were covered with reflective metal, so that the police would see themselves if they looked at us. I was one of six white allies asked to stand as a safety barrier between the police and several Indigenous youths who climbed the corporation’s structure to sing and drum through the chain link fence. A young Indigenous man with long thin braids told me that when he was asked to sing a song, he consulted the Creator for guidance, and the words that came to him were a prayer for those doing the harm.

“They don’t know any better,” he said quietly.

That reply struck me. What do we make of this difference she sometimes found between Indigenous protesters and white protesters who distance themselves from police? Are Indigenous activists more likely to honor the humanity of the enforcers by acknowledging the limitations of knowledge and conscience that seem to handicap white police?

This was new to me. In my many activist decades of dealing with police — including being beaten by them — it never occurred to me to acknowledge their limitations of knowledge and conscience as their handicap!

Ultimately, I found “Common Ground” to be both an enjoyable and fast read. I can also imagine its “manual dimension,” lending itself to being read in a group of activists. The many practical tips could easily come alive and fuel both the strategy and creativity needed for new winning campaigns.

This article A veteran climate organizer’s new book shares lessons from the frontlines was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Five years ago, my partner and I bought a house surrounded by open fields. Since then, as a kind of small-scale reforestation project designed to bring the forest closer, we’ve planted several dozen new trees, all native species, with a bias toward the slightly more southern and drought-tolerant varieties likely to do well in the face of rising temperatures.

It’s an enduring pleasure to watch these new beings develop their root systems, gain strength, and begin to take on height and girth. Like characters in a slowly unfolding narrative, each is beginning to take on a distinct personality. Some are robust, growing fast and proud; others are slower, patiently marshalling their resources and biding their time. A few have even begun to take on a certain stateliness, precursor to the mantle of grace and dignity they will inherit as they age.

To plant a tree is to affirm one’s faith in the future, while at the same time reckoning with the sadness inherent in the comparative brevity of a human lifespan. It is to humbly acknowledge one’s place in the cycles of natural life across the unimaginable vastness of geologic time.

As a novelist and avid reader, I’ve long been interested in literary portrayals of trees. Somewhere around my eighth birthday my parents started reading The Hobbit and all three books of The Lord of the Rings to my siblings and me, a journey that took us the better part of a year.

Tolkien’s epic quest narratives echo the dire circumstances in Europe in the interwar period, though the miasma of evil has its origin not in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy but in the realm of Mordor, from whence it rises like an inexorable black tide to overwhelm all the goodness in the world. Light is always there in the background, however, occasionally bleeding through that oppressive darkness to infuse the narrative with glimmers of hope.

Tolkien’s forests, similarly — where many of his most dramatic and evocative chapters take place — are gripping embodiments of this urgent wrestling match between darkness and light. The Old Forest, just beyond the borders of the bucolic Shire, is host not only to terrifying ring-wraiths but to uncanny and sometimes ravenously hostile ancient trees — and things get even worse in Mirkwood. But amid these forests of terror and danger there are also glades of joyous poetry and light, such as the alluring waystation of Rivendell and magical Lothlórien, where the cathedral-like spaces between the trees are filled with dappled golden light and the celestial music of elves.

Tolkien struck a resonant metaphorical chord when he introduced his readers to the Ents, sentient tree-beings of Fangorn forest, who are far older and wiser than any other creature in Middle Earth. As children my siblings and I couldn’t get enough of Treebeard, whose wise and funny aphorisms communicated not only the great wisdom of trees, but also an exhilaratingly defamiliarized perspective on time:

“Sheep get like shepherds, and shepherds like sheep, it is said; but slowly, and neither have long in the world.”

Our enchantment with Tolkien’s wise old trees was undoubtedly rooted in the author’s portrayal of them, which edged into the realm of the sublime:

“Treebeard lifted two great vessels and stood them on the table. They seemed to be filled with water; but he held his hands over them, and immediately they began to glow, one with a golden and the other with a rich, green light; and the blending of the two lights lit the bay, as if the sun of summer was shining through a roof of young leaves. Looking back, the hobbits saw that the trees in the court had also begun to glow, faintly at first, but steadily quickening, until every leaf was edged with light: some green, some gold, some red as copper; while the tree-trunks looked like pillars moulded out of luminous stone.”

Tolkien demonstrated once and for all that that along with other remarkable aspects of human life — love, heroism, death, the mysteries of the soul — our ancient association with trees is a worthy subject for literature.

Trees figure prominently in more recent novels, of course, perhaps most famously in Richard Powers’ 2018 masterpiece, The Overstory, whose presiding consciousness is actually a tree, or trees writ large.

Powers’ uniquely positioned high-omniscient narrator gives him the freedom to range backwards and forwards across great expanses of time. Three decades can go by in a single paragraph; a long-ago moment can be experienced with vivid intimacy, and we often know the fate of a character well before it comes to pass:

“At that click, a teenage Mimi lifted from her own nine-year-old shoulders to gaze up at the arhats from high up and years away. Out of the gazing teen rose another, even older woman. Time was not a line unrolling in front of her. It was a column of concentric circles with herself at the core and the present floating outward along the outermost line.”

One of the characters in The Overstory recalls reading a science fiction story about the arrival on Earth of a species of tiny, super-fast aliens. The aliens live on an accelerated timescale compared to that of humans, their movements so quick that they’re only perceptible as a faint buzzing in a person’s ears. Meanwhile, human movement is so slow that the aliens assume they’re inanimate meat statues, which they decide to harvest as food for their long homeward journey.

This dark little tale, of course, can be seen as analogous to our relationship with trees. We live on an entirely different timescale than the ancient, slow-growing beings with whom we share this planet, and we may therefore be missing something essential about them.

Trees play a key role in my new novel, The Afterlife Project, set partly in an old-growth forest of the deep future, in which trees provide nourishment, solace, and even life-giving companionship for a marooned scientist. One of the great pleasures of writing the book came from the hundreds of hours I spent in my local forest, giving my imagination free rein to dream up a fictional forest of the future.

Trees and forests are worthy subjects for human literature because they are an essential aspect of human lives. They provided the setting for our evolution as a species, and continue to be critical to the sustenance of both our bodies and spirits.

Most people know that healthy forests are key allies in taking on the grave environmental crisis we currently face. Recently, we’ve also learned that they’re helpful in improving our individual health. Being in a forest just feels good. Japan, recognizing this, has created an extensive nationwide network of forest-therapy trails, introducing the rest of the world to the concept of “forest bathing.” Clinical studies have provided insight into this phenomenon, finding that time spent walking or sitting among living trees may reduce stress, lower blood pressure, strengthen immunities, and improve our overall mental and physiological well-being.

A forest is a welcoming haven in any season. It has its own air conditioning system for one thing. On hot and muggy days near my home in Vermont the forest stays much cooler than out under the sun, and in winter, trees offer protection from the frigid winds that lash fallen snow across the open fields and roads, while the leafless canopy allows the sun to slant in, casting long shadows across the snow-blanketed understory and stage-lighting an evocative topography of snow-draped conifers and lichen-covered hardwood trunks.

And of course forests provide direct physical benefits for humans as well, as we know from lived experience here in Vermont: burned in our fireplaces and woodstoves, it heats us through the long winters; sustainably logged, it makes beautiful furniture and the very beams over our heads; tapped and boiled from our sugar maples, it brings forth one of the most deliciously sweet flavors known to humankind.

Trees are a living combination of the four elements revered in most ancient human systems of belief: earth and water by way of the mycorrhizal network that allows the tree to draw moisture and mineral nutrients from the soil, fire in the form of photosynthesis to harness the burning energy of the sun, and air in the way the wind bends but doesn’t break a tree’s trunk and branches, reinforcing its remarkably strong and flexible cellular structure.

It’s not surprising that groves and glades have long been considered sacred. As John Fowles wrote in his book-length essay, The Tree:

“We know that the very first holy places in Neolithic times … were artificial groves made of felled, transported and re-erected tree trunks; and that their roofs must have seemed to their makers less roofs than artificial leaf-canopies.”

A true forest is a sacred space built not by humans but by nature itself. Walking through one, any receptive person can experience the intrinsic holiness of the physical world. Toward the end of his life, the novelist Herman Hesse wrote:

“A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.”

Trees, it seems, may be messengers of a sort: stately, long-lived healers whose presence in our surroundings reminds us of our connection to the ineffable, while at the same time offering a way out of the environmental and spiritual degradation we’ve subjected ourselves to in our long, self-imposed exile from the heart of nature.

A young hophornbeam tree, planted (and photo by) Tim Weed. Used with permission.

And it seems that humanity may finally be getting the message. My social media feeds are filled with the accounts of tree-worshippers and rewilding organizations like “@bigtreehunter” and “@americanforests” and “@trees_boston.” Granted, this could just be the algorithms at work — I love trees and forests and am attuned to others who feel the same — but I’m also seeing tree-related stories in the news media with more and more frequency.

For me, this resurgence of interest in these ancient beings is cause for celebration and for hope: celebration that despite the damage we’ve done to our planetary ecology trees remain among us, and we among them; hope that the beauty, mystery, and wisdom they embody will continue to exist for many new generations of humanity to care for and enjoy.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Scan the QR code, or sign up here. Previously in The Revelator:

A Helping Hand for Mangroves

 

The post Messengers of the Eternal: Trees in Life and Literature appeared first on The Revelator.

Introducing the FMSS Advocacy Messaging Handbook The Kampala declaration instructed to “Address rural development issues by promoting farmer-managed seed systems (Strategic objective 1, CAADP Strategy & Action Plan 2026-2035)”. Seeds seem to be at their highest interest at AUC. Therefore it is essential that African Seed sovereignty promoters speak with one clear and united voice. […]

The post Voices for Seed Sovereignty: A Civil Society Guide to Policy Engagement first appeared on AFSA.

Emily Smejkal

Emily Smejkal, policy lead for the Cascade Institute's Geothermal Energy Office, is pioneering the regulatory solutions needed to transform Canada into a geothermal powerhouse.

This article originally appeared in The Future Economy

Canada is on the verge of a seismic shift—one that could define our economic and environmental legacy for generations. The global race toward electrification and net-zero emissions has created a high-stakes competition. Among baseload power technologies, geothermal electricity generation stands out as a transformative opportunity. Emerging geothermal technologies offer Canada a strategic path to build a globally competitive clean energy industry—one that can leverage our existing strengths and position us for long-term prosperity, if we take the necessary actions to stand the industry on its feet.

Geothermal can be a cornerstone of clean growth. By drilling deep and capturing the Earth’s heat, geothermal provides reliable, baseload, zero-emission power, complementing intermittent renewables like wind and solar. Globally, momentum is building. The International Energy Agency estimates a US$2.1 trillion geothermal investment opportunity. Tech giants like Google, Meta, and Microsoft are investing. The US Department of Energy’s Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) initiative and Enhanced Geothermal Shot are setting ambitious targets and backing them with serious funding. If Canada does not move now, we risk becoming a technology taker instead of a technology maker.

Canada has the ingredients but lacks the recipe

Canada is currently stuck on the ground floor. We have the tools, the talent, and the terrain—but not a single pure-play geothermal power plant to show for it. Our regulatory frameworks are a patchwork, with only Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia having geothermal-specific legislation. Federal support has been sporadic, tucked into broader renewable energy programs and grants. There has been no national strategy, no unified vision, and no clear signal to investors or innovators that geothermal is a priority.

But here is the good news: Canada is uniquely positioned to lead. First, we already have a robust, homegrown subsurface supply chain. Our oil and gas infrastructure is not a relic, but a launchpad. The same rigs and crews that drill for hydrocarbons can also drill for heat. Second, Canada’s geothermal potential spans the country. Yes, the West has the hottest gradients, but with emerging technologies, we can tap into heat across nearly every province and territory. Third, we have the talent. Canadians are already leading international geothermal projects. Our universities and public labs are conducting cutting-edge research, and our geothermal industry includes trailblazers like Eavor, DEEP, FutEra, and Indigenous-led initiatives like Tu Deh-Kah.

A modern industrial policy for geothermal innovation

To break through, we need to think bigger. We need a bold, coordinated strategy that matches the scale of the opportunity. That starts with a modern industrial policy. One that sets a clear national goal, similar to the US “Earthshot” target of driving geothermal electricity costs below $45/MWh by 2035. We need a strategy that aligns R&D funding, tax incentives, permitting reform, and IP protections to accelerate innovation. Industrial policy is not about picking winners; it is about creating the conditions for industries to reinvent themselves.

We also need regulatory reform and de-risked investment. A national geothermal regulatory template will harmonize permitting across the country and would enable rapid technology deployment. Cascade Institute’s new Groundwork report lays out guidelines that provinces can adopt and adapt immediately. We also need financial tools that give early-stage projects a fighting chance—expanded tax credits, loan guarantees, and a Canadian Geothermal Investment Fund to co-finance projects. These are not handouts—they are signals that Canada is serious about building a geothermal industry and driving down the cost of clean, baseload power.

Building Canada’s innovation engine

Policy frameworks alone are not enough, though. The Cascade Institute proposes the creation of the Geothermal Science and Technology Research Authority—GEOSTRA. Modelled after the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA) and FORGE, GEOSTRA would be a national sandbox for geothermal innovation. Its mission: to accelerate the development and commercialization of next-generation geothermal technologies through collaboration, experimentation, and shared learning.

GEOSTRA would consist of four test sites across Canada’s diverse geologies—open-access platforms where industry, academia, and government can work together, share data, and de-risk new technologies. These sites would focus on reducing drilling costs, developing high-temperature tools, refining well completions, and optimizing heat extraction. The goal is not just research, but commercialization—turning ideas into infrastructure and scaling solutions that can power Canada’s clean energy future.

To make this vision a reality, every stakeholder has a role. The federal government must fund GEOSTRA, craft a national geothermal strategy, and expand incentives. Provinces must pass geothermal regulations and streamline permitting. Industry must invest in R&D and partner on test sites. Academia must lead applied research and train the next generation of energy workers. The finance sector must develop tailored geothermal investment vehicles. Indigenous communities must be empowered as full partners and leaders. And entrepreneurs must innovate in drilling, sensors, and heat extraction—leveraging the deep expertise we already have.

Seizing the moment to lead in geothermal energy

This is a defining moment for Canada. Leadership is not a matter of chance—it’s a matter of choice. We must choose to act boldly, to coordinate our efforts, and to invest in the future we want to build. GEOSTRA can be the catalyst. A modern industrial policy and harmonized regulations can be the framework. And geothermal can be the foundation for a clean, competitive Canadian energy economy.

Canada has the heat—now let’s harness it.

Read article in The Future Economy The post How Canada can lead now in geothermal energy innovation appeared first on Cascade Institute.

In response to turbulent trade dynamics with our southern neighbour, governments across Canada are busy making important decisions about the processes, projects, and reforms we need to create stronger economies and energy systems. And as recent...