Must-Reads and Some Thoughts on Limping in the Dark
"Let’s sing songs and tend each other’s wounds."
Greetings friends,
I managed to fall down and injure myself today. My ankle is throbbing, so my final thoughts for the week will be tangled up in the injury. I apologize in advance for the sprained metaphor ahead, but I can presently focus on little else, and I still wanted to share my must-reads list and relay some thoughts about the struggle for Palestinian liberation from my friend Eman Abdelhadi.
Must-Reads
- Organizers Are Demanding Palantir Drop Contracts With ICE and Israeli Military by Jesse Roth. “Hossam Nasr, an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid (and a participant in the Seattle protest), said, ‘Palantir is the [company] that’s most brazenly and explicitly leading this charge of tech companies becoming arms of the state…Their CEO brags about how their technology kills people.’”
- DC National Guard Is Being Trained to Carry Pistols Known to Fire at Random by Matthew Gault. “The DC National Guard may soon be patrolling the streets of our nation's capital with a handgun famous for firing on its own.”
- ‘A Climate of Unparalleled Malevolence’: Are We On Our Way to the Sixth Major Mass Extinction? by Peter Brannen. “Put enough CO2 into the system all at once, and push the life-sustaining carbon cycle far enough out of equilibrium, and it might escape into a sort of planetary failure mode, where processes intrinsic to the Earth itself take over, acting as positive feedback to release dramatically more carbon into the system.”
- Eyes on the Heartland by Steve Held and Raven Geary. “A vast network of new license plate cameras has exploded across Illinois in recent years—paid for by state grants to fight retail crime. With the federal government clamoring for more information on people’s movements, how worried should we be about leaving our privacy in the hands of Flock Safety?”
- Following the Money by Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. “We examine the strategic importance of interrogating the flows of funds that make criminalization, incarceration, and policing possible, through all the different forms they take—from source to transfer to officer’s wage or prison gate.”
- Organizers Mobilized Community Self-Defense Even Before Trump’s LA ICE Crackdown by Sonali Kolhatkar. “With little help from elected officials and government agencies, and with a greater assault on the horizon, LA organizers have mobilized to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE. They call it ‘community self-defense.’”
- The Price Increases That Should Cause Americans More Alarm by Elisabeth Rosenthal. “Since 1999, health insurance premiums for people with employer-provided coverage have more than quadrupled. From 2023 to 2024 alone, they rose more than 6% for both individuals and family coverage — a steeper increase than that of wages and overall inflation.”
- Former Top Biden Spox Admits Israel Sabotaged Ceasefire Deals as US Blamed Hamas by Sharon Zhang. “The former top State Department spokesperson has admitted that the U.S. knew the Israeli government was systematically sabotaging ceasefire negotiations for months — even as he stood on the podium and spread the lie to the press and the public that it was Hamas standing in the way of a deal.”
- Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce’s Push for Elon Musk’s xAI Data Center by Wendi C. Thomas. “In the face of intense public opposition, the chamber has gone to unusual lengths to promote xAI, whose $12 billion investment the chamber believes will transform the shrinking city into a global hub of technological innovation.”
- 'Just in Time': Federal Judge Orders Closure of 'Alligator Alcatraz' by Brad Reed. “The ruling by Judge Kathleen Williams of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida sided with the plaintiffs that the facility was doing significant damage to the ecosystem of the Everglades.”
ICYMI
This week on Movement Memos, I talked with organizer and author Andrew Lee about the links between gentrification and authoritarianism. We dug into how displacement, surveillance, and “quality of life” policing serve as tools of social control — and why housing struggles are always class struggles.
Eyes on Palestine
U.N.-backed food security experts have belatedly declared a famine in Gaza, as Israel launches strikes against Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Deir al-Balah, despite mounting global outrage. As Donald Trump’s authoritarian consolidation continues, some people in the U.S. are paying less attention to what’s happening in Palestine. I recently talked with scholar and organizer Eman Abdelhadi about what those people are missing, what to make of empty gestures from politicians, and where the Palestine solidarity movement should go from here.
Right now, a lot of people are focused on the fascistic, authoritarian maneuvers of the Trump administration here in the U.S., and paying less attention to what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank. What are people who’ve looked away missing?
Eman Abdelhadi: People are failing to recognize that when we fight for Palestine, we fight the same enemies that are kidnapping our neighbors, the same companies that are ruining our environment, the same grasp on our politics that the ruling class insists on. Zionists have shown how willing they are to support authoritarianism if it deflects critique from Israel. So on all fronts, the fight for Palestine is the fight against authoritarianism.
We have seen some politicians in the US and elsewhere make empty acknowledgments that people are starving in Gaza, and some countries have made gestures toward acknowledging Palestine as a state. What should the public make of these statements and overtures?
Recognizing Palestine as a state right now is political theater. What state? Palestinians have been left with so little control over our land, and no means to build sovereignty. The PA is a puppet of the Israeli government that has served to internally police Palestinians. When the center finally comes around to an issue is when we are most under threat of cooptation. Demands from Palestinians and the movement have been clear and consistent, we need an immediate arms embargo. We need an end to the genocide. We need boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Anything less is fluff.
What role does transnational solidarity play in this moment, especially between movements facing authoritarianism, surveillance, or displacement globally?
We have to recognize that we are in a fight against a global ruling class that insists on the right to deem some people disposable. The ruling class tries to distract us by pretending that some of us are safe–but none of us are, and the authoritarian turn in the US has made that clear. Now more than ever we need to work globally. It's not even solidarity to fight for Palestine, to fight for Palestine is to fight for ourselves, for our right to protest, to dissent, to decide where our money goes.
What is the current state of the Palestine solidarity movement in the US, and where does the movement need to go from here?
The movement is strong, but we're tired. We've won public opinion, but we have not been able to translate that sea change into material wins. We need to work on base building and identifying points of leverage that we can use to place pressure on both our government and on Israel.
Brief Thoughts on Personal Injury
I took a dramatic stumble today. I wish I could say I was doing something brave or interesting, but I was simply trying to traverse a wooden deck in the dark. There was a single step down between sections, and I didn’t see it, so my weight came down awkwardly on my buckling left ankle, which promptly twisted, as my left knee caught the secondary momentum. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Friends I had been sharing stories and singing songs with were immediately at my side, evaluating my injuries and caring for me. It’s funny how our missteps and misfortunes can be the best reminders of how lucky we are. So many things are fucked, but when I stumble, good people immediately have my back.
That’s what I want for all of us.
As Trump continues his attacks on D.C., and threatens to bring his militarized, authoritarian consolidation act to Chicago, I am reminded of what Shannon Clark, a mutual aid organizer in Washington D.C. told me last week–that strong, pre-existing networks made the community response being waged in D.C. possible. This is both heartening and worrisome, given the fractured state of the left across so many of our communities.
I will have more to say about this soon. For now, I want to encourage you all to table your disputes and connect with people who are providing direct support to targeted groups in your communities. Who’s organizing your local ICE watch? Who’s defending encampments of unhoused folks? Who’s doing jail support? How can you help? These are the questions that matter right now. There’s no need to start from scratch. Find already-organized people and figure out how to contribute to or expand upon their efforts. We are not all coming from the same place, and some of us have strategic disagreements, but in a moment like this one, we should all be fighting for the same people.
We must defend the most vulnerable among us, and in doing so, defend our values and our souls. That’s how we make light in the dark. We are being terrorized by fascists who believe the spectacle of their attacks will drive us apart. They believe we will sacrifice our scapegoated classmates, colleagues, and neighbors, while we cower behind our screens.
I think we are made of tougher, more loving stuff than they could ever imagine, and I hope we’ll prove as much in the days ahead.
If you live in a city Trump has announced plans to target—like Chicago or New York—you have weeks, not months, to get your act together. I repeat: We have weeks—a month at best—to figure out how to act in concert and resist the militarized fascist onslaught. Even then, we will be late and lacking, but we dare not yield this round of the fight.
If we're honest, most of us have been stumbling through this moment, trying to find our footing and not always succeeding—kind of like me, trying to walk across a deck.
When I fell today, I knew I would be okay, because I wasn’t alone, and I was cared for. After having my ankle wrapped and my injuries inspected, I actually rejoined my friends for a few songs before putting my arm around a good friend’s shoulder, as he helped me limp to a waiting car.
Right now, I am laying in bed marveling at my good fortune. Two friends helped me into this room, and made sure I made it to bed. They’re still close by, listening for me to call out if I need anything. If you are hurting right now, I hope you feel this held.
A lot of vulnerable people are staring down this moment without that kind of support or accompaniment. We can change that—not for everyone, as we are not on the cusp of utopia, but in so many ways for so many people. Rather than recoiling and retreating, which is what this terrorizing administration wants, let’s rush toward each other, and refuse to abandon anyone the fascists would target. Let’s find hope and courage in each other by practicing solidarity and care. Let’s sing songs and tend each other’s wounds. Let’s help each other limp along in the dark, and find our way home, together.
Much love,
Kelly
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