By Ralph Nader October 9, 2026 Ever wonder why, more often than not, progressive candidates for public office lose to the most venal, corrupt, right-wing politicians? It is not just that progressives don’t have enough money. Too often, they run cookie-cutter campaigns—tediously monotone, without exciting and compelling activities. They also fail to draw a vivid…

On October 8, Oscar Belgal was shot in his car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. According to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, agents surrounded the man’s car, which had a 5-year-old child in the backseat, before firing seven rounds. A photograph taken a few hours after the shooting showed the car crashed into a concrete barrier, with a bullet hole in the windshield, two holes in the rear side window, and one in the rear panel.

Belgal was reportedly struck in the neck and taken to the hospital. While the child miraculously sustained no physical injuries, as Mamdani notes, this experience will leave him “traumatized and terrified.” Mamdani further remarked, “Tonight, millions of our neighbors are wondering whether they will be safe on our streets, in our schools, at their work sites.”

Those words are far from hyperbole. Additional photos obtained The Intercept show a federal agent in a high visibility safety vest wielding an assault rifle. An eyewitness said that the man was posing as a construction worker before the incident. This would not be the first time Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents disguised themselves to surveil targets. In 2025, ICE admitted that their agents were posing as construction workers in New York as part of an ongoing operation. Earlier this year in Minneapolis, ICE agents were caught disguising themselves as utility workers using fake license plates in clear violation of state law.

The sad reality is that Trump does not need to taunt Iran into attacking American cities—ICE is already doing that.

Not only do these secret police tactics undermine public trust and accountability, they also create additional risks. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass immigration agenda, people have impersonated masked ICE agents to commit robberies, kidnappings, scams, sexual assaults, and to terrorize immigrant communities across the country.

All of which raises several questions: Did ICE agents properly identify themselves to Belgal? Or did he just see a construction worker with an assault rifle pointed at his car and child? Did the officers try to deescalate the situation? Or did they take advantage of the confusion their own disguises created to justify unwarranted violence?

Importantly, Wired reports that one of the ICE agents present at the scene has been identified as Brenden Cuni, an ICE supervisor who has been involved in several illegal street arrests:

Court filings accuse him of using a Taser on a handcuffed man, while activists have alleged he is one of the agents seen forcing a pregnant woman to the ground during a Minneapolis operation. In recent months, federal judges have repeatedly found arrests involving Cuni unlawful. One judge called an arrest warrant he signed ‘fraudulent,’ while another said that video evidence contradicts his sworn account of an arrest; in a third case, the government withdrew his sworn statements as inaccurate.

Given the circumstances, as well as ICE’s track record of unprovoked violence and the string of ICE impersonations, Belgal would have had every right to fear for the safety of himself and the child. While ICE blames sanctuary policies and undocumented immigrants for endangering the public, it is their fascist tactics and the incompetence of their officers that are actively making the country less safe.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately responded to this latest violent incident by blaming the victim. They claimed that federal agents were conducting “a targeted enforcement operation […] to arrest a criminal illegal alien” who had been arrested in 2023, “but was released into the community a few days later by reckless Democrat sanctuary policies that put American lives at risk.”

Notably, their statement offers no justification whatsoever for the use of deadly force. Even if we accept DHS’ framing of Belgal as a dangerous criminal, that is not a legitimate reason for a federal agent to shoot a civilian—let alone to fire indiscriminately at a car with a child onboard. Within a rule-based democracy, prior arrests are not a license for extrajudicial violence.

This, however, is part of the problem. ICE operates as if simply being undocumented or having a criminal record nullifies any legal protections that immigrants are constitutionally afforded. In doing so, they openly violate and betray the very principles they purportedly wish to defend, while simultaneously breaking the very laws they supposedly want to uphold.

The sad reality is that Trump does not need to taunt Iran into attacking American cities—ICE is already doing that.

Importantly, this latest incident comes less than two weeks after DHS announced that ICE had “initiated a nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities.” On October 8, the same day Belgal was shot, the Trump administration reportedly launched “Operation Safe California”—a 45-day immigration enforcement surge across the state beginning in San Diego.

While the Trump administration has repeatedly targeted sanctuary cities and policies, these specific efforts are about the midterms. By targeting blue states like New York and California, Trump is hoping to sow enough fear and chaos to suppress Democrat turnout, while rallying Republicans who continue to overwhelmingly support his administration’s immigration policies. This, alongside his attempts to undermine mail-in voting and use a controversial database to check the citizenship status of voters, are part of his administration’s multipronged strategy to remain in power. As Trump himself has noted, if Republicans lose the midterms, he’ll “get impeached.” It is that fear—not public safety or concern for the American people—that is driving this latest round of ICE violence. In the end, Trump only cares about one thing: himself.

Ultimately, ICE must be abolished, but in the short term we must do everything we can to defend our communities against Trump’s armed gestapo and his attempt to steal the midterms. This includes pushing our elected officials to pass and enforce meaningful checks on ICE activities, supporting journalists and media outlets documenting ICE abuses, as well as creating community support networks to help victims of ICE’s brutality.

Yesterday it was Belgal. Three weeks ago, it was Wilber Rafael Garces Perez. Tomorrow, it could be any one of us. For everyone’s sake, we must put an end to ICE’s violence once and for all.

Once again, the debate over capital punishment is raging, driven by the staggering incompetence of Tennessee’s would-be prison executioners, who have repeatedly failed to kill Christa Pike for a murder she committed 30 years ago, and by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s shocking announcement that the military plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Major Nidal Hasan.

Largely missing, as usual, is the question that ought to be paramount in the mind of any citizen considering the wisdom of a government practice or policy: what is the death penalty for?

Clearly, killing killers is not about keeping society safe from convicted murderers. Serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from jail twice in 1977. The 2015 Dannemora break by Richard Matt and David Sweat in upstate New York, Danelo Cavalcante’s escape in Pennsylvania in 2023 and parts of the Texas Seven escape in 2000 all made news precisely because 99.999% of murderers remain behind bars. A 2024 study found that about 91% of overall escapees were back in custody within a year, most within a week.

Proponents repeatedly argue that the ultimate punishment serves as a deterrent. But if you visit a prison and talk to murderers—as I have—you will quickly learn that the vast majority of heinous crimes are committed by young men in their teens and 20s, typically under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, and often driven by the need for money to buy more drugs. By the time these offenders are in their 40s or 50s, they are entirely different people who would never do anything like that again if they were released.

Murder, by the way, has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the criminal justice system.

For a deterrent to work, a person considering a violent act has to be in a reasonably calm and rational state of mind. When Christa Pike and her two accomplices committed murder in the 1990s, she had convinced herself that the victim was plotting to steal her boyfriend. She was a drug addict at the time. It is fair to surmise that she never stopped to consider the possibility that she might end up behind bars, much less subjected to lethal injection. Like most murderers, she did something crazy while she was crazy.

There is no credible evidence that executions prevent murders—by reoffenders or anyone else—that long imprisonment would not prevent. There is also no good evidence for the opposite, liberal claim that executions cause more murders by cheapening life. The data do not support treating deterrence as a demonstrated benefit of the death penalty.

Retribution, then, remains the sole credible justification for executing citizens who commit murder or treason. Some killings are so disgusting, some people believe, that death is the only appropriate punishment. Families of some victims argue that it is an offense to them that their loved one is gone forever while the person who killed that loved one continues to draw breath; they yearn for closure.

Should the feelings of victims’ families trump serious political and ethical considerations—such as whether the state, an entity that is supposed to exemplify, embody, and define the best rather than the worst behavior among human beings, should kill other human beings? We cannot ignore the well-established historical record of a country that repeatedly convicts people of capital offenses, only to determine later that they were innocent all along.

Even if the state were to become incredibly efficient and effective at identifying guilty parties and executing them in a more civilized fashion than in the Pike and Hasan cases, the much-wanted closure argument collapses upon inspection.

A study analyzing news accounts of 138 executions carried out between 2006 and 2011 found that only 31% of relatives quoted said the execution brought closure, healing, or a step toward either, and 35% said they felt it represented justice. About 19% said it brought neither closure nor positive feelings. Thirteen percent said capital punishment was too easy.

A separate 2014 study of relatives who witnessed executions found that only 23% even mentioned closure, and those who did were evenly split on whether they had gotten it.

For those who subscribe to the Old Testament structure requiring an eye for an eye, the justification for state-sanctioned vengeance seems self-evident. If you are a practical American citizen fairly weighing the usefulness of this practice, however, there is not much point to the death penalty.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)

 

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LIVE 11 am Eastern Fridays, and then streaming whenever you wanna hear/watch it:

Ted sits down with editorial cartoonist Steve Breen to discuss politics and political cartooning.

Steve Breen, 56, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Orange County as the second oldest of eight children. He earned a political science degree from the University of California, Riverside, in 1992. He began drawing cartoons for the campus paper, The Highlander, and in 1991 won the Charles M. Schulz and the John Locher Awards.

He was nearly a high school history teacher when the Asbury Park Press hired him in 1994; he became its editorial cartoonist in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1998. In 1999 he launched the syndicated strip Grand Avenue. He joined The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2001, won a second Pulitzer in 2009, and left in 2023 after drawing more than 5,500 cartoons. His work remains nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Steve has also written and illustrated children’s books, including Stick and Violet the Pilot, and created the animated series Powerbirds.

Scott is off today.

Live Fridays at 11 am Eastern/10 am Central. Streaming after on YouTube and the usual podcast apps.

X: @tedrall and @scottstantis

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The post Here Come the Midterms (with Steve Breen) | DMZ America Podcast | Ep 261 appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

For the third week in a row, high school students across France are taking to the streets demanding more investment in their education. They want more teachers, smaller classes, decent school buildings, and a public education system that works for poor and working-class students.

But their struggle comes at a moment when France faces mounting pressure to cut public spending while dramatically increasing its military budget. The question at the heart of this uprising goes far beyond education: Will France invest in its young people—or in missiles, weapons, and war? Books or bombs?

What began in the Paris suburbs has spread to more than a thousand schools. On October 6, more than 250,000 people reportedly took to the streets in demonstrations supporting the students.

An entire generation is being asked to accept austerity while Europe embarks on one of its largest military buildups since the Cold War.

The government's response has only deepened the anger. Instead of addressing students' demands, authorities have unleashed riot police, tear gas, grenades, and mass arrests. More than 6,500 people have reportedly been arrested since the protests began, most of them minors. Some young protesters have suffered horrific injuries, including a 15-year-old who lost his hand after a police grenade exploded. Amnesty International has condemned what it calls the "disproportionate" use of force against young people peacefully demanding their right to education.

The contrast is striking: Students are asking for teachers and decent schools, while the government deploys riot police against them—and finds billions more for its military.

The student movement is unfolding just as NATO is pressuring European governments to massively increase military spending. Under intense pressure from Washington, NATO leaders agreed in 2025 to a staggering new target: 5% of each member country's GDP by 2035. At least 3.5% is supposed to go directly to military expenditures, with another 1.5% devoted to military-related infrastructure, cybersecurity, and "resilience."

This represents an enormous shift from NATO's previous 2% target, which many members already struggled to meet. For countries facing growing deficits, heavy debt, and deteriorating public services, such an increase comes at a steep price.

France provides a glaring example. The country has nearly $4 trillion in public debt—roughly 119% of GDP, one of the highest levels in Europe. To tackle its deficit, the government has proposed approximately $48 billion in spending cuts and tax increases, putting already strained public services under even greater pressure.

Yet even as the government demands belt-tightening, its proposed 2027 budget increases military spending by approximately $7.2 billion in a single year, compared with just $1.2 billion more for education. The education budget would also eliminate 1,588 permanent teaching positions.

Imagine being a 16-year-old sitting in an overcrowded classroom, with a leaking ceiling and no regular teacher, hearing that your government cannot afford better schools—but can somehow find billions more for weapons.

France's own fiscal watchdog has pointed out that increases in central government spending are being driven largely by rising interest payments, contributions to the European Union, and increased military expenditures.

NATO officials insist that this massive military buildup is necessary to protect Europe from Russia and other threats. But the notion that Russia is poised to invade France is absurd, and the push for ever-greater military spending raises a fundamental question: What kind of security is the French government actually providing if their schools, hospitals, and other public services are left to deteriorate?

France is not alone. Students and teachers in Belgium, Spain, and Portugal have also taken to the streets over education funding and working conditions, reflecting growing frustration across Europe with governments that claim there is not enough money for basic public services.

An entire generation is being asked to accept austerity while Europe embarks on one of its largest military buildups since the Cold War. Political leaders may insist that education and military spending are separate issues. But they compete for the same limited public resources.

And some French students are already making that connection themselves. Protest signs have declared, "Money for schools, not war" and "Fund high schools, not genocide," linking their immediate demands to the broader question of what—and whom—the government chooses to fund.

These young people are challenging the very definition of security. NATO measures security in tanks, missiles, drones, and ammunition. The students are demanding another kind of security: decent schools, equal opportunity, and a society that invests in their future instead of sacrificing it to an endless arms buildup.

Their demands should resonate throughout the NATO alliance, including in the United States, where public services are under attack while President Donald Trump seeks a staggering 54% increase in the military budget.

That's why CODEPINK and allied groups are organizing a Taxpayer Uprising in Washington, DC, November 10-12, bringing people into the halls of Congress to demand a fundamental reorientation of our national priorities. Instead of funneling ever more tax dollars into war and weapons manufacturers, our government should invest in healthcare, education, affordable housing, green energy, and a sustainable future.

From the classrooms of France to the halls of Congress, the question is the same: Will our governments invest in life—or in war? Books or bombs?

LIVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

The firing squad execution of 2009 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed December 3rd.

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we also discuss:

• Unidentified ICE agents using unmarked cars surrounded a Dominican man and his 5-year-old child in his car in the Marble Hill section of The Bronx and shot him multiple times.

• The Pentagon has developed plans to strike Iran’s drone and missile arsenal, energy facilities and other military sites. But Trump has repeatedly decided not to relaunch heavy combat operations against Iran. And the U.S. military response to Iran has been more muted in recent weeks. Several explosions were heard in the Saudi capital, including one at the Riyadh airport. A recent Congressional Research Service report shows that at least 81 U.S. military aircraft, drones, and helicopters were lost or damaged during the war with Iran—Senator Chris Murphy calls it a cover-up.

• The Trump Administration suspended major tech companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, as well as IT outsourcing firms from a green card program. J.D. Vance said that the companies had “abused” H-1B visa and green card processes in order to “replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants.” Officials announced probes into 9 universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, that the Administration accused of misusing a program meant for temporary educational and cultural exchanges.

MERCHANDISE: DeProgram.MySpreadShop.com

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House Democrats can stand with college athletes, or they can help Donald Trump score a win at those athletes' expense. There isn't much middle ground here.

The Senate has passed the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that would make it harder for college athletes to set the terms of their own endorsement deals. Now the president wants Congress to put it on his desk.

Democrats should say no. Passing it hands him a win and gives powerful schools even more control over the young people whose labor keeps college sports running in the first place.

There's still time for Democrats to hold out for a better bill. They should keep the scholarship and health protections, protect women's and Olympic sports, and give athletes real bargaining rights and a way to fight unfair restrictions.

In its September 28 statement, the White House cast Trump as a champion of college athletes and pushed lawmakers to bring stability to the system. It's a tidy story. Democrats ought to ask the obvious follow-up, though. Stability for whom?

For decades, college sports ran on the idea of amateurism. The rivalries got the headlines, and players were told they were out there for the love of the game. Funny how that love never kept the schools from cashing in. By 1952, college football was already a TV property. That year, NBC paid the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) $1.14 million for the rights to broadcast one game a week.

Then came 1984, when individual schools and conferences won the right to cut their own TV deals, and the value went through the roof. That's a big part of how college sports grew into the multibillion-dollar business it is today. Schools and conferences fought each other for TV money, all while capping what the athletes bringing in that money could make. Nobody turned on the TV to watch an athletic director. They tuned in for the players.

A lot of the athletes shut out of that money came from families without much wealth to pass down. Black athletes, in particular, filled the rosters of the football and basketball programs that drew the biggest TV checks. Colleges and networks made money off every game, yet the players couldn't earn a dime from their own names or faces. Their work built wealth for just about everyone but them.

That began to change in 2021, when the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA couldn't cap certain education-related benefits for athletes. Days later, state name, image, and likeness (NIL) laws took effect, and the NCAA set aside the rules that had kept athletes from profiting off their names, images, and likenesses. For the first time, a player could get paid for an endorsement or a video game appearance and still keep their eligibility.

To Democrats, this ought to read as a labor fight, plain and simple. Athletes finally got some room to negotiate what their names and talents are worth. Coaches, networks, and universities have been doing that forever. Yes, a scholarship is worth something. So is the work of the person who earns it. We can't champion workers' bargaining power in every other industry and then act like it's a problem once it shows up on a football field.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has spent years preaching about free markets, is now one of the people leading the charge to limit what athletes can earn. So I guess competition only becomes a crisis when the young people doing the work finally have some leverage over the schools paying them. Nick Saban insisted last month that player pay and coach pay are "totally different markets," but when the Senate had a chance to cap coaches' salaries, that amendment failed, so apparently the only market that needs a ceiling is the one where the players get paid.

Congress has no business giving schools more power over the terms of players' endorsement deals. Athletes deserve protections, and they shouldn't have to give up their leverage to get them.

Collective bargaining belongs at the center of this fight. Athletes need to be able to negotiate as a group over pay, working conditions, and medical care for injuries that can stick with them for years after their eligibility runs out. Giving them a seat on some committee doesn't come close. Democrats should insist on a bargaining framework with real teeth, not punt the question to some future commission.

For Black athletes, the stakes are even higher. An NIL deal might cover a family's bills, chip away at debt, or start a savings account. Cap what players can earn or where they can go, and you shrink those chances during a career that's short to begin with. The NAACP has opposed this legislation, warning that it puts institutional interests ahead of athletes' economic rights. Democrats would be smart to listen.

And now Trump wants his name on it. Why would Democrats help him market limits on athletes' bargaining power as a win for the same people those limits hold back? We tell voters we'll fight for workers and help Black families build wealth. We should remember that when rich universities and conferences show up asking for protection.

There's still time for Democrats to hold out for a better bill. They should keep the scholarship and health protections, protect women's and Olympic sports, and give athletes real bargaining rights and a way to fight unfair restrictions. What they shouldn't do is give Trump a win paid for with Black athletes' economic freedom. The people doing the work have earned a win of their own.

Looking across the devastated landscape of the Gaza Strip, where surviving generations now carry the permanent physical and psychological scars of war, the ultimate indictment of our era is damning: The world watched the horror unfold in real time, possessed all the legal, political, and institutional mechanisms to stop it, and did nothing.

For months, then years, the catastrophe in Gaza tested the fabric of international law, the integrity of global governance, and the moral conscience of humanity. From the halls of the United Nations to the high courts of The Hague, what followed was not information failure, but a shameful surrender of political and moral will.

Rarely does history deliver such swift and scathing hindsight. Three years after October 7, 2023, the real horror of Gaza is that this barbarity was never hidden; it was broadcast live in high definition to a global audience that watched, debated, proceduralized, and allowed it to continue.

There was never any doubt about the genocide, nor a dearth of international laws to end it. Instead, the failure lies entirely with Western institutional gatekeepers who have lacked the courage to act.

Israel’s war on Palestinians continues uninterrupted. Despite having the influence to halt the crisis, major international powers have not intervened, allowing the regime and its colonizers to increase their violence across both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

As time lifts the fog of war, the systemic breakdown of global institutions and governments becomes unmistakably apparent. The world failed to stop the genocide in Gaza not because it lacked awareness or warning. It faltered because the “rules-based” international order (aka Western order) is structurally and morally bankrupt, paralyzed by complicity, cowardice, and double standards.

The war exposed international humanitarian law as a selective tool of the West—applied swiftly to some, but suspended when it inconveniences the powerful. Governments that traditionally postured as champions of human rights have prioritized strategic alignments over universal legal and humanitarian obligations.

During the initial months of the onslaught, as the number killed rose into the tens of thousands and entire neighborhoods were flattened with their residents inside, global diplomats did what they do best: Use bureaucratic delays to stall for time.

While hospitals were besieged and children underwent amputations without anesthesia, on blood-soaked floors, the UN Security Council degenerated into a theater of deadlock. The world’s premier body for collective security rendered global consensus impotent and buckled under superpower threats.

Repeated resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire were either vetoed or watered down into toothless rhetoric. Meanwhile, international courts meticulously deliberated over the legal nuances of genocide while graves multiplied and atrocities continued uninterrupted.

Today, as the International Court of Justice unhurriedly considers its final ruling on South Africa’s 2023 genocide case against Israel, tangible memories of Palestine are being erased; centuries of history, culture, and ancestral lineages are being obliterated. For Palestine, justice delayed is not justice denied; it is genocide completed.

Three years of impunity, of unprosecuted genocide, reveal that the value of human life is being measured on a sliding scale; that it is weighed based on race, geography, and political utility.

In retrospect, these procedural and administrative delays look less like structural gridlock and more like an active cover-up. Every month spent debating the semantics of humanitarian corridors or compliance with international law gave carte blanche to Israel’s military onslaught.

The harshest criticism of the last three years falls on Western powers. Governments that never tire of lecturing the world on human rights, rules-based order, and international jurisprudence performed moral gymnastics to justify the unjustifiable.

We watched as world leaders converged on Israel with blank checks of allegiance, supplying an uninterrupted stream of munitions that reduced universities, schools, hospitals, markets, bookstores, bakeries, places of worship, and apartment blocks to rubble.

While publicly wringing their hands, in private, these same leaders approved the weapon shipments. And, in a cruel theatrical act of humanitarian absolution, they authorized the aerial dropping of meager sacks of flour into the very zones in Gaza they helped leave in ruins.

Failure was not restricted to the halls of power; the entire mainstream media landscape failed alongside it. For months, reporters on the ground in Gaza—those who were not among the hundreds systematically targeted and killed—fought to pierce a wall of severe censorship and dehumanization.

In the West, corporate media tied itself in knots trying to sanitize language in order to obscure Israel’s direct responsibility for the ongoing violence. Outlets downplayed Palestinian deaths by using passive language like "died" to treat mass casualties as collateral damage, all while elevating voices that defended the legitimacy of the war.

The public response, however, revealed a deeper fracture. Millions marched in cities worldwide, launching one of the largest sustained anti-war mobilizations in a generation. Yet, the disconnect between the governed and the governing remained absolute. Western democracies proved entirely immune to the moral demands of their own citizens.

The silence of the last three years has been deafening. There was never any doubt about the genocide, nor a dearth of international laws to end it. Instead, the failure lies entirely with Western institutional gatekeepers who have lacked the courage to act.

Allowing genocide to go unpunished creates a dangerous precedent for global security. If international law and justice are buried in the rubble of Gaza, the global community will ultimately be digging its own grave.

In Guaíba, in southern Brazil, the effects of CMPC’s pulp mill enter people’s homes. Residents living nearby describe a rotten-egg smell from reduced sulfur compounds that irritates the eyes and nose and causes headaches and nausea. They live with noise and powerful vibrations, in some areas around the clock. Residents report cracks in their homes and disrupted sleep while sawdust and even foam from the mill’s effluent treatment plant fall on their houses. Soot and dust cover laundry hanging on clotheslines and cars parked in driveways, making it standard practice for the company to pay for the washing of neighborhood vehicles.

And then there are the accidents.

Workers have suffered poisoning and injuries, including fatal incidents. Chlorine leaks have affected residents living nearby, while communities still do not have an adequate emergency plan for a major accident.

Now CMPC Wants to Build Another Pulp Mill

Chilean pulp and paper company and monoculture tree plantation CMPC plans to build the so-called Natureza Project in Barra do Ribeiro, Rio Grande do Sul. The project isn’t simply a factory. It encompasses the expansion of massive eucalyptus monoculture plantations, roads, port infrastructure, dredging, transmission lines, and increased transportation, with production projected at millions of metric ton of pulp annually.

Indigenous and environmental organisations therefore question why the territorial, social, water-related, and ecological impacts of this tree monoculture expansion are not fully incorporated into the project’s assessment process.

And this is all happening as the industry continues to utilize an intense corporate lobby, leading to serious legal setbacks in corporate environmental regulation at the state and national levels. In 2023, environmental zoning regulations for forestry in Rio Grande do Sul were relaxed, allowing for the expansion of plantations from 1.2 million hectares to 4 million. And in 2024, forestry was excluded from the list of potentially polluting activities that consume environmental resources in Brazil, exempting tree monocultures from any type of environmental permit.

CMPC also actively greenwashes their activities, going as far as to fund local football tournaments. We see this as a broader scheme by corporations to mitigate pushback against their operations.

The Impact Assessment Can’t Stop at the Pulp Mill

The proposed mill would discharge industrial effluent into Lake Guaíba, a crucial water body near Porto Alegre and other municipalities with a population of around 1.3 million people. Among the issues raised publicly are water quality; cumulative effects on a watershed already under pressure; and impacts related to dredging and navigation, mining, and the discharge of wastewater and industrial effluents (including those from the company’s existing factory). The volume of water consumed by the company and the pollutants discharged into Lake Guaíba would be equivalent to the water consumption and wastewater production of the entire population of the region. Possible contaminants include dioxins, extremely toxic chemical compounds that can enter the food chain and reach humans through the consumption of fish.

Lake Guaíba also supports fishing communities, contributes to drinking-water supplies, and is already under enormous ecological pressure. Asking whether a new factory complies with the technical conditions of a permit is therefore a narrower question than asking whether the entire corporate project is compatible with the rights of the people and ecosystems that are forced to absorb its consequences.

The Natureza Project presents a practical test for a global principle: Corporate human rights regulation must reflect the reality of corporate power.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office says at least eight Mbyá Guarani villages fall within the project’s direct area of influence and 18 within its indirect area. As a result, its recommendations stress that consultation under International Labor Organization Convention 169 cannot be replaced by informal meetings or an Indigenous component study. Consultation must be free, prior, and informed and must respect the communities’ own protocols and decision-making processes. But the struggle goes beyond the consultation; it is about ensuring that communities have the right to say NO to the project.

That distinction is fundamental. Consultation is not a box to tick after the project has effectively been decided.

The proposed mill is also inseparable from a longer history. CMPC has been linked to the Laja-San Rosendo massacre, in which 19 people were murdered following Augusto Pinochet’s military coup. In 2021, the Concepción Court of Appeals convicted a former CMPC employee as an accomplice in the killings, finding coordination between state agents and company personnel. That history underscores why corporate accountability cannot be reduced to whether a company publishes sustainability reports or complies with a narrow administrative procedure.

The UN Binding Treaty

The proposed legally binding instrument is intended to address precisely the gaps that arise when corporate impacts cross borders, jurisdictions, and stages of production. A meaningful treaty should require companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and address human rights risks associated with the entire chain of activities under its control or linked to its project.

For a project like Natureza, that would mean assessing the mill alongside plantations, roads, ports, dredging, water use, emissions, and affected communities. It would mean treating Indigenous consultation as a substantive right rather than a procedural obstacle. It would mean ensuring access to information, participation, justice, and effective remedy.

Most importantly, it would clarify that responsibility cannot disappear simply because an impact occurs several steps away from the factory itself. That is the accountability gap the UN negotiations must confront.

The Natureza Project presents a practical test for a global principle: Corporate human rights regulation must reflect the reality of corporate power.

If a company’s business model transforms land, water, livelihoods, and Indigenous territories across an entire region, then the law must be capable of seeing that whole picture.

Anything less leaves the people bearing the consequences to carry the burden of a business model they never designed.

As we approach the midterm elections, our country's most prominent voting concerns are back on the frontline. The US is experiencing historically high voter turnouts, yet voters are expressing record levels of dissatisfaction. Perhaps it is because one of the most salient topics across party lines is missing from the conversation: campaign finance reform.

The upcoming midterm election cycle is projected to be the most expensive in American history. Analysis by The New York Times found that 20 donors have already spent $1.2 billion on this year's campaigns to push candidates in battleground states and integrate corporate agendas into public policy. Special interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Musk’s America PAC are spending big to elect allies friendly to their political and economic interests. Not only do AI groups fund candidates, but increasingly dishonest and weird deepfake AI videos circulate online. Further analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) Action Fund found that 172 billionaire families spent $1.7 billion. Over $1 billion in untraceable dark money is corrupting American democracy.

Americans are unhappy with the state of campaign finance in the US. But how did we end up here? In 1976, the Supreme Court’s Buckley v. Valeo paved the way for campaign finance laws by equating campaign donations to “free speech,” protected as a First Amendment right. In, 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC ruling enabled the creation of “super PACs,” allowing unlimited corporate donations beyond the previous $5,000 limit. As a result, US elections are dominated by corporate interests and lobbyists, increasing the cost and accessibility of running for office.

The For Our Freedom Amendment is here, and campaign spending limits are not far behind.

Several polls confirm Americans’ discontent. Many in both parties and in all regions of the country have lost faith in our system, feeling elected officials cater to lobbyists rather than constituents. Nearly 80% of voters believe big donations are linked to corruption, while merely 4% of American voters believe the United States’ current political system works well. This pattern is similarly present in congressional elections;8 out of every 10 adults in the US believe that people who donate money to political campaigns have too much of an influence over congressional decisions.

However, while many remain dissatisfied with the state of campaign finance, large majorities are optimistic about reform. Approximately 60% of Americans believe in the possibility of adopting laws that limit spending on political campaigns. An even greater majority desire doing so, with 72% of Americans believing in imposing spending limits on campaigns. All around the country, Americans support enforcing limits by margins of 3-to-1 or even greater.

Although many may be skeptical, wondering how campaign finance reform can take place when unlimited spending is protected under the First Amendment, change is already underway. The pathway lies in the very foundation of the American democratic system: the United States’ Constitution. Supermajorities up to 80% across the country support an amendment to limit campaign spending. Already, the cross-partisan nonprofit American Promise has drafted and is proposing the amendment.

The For Our Freedom Amendment was developed meticulously through the collaboration of citizens, lawmakers, and scholars from all parties. Its text gets straight to the point: It empowers the government by granting it constitutional authority to enforce campaign spending limits. The full text of the amendment is as follows:

Section 1. We the People have compelling sovereign interests in the freedom of speech, representative self-government, federalism, the integrity of the electoral process, and the political equality of natural persons.

Section 2. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to forbid Congress or the States, within their respective jurisdictions, from reasonably regulating and limiting contributions and spending in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.

Section 3. Congress and the States shall have the power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation and may distinguish between natural persons and artificial entities, including by prohibiting artificial entities from raising and spending money in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.

Its concise and clear language makes it accessible to the average American. It conveys a refreshing honesty and constituent-first sentiment recently missing from political debate, placing it at the heart of political and individual dignity.

Not only is it drafted, but support for the amendment is significant. Twenty-three states have passed official resolutions calling on Congress, meaning it has garnered nearly half of the three-quarters majority required for Congress to propose the amendment.

While a constitutional amendment may feel beyond reach, we must keep constitutional change at the forefront of our political imagination. The seeds of reform have already been planted by the electorate. Electing proactive candidates enables conversations and reform in Congress. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) proposed the House Joint Resolution 191, Constitutional Campaign Finance Reform Amendment, in collaboration with American Promise. With this, Rep. Barrett expressed unwavering American democratic spirit, and this is just the beginning.

It is now our job as citizens in this election cycle to keep the pressure on, which means greater voter participation. Congressional leaders are in charge of the Committee on Appropriations, which oversees and enforces campaign finance laws. Participating in the election of competent leaders can lead to higher standards of regulation; but beyond that, it may very well be a key stepping stone on the road to ratification.

Unequivocally, the facts do not lie: Americans want change. So, call your friends and family, or chat with your neighbors, and let them know: The For Our Freedom Amendment is here, and campaign spending limits are not far behind. We can make this happen

Customer service has never been worse or more irritating to American consumers, who must suffer countless indignities like A.I. phonemail trees that don’t recognize their voices. The only way out, for those who are willing to publicize their plight, is to go public on social media.

The post Customer Service appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Washington’s political discourse on the war with Iran took a revealing turn during President Donald Trump’s recent campaign remarks. Having originally sold the confrontation as a rapid, low-cost campaign destined to conclude within weeks, the administration abruptly reset its threshold of acceptable sacrifice. Trump declared that even if Iranian retaliatory strikes were to “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, such catastrophic damage would remain “a small price” for American security. While the remarks drew immediate backlash across California leadership, the strategic implication runs far deeper. It marks the collapse of the Pentagon’s short-war doctrine, signaling that the conflict’s costs have migrated from West Asia directly to the American homeland.

At the onset of hostilities, the White House’s logic rested on absolute military preeminence. Superior firepower was supposed to impose a swift resolution, sparing Washington an attritional quagmire. But as weeks turned into months, the gap between promise and operational reality became unbridgeable. Rather than compelling capitulation, Washington met Iran’s resilient deterrence and asymmetric depth. Instead of seeing military burdens recede, the administration must now explain to voters why they must shoulder costs never accounted for in initial war plans.

Hawks defend this shift by claiming that conditioning the public for pain signals resolve and escalation dominance. Yet this justification collapses under scrutiny. Effective deterrence requires achievable political aims, not normalizing homeland destruction to obscure planning failures. Far from projecting strength, accepting strikes on major domestic metropolises reveals an inability to dictate terms militarily. It is the posture of an overextended power that has lost escalation control and is retroactively negotiating the price of strategic deadlock with its own electorate.

Dismissing devastation to these hubs as a “small price” reveals the transactional ethos of the ruling elite: Ordinary citizens and domestic infrastructure are treated as war livestock—herded to absorb the fallout of elite adventurism while their safety is traded away for unattainable geopolitical goals.

The dismissal of potential damage to California brings this cynicism into sharp relief. Los Angeles and San Diego are not incidental collateral; they anchor America’s defense architecture. San Diego serves as the premier home port of the Pacific Fleet Surface Navy, housing dozens of combatants and major Marine Corps installations, while Los Angeles anchors the nation’s primary aerospace and defense manufacturing cluster. Dismissing devastation to these hubs as a “small price” reveals the transactional ethos of the ruling elite: Ordinary citizens and domestic infrastructure are treated as war livestock—herded to absorb the fallout of elite adventurism while their safety is traded away for unattainable geopolitical goals.

This domestic vulnerability mirrors Washington’s strategic miscalculation in the Strait of Hormuz. Planners envisioned the waterway as a pressure point where naval coercion would rapidly force compliance. Instead, it became an economic trap. Protracted uncertainty across maritime routes, compounded by crisis-level war-risk insurance surcharges—premiums have surged from 0.10-0.25% of hull and machinery value pre-conflict to 3.5-7.5% per transit—and severe disruptions documented in the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) assessments of vital transit chokepoints, turned a tactical blitz into structural inflation. The EIA assumes the strait will remain effectively closed through late May before traffic gradually resumes. The very levers intended to force a rapid settlement have prolonged the conflict, imposing compounding penalties on American consumers.

The crisis extends beyond an elongated timeline; the political logic of the war has been inverted. Initially, military force was justified as a way to avert protracted costs. Today, that framework has become an exercise in retroactive justification. When the White House argues that metropolitan destruction is acceptable against abstract security objectives, the debate ceases to be about preventing the burdens of conflict. It becomes about forcing citizens to accept homeland vulnerability as the price of foreign policy failure.

The central question is no longer simply when Trump can announce that the war is over. The more important question is whether he can explain to the American public the gap between the promise of a “two-week war” and the reality of a protracted crisis. A war that was supposed to end with a rapid victory has instead become a conflict whose continuation requires explanations about fuel prices, the Strait of Hormuz, and even the security of American cities.

This shift exposes an irreconcilable contradiction in official messaging. Trump insists the conflict will end “very soon,” yet simultaneously prepares the public for catastrophic domestic losses. If the war were genuinely nearing a favorable conclusion, preparing the homeland for devastation would be irrational. If the destruction of major cities is a realistic possibility, the promise of a swift, contained campaign was fundamentally illusory. Washington cannot maintain both assertions: one is a fiction, the other an admission of failure.

Where did the two-week war go? The answer lies in Washington’s altered vocabulary: from promising minimal costs to declaring destruction at the heart of America tolerable. When leadership stops preventing the burdens of conflict and instead demands that citizens absorb them at home, the illusion of hegemonic control shatters. The two-week war collapsed against strategic overreach, leaving an administration trying to sell the sacrifice of its own cities as an acceptable price of power.

In much of the country, there is an enormous vacuum for working people seeking political representation. In 2024, 132 Republican House victories were by 25 percentage points or more.

In nine Great Plains and central states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho—Democrats did not even field candidates in approximately 40 percent of the roughly 1,400 state legislative races, according to my own rough count.

Here’s what one 2026 projection looks like:

The above map shows all too clearly that in vast areas of the country working-class voters have no realistic alternative-party representation—the Republican is the only viable major-party choice, while the Democratic Party has largely abandoned many of these races.

But nature, as well as politics, abhors a vacuum, which is why we’re starting to see the emergence of progressive populist independents trying to take hold in this desert.

Here are a few worth noting:

Dan Osborn, a mechanic, Navy veteran, and former labor union president, is running for US Senate in Nebraska against incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts, the former governor and son of billionaire Joe Ricketts. Osborn came within seven points of defeating Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024, running 16 points ahead of Kamala Harris, and the 2026 race has again attracted national attention.

The current polling picture is close. The average of three recent Nebraska polls has Ricketts at 46.3 percent and Osborn at 44.7 percent, within the margin of error, with a substantial share of voters undecided or supporting other candidates. The latest polls that meet the New York Times criteria for worthiness show Osborn slightly ahead, a virtual toss-up pitting an incumbent Republican with deep pockets against an independent.

We can expect an inordinate amount of money to flood into the race to attack Osborn. A Republican super PAC has already put more than $3 million into advertising targeting him.

Osborn is running on his Nebraska Growth & Fairness Plan, which he says is “not a party’s platform or written by consultants. It’s written for the people who punch a clock and wonder why nobody in Washington is fighting for them.”

He explicitly disavows a connection to the Democratic Party, though the Republicans try to link the two at every turn.

If Osborn can overcome the Republican financial advantage, it would be an enormous boost to working-class candidates who have given up on the Democrats.

Unfortunately, Osborn faces the fallout from a leaked audio recording in which he made disparaging remarks about some of Trump’s voters. The recording was obtained by the Omaha World-Herald, and Osborn subsequently said that the voice “sure sounds like me” and apologized for the remarks.

He was recorded saying:

“Billy Bob in f—— Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the f—— Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the flag, all he knows is that he’s on the winning team. (Trump has) been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them … you’re on the winning team. And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so f—— bad.”

November will tell us whether his campaign against the two parties can overcome both the Republican financial advantage and the political damage from his choice of words.

Todd Achilles is running as an independent for US Senate in Idaho. He says:

“The two-party system has failed America. Both parties increase the national debt, keep us in endless wars, and favor big corporations, harming our families in the process…I reject the left-right divide because the challenge ahead of us is those at the top versus those at the bottom — those in power against the people. I will fight for all Idahoans, not billionaires or extremists.”

Achilles, a former Democratic member of the Idaho House of Representatives, is not a traditional working-class candidate. He is an Army veteran and technology executive who is running on a populist, anti-corporate platform.

The polling picture in Idaho is complicated. Recent surveys have produced very different results depending on the sample and whether voters are shown a two-candidate or multi-candidate race. One recent rather optimistic average of polls shows Achilles trailing by about 3 to 5 percent.

Whatever the polling, Idaho remains an overwhelmingly Republican state: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris there by 36.5 percentage points in 2024, winning 66.9 percent to Harris’s 30.4 percent.

Brian Bengs, a US Navy and Air Force veteran, former JAG officer, and lawyer, is running as an independent for the US Senate from South Dakota. In 2022, he ran for Senate as a Democrat and lost by more than 40 points. He’s running as a member of the Independent Veterans of America.

He is attacking the billionaire class:

“who buy politicians to rig the system so they can pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries & condition us to see only through red or blue-colored glasses disguising how they pick our pockets.”

His campaign’s current platform indeed emphasizes getting big money out of politics, eliminating corruption, banning congressional stock trading, unrigging the tax code, and reducing the national debt.

Like Achilles, Bengs faces a formidable Republican political environment. Trump carried South Dakota by 29.2 percentage points in 2024.

Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman, construction worker, teacher, principal, and former superintendent, is running as an independent for Alaska’s sole congressional seat. He spent more than two decades in education and was named Alaska Superintendent of the Year in 2023.

Hill is calling for:

“a total ban on congressional stock trading. Billionaires and corporations need to pay their share like the rest of us. And we need to get big money out of our elections…I’m a lifelong independent running to do what’s right by Alaskans, not what’s right by billionaires, corporations, or party bosses in DC.”

Political analysts repeatedly warn that third-party candidates can serve as spoilers, potentially helping the candidate they least support. But Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system makes the situation more complicated.

The Democrat, Eric Hafner, remains on the November ballot, along with Republican incumbent Nick Begich, Hill, and Libertarian Jim McDermott. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, the first-choice results were Begich 47 percent, Hill 35 percent, Hafner 8 percent, and McDermott 5 percent. After ranked-choice tabulation, Begich led Hill 53 percent to 47 percent.

So, in Alaska, the spoiler question is not simply a matter of who finishes ahead in the first round. The ranked-choice system makes the ultimate effect of Hafner’s candidacy dependent on how his supporters’ second choices are distributed.

Candidates Without a Party?

Currently, there is no unified effort to build a party of independents to run in deep-red America. Instead, the effort is largely driven by the candidates themselves. It’s unclear if this will be the best long-term approach.

The word “independent” does fit nicely with the idea of independent candidates, free from any broader party or political organization. But independence has its downside in terms of accumulating and sharing campaign expertise, funding, and building a unified platform.

To find out more about the viability of independent candidates, we will be conducting a new survey of 5,000 voters in red America. One question we will ask respondents is whether a new organization of independents should be formed and what to call it.

Will a New Political Formation Emerge?

The political logic of the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its working class roots, which led to the very red map of America, and the Republican Party’s failure to support workers and their issues while having control of the government, suggests strongly that something new could emerge. There are just too many working people with no political home. But it remains to be seen how this vacuum will be filled—and by whom.

There is some chance that the Democrats, responding to the independents, will address the void by running many more working-class and progressive populist candidates. But the Democratic brand is extremely tarnished.

As John Tester, the former Democratic Montana US Senator, put it in a leaked text attributed to him:

“Every race I ran as Montana Senator and US Senator it was about distancing myself from the Democratic Party…. During my last two races the Democratic Party was poison in my attempts to get re-elected.”

For those of us who want to end MAGA’s grip on national politics this November, let’s hope that an enormous blue (and independent) wave will serve, for now, as the antidote.

For more information, see A Party of Our Own.

The views, analysis, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author. They do not represent the official stance, policy, or position of Berkeley Independent Study, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, the Berkeley Unified School District, or any affiliated organization.

Colorful, progressive posters fill the walls in Room 202 of Berkeley High School's Independent Study Program. A Rainbow Coalition poster features Fred Hampton with the phrase, "In Unity, there is survival." The Black Panther Party, IWW Local 8, Somos El 99%, Louise Olivereau, Marie Equi, environmental justice, and other progressive causes are represented.

Palestine posters fit in with the milieu of the room. "Berkeley Educators for Palestine," "Stop the Bombing, Free Free Palestine," and "Stop the Israeli-US Genocide in Palestine" are included.

What is uncommon is to bypass teachers and administrators and go straight to a civil rights complaint, unless the complaint is about Palestine, and the people making the complaint are connected to the Brandeis Center.

These posters, along with one titled "Standing with Muslims Against Islamophobia and Racism," resulted in an official complaint filed through the District Civil Rights and Compliance Office of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD). No teachers or staff were aware of any concerns surrounding the posters until they were contacted by a district-hired attorney.

Jonas LaMattery-Brownell, Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) co-site representative at Berkeley Independent Study (BIS), told me in an interview, "Some colleagues of mine who were most targeted by the investigation were Jewish, and were horrified that support for Palestine was getting weaponized against them and the school."

Public schools are accustomed to resolving issues in-house. It's not uncommon for students to feel discomfort, and for parents to voice their concerns with teachers and administrators. These concerns often result in meaningful discussions and a better educational environment for everyone.

What is uncommon is to bypass teachers and administrators and go straight to a civil rights complaint, unless the complaint is about Palestine, and the people making the complaint are connected to the Brandeis Center.

Antisemitism Charges

Kenneth Marcus, former Trump official and founder of the Brandeis Center, wrote openly about filing “high-profile cases alleging unlawful antisemitic harassment” in "Standing up for Jewish Students" (Jerusalem Post, 2013). Marcus writes, “These cases—even when rejected—expose administrators to bad publicity... The only way to win these cases is to file them, even when we see some or most rejected.”

The Brandeis Center filed a 41-page complaint in 2024 with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against BUSD, alleging that “BUSD teachers are using BUSD resources to teach anti-Israel propaganda and promote walkouts demeaning Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews."

BUSD Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel testified before Congress that "antisemitism is not pervasive in [the] Berkeley Unified School District" after conducting 12 investigations of complaints filed through the District Civil Rights and Compliance Office. In Berkeleyside, the Berkeley Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation called the Brandeis Center claims "tired, fully investigated, and determined to be baseless."

Liz Jackson, director of K-12 Legal Defense and former senior attorney at Palestine Legal, interviewed multiple witnesses to determine the veracity of the Brandeis Center complaints. Addressing the claim that students during the walkout were screaming "Kill the Jews," Jackson told me in an interview, "I've talked to a lot of students and teachers who were supervising or participating in the walkout and no one can verify that. There was definitely not a chant that was loud that students were chanting in unison. I think it's probably fabricated based on what else they fabricate."

Jackson is aware of about 20 complaints filed over the last two years, all of which involve Palestine. The allegations typically fall into the following categories:

1. True, but not antisemitic;
2. Fabricated; and
3. A grain of truth, but grossly exaggerated.

Jackson states: "They paint a picture by blurring a mix of 1, 2, and 3 to create a picture of rampant, systematic antisemitism. They are manufacturing a curriculum causation theory, which is that teaching about Palestine causes antisemitic bullying."

According to Jackson, the small group of "parents who are pushing this stuff are largely from abundantly resourced, owning class families, while the children who are targeted are largely working class refugees." In 2024, the Brandeis Center tax forms reported $18 million in grants following the Hamas attacks when many official complaints were launched.

The norm is that complaints are filed, usually by parents or external organizations, citing Palestine and claiming antisemitism, then BUSD hires its own attorneys to investigate.

The Palestine posters at BIS were found by BUSD to be one-sided, but not discriminatory, citing insufficient evidence that any student expressed discomfort. The complainants appealed to the California Department of Education (CDE), which overruled the district and found the posters discriminatory, mandating antisemitism training for all BIS staff.

CDE Intervention—Assembly Bill 715

The game-changer is Assembly Bill 715, which passed in October 2025 despite "overwhelming opposition from educators, students, and civil rights advocates," including the American Civil Liberties Union, California Teachers Association, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Jewish Voice For Peace. AB 715 states:

This bill would establish that discriminatory bias in instruction and school-sponsored activities does not require a showing of direct harm to members of a protected group and would not require members of a protected group to be present while the discriminatory bias is occurring for the act to be considered discriminatory bias. If the governing board or body of the local educational agency finds that instruction or school-sponsored activities are discriminatory, as provided, the bill would require corrective action to be taken, as provided.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism brought together hundreds of scholars from Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to provide the following definition of antisemitism: "Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility,or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)." Additional guidelines include that antisemitism is not "supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil, and human rights, as encapsulated in international law."

According to Mr. LaMattery-Brownell: "It's basic humanity to say that we stand for Palestinian self-determination. Free Palestine is talking about freedom for a people. That's not discrimination. Unless you think that freedom for some people is unfair to everyone else."

CDE Case 2026-0259 found the BIS Palestine posters discriminatory for two reasons

1. Conveying a "pro-Palestinian/Muslim message with no corresponding expression of support for Israel/Jews," ignoring the Holocaust posters mentioned elsewhere in the letter; and
2. Conveying "an anti-Israel/Jewish message referencing 'genocide' in Palestine without any corresponding negative reference to the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023."

The Hamas attack on October 7 took the lives of approximately 1,200 Israelis. Since then, according to the United Nations, the Israeli military has taken the lives of approximately 72,000 Palestinians. There is a 60-fold discrepancy here. The imbalance lies in the facts.

The term "genocide" is explicitly referenced by the CDE as "an anti-Israeli/Jewish message." This assumption is unsubstantiated. Many Jewish students, parents, and staff have spoken out in Berkeley in support of Palestine and against the US and Israeli-led genocide, and over 1,400 Israeli academics signed a petition calling for an end to the war in Gaza in 2024. Critiquing genocide and wars is an act of civic responsibility for all citizens, Israelis and Jewish Americans included.

Following October 7, the Brandeis Center claimed that "Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop antisemitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards." BUSD investigations have found otherwise. And BUSD teachers have experienced the opposite.

Teacher Harassment

Candiss Youngblood, an art teacher at Berkeley High School (BHS) interviewed for this article, was the subject of five different civil rights complaints. Her offense? She wears a patch, approved by administrators, with a heart and rose that states, "Free Palestine."

Students organized a Grief Circle that Ms. Youngblood participated in following the casualties after October 7. The students made a template poster that read, "My hope for Israel and Palestine," followed by open space to communicate their wishes. The posters were hung up for display at BHS, but "late that night, after hours," Ms. Youngblood reported, "admin went and took them all down." Ms. Youngblood was told that the Grief Circle was a "misuse of district funds."

Investigations and disciplinary action followed. Ms. Youngblood was written up for purchasing art supplies from a dollar store that were never used. Harassment followed as parents accused her of antisemitism in mass emails and students hid behind bushes outside her windows to photograph her classroom. "It was scary to be here," said Ms. Youngblood. "Admin wasn't saying we couldn't wear stuff, but they also weren't preventing any harassment from the community."

Weaponizing support for Palestine as antisemitic is coming not just from extremists trying to control public education, but from the State of California.

Ms. Youngblood was a witness to a complaint issued against the Berkeley High Safety Committee, of which she was a member, because they added a norm to combat white supremacy. According to Ms. Youngblood, ActNowK12.org charged that "we were using that norm as a way to silence their participation in the meetings." ActNowK12.org is a collaboration of California Jewish Grassroots Groups and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that offers its website as a means to report antisemitism.

Dan Brownson, a BUSD clerical worker and former Berkeley Council of Classified Employees (BCCE) union rep was asked to defend a BUSD staff member investigated for wearing a keffiyeh. Brownson told me in an interview that the complaint was filed by ActNowK12.org, and the investigation revealed that no specific student or parent actually complained. Brownson said: "They asked how it might make an Israeli or Jewish student feel to see the keffiyeh. I said, are we going to go on feelings now?"

Brownson was asked to represent the staff member on account of his own experience fighting spurious claims of antisemitism and dealing with an administrator who yelled at him for refusing to take down a pro-Palestine poster in his cubicle unless the administrator could show him where he was breaking the law, which she could not. Brownson was fired at the end of the year before obtaining a new position.

Mandated Trainings Across California

The ambiguity of the law surrounding an educator's freedom of political speech gives Assembly Bill 715 unprecedented power. Weaponizing support for Palestine as antisemitic is coming not just from extremists trying to control public education, but from the State of California. Appeals of complaints are underway across the state and corrective actions are being widely dispersed.

The entire staff and student body of King Middle School in BUSD were mandated a training on antisemitism by the CDE following a SSWANA (South Asian, Southwest Asian, North African) assembly due to students wearing Palestinian flags; chanting,"Free Palestine"; and excluding Israel from some maps.

District-wide trainings on antisemitism were mandated in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) after the CDE overturned multiple cases involving a Palestine teach-in, Palestine posters, a Palestine flag without a corresponding Israeli flag, and Arab American Heritage Month materials omitting Israel from some regional maps.

Conflating support for Palestine with antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent that threatens human rights everywhere.

The Sequoia Union High School District settled a federal lawsuit for $325,000 alleging widespread antisemitism including pro-Hamas propaganda from teachers and discriminatory grading; the settlement included mandatory antisemitism training for all staff. Exhibit A of the settlement mentions "the denial of the Jewish people's right to self-defense" under its expanded definition of antisemitism.

Additional lawsuits in BUSD and the Santa Ana Unified School District over ethnic studies curricula that included Palestine cited antisemitism as did accusations against the Mountain View-Los Altos District who terminated a contract with Acosta Educational Partnerships. All high school teachers and administrators in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District (LA County) were mandated antisemitism training after an AP US History teacher posted slides describing the genocide in Gaza.

Trainings on antisemitism have commenced in BUSD and OUSD with more to come. Authentic teachings on antisemitism are welcome in public education, as are factually relevant discussions on Israel-Palestine. But the systematic pattern that has developed within California school districts is alarming: File complaints citing antisemitism whenever schools, educators, or students show support for Palestine, then appeal at the state level to overrule school districts where the CDE intervenes.

Labeling the BIS Palestine posters discriminatory sends a chilling message of censorship against Palestine throughout BUSD. Conflating support for Palestine with antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent that threatens human rights everywhere. Responding to the CDE decisions, Jackson stated, "They're anti-Arab, they're anti-Palestinian, and they violate our free speech rights and rights to learn."

Live at 9 AM Eastern & Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

• Israeli settler-terrorists attacked and fired at two Agence France-Presse journalists as they were reporting on settler violence against Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank. Photographers Jaafar Ashtiyeh and John Wessels were taking pictures of an IDF soldier detaining a man when a driver on a quad bike opened fire with at least six other colonists and stole their camera equipment. Ashtiyeh tried to escape into a car marked “Press,” but two men assaulted him and beat him with the butts of their rifles.

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM Eastern time.

Today we also discuss:

• María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her home two weeks ago prompted widespread protests in Spain and spurred the prime minister to call national elections, died.

• Italian lawmakers approved a law that awards bonus seats in Parliament to election winners, a move supporters say will help prevent governments from collapsing and that detractors denounce as unconstitutional and antidemocratic. Championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had threatened to resign should the legislation not pass, the new law gives a bonus to the winning party or coalition of an election: 70 seats in the lower house of Parliament and 35 in the Senate, provided the party or coalition reaches 42 percent in both houses. Italy has a 600-seat Parliament, with 400 seats in the lower house and 200 seats in the Senate.

• Krista Pike is talking and walking. Maj. Nidal Hasan will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on Dec. 3, for fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 in 2009 at the same base. Gov. Gavin Newsom is seriously considering whether to spare the lives of all 563 prisoners on death row in California as one of his final acts in office.

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The post Another Israeli Settler Attack on Journalists | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

With less than a month before the midterm elections, attempts by President Donald Trump and his administration to keep certain Americans from voting will likely continue.

Voting is how we get an equal say in the decisions that impact our lives, regardless of race, disability, zip code, language, or income. That’s why we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast their ballot free from fear, intimidation, or unnecessary barriers.

Anti-democratic forces might dominate the headlines, but they have not dominated the outcomes. That’s important.

Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.

In the past month, whistleblowers courageously revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be instructing agents to break laws, and potentially “ensnare eligible voters,” in order to find alleged “proof of mass non-citizen voting—shown in studies to be exceedingly rare,” CNN reports.

In Michigan, an effort to get a “show your papers” measure on the November ballot failed to garner enough signatures. The Department of Justice lost 25 consecutive court cases in their quest to obtain private voter information.

Even the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to stifle vote-by-mail nationwide by preventing the US Postal Service from implementing a rule that would have disenfranchised millions of voters.

I spent years as a local election official—I can assure you that election administrators nationwide are breathing a collective sigh of relief. The administration’s attempt to rewrite election rules was wrong, and I applaud those state and local officials who rejected political pressure and sued to uphold the law on behalf of voters.

From courtroom victories to successes in state and local communities, these recent wins are not isolated. They are victories for democracy, for the freedom to vote, and for election officials who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly. They prove democracy can withstand relentless attacks.

And they tell a bigger story: Democracy works when people are willing to defend it by showing up to vote.

Winning for democracy means continuing through the midterms with clear eyes on the multiple attempts to upend the election. These attempts could include deploying federal law enforcement to polling locations and election offices, seizing ballots or voting machines, and further gerrymandering in the future.

From secretaries of state to county clerks in Wisconsin, board of election members in Georgia, supervisors of elections in Florida, and thousands of volunteer poll workers nationwide, election defenders are already working around the clock to protect the freedom to vote. They’re pushing back against demands for our private voter data, resisting federal overreach, safeguarding ballots, and helping voters make plans to vote—whether by mail, drop box, in person during early voting, or at a polling location on Election Day.

This work is not just about ballots and election procedures. It’s about ensuring that every eligible voter can fully participate in our democracy. We cannot sit down. We cannot give up.

As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how:

• Visit your local elections office for voting information. Vote-by-mail remains a reliable way to vote. Early voting remains available. Voters should choose the method that works best for their lives and make a plan to vote as early as possible.
• Promote or participate in upcoming days of action, including National Voter Education Week (October 5-9), Election Hero Day (October 20), and Vote Early Day (October 24).
• Make a plan to vote with your friends and family.

Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.

The fight to protect free and democratic elections has always mattered. What happens next is up to us. Let’s keep the momentum going.

A reactionary wave is sweeping Latin America. Since the elections of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in July 2024 and Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi in November 2024, all seven of the subsequent direct presidential contests have gone to the right.

The Maduro election is widely assumed by the US-aligned corporate press to have been stolen, although a recently declassified CIA report found no election manipulation. More relevant has been Washington’s role in tipping elections to the right in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. Most blatant was the Honduran contest in which President Donald Trump pardoned convicted narco-trafficker and former president Juan Orlando Hernández immediately before the election and threatened to cut aid if his candidate lost.

“The Latin American electoral left has reached its limits,” the Peoples Dispatch concludes. If Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva loses the presidential runoff, an orange wave will have inundated the Pink Tide for some time to come.

The New Right

A US-backed reactionary wave of the 1960s-1980s brought the rule of the generals. The current one might be called the reign of the clowns: Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella joked about burning cats, Argentina’s Javier Milei communicated with his deceased dog, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele proclaimed himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”

While the reactionaries of the past posed as nationalists, today’s neo-fascists flaunt their subservience to the White House in what Foreign Policy calls “caudillo courtship.” “Patriotism,” according to Vijay Prashad, “is cast aside for absolute loyalty to Washington and its corporations.”

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez helped initiate regional alliances for Latin American integration and autonomy that deliberately excluded the US and Canada. ALBA and CELAC have survived, though much reduced; UNASUR and Petrocaribe have largely withered. Capitalizing on their decline, Washington has constructed the Shield of the Americas, a hemispheric bloc designed to reintegrate the region into a US-centered political and security architecture.

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region. The Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere is integrating military capabilities of 17 partner nations with those of the US in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition.

Decapitation Strike

For a quarter century, the US tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. The campaign further escalated with the imposition of an oil blockade last December. And still the Venezuelans resisted. Then on January 3, Washington kidnapped Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife, National Assembly delegate Cilia Flores, leaving over 100 dead. The attack demonstrated, especially to Venezuelans, that Washington could act with impunity.

With a war on Iran looming, the US needed to reassure international oil markets to keep prices down at the gas pump. Maduro had repeatedly offered to negotiate with Washington and even update the hydrocarbon law. The US had demonized Maduro as a narco-terrorist, providing a pretext for abducting the lawful president while leaving intact much of the Chavista system that emerged from the Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez.

Washington possibly reasoned that removing Maduro while compelling the existing state to accommodate intervention was more workable than destroying Chavismo and attempting regime change from scratch.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. The Chavista party, legislature, judiciary, military, and grassroots organizations united behind her and continue to do so. Venezuela’s access to oil markets and thus its hope for economic recovery and national development was restored, but at a terrific price.

In the face of overwhelming force, Venezuela has been forced into an unprecedented negotiated sovereignty. Washington determines the boundaries within which Venezuela can bargain, although Caracas retains some agency within those boundaries.

Sentiment on the Street

Venezuelans feel alone, a sentiment communicated to me in a February visit and subsequent correspondence. Even some critical voices recognize “the continuing capacity of US imperialism to impose its will when no countervailing power exists, and without new political breakthroughs internationally to come to Venezuela’s aid.”

Venezuelans, regardless of political affiliation in a highly polarized country, feel under attack. They believe, with good reason, that the US could come back at any time with ever more devastating force. The metaphor of a “gun to the head” is a lived reality. Every week or so, a small boat is capriciously incinerated in the eastern Pacific or the Caribbean.

Some online leftists living in the imperial core call Rodríguez “cowardly”—substituting moralism for political analysis. But the “gun” was pointed not just at the leadership but at the whole country: the threat of an asphyxiating blockade, a large-scale invasion, a far-right government, and a bloodbath for Chavistas.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Venezuelans also want peace. While militant currents exist, particularly in some of the more successful communes, there is no appetite for confrontation with the hegemon. The consensus after 26 years of US siege and 11 years of suffocating sanctions is a desire for reconciliation and economic recovery.

The Caracas Chronicles describes the current fatigue in Venezuela: “The timeline for economic relief is slipping away, while the timeline for public demand is accelerating,” resulting in “an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and promises of a swift transition collapse.”

The Oil Deal

The so-called oil deal became a lightning rod for mounting discontent, all the more so because neither Venezuela nor the US released the details; anyone could read anything into it. The long-hostile international corporate press took false umbrage that the Chavistas weren’t Chavista enough.

Everyone found fault, but practically no one discussed what Venezuela’s development path should be. It is easier to criticize the Chavista leadership than to consider a possible economic solution. Nor were comparisons made to other regional oil development agreements.

Venezuela does not have the capacity or investment to undertake major oil projects by itself.

Closer investigation would have shown that the Rodríguez government required negotiations, resisted company demands, and imposed fiscal and operational conditions. In fact, US oil companies complained that the conditions they were getting in Venezuela were too onerous.

But Venezuela did not negotiate from anything approaching equality with a hegemon that controlled sanctions licenses and much of the oil-sales revenue flow. Yet asymmetric bargaining is still bargaining. To think otherwise is to deny agency to the Venezuelans.

“Venezuelan Exceptionalism”

Most left-leaning folks see through American Exceptionalism. Yet a reverse corollary has lately been circulating: that among Latin American states there is something singularly wrong in Venezuela. The danger of “Venezuelan Exceptionalism” is that it downplays a united struggle against US imperialism and undermines building a common defense.

Some online leftists counterpose Cuba’s heroic resistance to Venezuela’s supposedly shameful capitulation. Whatever truth there may be in such a characterization, it obscures important realities. Washington never offered socialist Cuba—whose former ruling and propertied classes had largely left—the option of a negotiated soft landing. Further, holding Cuba’s resistance up against Venezuela is just half of the equation. The other half is the dire condition of the Cuban people under US blockade. Who wishes that on Venezuela?

The situation in Venezuela highlights what the Venezuelans have been telling us in the imperial core: Their predicament is a result of our failure to curb our own imperialists. The periphery will not free the core.

Cuba and Venezuela are particularly intense expressions of a regional struggle for sovereignty in a hemisphere where the US remains the predominant power. The central regional divide is not between governments that make compromises and those that do not. Virtually every Latin American government makes accommodations to international capital.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Has the Bolivarian Revolution Retreated or Been Betrayed?

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), among others, concludes that the Chavista leadership has gone from tactical retreat to strategic realignment. PSL points to troubling developments such as the deportation of Alex Saab and the opening of consular relations with Israel.

Whether the retreat over the last 10 months has gone so far that it no longer allows for a reversal remains unresolved. Given incomplete knowledge, however, the greater danger is reaching a premature conclusion rather than erring on the side of Rodríguez’s counsel for “prudence and strategic patience.”

We should not compare the Venezuelan present to a socialist ideal, but to the alternatives actually available under the present balance of forces—including the possibility of a fascist future.

Whether the current forced retreat ultimately proves tactical or strategic remains an important question for Venezuelans and their revolution. But for internationalists, that uncertainty does not change the immediate tasks.

The Tasks Remain the Same

Agreement on the character of the Rodríguez government is not a prerequisite for common action against US imperialism. Debate entails disagreements, sometimes sharp ones. But declaring others outside the movement because they differ over how to assess developments in Venezuela weakens the shared counter-hegemonic struggle.

For internationalists, the focus, as always, is on our own imperialists. Concretely, that means freeing Maduro and Flores, ending sanctions and the military threat, and returning stolen assets. In addition, whatever the future course of the Chavista government, solidarity with the communes and other social advances of the Bolivarian Revolution is still essential.

The situation in Venezuela highlights what the Venezuelans have been telling us in the imperial core: Their predicament is a result of our failure to curb our own imperialists. The periphery will not free the core.

Whatever concessions have been forced upon Venezuela, so long as Venezuelans continue to resist, their struggle calls for international solidarity.

Over the summer, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration free rein to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, along with hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from other countries, limiting the accountability any administration will have for making determinations about TPS for the foreseeable future.

Last month, a young pre-med college student named Pierre Damas Bel from Springfield, Ohio was found dead, by an apparent suicide. He was suffering depression brought on by the termination of TPS and being forced to wear an Immigration and Custom Enforcement-issued ankle bracelet.

What happened to Damas Bel represents the real human cost of these inhumane policies. But sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the nadir of this administration’s cruelty.

Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.

Haitians have been here before.

For centuries, we’ve witnessed a similar pattern of using Haitian immigrants as political scapegoats. Haitians know all too well what it feels like to be targeted, and as a result we live with the collective trauma of being treated as less than human.

When I arrived in 1984, I encountered hatred fueled by ignorance, misinformation, and xenophobia. I was bullied relentlessly. I was called "Boat People," "HBO" (Haitian Body Odor), "f***ing Haitian," and "HIV carrier." I was physically assaulted on my way to and from school. Those experiences taught me, at a very young age, how quickly stereotypes and lies can strip someone of their dignity and sense of belonging.

Fast forward to 2024, I would never have imagined hearing a former president utter the words: "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the pets," during a presidential debate. At the time, many people dismissed those comments as absurd, entertaining, or inconsequential. I could not.

As a 52-year-old father of two teenage boys, I wasn't amused. I was triggered. Those words reopened wounds I had buried for decades and forced me to relive the trauma I experienced as a newly arrived Haitian immigrant in New York City.

But by 2024, I was no longer afraid for myself. I was afraid for my sons, who had grown up embracing their Haitian heritage with pride and confidence. I wondered what these renewed attacks on Haitians would mean for them. Would they become targets of ridicule or violence? Would they feel pressured to hide a core part of who they are? Would they experience the same fear and isolation that defined so much of my youth?

Those questions kept me awake at night. Eventually, they compelled me to have "the talk" with my boys. For the first time, I shared the painful experiences I had buried for decades. We discussed what they were seeing and hearing in their social circles, and I tried to prepare them to navigate a climate where hateful rhetoric can quickly lead to real-life consequences. It was a conversation I had hoped I would never have to have. However, it reminded me that every generation must remain vigilant in confronting prejudice and defending the human rights and dignity of those who come after us.

The psychological ramifications of TPS' end have reverberated across the Haitian community in devastating ways. There are those who have already been deported and face an unsafe future, those of us who exist on bated breath, and then there are people like Damas Bel whose mental health has been shattered by the indignity of it all.

When I feel dejected and afraid for my community, I try to remember the Haitian Day of Outrage in 1990 when an estimated 50,000-150,000 Haitians and allies marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, shutting down Lower Manhattan. We were protesting against the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) discriminatory designation of Haitians as a high-risk group for HIV/AIDS and its policy of banning Haitian Americans from donating blood. The policy was rooted in racism rather than science, and fueled dangerous stereotypes. That historic demonstration played a significant role in pressuring the FDA to eventually reverse its position.

That memory reminds me that we are a people who will fight for our survival and dignity, but there is also a limit to our resilience. These attacks have not only threatened our physical safety, they are also working to destroy our sense of psychological safety.

We must ask ourselves how we can protect young Haitians like Damas Bel, and all those made vulnerable by the Trump administration and its far-right MAGA supporters. Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.

The best way to know what you can do to stand in solidarity with these communities is to first connect with local organizations taking decisive steps to protect and stand with those who are in the bullseye of the current administration’s attempts to strip all of us of our rights and dignity.

Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, where I work as a case manager and community organizer, is one of these organizations. We know that people power is the only thing that will protect us. We are using every tool at our disposal to provide care and safety for our community.

Here are some ways that you can join us in supporting Haitian and all TPS holders.

Actions you can take TODAY:

• Call your Senators or email them to urge them to vote yes on S. 4814 to extend TPS for Haitians until 2029;
• Call your US House representatives and demand that they sign the discharge petition and support The Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 1589) which would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) holders; and
• Get involved with court accompaniment programs, mutual aid networks, and your local rapid response networks in support and defense of immigrant communities in your neighborhood.

Three years have passed since October 7, 2023, yet much of the world still begins the story on that morning.

As if Palestinians suddenly woke up that day and decided to enter history.

As if Gaza had not already been under blockade. As if the West Bank and East Jerusalem had not already been under occupation. As if settlements, checkpoints, arrests, home demolitions, and land confiscation had not already been part of everyday Palestinian life.

Three years later, what has happened in Gaza can no longer be reduced to the word “response.”

I am not writing today to justify the killing of civilians, Palestinian or Israeli.

A civilian life does not need a nationality to be worthy of protection.

But I refuse to accept October 7 as an eraser—wiping away everything that came before it and becoming an open-ended justification for everything that followed.

When an Israeli is killed, we are told to go back to October 7.

When a Palestinian is killed, we are told: Remember October 7.

When Gaza is destroyed, its people displaced, and its children killed, the answer is the same: October 7.

But if we are asked to remember that day, then we should also be allowed to ask a simple question: What was there on October 6?

There were millions of Palestinians already living under occupation.

More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza had been living under blockade for years.

In the West Bank, Palestinians lived among checkpoints and settlements, without freedom of movement on their own land, while Israeli settlers moved through the same territory with rights and protection denied to the Palestinians who live there.

There were prisoners in Israeli jails. Homes were being demolished. Land was being confiscated.

None of this began on October 7.

Palestinians carry the memory of the Nakba of 1948, the occupation of 1967, and decades of settlement expansion, displacement, and blockade.

That history does not make the killing of civilians acceptable. But neither does it make acceptable the claim that this conflict began on October 7.

There is a difference between condemning an act and using that act to erase everything that came before it.

Three years later, what has happened in Gaza can no longer be reduced to the word “response.”

A response cannot be a blank check. October 7 cannot become a permanent justification for killing, destruction, displacement, and hunger, or for making an entire people pay the price year after year.

Even the ceasefire announced in October 2025 did not end the tragedy. The devastation remained. Families continued searching beneath the rubble for the bodies of their loved ones. And the killing did not stop entirely.

At the same time, the occupation in the West Bank did not pause and wait for the war in Gaza to end. Land continued to be confiscated. Settlements continued to expand. Checkpoints continued to cut Palestinians off from one another.

And this is where the heart of the matter lies.

Palestinians are not asking for a privilege denied to others.

They want to live freely on their own land. To move through it without needing permission from an occupying soldier. To feel that their homes, their land, and their children’s future are safe.

These are not extraordinary demands.

They are the ordinary conditions of life that most people in the world enjoy without ever having to think about them.

So, three years later, it is not enough to ask: What happened on October 7?

We must also ask: What was done to Palestinians before that day, and what is being done to them now?

The world is not being asked to choose between Palestinian blood and Israeli blood, or to find excuses for the killing of civilians by either side.

It is being asked to stop reversing the relationship between the occupier and the occupied.

Palestinians are not a people occupying another people’s land.

Palestinians are the people living under occupation.

That is not an emotional statement. It is a fact that cannot be removed from any serious reading of what happened before October 7, on October 7, or after it.

Three years have passed. Much has changed, and far more has been destroyed. But the question that existed on October 6 did not disappear on October 7, and all the war that followed has not erased it: When will Palestinians live freely on their own land?

So if the world truly does not want to see another October 7, it is not enough to remember what happened on that day.

It must also remember what existed the day before.

What had existed for decades before that.

And what still exists at this very moment.

The occupation.

Ali Abu al-Ezz, 38, lives with his six children near the “Yellow Line” in Gaza City’s eastern Tuffah neighborhood. His children range in age from 13 to 2 years old. After they were displaced from their land following the demarcation of the Yellow Line, Abu al-Ezz pitched a tent for his family as close to their home in Tuffah as he could, hoping that one day they would be able to return.

The tent they live in is far from their daily needs and necessities. Food is difficult to reach, humanitarian organizations distributing water and meals are scarce, and medical facilities and schools are far away. When the new school year began last December, Abu al-Ezz did not send any of his children to attend. In fact, he rarely ever leaves the area, preferring to stay close to his wife and children.

Before the war, Abu al-Ezz’s children attended nearby schools regularly, while he worked as a taxi driver, heading out in the morning and driving until sunset to support his family. Today, the war has imposed an entirely different reality.

“We live as if we have been cut off from the world,” he said. “As if we do not belong to this modern age. It feels as though we are living in the Stone Age, not 2026.”

“The road to the schools is long and difficult, the streets are not fit for walking, and transportation is also hard to find,” Abu al-Ezz said. “I am afraid that if I send my children to school, a quadcopter will shoot and kill them, or their school will be bombed, and they will die. I decided to postpone all of their education until the war ends, when we can feel safe in our own country again.”

The war has affected families beyond their homes and how they obtain food and water. It has altered the very meaning of family life and the roles that parents and children are expected to play within it.

Despite the blockade and hardships that had long shaped life in Gaza before the war, families could still maintain a semblance of an ordinary social order. Children went to school and played outside together. Even if they made playgrounds and football pitches out of busy streets and lots, they still had space to live their childhood.

That balance has been shattered.

For many fathers, parenthood has become an unending attempt to keep their children alive. Mothers cook over open fires and devise ways to keep rodents out of tents while trying to maintain some measure of cleanliness in conditions that make it nearly impossible. And children, among those most profoundly affected by the war, have been forced into roles that once belonged to adults.

“Some days, I leave in the morning to try to make some money or find some work for the day,” Abu al-Ezz said. “By the time I return with whatever I have earned and some food for my children, my eldest sons will have taken care of other things.”

His sons—Ibrahim, 13, and Hassan, 11—are responsible for finding drinking water for the family.

“These were never my children’s responsibilities,” Abu al-Ezz said. “But the war has forced these children to carry responsibilities far beyond their age, responsibility for the family itself and for finding the things we need to survive.”

The boys fetch water and search the streets and rubble for pieces of wood to burn for cooking. They return during the hottest hours of the day, walking under the sun while carrying jerrycans of water that, their father says, seem to weigh as much as they do after months of hunger.

Before the war, this time of year sounded very different inside Abu al-Ezz’s home. His children would return from school, filling the house with stories about their classmates and teachers. A new school year meant excitement over new books, school bags, and stationery.

“We lived under siege, and our circumstances were difficult, but our lives were beautiful,” he said. “We lived in our homes. We visited our relatives, and they visited us. We went to the sea to relax. Every month, we would have barbecues on the beach or on our roof. We were happy with the little we had, and we thanked God for what He gave us.”

For Abu al-Ezz, deprivation has penetrated almost every aspect of his family’s life. The infants cry from hunger while their parents search for formula, the children suffer as their daily needs cannot be met, and even his wife’s personal necessities have become difficult to obtain.

“We live as if we have been cut off from the world,” he said. “As if we do not belong to this modern age. It feels as though we are living in the Stone Age, not 2026.”

“And the strangest thing of all is that the world watches us and sees this, yet nothing changes in the miserable life we are living,” he continued.

When Children Dream of Food and Shelter

The war has changed not only what children do, but also what they dream about.

For Ibrahim, Abu al-Ezz’s 13-year-old son, aspirations have narrowed to the most basic elements of a livable life.

He dreams of leaving behind the makeshift tent his family assembled from scraps of fabric and wood. Every winter, when heavy rain floods the area, the family risks losing their only shelter. On some nights, they sleep sitting upright on plastic chairs to keep themselves above the water flooding the tent from all sides.

Ibrahim dreams of a Qatari tent, the name Gazans commonly use for the dome-shaped tents that are considered better able to withstand winter rain because of their sturdier fabric and construction.

But his dreams extend beyond shelter, for the simplest things. “I dream that one day we will eat three good meals,” Ibrahim said.

He also dreams of going to his grandfather’s house and playing with his cousins, and of having just one more of the evenings his father once organized on Gaza’s Mediterranean shore: the entire family gathered together for a barbecue by the sea.

Now Abu al-Ezz’s extended family has been scattered. Relatives live far from one another, each in a different tent, each confronting their own conditions of displacement and survival.

A Family Scattered Across Gaza

The transformation of family life in Gaza is not limited to children or their parents. The rituals that once held extended families together, from visiting relatives’ homes to evening gatherings to sharing meals and stories, have all been disrupted.

For older women in particular, the contrast between life before and after the war can be stark.

Before the war, many spent their later years surrounded by children and grandchildren, living in established family homes and enjoying the companionship of nearby relatives of their generation.

Hanan Abu Arab, 63, was one of them.

Everyone, she said, is pushed toward the same calculation: Protect yourself and your children, stay away from danger, leave the tent as little as possible, and hope that, by doing so, death will pass you by.

Displaced from eastern Khan Younis and now living in Deir al-Balah, Abu Arab once had a five-story house where her children and grandchildren gathered. In front of it was a garden where she sometimes received close friends and relatives. They would sit beside rose bushes she had planted herself, spending hours together in the evening, talking and drinking tea.

Today, she hesitates to even name her new home as a tent. “It is more like a room wrapped in cloth,” she said. “It is not properly enclosed.”

During the winter, rain enters from every direction. Sometimes, she said, she has to leave and stand by the roadside, searching for any roof or overhang that might shelter her from the rain.

“My house was a landmark in Bani Suheila because of how beautiful it was,” Abu Arab said. “My relatives who lived nearby would come almost every day. We stayed up together, ate fruit, and talked for hours. Everyone who entered my house would tell me how beautiful it was.”

“All of those traditions are gone,” she added.

Abu Arab sees this fragmentation as one of the less visible consequences of the war. Everyone, she said, is pushed toward the same calculation: Protect yourself and your children, stay away from danger, leave the tent as little as possible, and hope that, by doing so, death will pass you by.

“This is one of the hidden goals of this genocide,” she said. “For the Israeli army to tear apart everything that connects Palestinians, everything that creates a social fabric and solidarity in Gaza, and replace it with this constant, urgent need for individual survival.”