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B4. Radical Ecology

25 Years Later: How 9/11 Changed Everything

Green and Red Podcast - Thu, 09/10/2026 - 16:31
In our latest, we look at the watershed event of September 11th, 2001. We discuss how the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, led to dramatic shifts in…
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Comandante Tacho New Archive Photo of the Week

Global Justice Ecology Project - Tue, 09/08/2026 - 09:02
Comandante Tacho, headquarters of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation), La Realidad, Lacandon Jungle, Chiapas, México (1996) Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

9to5…The Labor Movement that Inspired Dolly Parton’s Movie and Song w/ Karen Nussbaum

Green and Red Podcast - Sun, 09/06/2026 - 16:48
Dolly Parton passed away last week. She’s remembered as a legendary singer-songwriter, country superstar, LGBQT icon and champion for kids literacy, but she was also very important in telling the…
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

US communities are organizing to end complicity with genocide in their backyards

Waging Nonviolence - Thu, 09/03/2026 - 09:56

This article US communities are organizing to end complicity with genocide in their backyards was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Dwight Hua’s roommate knocked on his door at 5:30 a.m. on May 22, saying there was a notice for nearly 50,000 people in their city of Garden Grove, California, to evacuate due to the danger of a deadly chemical explosion at a nearby GKN Aerospace plant. Hua quickly left for a shelter in a neighboring city. But he had a lot of questions. 

As the evacuation stretched over five days, advocacy groups VietRISE — where Hua is a youth programs coordinator — the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and Orange County Justice for Palestine formed a coalition to demand “transparency about why a facility tied to global hazardous weapons manufacturing is operating in the middle of working-class immigrant neighborhoods.” Research led by the local chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, or PYM, found that the company manufactured parts for military vehicles, including F-35 fighter jets, which are used in Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

“No one really knew that this was what we were living close to,” Hua said. “A company that makes money off of violence abroad is not the character of Garden Grove and its residents.”

Many residents who, like Hua, live just blocks away from the facility felt enraged when they found out. The coalition joined the People’s Embargo for Palestine, an international movement to establish an arms embargo on Israel, and began organizing actions to push the city to shut down GKN Aerospace and place a moratorium on military manufacturing in Garden Grove. They have been canvassing, showing up to city council meetings and circulating a petition that has drawn more than 11,000 signatures. Addressed to the mayor and city council, the petition demands “an immediate end to the use of our tax dollars, public land and public infrastructure to manufacture, store or transport the weapons that make this genocide possible.” 

While the Garden Grove City Council has canceled meetings and omitted GKN Aerospace from meeting agendas in the months since the evacuation, Hua said, the coalition has kept on growing in size and influence. Members continue to show up to city council meetings, canvass and meet with city officials, some of whom have shown support for the embargo.

The campaign for a weapons embargo is part of a larger international movement to stop global manufacturing and shipment of weapons to Israel. From Türkiye to Italy to the U.S., localized campaigns targeted at Israeli weapons suppliers have emerged, led by community groups and unions, and often supported by PYM chapters. Their goal is to end local complicity in the genocide — and ensure worker and community safety — through bans on weapons shipments through local airports and seaports, as well as shutdowns and moratoriums on weapons manufacturing facilities in residential areas.

Putting communities at risk for Israel

A coalition of community groups is leading an embargo campaign in New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport, where dangerous explosives and F-35 bomber components bound for Israel have passed through the same runways as passenger flights. The campaign is calling on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to end arms shipments through public infrastructure. Most of the coalition’s efforts have been geared toward organizing and educating workers, especially unionized workers in warehouses and on planes. 

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Abdullah Shehadeh, communications co-chair of Break the Chain, the coalition leading the campaign, said that workers were unaware they were handling explosives bound for Israel because they were mislabeled. 

“Workers feel very scared about what they’re doing in their day to day, not knowing that complicity like this is even possible for them,” Shehadeh said. “They didn’t sign up to be part of a supply chain of genocide.”

In outreach to workers, volunteers with the coalition also point out the dangers of handling explosives, noting that a munitions plant in Tennessee which manufactured the same explosives experienced a blast last year that destroyed an entire building and killed 16 people. 

Organized by New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, Break the Chain was founded in 2025 by Palestinian liberation organizers in New York who wanted to focus on a tangible campaign to organize labor. 

The coalition is advocating for more transparency for workers and the public to know what is passing through their workplaces and communities. Volunteers with the coalition post educational flyers in Queens, New York, where many airport workers live, and hand them out on the air train that workers use to commute. The coalition encourages small businesses in the area to display informational posters and hold events in their spaces. A tool on the coalition website lets workers search for whether their employers are complicit in the genocide.

“It’s their right to know what they’re moving and to not be a part of a war machine that they didn’t sign up for,” Shehadeh said. “They should be moving civilian goods, not military goods or bombs going to a genocide.” 

Break the Chain also advocates for labor unions to pass resolutions calling for a ceasefire and end to military aid, to bargain for contract protections for workers who refuse to contribute to the supply chain of Israeli arms, and to work with elected city officials to explore expanding the rights of working-class New Yorkers. After meetings with union leaders and working groups, more than 20 unions have signed the coalition’s resolutions, including the United Auto Workers, Association of Flight Attendants, National Education Association and 1199SEIU.

Shehadeh said the coalition’s activism is “an intersection between labor, Palestine, and community and public safety.” He is concerned that if the explosives are mishandled or improperly stored, there could be a catastrophic explosion threatening the lives of the more than hundred thousand people who pass through JFK every day, as well as nearby communities. 

Previous Coverage
  • Pro-Palestine activists arrested blocking New Jersey port
  • Garden Grove and the area of Queens surrounding JFK are both predominantly immigrant communities. Shehadeh said the transfer of weapons through JFK is an example of how “massive private profit fuels endless conflict, and the environmental health and moral burdens fall on working-class communities here in New York City.”

    “A handful of billionaires line their pockets with profits from weapons contracts, while we are seeing crumbling infrastructure in our subways here in New York City; we’re seeing climate change get worse and worse,” Shehadeh said. 

    Embargo campaigns at the ports

    Activists in Texas have called on the Port of Houston to place an arms embargo at their ports, where critical parts for the F-35 fighter jet pass through to Israel. Upon learning from a PYM report that the Houston port was shipping parts for the same weapons used to bomb schools, refugee camps and hospitals, activists came together with PYM and local groups to form the Houston Arms Embargo Campaign in 2024.

    The campaign took inspiration from PYM’s global Mask off Maersk campaign, which calls on people to get Maersk to end its contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Israeli Ministry of Defense to ship military components to Israel. Under the contracts, the logistics and shipping giant handles everything from tactical vehicles used to transport Palestinian prisoners  to parts for armored tanks and aircraft and artillery systems used for slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon. According to a recent report published by PYM and Oxfam, Maersk shipped millions of pounds of cargo to Israeli military manufacturer, Elbit Systems, between October 2023 and July 2025.

    PYM organizer Fouad Salah said that localizing the campaign has helped activate constituencies from students and workers to faith communities, and built relationships with 40 national and local organizations, including other Palestinian campaigns, and anti-gentrification, Black and Latino groups. 

    There are similar campaigns at major ports in California, Louisiana, New Jersey and more. In New Jersey, activists used their own bodies and cars to block a port from delivering weapons to Israel in May.

    “So many of the ports in this country are implicated in the transport of military cargo that’s used in an ongoing genocide, and I think this is a really important piece because this is public infrastructure, these are not military ports,” Salah said. “As constituents, we should have a say in what happens with our public infrastructure.”

    A child attempts to strike a piñata resembling a F-35 aircraft at a picnic hosted by Houston Arms Embargo in late July. (Courtesy of Houston Arms Embargo)

    Like the Break the Chain campaign, the Houston Arms Embargo Campaign has been flyering at community centers, parks, malls, mosques and churches. They have also circulated the Houston Arms Embargo petition, engaging constituents in the idea of an arms embargo and encouraging them to get involved. The campaign has also held free lunches provided by local restaurants for people interested to learn more about their work. In July, they held a picnic at a park to bring the community together for the campaign’s one-year anniversary, which was well-attended despite the Texas heat.

    “The power is with the people, but for the people to exercise that power, they need to be educated and conscious of what’s going on, and so a lot of our tactics revolve around getting the average Houstonian aware and agitated about what’s happening at the port,” Salah said.

    Many people Salah comes across don’t know much about how the ports near their homes are shipping weapons to Israel; once they find out, he said, they generally support the campaign and want to help. He said many people “have watched Palestinian children limbless crying for their mothers and fathers because of a genocide being committed by weapons manufactured and transported from the United States, and at a certain point, there is an ethical line that a person draws.”

    He said that having a localized campaign at the ports gives people a place to feel like they can do something about it. 

    “We were able to build a campaign that took [people’s general desire] to stop the genocide in Gaza, and hone it in to something that is happening in our city,” Salah said. “I think this gave people a sense of real purpose and real direction. It gave them a real, concrete, tangible thing that they could channel their energy into.”

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    Similarly, Hua said that having a community-based coalition has empowered residents by giving them a platform for action.

    “Having a coalition has really been a space for community members to be able to feel empowered to be involved in shaping their community,” Hua said. “We want to continue to strengthen the community power and not let this get swept under the rug, and so we are continuing to show up to city council meetings and continuing to build that power.”

    This article US communities are organizing to end complicity with genocide in their backyards was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Indigenous Groups Sue to Stop Big Bend Border Wall w/ Journalist Candice Bernd

    Green and Red Podcast - Thu, 09/03/2026 - 09:36
    In this episode, journalist **Candice Bernd** returns to the *Green and Red Podcast* to discuss **Trump’s proposed border wall in Big Bend, Texas, and the Indigenous groups and other communities…
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    What the 1960s can teach us about cross-racial solidarity

    Waging Nonviolence - Tue, 09/01/2026 - 09:15

    This article What the 1960s can teach us about cross-racial solidarity was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    There is a particular kind of political amnesia that can overtake movements in difficult times. We remember the victories but forget the arguments that preceded them. We remember the marches but forget the years of patient organizing that made them possible. We remember solidarity as a feeling rather than a political practice.

    Alice Echols’ “Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic” is a useful antidote to that amnesia.

    Echols tells the story of interracial and cross-racial organizing within the Black freedom movement through two organizations that bookend the decade: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, and the Black Panther Party. The Panthers’ commitment to armed self-defense, and later debates over militancy and guerrilla warfare, form part of that history. Echols’ central concern — and the focus of this review — is the difficult work of solidarity: how movements build relationships across differences in race, power and political position.

    This book arrives at an important moment. Across the United States and elsewhere, racism, xenophobia, and religious and white supremacist nationalism are again being mobilized to divide people who might otherwise have common interests. Authoritarian movements understand something the left sometimes forgets: people who can be persuaded to see one another as enemies are much easier to govern.

    The question of how we build solidarity across difference is therefore an urgent question of power.

    From Black Power to “Radical Chic”

    The title captures the book’s historical arc.

    Black Power meant, among other things, the assertion of Black autonomy, self-determination and political power.

    White Heat comes from SNCC organizer Bob Moses’s metaphor for the transformative potential of white participation in the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. Nearly 1,000 mostly white college students traveled to Mississippi that summer to support Black voter-registration efforts. Moses hoped their presence would expose white America to the reality of racial violence and help generate political transformation beyond Mississippi.

    And then there was “Radical Chic,” Tom Wolfe’s infamous 1970 caricature of wealthy white liberals hosting a fundraiser for the Black Panther Party at Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s Manhattan penthouse. Wolfe transformed cross-racial political solidarity into a punchline: wealthy liberals playing at revolution, fashionable people dabbling in radical causes. Echols argues that the essay became more than a satire of one awkward party: It helped create a durable political language for attacking solidarity itself.

    What happened between those moments is the heart of the book. Echols resists a simple story of interracialism giving way to Black nationalism, or a morality tale in which one side was right and the other wrong. She describes experiments in solidarity that were sometimes extraordinarily productive, sometimes painful, and often both at once.

    That complexity is precisely what makes this history useful now.

    Solidarity is not sameness

    The early SNCC experience illustrates both the promise and limitations of interracial organizing.

    SNCC brought Black and white activists together in a shared struggle against segregation and disenfranchisement. But Freedom Summer also intensified questions about power inside the movement. What did it mean for white people to participate in a movement led by Black people? Could interracialism reproduce the racial hierarchy it was supposed to challenge?

    Echols gives this contradiction a particularly revealing form. Some Black SNCC organizers noticed that local Black people who had repeatedly ignored their appeals to get involved would suddenly listen to newly arrived white male volunteers. In other cases, white volunteers arrived in Mississippi with assumptions about how things should be done, even taking over office work that Black staff had been doing. The conflicts revealed a deeper problem: The racial hierarchy SNCC was trying to dismantle could reappear inside an interracial movement.

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    These questions shaped the organization’s strategy and eventually contributed to SNCC’s turn toward Black Power and the expulsion of white staff in 1966.

    Echols’ history offers no simple verdict on interracial organizing. It shows how coalitions can generate real political power while reproducing some of the very inequalities they are trying to overcome. The people in her history wrestled with that contradiction, producing new strategies, organizations, alliances and political possibilities.

    Their experiences point toward a more demanding alternative to divide and rule: organized solidarity capable of turning difference into political power.

    Organizing is more than mobilizing

    One of the book’s most important lessons for the present concerns the difference between mobilizing and organizing.

    The 1960s are often remembered through spectacular images: marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, crowds in the streets. But the power of the movements Echols describes depended on much more than protest.

    It grew through people living in communities, building relationships, developing political confidence, creating institutions and learning how to act collectively. One example is the Freedom Schools organized during Mississippi Summer. Their purpose went beyond political messaging. Organizers developed curricula intended to help people understand their communities and develop the confidence and skills to participate in changing them. The schools became part of the infrastructure through which Freedom Summer could turn a national moment of attention into deeper local organizing.

    Freedom Summer did not emerge from nowhere. Neither did the Panthers’ survival programs or their legal and political defense networks. This infrastructure depended on relationships and material capacities built over time.

    The mass protests following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, and more recently against Trump’s authoritarianism, demonstrated extraordinary popular anger. But mass participation alone does not create durable power. Movements need the capacity to bring people into action — and then to keep organizing them after the cameras leave. They need structures through which people develop political agency, and organizations capable of surviving repression, disagreement, electoral cycles and changes in public mood.

    We need movements that can mobilize. We also need movements that can organize.

    The politics of the “ally”

    Another question running through the book has become familiar on the contemporary left: What should people do when they want to support a struggle that is not their own? Echols offers no simple answer.

    White activists sometimes became important organizers and collaborators. Others became what Echols calls “awkward allies” or “clueless comrades.” The harder question concerned the terms of participation: what could meaningful support look like in a movement organized around Black self-determination?

    Ella Baker advocated for a broad movement expansive enough even to include what she called the “matron in the fur coat.” Her approach was not merely rhetorical. When SNCC was getting started, Baker hired Jane Stembridge, a white Southern theology student and poet, as the organization’s first paid staffer. Echols notes that historian Clayborne Carson has suggested SNCC might have collapsed during that first summer without the energy and skills Baker and Stembridge brought to the work. Baker’s organizing philosophy centered on developing people’s capacity rather than accumulating authority. As Echols notes, she believed that “strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

    Solidarity is a relationship, not a performance. That does not mean every contribution carries the same value or that movements should welcome everyone without conditions. It means that meaningful participation depends on relationships of trust, accountability and a willingness to support work that one may not control.

    The Panthers offer a particularly interesting example. They remained committed to Black political autonomy while deliberately cultivating relationships with white radicals, lawyers, journalists, publishers and other supporters. These relationships could be politically useful, but they also created tensions. White radicals sometimes struggled with being asked to play supporting rather than leading roles, while the Panthers had to navigate relationships with people whose social position was fundamentally different from their own. Huey Newton later acknowledged the importance of progressive white activists to the Panthers, even as relationships between Black and white radicals remained fraught.

    SNCC’s evolving approach to white radicals points toward another way of thinking about this relationship. Stokely Carmichael, later Kwame Ture, increasingly argued that white activists should organize in their own communities. White radicals were encouraged to confront the institutions shaping their own lives, including the military draft and the Vietnam War. Bob Moses himself worked with white antiwar organizers such as David Dellinger, A. J. Muste and Staughton Lynd.

    Organizer Staughton Lynd shakes hands with a Mississippi resident during Freedom Summer. (Mark Levy Collection/The Civil Rights Archives of the Queens College)

    Carmichael’s argument proposed a different structure for solidarity: people developing power in their own communities and around the forms of oppression shaping their own lives while remaining connected to a broader struggle.

    That approach can help shift solidarity away from paternalism. Rather than entering someone else’s struggle primarily as a helper, people are asked to examine how the systems they are fighting also shape their own lives, communities and possibilities. That can create a more grounded basis for political commitment.

    There is a tension here as well. A politics built around one’s own stake can narrow into self-interest, with people feeling responsible only for struggles in which they can identify themselves as directly affected. The challenge is to begin from one’s own lived position without ending there — to build power where we are while recognizing the larger systems that connect our struggles.

    Autonomy and coalition can coexist.

    The material side of solidarity

    Echols also pays unusual attention to something movements sometimes overlook: the practical resources needed to keep political work going. Movements need lawyers, meeting spaces, printing presses, transportation, ways to communicate, food, bail money, staff, research, childcare, and, of course, money. 

    The Panthers’ relationships with white lawyers and other supporters offer a useful example. Their legal defense efforts depended on people who could provide skills, money, publicity and access to institutions that the Panthers themselves could not easily command. In courtrooms across the country, mostly white left-wing lawyers defended Black radicals against prosecutors and police forces. These relationships could strengthen the movement materially and sometimes helped expose the workings of the state itself. 

    Political economy is inseparable from organizing. Good intentions do not build legal networks, communications systems, or the other infrastructure movements need.

    Resources, however, also create relationships of power. A movement dependent on wealthy supporters can become vulnerable to their influence. A donor may want to help without understanding the political work — or may expect gratitude, access, influence or even authority in return.

    Movements often need resources from people outside their core constituencies. The challenge is to build relationships in which those resources expand collective power rather than quietly shifting power toward those who control them.

    Rather than resolve this contradiction, Echols shows why movements have to confront it.

    Repression and the politics of division

    Movements do not operate in a vacuum.

    Echols shows how repression can reshape a movement from within. COINTELPRO and local police “Red Squads” amplified existing rivalries and ideological divisions inside the Panthers, helping create a climate of debilitating paranoia. Panther chief of staff David Hilliard captured the bitter irony: The party had been created to help Black people determine their own destinies, yet increasingly “the state — FBI, police, Red Squads — is deciding our fate.”

    Repression also pushed the Panthers toward coalition. Echols traces how the pressure of state surveillance and police attacks encouraged the party to seek alliances with other radicals and left-leaning liberals, including through the 1969 United Front Against Fascism, a broad coalition that brought together the Panthers and other groups concerned about state repression and the threat of fascism.

    Previous Coverage
  • Ingredients for building courage
  • Authoritarian politics thrives on fragmentation. It encourages workers to blame migrants rather than employers, poor people rather than concentrated wealth, and racial minorities rather than the institutions that reproduce inequality. It turns religious difference into a political weapon and cultural difference into evidence of threat.

    The parallels between the present and the 1960s have limits. The present should not be reduced to a replay of that earlier period. The underlying political problem, however, is familiar: Those in power often seek to divide people who might otherwise recognize their shared interests and build power together.

    Echols’ history shows what becomes possible when movements resist that fragmentation — and what can happen when they cannot. 

    “Radical Chic” and the attack on solidarity

    Perhaps the book’s most surprising contribution is its treatment of Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic.”

    Wolfe’s 1970 essay mocked a fundraiser for the Black Panther Party held at Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s Manhattan penthouse. The image was almost irresistible: wealthy white liberals in evening clothes mingling with Black revolutionaries, champagne and revolution sharing the same room. Wolfe turned the gathering into a joke about fashionable people playing at radicalism.

    Echols argues that something more consequential happened. “Radical Chic” helped establish a political language for dismissing cross-racial solidarity as fundamentally unserious: the rich were hypocrites, the radicals were dangerous, and everyone involved was performing for status.

    That framing has proved remarkably durable. Echols traces how the idea of “radical chic” migrated into conservative politics, becoming part of a broader effort to portray progressive politics as the indulgence of cultural elites rather than a response to real systems of exploitation and racial domination.

    There is an important tension here. Some of the people who participated in these relationships undoubtedly were motivated by status, fashion or a desire to be close to something exciting. Yet the imperfections of individual participants do not tell us much about the value of solidarity itself. Treating privileged or imperfect allies as evidence that coalition is inherently fraudulent can become a way of making solidarity seem suspect.

    Echols shows that cross-racial solidarity persisted in forms far removed from Wolfe’s caricature. Black radicals continued to find unexpected points of connection with white lawyers, journalists, activists, jurors and ordinary people who encountered their politics through organizing, political trials and community work. What mattered was whether those relationships could produce greater political understanding and collective power.

    That distinction matters now. In a political culture increasingly eager to reduce solidarity to social-media signaling, celebrity activism or elite posturing, cynicism can spread easily.

    We should be capable of criticizing performative solidarity without becoming cynical about solidarity itself. The first can sharpen political judgment. The second can become political disarmament.

    A history worth putting to work

    “Black Power, White Heat” offers no formula for building the next movement. Its value lies in the richer political history it gives us for thinking about our own organizing — and in the questions that history leaves us with:

    How do we build solidarity across real differences in power and experience?

    How do we combine autonomy with coalition?

    How do we organize people rather than simply mobilize them?

    How do we build institutions that can survive repression?

    How do we develop political power within our own communities while remaining committed to a larger movement?

    And how do we build relationships strong enough to withstand the deliberate efforts of those in power to divide us?

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    Echols’ story offers no easy answers, and the people she writes about did not have them either. Their collaborations were productive and fraught, sometimes exhilarating and sometimes heartbreaking. That is precisely why this history is useful.

    The left does not need another mythology about the 1960s. We need its contradictions.

    For those of us trying to build movements now — against racism, militarism, ecological destruction, exploitation, xenophobia, patriarchy and authoritarianism — this history offers something more valuable than nostalgia. It offers political literacy.

    Read it with your organizing group. Read it with your political education circle. Argue about it. Ask where the people in the book succeeded and where they failed. Ask what their dilemmas look like in your own community.

    Because solidarity is something we build.

    In an age increasingly defined by attempts to divide us, building solidarity may be one of the most important forms of power we have.

    This article is co-published with ZNetwork.org.

    This article What the 1960s can teach us about cross-racial solidarity was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Woman with 2 Machetes: Nicaragua (1997) New Archive Photo of the Week

    Global Justice Ecology Project - Tue, 09/01/2026 - 07:25
    A woman stands in the open kitchen of a wooden thatched-roof hut; two machetes hang within the frame as ordinary tools of daily life in the rainforest. North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), Nicaragua — circa 1997 (Now the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region) Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP From the archive, back into history Archive Photo of […]
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza w/ Adam Johnson

    Green and Red Podcast - Mon, 08/31/2026 - 16:13
    In our latest, we talk with Adam Johnson, co-host of Citations Needed podcast, and author of “How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.” We…
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Why solidarity is vital to freeing imprisoned human rights defenders

    Waging Nonviolence - Fri, 08/28/2026 - 13:06

    This article Why solidarity is vital to freeing imprisoned human rights defenders was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Every Aug. 30, the world marks the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Beneath the official statements and solemn commemorations lies a stark, unsettling reality: the practice of making people vanish — and holding them in silence away from the world — remains a favored tactic for powerful regimes seeking to crush dissent. The goal of authoritarian states is to cut dissenters off from the outside world until public attention fades. 

    Yet as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani highlighted during a global leadership summit last month, solidarity is far more than a moral sentiment; when organized effectively, it acts as a concrete strategy to pull those trapped in state-enforced shadows back into the light. 

    Six years ago, when CIVICUS, a global alliance dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society, launched the Stand As My Witness campaign, we made that exact wager: that the surest way to protect an imprisoned or disappeared defender is public visibility. In practice, that means turning quiet solidarity into loud, coordinated action, sharing their stories, mobilizing petitions, amplifying their voices across borders, and forcing governments to act. The objective is simple: to make their continued detention impossible to ignore.

    Since 2020, the campaign has put faces to some 50 detained defenders and helped win freedom for 32 of them. Among them are Loujain al-Hathloul, who stood up for women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia; Floriane Irangabiye, who set up a radio station to profile the lives of exiled Burundians; and Muhammad Ismail, who spoke out against human rights abuses by security forces in Pakistan. Solidarity works. That is exactly why we cannot stop now. 

    Refusing erasure

    Authoritarian regimes rely on the quiet assumption that if a prisoner is hidden long enough, the outside world will simply move on. Countering this state-enforced oblivion requires bringing individual names, faces and struggles back into the light.

    Khurram Parvez has spent decades ensuring that victims of state-enforced disappearances in Kashmir are not forgotten. For that work, the prominent human rights defender was jailed in November 2021 under India’s draconian anti-terror laws. In exposing how security forces made citizens vanish, Parvez became a target of the same machinery of erasure himself.

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    In 2023, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his imprisonment unlawful. Though an Indian court recently granted him bail after four and a half years without trial, state authorities moved instantly to halt his release. His ongoing ordeal is a reminder that when those who document disappearances are silenced, an entire society loses its voice.

    Narges Mohammadi’s story reveals both the power of witness and its fragility. The Iranian Nobel laureate who has spoken out against torture and the death penalty has been repeatedly arrested, re-sentenced and subjected to periods of incommunicado detention — a form of short-term enforced disappearance designed to cut her off entirely from family, legal counsel and the outside world. 

    Her ongoing persecution maps almost exactly onto the world’s attention span: when global pressure was high, she was granted temporary relief; when it eased, authorities placed her in punitive isolation and handed her additional sentences. In May, after collapsing in prison following suspected heart attacks, she was released on medical bail, some 45 pounds lighter and barely recognizable. Her cumulative sentence still stands at 44 years. A conditional release is not freedom, and the threat of return — and total isolation — has never lifted.

    Buzurgmehr Yorov’s decade behind bars illustrates how states turn the justice system itself into a tool of erasure. Arrested in 2015 after taking on targeted political clients and speaking out against their torture, the Tajik lawyer has faced continuous punishment for refusing to stay silent. Held incommunicado and repeatedly placed in solitary isolation, he has been subjected to secret trials behind closed doors that pushed his sentence out to 2043, when he will be in his 70s. Though the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for his immediate release years ago, Tajikistan continues to keep him in the shadows. Silencing the advocate to bury the abuse is the ultimate act of state-enforced invisibility.

    Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya embodies a newer frontier of enforced disappearance: the deliberate targeting of those who keep others alive. Director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, he was detained by Israeli forces after refusing to abandon his patients, and he has since been held without charge, cut off from his family and the outside world as his health deteriorates. 

    He is not alone. He is one of 14 Gaza doctors whose release Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is now seeking before Israel’s Supreme Court. Amnesty International has warned that his life is in grave danger, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled his detention unlawful, and Médecins Sans Frontières has called for the release of all arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers. Their vanishing carries its own chilling logic: when the very people who run toward catastrophe to save others can be made to disappear, no one is meant to feel safe.

    Breaking the architecture of erasure

    Demolishing this system of state-enforced silence cannot be left to traditional diplomacy or closed-door negotiation alone. Protecting the space for dissent requires transforming public solidarity into an active, organized strategy.

    At that same forum, Mamdani challenged governments to consider who among today’s vilified activists will be glorified in retrospect once history passes judgment. Parvez, Mohammadi, Yorov and Dr. Abu Safiya are direct answers to that question, alongside dozens of other defenders sitting in cells or secret detention facilities.

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    And the space to defend them is shrinking at an alarming rate. Through the CIVICUS Monitor, we have tracked a steady global closing of civic freedoms — to the point where a mere three percent of the global population now lives in countries with open civic space. Across 83 countries now classified as “closed” or “repressed,” states rely on a familiar playbook: new laws branding activists as foreign agents, cross-border surveillance, and a news cycle so crowded with crises that political prisoners risk slipping into total obscurity.

    Human rights defenders are not a threat to national security. They are often the last line of defense between a society and its own collapse: the journalists, lawyers and organizers who strive to hold power to account when institutions fail. Defending them is not charity; it is self-defense for democracy.

    When powerful regimes attempt to bury dissenters in prison, global solidarity becomes a lifeline. Just as worldwide public pressure was instrumental in freeing Nelson Mandela after 27 years of state isolation, public witness remains the most formidable tool we have today. Thirty-two former political prisoners are free because ordinary people chose to speak up when states demanded silence.

    As Mamdani noted, it is often in the darkest moments that true light becomes visible. The current darkness around civic freedoms is undeniable. Our ask remains deceptively simple: Learn a name. Say it out loud. Stand as a witness. Let us make sure that Khurram Parvez, Narges Mohammadi, Buzurgmehr Yorov, and Dr. Abu Safiya are not still waiting in the dark when the next anniversary comes.

    This article Why solidarity is vital to freeing imprisoned human rights defenders was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Statements Denouncing USDA Approval of Failed GMO Chestnut

    Global Justice Ecology Project - Fri, 08/28/2026 - 10:58
    Donald Davis, PhD Author “The American Chestnut: An Environmental History” It is truly irresponsible for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to approve the release of the Darling 54 transgenic American chestnut. In my own assessment, neither the SUNY-ESF petitions, nor the plant pest risk assessment (PPRA) documents […]
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    GJEP Response to USDA Decision to Deregulate Defective D54 GE Chestnut

    Global Justice Ecology Project - Fri, 08/28/2026 - 07:37
    Take Action Here! For Immediate Release 27 August 2026 Response to USDA Deregulation of Failed GMO Chestnut New York–Global Justice Ecology Project released the following statement today regarding the announcement by the USDA of the decision to deregulate the genetically engineered (GE) Darling 54 American chestnut tree. “Given the current trend toward the disregard of science and concern for […]
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Take action: Tell USDA, SilvaBio, and SUNY-ESF you reject their Franken-Chestnut!

    Global Justice Ecology Project - Fri, 08/28/2026 - 06:35
    The USDA just approved SilvaBio’s defective GMO chestnut! Take action NOW to keep our forests wild and free from these disastrous trees! On August 27, 2026, USDA-APHIS granted “nonregulated status” to the genetically engineered D54 American chestnut tree — clearing the way for its release into wild forests with no monitoring or oversight. This was […]
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Requirements for Registering with Togel123 Agent!

    Hambach Forest - Thu, 08/27/2026 - 23:44

    hambachforest.org – Registering with a Togel123 agent is straightforward. First, you need to be of legal age. Most platforms require players to be at least 18 years old.

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    Legal Requirements for Registration Togel123

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    Residency can also play a role in registration eligibility. Some regions may have specific regulations governing online gaming platforms that players must adhere to.

    It’s vital for players to read through terms and conditions carefully before proceeding. Familiarizing oneself with these guidelines promotes transparency and safeguards against potential issues later on. Always ensure your information remains accurate throughout the process for seamless transactions down the line.

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    The post Requirements for Registering with Togel123 Agent! appeared first on HAMBACHFOREST.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    The movement to defend the Minneapolis 15

    Waging Nonviolence - Thu, 08/27/2026 - 11:35

    This article The movement to defend the Minneapolis 15 was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    When Minneapolis organizer Alec Stewart pulled out of his parking spot on June 16 and headed to work, it seemed like an ordinary day. That is, until Homeland Security Investigations, a detective-like sub-agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, rolled up with multiple squad cars and dragged him out of his vehicle. 

    “I was never told I was arrested,” said Stewart, who goes by Mac. “I was not told what for. I was not shown any warrants. I had no idea [I was going to be arrested] until I was in cuffs.”

    Mac was among the thousands of Minnesotans who rallied to defend their neighbors this January when Trump inundated Minneapolis-St. Paul with federal immigration agents who outnumbered regular police 3 to 1. Residents responded with one of the most sweeping, complex and powerful movements of the decade, mobilizing a multitude of existing relationships and organizations to craft a shield capable of fighting off Trump’s domestic militia. Using the encrypted app Signal, they built networks to track officers and warn potential arrestees. They launched mutual aid networks to support those who were in hiding to avoid becoming targets of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. They blockaded roads, tailed ICE vehicles and went out on a one-day general strike. 

    The charges faced by Mac and his 14 co-defendants, all of whom were arrested on the same day, carry multi-year sentences. The government claims all 15 people indicted “did knowingly conspire … to prevent by force, intimidation and threats, officers and employees of the United States Department of Homeland Security … from discharging the duties of their officers,” while individual defendants have been charged with additional crimes like assault on a federal officer. The alleged “conspiracy” involved everything from conversations in Signal chats about plans to blockade an ICE processing center, to assigning working groups for the Jan. 23 General Strike, to possessing homemade defensive shields or just following federal officers — as tens of thousands around the country have done. 

    What’s particularly alarming to the defendants and their allies is that the charges don’t cite any specific officers who were assaulted, and the government’s evidence includes mundane activist chatter: discussing protests and ICE locations, posting an article from the anarchist website CrimethInc. Anything provably tied to organizing, or just radical ideas, became proof of conspiracy: renting a U-Haul, purchasing a trailer from Facebook Marketplace, calling on Facebook for the public to “become ungovernable” — all were alleged evidence of malicious intent. 

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    What’s also alarming is how that information was gathered. Recently, the defense filed a motion that revealed the existence of Operation Puppet Master, a program to surveil and investigate Twin Cities labor unions, churches and community groups in advance of the filing of criminal charges. Unions in which defendants were member leaders had their finances quietly inspected, including their national unions’ political donations. Undercover officers attended protest planning meetings and covertly recorded unsuspecting citizens. The level of surveillance was shockingly broad: Homeland Security Investigations had near carte blanche to categorize almost any organization that could oppose sweeping deportation arrests as potentially criminal. 

    If the government can make these charges stick, it could have a profound chilling effect on one of the largest social movements of the 21st century, and could chart a pathway for the Trump administration to effectively criminalize any opposition. That is why these 15 defendants have vowed to fight the charges, and why they have a committee of supporters who are doing what it takes to support those who have been singled out.

    They came for everyone

    “I think they picked us out because we’re good organizers,” said Treasure Thoreson, a special education teacher who was among those indicted. All 15 of the defendants are union members, and many are leaders in their locals. Thoreson is an executive board member of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and was a captain during their confrontational strike in 2022. When Trump came back in 2024, she knew deportation defense had to be the priority. She built on her strike experience as she began to organize against ICE in her neighborhood, working with a group of rank-and-file union members called the Workers’ Solidarity Circle.

    “This is purely a way to try and send a message of fear and of repression,” Thoreson said of the charges. That opinion was echoed by everyone working on the Minneapolis case, and also by those doing jail support for criminalized protesters across the country. 

    Protesters rally at the Whipple Building, an ICE processing center, on Jan. 30 in Minneapolis. (Octavio Jones / AFP via Getty Images)

    The Minneapolis 15, as the defendants have become known, are the latest in what is becoming an institutional strategy by the federal government. In the fall of 2025, a 12-count indictment was issued relating to a shooting of an officer during a July 4 protest outside of the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas. In September, Trump labeled “antifa” a “Domestic Terrorist Organization” and connected the Prairieland case to it. Prosecutors in the case used “antifa” ideology as evidence of “providing material support to terrorists” — support that allegedly came in the form of offering “property, services, training, communications equipment, weapons, explosives, personnel (including themselves) and transportation.”

    The Prairieland indictments cast a wide net and tried to implicate protesters, some of whom barely knew each other, in the shooting based on their attendance at the demonstration, participation in a Signal channel coordinating direct actions and, in one particularly shocking situation, having moved a box of political zines that were considered evidence. 

    Many of these defendants were ultimately convicted of charges like rioting or providing material support to terrorists and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, for a cumulative sentence of more than 450 years in federal prison. The defendant who transferred the box of protest literature received 30 years for “corruptly concealing a document or record.” 

    “The outcome of this case will haunt movements for decades to come,” wrote the Prairieland defense committee in a public statement. “The Trump administration is using what happened on July 4 to test its ability to criminalize dissent and chill all opposition.” 

    Also last fall, six demonstrators, including a congressional candidate, were arrested while protesting the Broadview ICE facility in the Chicago suburbs and charged with felony conspiracy to impede a federal official, among other charges, though the felony charges were eventually dropped. Then, in January, 39 people were arrested at the Cities Church in St. Paul for protesting against the ICE officer who served as their lay preacher, and charged with interfering with religious freedom. These arrests galvanized the media because former CNN host Don Lemon, who was covering the event as a journalist, was among those charged, thus sending the message that reporters could be treated as perpetrators. 

    Reuters found at least 655 cases brought in 2025 and early 2026 under 18 U.S.C. Section 111, the primary law being used against people accused of interfering with ICE, which punishes anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes with” federal officers. This was the rationale given by masked federal immigration agents for arresting 42-year-old Minnesota resident Becky Ringstrom after surrounding her car and pounding on her window with a metal object. As a result, she was told, her information was entered into a government database, presumably allowing the administration to further build out a list of activists who challenge their authority. 

    What’s different about the Minneapolis case, is that it uses another statute, 18 U.S.C. Section 372, focusing on alleged coordination, which widens its potential scope. 

    With arrests mounting, charges escalating, and the government employing broad infiltration and surveillance, those who are organizing the defense committee hope that their model can be reproduced by communities around the country if and when their resistance is criminalized.

    The best defense

    “A lot of what the defense committee is trying to do is bring attention to the fact that this happened and show support for these people,” said Emily, a Minneapolis organizer who is a part of the defense committee and asked that only her first name be used for fear of government reprisal. 

    When activists are arrested, they are at a huge disadvantage in terms of resources and finances. A defense committee is critical to pooling community connections and skills that can support them as they head towards trial. 

    Because legal costs and the expenses of other consequences from facing such extraordinary charges can become insurmountable, creating a fundraiser was the first order of business. The fund had reached over $390,000 as of Aug. 27. Immediate support is often the next priority: helping the defendants pay their rent, get groceries and figure out day-to-day needs, particularly since in this case the defendants were ordered to have no communication with each other by the court. 

    Previous Coverage
  • Steadfast resistance under occupation from Minneapolis to Palestine
  • “I think that’s another reason they’re doing this is to scare people that this could happen to you if you do anything to protect your neighbors,” Emily said. “You could be facing legal charges and have to go through that process, which could take months, if not [longer].” 

    This is why Mac says “the process is the punishment,” since the time and money it takes to even win a case, or see it through until it is dismissed, can be enormous. Since the evidence includes things most of the city was doing, the slogan “Minnesota, the land of 100,000 unindicted codefendants” has spread.

    While financial and legal support are absolutely critical, so, too, is ensuring that the defendants stay a part of the public conversation and are supported by larger institutional players. Some members of the defense committee work with the media, while others connect with community groups. And as members of unions, the co-defendants have a built-in base of support. 

    “Today, the Trump administration is trying to criminalize those who speak up for their neighbors — trashing civil liberties, transparency and accountability — and then pepper spraying those who dare to call them out,” said Randi Weingarten, the national president of American Federation of Teachers, of which Thoreson’s union is an affiliate. 

    Union membership is mentioned in the indictment, as is the historic Jan. 23 general strike, which suggests that labor activism is part of why the Minneapolis 15 were singled out. Unions have played an especially large role in the movement against ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis, above and beyond that single-day strike. Unions like Unite HERE helped to transport vulnerable immigrant workers to and from work, and others, like CWA Local 7250 and SEIU Local 26, built mutual aid networks to support those who couldn’t work for fear of ICE arrest. The Minneapolis Federation of Educators had one of the most central roles, working with parents to prevent ICE arrests at schools by establishing hundreds of weekly watch shifts each week.

    Minneapolis teachers, parents and children rally against ICE targeting schools. (Riley Bruce / Take Action MN)

    Most movements that have faced extreme legal repression, from the Black Panthers to the New Left, have had to maintain long-term support for political prisoners. These efforts are necessary to help to ensure that no one is left behind, though they can require significant time and financial resources. But they also help the larger project survive, which in this case means maintaining the systems of mutual aid and direct action that activists are invested in.

    “It would be tragic to see all the work we’ve done get hamstrung by this politically repressive move,” said Mac, echoing what other defendants have said: The best form of support is to continue to defend our communities. 

    “[We need to] keep on going and doing what we have been doing — organizing, developing decentralized local groups that can have each other’s backs, so that when something happens again, we have this protection — and to continue to get unions involved,” said Emily, in a point echoed by the defendants.

    The committee is eyeing upcoming court dates over pretrial discovery motions that will determine how widely the state can cast its evidentiary net. Discovery can be punitive in the same way that the length and cost of a court case can. The process can be used to pull private conversations and information about dissidents into the public record. This can include conversations and internet activity that range from embarrassing to incriminating, often forcing activists to go through a painfully humiliating process of exposure that leads them open to further repression. Putting limits on that is a priority for the committee. 

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    With the federal government’s wildly outsized indictment and sweeping surveillance tactics, the outcome could be precedent-setting for what options federal authorities have when looking to infiltrate a particular locality’s anti-ICE network. Given that Trump has also used ICE as a kind of federal protest police, his federal allies need a legal victory that would allow Trump to target any city that defies him.

    The only thing that will stop that, besides good legal counsel, is having the community behind them to remind prosecutors and judges that their actions are observable and have consequences ranging from protests to lawsuits and election losses. Trump’s attacks on civil liberties and democracy are sustained primarily where resistance wanes. While the neutrality of courts has held in some cases and bent to Trump’s will in others, what happens outside of the courtroom is just as important as what happens inside it.

    This article The movement to defend the Minneapolis 15 was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Archive Photo of the Week: The Grey Lady

    Global Justice Ecology Project - Wed, 08/26/2026 - 12:09
    About the Photo: Bread & Puppet Theater takes to the streets of Vermont against the Iraq War. This figure is from Peter Schumann’s Grey Lady imagery—figures associated with war, grief, and mourning. Artist Peter Schumann is the founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP (circa 2003)
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    The fight to clean up the damage of US war in Laos

    Waging Nonviolence - Tue, 08/25/2026 - 13:27

    This article The fight to clean up the damage of US war in Laos was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    In the city of Phonsavan in northern Laos, May Sinoun, a 107-year-old woman with a gentle smile, leaned forward on her chair. She tells how she survived one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in world history. 

    “During the war, if we stayed at home, we had to sleep in pits or holes,” she said. “At night, even a small light could be dangerous. One person died because the plane saw the light and dropped bombs. If we fell down, we would cover ourselves with grass to pretend to be dead.”

    From 1964 to 1973 the U.S. led a massive bombing campaign along a supply route it called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. “Operation Barrel Roll,” as it was called, provided support to a CIA-led clandestine army in efforts to subdue the communist Pathet Lao and Northern Vietnamese fighters. The vast majority of victims, however, were civilians. 

    May Sinuon, 107, survived the US bombing of a school in Laos. (Brendan Maslauskas Dunn)

    May Sinoun survived the blast from a bomb dropped on a school she was in, but her friends were killed in front of her. She is reminded of the bombing daily. “I have wounds from that time,” she said as she squinted her eyes and contorted her body. She pointed to her arms, shoulders and back, where the pain is most intense. Shrapnel has worn down her muscles for over half a century. 

    Daily reminders of the war are ubiquitous in Sinoun’s province of Xieng Khouang. The ancient Plain of Jars is covered in bomb craters and a number of funerary jars thousands of years old cracked by the blasts. Defused bombs are scattered across the province, used as construction material, garden beds and as decoration in cafes. Spoons and chopsticks in restaurants are made by melting down aluminum from the bombs. 

    But the deadliest reminders of the war are hidden in the mountains, farms and villages of Laos. Millions of bombs never blew up. Most of them lie just beneath the surface in Xieng Khouang and surrounding northern provinces, and in the southern regions of Laos that border Vietnam. Finding and removing the bombs is a labor-intensive, slow, dangerous process. At the height of the antiwar movement, activists demanded the U.S. government come up with a long-term postwar plan to remove the bombs. Decades after the movement subsided, a small network of grassroots activists has continued to advance the demand under incredibly challenging circumstances. 

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    “Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history,” said Sera Koulabdara, who leads Legacies of War, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to the long-term impacts of the American war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. “The U.S. dropped more than 2.5 million tons of ordnance across 580,000 bombing missions — equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.” In total, across the three countries, the U.S. military dropped some 13 million tons of ordnance.

    Locals who survived the war say that “everything” was bombed — houses, ancient temples, hospitals, farms, schools, entire villages. The ancient city of Xieng Khouang was completely leveled by the U.S. bombing campaign, save for the crumbling remains of some old stupas, a temple and a few French colonial buildings. 

    One of the more devastating legacies of the war is the unexploded ordnance, or UXO, which still claims lives in Laos every month. It’s estimated that over 30% of the ordnance dropped during the war did not explode. “Today vast amounts of land remain contaminated with unexploded ordnance,” Koulabdara said. “It continues to pose a threat to citizens in all three countries, with many survivors permanently disabled and their families impoverished.”

    A poster warns about the dangers of unexploded US ordnance, which has killed over 20,000 people in Laos since the war ended in 1975. (Brendan Maslauskas Dunn)

    On a backcountry road in Xieng Khouang, trucks filled with workers stir up clouds of dust as they navigate the crumbling asphalt. The workers will spend the next few weeks finding and defusing bombs in a remote mountain village. Thousands of government and NGO workers risk their lives daily in the nerve-wrecking hunt for UXO.

    Koulabdara’s organization coordinates with a vast patchwork of NGOs, volunteers, grassroots organizations, activists and government workers who are dedicated to making Laos bomb-free. Koulabdara said the group brings together “veterans, members of the diaspora community, government officials, students, artists and supporters from across the globe.” 

    If the work continues at its current rate, however, it is projected to take 1,000 years to clear Laos of UXO. This is a fact that weighs heavily on the people that live and work among the bombs.

    The rebellion of the 1960s

    Demands for the U.S. to make reparations and clean up the millions of bombs scattered all over Southeast Asia once emanated from the ranks of a mass antiwar movement in the U.S. and communist liberation movements in Southeast Asia. 

    At its peak, the U.S. antiwar movement was ablaze with resistance on many fronts. Students, workers, the Black Freedom struggle, the feminist movement and the broader New Left rose up in the political whirlwind of the time, not only calling for an end to the bloodshed, but at times openly declaring support for the communist movements in Southeast Asia. Organizations like Students for a Democratic Society swelled to nearly 100,000 members. 

    A nine-year bombing campaign by the US leveled entire towns in Laos and left massive craters, like this one in Xieng Khouang province. (Brendan Maslauskas Dunn)

    In May 1970, more than 4 million students launched a mass strike in response to the U.S. expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the FBI’s increased political repression of the Black Panther Party. Protests were held at over 700 U.S. colleges and universities. Occupations of buildings, mass teach-ins about the war and pitched battles with the authorities were common. 

    The strike turned deadly at Kent State University when the National Guard opened fire on demonstrators, killing four. Eleven days later, police killed two students at Jackson State University. In total, nearly 100 people were wounded by authorities across the U.S. during the May strike. 

    George Katsiaficas was deeply active in the antiwar movement and the New Left, struggles he has chronicled and theorized about in a host of books and articles. In 1972 he was invited to attend a conference in Versailles called the World Assembly for Peace and Independence of the Peoples of Indochina.

    At the conference, he witnessed a deep and sincere form of solidarity in practice and was inspired by the speeches given by Vietnamese revolutionaries. It was there that he learned about cluster munitions — the kind that are still killing people in Laos today.

    “The Vietnamese gave me a three-inch-high stack of photos about cluster bombs,” Katsiaficas said. He recalled being told, “we don’t think the American people know about this” and being urged to educate them when he returned home. Although there was some public knowledge of the U.S. using cluster bombs in Southeast Asia and even actions targeting their production, Katsiaficas said this was the first time he learned about them. 

    He was horrified. Cluster bombs are designed to open in midair and release smaller “bombies” over an area as large as five football fields. The bombies are filled with plastic and fiberglass shrapnel so they could not be detected by X-ray. They are specifically designed to kill and injure humans. 

    Previous Coverage
  • A 40-year fight against cluster bombs offers lessons to stop the US-Israel weapons pipeline
  • “I was outraged at the U.S. government. I’m still outraged,” Katsiaficas said. He went back to the U.S. and gave the information on cluster munitions to other activists who created brochures and distributed them en masse. He and other activists drove across the U.S. in a speaking tour to mobilize local antiwar and activist groups to protest the 1972 Republican and Democratic national conventions. Education about cluster munitions became part of their presentation. 

    “People were genuinely shocked,” he said. “Outrage, I would say, was the main reaction that people had. Indignation, you know, digging their heels in to really fight against the war. It just made people more determined than ever that the United States was evil.”

    As more people became aware of cluster bombs, more protests were organized against their use. 

    Sera Koulabdara said that over the years, this mass organizing, educational work and advocacy to pressure the U.S. government for reparations and cleanup has certainly helped her group and other NGOs secure U.S. funding to address these “legacies of war.”

    The revolt of American soldiers who turned against the war was also at the heart of the movement. 

    Susan Schnall was a lieutenant and nurse in the Navy during the war, and now serves as president of Veterans for Peace. She made headlines in 1969 when she was dismissed from the Navy for wearing her uniform at a veterans antiwar march in San Francisco. She later launched a daring action with two other activists where they flew a plane over military bases in the Bay Area and dropped thousands of antiwar flyers. “When I look back on it, I think we were just very, very lucky that they didn’t shoot us down,” Schnall said. She organized alongside other GIs and healthcare professionals, joining the Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Medical Aid for Indochina, which sent medical supplies and aid directly to North Vietnam. 

    Map of U.S. bombing runs during the Vietnam War, with each black dot representing a 1,000‑pound bomb.

    As the war progressed, and as more Americans began to see what the U.S. military was doing in Southeast Asia as mistaken, futile or inhumane, GI resistance surged. Vietnam Veterans Against the War and other antiwar veterans groups formed, and GI coffeehouses and underground newspapers sprung up across the country to organize soldiers against the war. Increasingly, more soldiers went AWOL, refused orders or refused to fight. Morale broke down in the military. In 1970 alone, the Pentagon reported 209 fraggings (targeted killings of officers by soldiers). There were 65,643 desertions from the Army that same year. This was the largest form of soldier-led resistance to a war in the history of the United States.  

    The mass antiwar movement and GI resistance played a critical role in hastening the end of the war. The military conflict finally ended in 1975, but economic sanctions and political isolation became U.S. policy in the region for decades. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos lay in ruins, UXO continued to kill and maim, and the U.S. reneged on the Paris Peace Accords agreement in its promise to give $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam. No similar aid was ever promised to Laos. 

    From national liberation to NGOs

    Fifty years after the war’s end, the demands for reparations are now muted. The movement has long since faded away, and the communist forces in Southeast Asia became consumed by bureaucracy and state power, replacing the revolutionary language of Marxism and liberation with the capitalist language of development and finance. 

    With no mass antiwar movement using disruption and direct action to pressure the U.S. government to address the legacies of war, a small network of volunteers and grassroots activists have filled this void and turned toward raising public awareness, lobbying and directly assisting with UXO education and removal on the ground in Laos.

    Workers from the Mines Advisory Group prepare for a three-week mission to find unexploded bombs in the mountains of Xieng Khouang. (Brendan Maslauskas Dunn)

    In the 1990s the U.S. started to change its policy towards Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and work more closely with its former foes. As more money for international aid and development began to trickle in, NGOs became increasingly dominant in efforts to clear UXO. While these shifts have benefited people most at risk from UXO, they also come with strings attached. 

    Susan Hammond’s organization, the War Legacies Project, was once offered a $20,000 grant from a development consulting firm that she calls a “D.C. Beltway bandit for-profit corporation.” Her organization was slowed down by bureaucracy and constraints set by the donors. “I would never do it again,” she said. “A lot of the funding that’s going to Vietnam right now and Laos is going through these for-profit entities. NGOs are all having a really difficult time, and so they tend to not want to take on issues that might be sensitive.”

    Funding to clean up UXO in Vietnam often comes from the Department of Defense and USAID, Hammond added. “They don’t do it for any kind of reparations, or even feel guilty by any means. It’s a way for them to get closer to the Vietnamese military.”

    This also happened in Laos when President Barack Obama visited the country in 2016 and pledged over $90 million in aid to address UXO. The closer political relationship between both countries has been beneficial for American corporations as they vie to establish new markets, and for the U.S. military and government as they work more closely with Laos in a U.S.-led attempt to counter Chinese dominance in Southeast Asia. 

    Activists have to grapple with the ethics of getting funding from the U.S. government, and in particular from agencies like USAID, which was central to the war operation in Southeast Asia.

    Susan Schnall said that Veterans for Peace had an opportunity to apply for a grant from USAID to assist survivors of the effects of Agent Orange. “We had major issues and disagreements, and some people … wouldn’t take the money. Then there were others of us that said we need to take care of these children. We need to clean up the land.” In the end, the money was not offered. 

    When President Trump froze funding to USAID and UXO programs in Laos in early 2025, the limitations of doing work contingent on funds from the U.S. government became painfully clear to people in Laos. Thousands of de-mining workers were taken out of the field, programs were shuttered and many NGOs heavily scaled back their operations or halted them altogether.

    Legacies of War took a series of actions to reverse the funding freeze, Koulabdara said. “When many partners hesitated to go public, we stepped forward — using our voices, our credibility and decades of collective experience to reframe the national conversation on U.S. foreign aid and war legacy. We refused to allow the narrative to be so narrow.”

    Legacies of War put pressure on the U.S. government through public education and delivered a letter signed by 17 former American ambassadors to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging him to continue funding UXO removal.

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    The funding began to flow again after months of mounting public pressure and organizing, and a Supreme Court decision upholding a lower court’s ruling that the Trump administration must release over $2 billion in frozen funds.

    What will it take ultimately to make Laos bomb-free? It’s a difficult question, but there is an acute sense from volunteers on the ground that it will take much more than increased education, awareness and funding. 

    Another mass movement could address the war legacies in Southeast Asia and also stop current wars, interventions and support for genocide. Until that day comes, the people of Laos must shoulder the bulk of the burden, clearing one bomb at a time. 

    This article The fight to clean up the damage of US war in Laos was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    The People’s History of Howard Zinn w/ Dave Zirin

    Green and Red Podcast - Mon, 08/24/2026 - 23:22
    In our latest, Scott and guest co-host Hep Ingham talk with sports writer and author Dave Zirin about his new biography of peoples’ historian Howard Zinn. Listen in: Guest Host//…
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Iran… From 1953 to Now, The 73rd Anniversary of the U.S. Coup in Tehran

    Green and Red Podcast - Thu, 08/20/2026 - 16:59
    This week is the 73rd anniversary of the U.S. coup in Iran. In our latest, we give a background on the geopolitics of the Cold War, U.S.-Soviet tension in Iran…
    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Atlanta offers a model for building sanctuary

    Waging Nonviolence - Thu, 08/20/2026 - 10:44

    This article Atlanta offers a model for building sanctuary was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Atlanta community organizer Bassey Etuk opened a community defense workshop in June with a stark observation, and heads nodded around the crowded room. “Atlanta was a sanctuary city until the governor of Georgia made it illegal in 2009. Now Atlanta is Cop City,” he said. 

    From California to Kenya, whenever I say I’m based in Atlanta, people immediately bring up Cop City, the police training facility that sparked years of protest and major campaigns to prevent it from being built on public land. The training facility was ultimately built and is now in operation. But the Stop Cop City movement reduced the size and scale of the compound and, importantly, captured the imagination of people fighting on the frontlines against policing and state violence around the world.

    In 2026, organizers in Atlanta have shifted from protests and mass mobilizations to applying the lessons they learned from the campaign and building the infrastructure needed to practice real community safety every day.

    I am a longtime organizer and senior strategist with Project South, where I work alongside Bassey, an Atlanta-native who organizes in the 10 historically Black neighborhoods of Brownsville in southeast Atlanta. For the past two months, Bassey, I and the ATL Get Ready Team — a coalition of community organizers and organizations from across the city — launched a community preparedness plan to respond to escalating ICE enforcement, policing and National Guard deployments in cities across the United States. Together, we have been recruiting businesses, churches, bars and community centers to become “Sanctuary Zones” — sites that commit to preventing ICE and other law enforcement from entering. 

    Building sanctuary and protection for all people is critical in this period. It keeps us alive through moments of immediate crisis while positioning our communities to build the power needed for deeper, fundamental change. We share the lessons we are learning on the ground so that we are moving in coordination and solidarity with other communities all over the country who are similarly experiencing the trauma of this moment — the murders, detentions, intimidation and indictments — as fascist forces attempt to consolidate power at every level of society.

    Atlanta gets ready

    After witnessing ICE operations in Minnesota and National Guard deployments in Memphis and Washington, D.C., 15 Atlanta-based organizations came together in February 2026 and asked each other some hard questions. If federal agents surge into, deploy across, or occupy Atlanta, are we ready? Are we ready to resist, to protect our communities and to prevent killings and kidnappings? Are we ready to put aside old tensions and disagreements? Are we ready to see ourselves as connected and act together, applying unified pressure in pursuit of our shared goals of community protection and collective defense?

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    At our first coalition meeting, Adelina Nicholls of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights said it clearly: “We can no longer afford to mobilize in reaction to what is happening. We have to determine a political direction and alignment towards a real vision.”

    Large-scale anti-ICE protests have been powerful demonstrations of collective dissent and people power. But we understood that without greater unity across race, class, gender and geography, we could not win.

    It was a vital moment for those of us who have organized in Atlanta for a long time. Organizations that did not always work together and that openly acknowledged long-standing tensions and disagreements, decided that, given the rise in state repression and violence, we need each other differently in this moment.

    In the face of ICE raids in Latino, Caribbean and African immigrant neighborhoods, ongoing police violence against Black youth, sweeps of homeless encampments ahead of the World Cup in Atlanta, and the targeting of youth and trans people at the federal and state levels, we named criminalization as a shared reality and a political baseline for our alignment and collective action.

    We agreed on a single commitment: to prevent and disrupt the growing criminalization of all our people. We called ourselves the ATL Get Ready Team, and we began by sharing trainings and building our collective skills with one another and with communities across Atlanta. In all, 15 Black-led, migrant-led and queer-led organizations made the decision to work together, combining our strengths instead of continuing to work alone.

    Over the past six months, that commitment has become a practice. We meet weekly to check in and coordinate on the work happening on the ground. We have facilitated community trainings, hosted educational forums, organized canvassing days and launched a shared campaign to protect our people.

    The assembly affirms the vision

    In the aftermath of the Stop Cop City movement in 2025, organizations across Atlanta joined forces to organize People’s Movement Assemblies to define and build real community safety — despite the mayor’s assurances that training police forces in advanced urban warfare techniques would do that for us. Assemblies are community gatherings where people come together to assess the problems they face, develop shared solutions and create plans of action.

    Drawing on the lessons we learned during the Stop Cop City struggle, we shifted from resisting the city’s vision of public safety to building our own. The assembly process became a form of community governance to define that vision together. It also became a space to strengthen relationships and build the movement infrastructure needed for long-term transformation.

    Previous Coverage
  • ICE will be at the World Cup, but organizers are ready
  • The ATL Get Ready Team participated in the Atlanta Citywide People’s Movement Assembly in March. It was the third assembly held since early 2025 and led by the People’s Campaign. More than 500 people poured into Project South’s historic building in South Atlanta looking for connection, skills and a plan to act. Together, our organizations facilitated a large-scale, real-life scenario exercise to prepare for the upcoming World Cup season. We walked participants through the anticipated influx of federal law enforcement, drones and surveillance expected over five weeks during the summer. The gym was full of so many people — young and old, seasoned organizers and those just coming into the movement space. Naming the heightened military presence in our communities was scary, especially as we witnessed ICE murders and violence, but there was also relief that we were naming our power to prepare and act. We told the room, “Prepared people don’t panic.”  

    We then moved into a full day of practical, hands-on trainings in community first response, mutual aid organizing, ICE tracking, school protection, Know Your Rights (and the risks), and porch-sit community engagement.

    By the end of the assembly, participants committed to continuing to organize together, building toward May 1, International Workers’ Day, and developing community safety plans for the World Cup season. We also began to design a campaign that invited more people to participate in protections that would reduce and eliminate law enforcement entanglements.

    Recruiting Sanctuary Zones

    Sanctuary Zones are spaces that commit to keeping communities safe by refusing to cooperate with ICE or other law enforcement agencies that criminalize, detain and separate people from their families.

    They are also a way for businesses, faith institutions, community centers and other public spaces to demonstrate a commitment to caring for their staff, patrons and neighbors. Sanctuary Zones are a practical response to the violence, hostility and fear created by the Trump administration’s escalation of ICE raids, National Guard deployments and the criminalization of protest over the past year.

    The more our organizing team learned about the preparations for the World Cup — including hundreds of millions of dollars allocated for security, expanded police deployments, street closures, surveillance technology and drones — the more convinced we became that we needed a campaign with accessible entry points for more public engagement around keeping our communities safe. 

    Project South organizers participate in a canvassing day to build the Sanctuary Zone network across Atlanta to protect people from ICE and police violence. (WNV/Stephanie Guilloud)

    We designed a plan to invite bars, restaurants and community centers to commit to declaring themselves as a Sanctuary Zone and to become part of a network of protection. We used the word “sanctuary” on purpose to signal that even if Georgia passes legislation to make it illegal for cities to pass sanctuary protections for migrants, independent businesses, faith centers and community spaces can declare sanctuary as autonomous spaces.

    The real shift came when we named a deeper truth. We built the campaign in response to the public outrage over ICE, but we also knew we had a responsibility, and an opportunity, to make clear that ICE and the police are two arms of the same apparatus. Both function as agents of the state to control, contain, surveil and criminalize our communities. From the beginning, the ATL Get Ready Team aligned around an abolitionist position not to reinforce any part of the prison-industrial complex.

    Bassey opened a Sanctuary Zone workshop at Project South’s Juneteenth gathering by naming his own experience with the police in Atlanta. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve been harassed, searched, had guns put in my face,” he said. “But in 2006 when the police shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, it shifted something in this city. Police had a no-knock warrant using false information and it was the wrong house. Kathryn was old-school, she reminded me of my grandma. My grandma kept a .22 and shot it every 4th of July. When police battle rammed Kathryn’s house, she let off a single warning shot, and in return the officers fired 39 shots killing her dead. There are many battles we’ve lost, but we can’t afford to lose more battles like that if we want to win in the long-term.”

    So far, some 70 sites across Atlanta have publicly declared themselves Sanctuary Zones. Barbershops, bookstores, independent businesses, bars, restaurants, retailers, churches and community spaces have all joined the network. We canvassed neighborhoods, inviting sites to display Sanctuary Zone posters in their windows and commit to the campaign. We also coordinated Know Your Rights and Risks trainings and other community preparedness workshops for participating sites, while connecting them with local policing alternatives and diversion programs that offer practical ways to respond to conflict and crisis without calling 911.

    Multiple grassroots organizations canvassed over 500 sites across Atlanta as part of the ATL Get Ready Team. (WNV/Stephanie Guilloud)

    The campaign engaged more than 500 sites across the city. We began by concentrating on the two-mile radius surrounding the stadium as a visible show of solidarity to the thousands of visitors expected during the World Cup. As we learned that ICE was shifting its tactics and increasingly targeting people in surrounding counties, we expanded our outreach beyond the stadium corridor to neighborhoods where watch parties and community gatherings would take place, so that vulnerable people could feel safer being in public and enjoying the matches.

    Many bar owners and restaurant operators expressed their commitment to refusing ICE entry but were hesitant to display a Sanctuary Zone poster or publicly join the network out of fear of retaliation. Many Black-owned businesses appreciated that we named the connection between ICE violence and police violence. As one owner told us, “We already don’t call the cops, we can sign on to this, easy.”

    In a time of economic hardship, the government’s extraordinary spending on police, ICE and surveillance feels like a slap in the face, and the people we spoke with responded with outrage at this unjust siphoning of public funds. The Federal Emergency Response Agency, or FEMA, spent more than $846 million on security and policing for the FIFA spectacle instead of responding to climate disasters. During hurricane season. During the hottest summer on record. During floods and wildfires affecting hundreds of thousands of people. 

    At the same time, as many of us feared, ICE kidnappings and detentions escalated, reaching 43,000 in the month of June alone. Over the previous two months, four Black men were killed by federal troops and agents deployed in Memphis, while the military occupation of Washington, D.C., doubled from 2,500 to 5,000 troops. For comparison, the massive ICE operation in Minneapolis deployed 3,000 federal agents, creating immense harm. Faced with this reality, we refuse to give in to fear. To protect our people, we prepare and we build.

    Sharing the vision

    A local coffeehouse owner said, “Of course, we will sign on. I’m an immigrant, and when we are in solidarity with each other, we are stronger. What do we have to lose?”

    She immediately offered the coffeehouse as a meeting space. We are now talking to business owners and church leaders about holding sessions that allow folks to share policies and practices that support protections for workers, patrons and community members.

    The invitation to Sanctuary Zones is to join a larger vision: a coordinated network of sites that can be proactive and generative in times of crisis rather than reactive. These spaces are one step toward reducing our reliance on policing, which so often produces harm instead of safety. They create a concrete invitation for people beyond the usual movement circles to resist this regime through collective noncooperation. Sanctuary Zones prioritize safety over surveillance and solidarity over fear.

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    As we move out of the heat of summer and into the fall, the ATL Get Ready Team intends to keep building. Project South will facilitate Community Responder Trainings to strengthen the capacity of community members to assess emergencies, intervene and address medical situations without calling the police. The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights will continue offering ICE tracker and legal trainings so businesses and faith institutions understand their rights and know how to prevent ICE raids.

    Together, we will invite Sanctuary Zone partners to run drills and continue practicing preparedness plans that can be adapted to many kinds of crises — whether climate disasters, economic instability or state violence. Preparation is infrastructure, and in times of disaster or crisis, infrastructure is power.

    Sharing the lessons

    Below are a few lessons to share with groups working on similar projects: 

    1. Differences are not deterrents: We can acknowledge differences and tensions but still work together towards a common vision of preventing criminalization and protecting our communities. Differences can be a strength because sharing knowledge from divergent perspectives gives us a fuller picture of the threats and opportunities to respond. 

    2. Connections make our strategies stronger: We can connect ICE, policing and surveillance — an important political intervention that ensures movements to protect our immigrant neighbors are inseparable from movements to protect our Black neighbors from deadly policing. Both are connected to the growing struggles against data centers, surveillance technologies and cameras in our public spaces. We can connect daily, local police harassment to federal agents roaming our streets and to the executive orders and legislation that is targeting trans people and anyone who dissents.

    3. Focused strategies are winning strategies: Collaborating around a shared strategy to name and resist the criminalization of people, poverty and protest is an important path forward. Bars, independent businesses and other community spaces want to participate in this moment, they simply need accessible ways to do so. One commitment, one poster, one campaign gives them a concrete way to say yes to noncooperation with institutions of harm, and yes to the work of creating proactive protections and solutions.

    4. Local knowledge and national ripples: Rooting in local knowledge, relationships and histories is critical to building long-lasting infrastructure that engages people from diverse backgrounds. Careful reconnaissance to identify canvassing targets, direct follow-up with people with trusted relationships at neighborhood barbershops or churches, elders working with young people to engage sites from different angles, and clear recognition of local cultures and tensions make campaigns like this stronger and allow more people to participate. 

    Each of our locations requires different tactics, but if we can coordinate across places and learn from one another as we have learned from Ferguson to Los Angeles, Chicago to Minneapolis, Washington, D.C. to Memphis to Atlanta, we can confront this daunting machine with greater strength, deeper solidarity and more collective power.

    As Rehana Lerandeau of Critical Resistance said, “We have to make our practices and our stories fresh, radical and irresistible.” In a time of so much danger and despair, sanctuary is a practice and a vision for how we want to be together in community. This campaign invited people across a diverse range of communities in Atlanta into their own courage, and they have overwhelmingly said yes. 

    This article Atlanta offers a model for building sanctuary was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

    Togel123 Login Online Gambling Site with Abundant Bonuses

    Hambach Forest - Tue, 08/18/2026 - 21:51

    hambachforest.org – Welcome to the world of Togel123 Login, where excitement meets opportunity! If you’re looking for an online gambling site that not only offers a thrilling gaming experience but also showers players with abundant bonuses, you’ve come to the right place. With its growing popularity in Indonesia, Togel123 has become a go-to platform for both seasoned gamblers and newcomers alike. As you explore this vibrant realm of chance and strategy, it’s crucial to understand how to navigate it safely while reaping all the rewards. Dive into our comprehensive guide on what makes Togel123 Login stand out from the crowd!

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    The post Togel123 Login Online Gambling Site with Abundant Bonuses appeared first on HAMBACHFOREST.

    Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

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