The U.S.'s political landscape - and our daily lives - are increasingly shaped by repression and violence, amplified by a media cycle designed to keep us fearful in the present, uncertain about the future, and depleted. Exhaustion is not a side effect of this system. It is one of its core tools. Last year, I wrote that Donald Trump's attacks were designed to exhaust us. Over the past year, I've watched communities build movements and adapt their organizing under this reality.
In the United States, death, deportation, forced disappearance, and state kidnappings against migrants have been normalized. This killing causes significant concern because it's a warning to anyone bearing witness to state terror that they too could be killed if they stand in solidarity with targeted communities. That's the mark of a pending escalation of state repression that necessitates the full participation from the majority to act as bystanders that will either fully support or look the other way as state terror escalates.
We said that if we could do something to damage this military regime, we should, recalls Aguirre on the terrace of the restaurant he ran for many years after his retirement. But it had to be subtle, or they wouldn't let us out on the field. So, we slipped into the toilets with a pair of bootlaces. I tied one onto Sergio, and he tied one onto me, so they looked like armbands. They swiftly rejoined their teammates, leaving an empty changing room behind.
Our guests today are among the many Chicagoans who have shown up with courage and care over the last few months, and I am proud to have struggled alongside them. As raids expand to other cities and the Department of Homeland Security signals that Chicago may be hit even harder in the spring, these lessons feel urgent - both for our own preparation and for anyone, anywhere, who may find themselves facing what we just lived through.
The United States is lurching toward neo-fascism with alarming speed, courtesy of President Donald Trump, who is using all the resources of the repressive apparatus of the U.S. state to stifle dissent and crush opposition to his extreme agenda. He is so keen on imposing his dystopian vision on the country that he has sought to criminalize anti-fascist struggle itself. How do we fight back?
The news was bittersweet. Bitter because Assata will never again walk among us, tell another story, or author another poem; bitter because no longer can we point to her as a living example of she who struggled for Black people with courage and dignity, she who remained steadfast in the face of such fierce opposition. But also, sweet. Sweet because although they hunted her, the forces of U.S. Empire - with all their monstrous technology, were unable to kill her,
During 2024's "Bloody July," hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis rose up against corruption, class stratification, nepotism, and exploitation under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party, the Awami League. Protests began on June 5, 2024, with small student demonstrations against preferential access to civil service jobs at a time when 30 percent of young people who aren't students or in job training programs are unemployed. Protests grew throughout July and August, incorporating the working and middle class.
