Category Archives: HUMAN RIGHTS

‘America Belongs to the People’: No Kings Coalition Plans Oct. 17 Early Voting Action

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article by Jessica Corbett from Common Dreams (reprinted according to Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

“On October 17th, No Kings: Vote Early will show the billionaire elites attempting to destroy our country that We the People have the power by mobilizing turnout to make our elections too big for the evils of  fascism and oligarchy to rig,” according to Sarah Parker, a spokesperson for the 50501 movement.


People hold signs that declare “No Kings” in Detroit, Michigan, on February 17, 2025, which was President’s Day. (Photo by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The movement is part of the No Kings Coalition that has held a trio of  protests across the United States since President Donald Trump returned to power last year.

Now, with the midterm elections less than two months away, the coalition is planning a fourth day of action. Parker, who’s also executive director of Voices of Florida Fund, declared Tuesday that “the people, united, will never be defeated.”

The first round of protests was held in June 2025, on Trump’s birthday. The ACLU’s chief political and advocacy officer, Deirdre Schifeling, said at the time that “No Kings is really about standing up for democracy, standing up for people’s rights and liberties in this country, and against the gross abuse of power that we’ve seen consistently from the Trump administration.”

As with those first demonstrations, millions of people took to US streets again last October. Then, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told Common Dreams that “what we’re seeing from this administration is authoritarian slip. We are seeing them attack judges, attack nonprofits, trying to attack the media, stifle First Amendment protected speech, and arrest sitting members of Congress for doing their oversight” of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The third action, in March, followed ICE’s deadly invasion of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, and Trump launching his illegal war on Iran. The three themes of those demonstrations,  said Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg, were “no kings, no ICE, no war.”

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Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

How can we be sure to get news about peace demonstrations?

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Her co-executive director, Ezra Levin, said Tuesday that “since the first No Kings in June of last year, millions of people have demonstrated they are not afraid and they will not bow to any would-be American king. We’ve sent that message loud and clear—but we’re not just sending a message with this next No Kings.”

“We’re taking back power for the people using our constitutional right to organize and our constitutional right to vote,” Levin stressed. “While corrupt politicians and elected officials line their pockets, families across America are struggling to put food on the table and gas in the car. No Kings: Vote Early is about making sure every eligible voter has a plan to vote, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice heard.”

Schifeling, from the ACLU, noted that “this year, voters are facing coordinated efforts from their own government to make it harder for eligible voters to vote and have their vote counted. That’s why this next chapter of No Kings is focused on encouraging all voters to make a plan to vote as early as possible.”

“In a democracy, elected officials are supposed to be accountable to their constituents; voting is one of the best ways to ensure they are,” she continued. “No Kings will be on the ground in communities across the country making sure that all eligible voters can and do vote.” Public Citizen’s Gilbert said that “the importance of as many people as possible voting early cannot be overstated.”

“Early voting can make the difference between voting and not voting for people who are traveling, who are working on Election Day, who need options for childcare while voting, and more,” she highlighted. “Voting is democracy in action at a time when authoritarianism and oligarchy are looming large, and standing together to cast our vote is one of the most patriotic things we can do right now.”

In addition to Trump’s authoritarian policies, US voters are contending with high prices tied to the president’s policies, from the Iran War to his legally dubious tariffs. Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, co-founders of Black Voters Matter Fund, noted that “the cost of our groceries, our utility bills, our healthcare—all of it is shaped by the people we elect and the decisions they make, which is why our participation matters.”

“America belongs to the people—not to kings, billionaires, or politicians,” Albright and Brown emphasized.

Other coalition members include the American Federation of Teachers, MoveOn, State Voices, and Voto Latino, whose executive director, Beatriz Lopez, vowed that “on October 17th, we will show up, vote early, and vote like our future depends on it because American democracy has no kings.”

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

USA: Bea Lumpkin and How an Antifascist Rests in Power

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article by Stacy Davis Gates in In These Times

When people ask me what it means to be a woman in power, I think about Bea Lumpkin, because power means you don’t wait for permission.

Not power as in proximity to the powerful, or having a seat at a table someone else built. I mean power as in knowing early which side you were on, then spending every day of your life standing on the business of that side.

Bea passed away June 14 at 107 years old. A lifelong communist and the Jewish daughter of Russian immigrants, she married a Black man during the height of the Red Scare in 1949 and raised a family under the restrictive conventions of Jim Crow fascism.


Bea Lumpkin with her husband Frank

The United States in the mid-20th century was a country where inter-racial marriage was still illegal in 30 states, and where the Supreme Court would not strike down those laws until 1967. A federal agent might show up at your door simply because of who you loved and what you believed.

It was the McCarthy era, and the openly Communist Lumpkins were already a target for their activism. But their politics were the least of it. They were an interracial couple in America in 1949. That alone was enough to make them a threat.

In a 2019 article for People’s World, Bea Lumpkin wrote: “In addition to fighting back against school closures and the firing of teachers, it is important to keep the struggle for an anti-racist, multicultural curriculum front and center.”

Bea and her husband, Frank — steel-worker, son of sharecroppers — were undeterred.

To understand what Bea brought to her marriage, and to everything else in her life, you have to understand what she had already lived by the time she married.

Her parents were Russian revolutionaries. Her father was arrested after returning fire on the Czar’s Cossacks when they attacked the synagogue where the Jewish Labor Bund was meeting. Her mother helped engineer his escape.

Bea was born knowing which side she was on, telling the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund in 2025, “I always knew, even when I was 6 years old, how much injustice there was.”

By age 9, she was making solidarity trips in support of striking textile workers. At 14, she lied about her age to get a factory job assembling radio tubes and joined the Metal Workers Industrial Union. At Hunter College, when the school threatened to raise the price of a half pint of milk from five to six cents, she organized a boycott and won. She was later suspended for organizing a conference against war and fascism on campus.

At 19, Bea was one of the organizers hired by the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations to organize more than 30,000 laundry workers in New York City. She was a radio technician with the United Electrical Workers and a defense worker during World War II.

In 1948, she stood alongside Paul Robeson at a labor rally in New York. She marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Marquette Park. She stood alongside the Black Panthers on Chicago’s West Side. Legend in our movement holds that she once babysat a young Fred Hampton.

She bore witness to the state killing striking workers during the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago, where 10 were killed and 90 injured when police shot into the crowd. She knowingly took risks to win justice and to marry the love of her life.

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Questions related to this article:

How can we carry forward the work of the great peace and justice activists who went before us?

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Bea was many things that our politics too often tries to reduce and sort into separate boxes. She was a mother, and she was an educator who started her classroom career at age 47. She was a mathematician who published groundbreaking scholarship on the multicultural roots of math and science because her students demanded to see themselves in what they were learning. She was a feminist who co-founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974. She was a fierce advocate for climate justice in her 100s.

Bea’s existence resisted reduction because it undersells the enormous impact of her life. She wasn’t an “-ism.” She was a force of nature. The labor movement Bea entered as a teenager in the 1930s was fighting for things we now take as bedrock: the right to organize, the minimum wage and the eight-hour workday. She was raised to believe that her existence was to make the world a more just place for everyone. For Bea, the struggle was never a sacrifice. It was a joy.

As a Black woman leading a labor union in this particular moment in America, when the rights Bea’s generation bled for are being dismantled in real time, when public education is under assault, when the multiracial coalitions she built her life around are being deliberately fractured,
I find myself asking what Bea would do.

She would be at the rally, on the picket line and knocking doors. She would be organizing young people and old people in the same room. She would be furious and unrelenting, yet jubilant and optimistic. She didn’t slow down by choice. Her body made that decision for her.

Bea taught us the discipline of showing up, and the refusal to leave a struggle to someone else.

She embodied the understanding that justice is not something you wait for, but something you build, generation by generation, in union halls and church basements, and on picket lines, no matter the weather. Well into her 100s she attended every monthly delegate meeting and protest and caucus meeting for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and oftentimes got there without any support or assistance. I can close my eyes and see that black fanny pack, red CTU cap, and fist held high in proud defiance.

She was our friend, and we are going to miss her.

Roberta Wilson, a longtime organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), gave 80 years of her life to educating students.

Our union also lost in these same days of grief one of our longtime members, Roberta Wilson.

Roberta came north from Thomson, Georgia, as part of the Second Great Migration that helped build Chicago. She gave 80 years of her life to her faith, to educating her students, to organizing her block club, coat drives, and food pantry, and to creating a scholarship fund that sent Black children from Chicago’s West Side to college.

Black history.

Where Bea showed us how to fight, Roberta showed us how to hold, and how to be the root system of a community that allowed everything above ground to grow.

They are the women on whom this movement is built.

Excerpt from her book, Joy in the Struggle: My Life and Love by Beatrice Lumpkin, International Publishers, 2018. Free for any DSA or Union member

‘So how do I feel about fighting for the same issues again and again? My reply is, “Yes, I am tired of the system that puts profits first. But I am not tired of fighting capitalism. Each fight brings us in touch with wonderful fellow-fighters. Each fight hastens the day when organized workers and their allies will be strong enough to get rid of capitalism and begin to build socialism. Yes, there is joy in the struggle.’ —

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The author, Stacy Davis Gates, is president of the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

Thousands march in Washington as leaders warn of voting and civil rights rollbacks

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article from Reuters (reproduced by permission)

More than six decades after Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps ‌of the Lincoln Memorial and declared his dream for a more just America, thousands gathered in Washington on Friday to warn that voting rights and other freedoms he fought and died for are once again under threat.

Civil rights leaders invoked the same demands he made from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial two and a half generations ago: that the fight for equality remains unfinished.

The event, called “March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote,” drew several thousand people to the National Mall, including union members, students, members of Black Greek-letter organizations, and attendees of all ages who traveled from across the country.


Photo from video accompanying the article

The march comes after the Supreme Court weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act this year, setting off a string of redistricting battles across the South, with Republican-led statehouses moving quickly, in some cases within days, to redraw congressional maps in time for midterm elections in November.

“We know in this fight we’re fighting powerful forces, but this is why we rally today,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the civil rights organization National Urban League. “This is why we seek to bring Americans together of goodwill from all races, from all sections of the country to push back as forcefully as we can.”

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Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

How can we be sure to get news about peace demonstrations?

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The gathering was organized by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and Martin Luther King III ‌and Arndrea Waters King’s Drum Major Institute, alongside more than 90 community partner organizations, including the NAACP and National Urban League.

“Defending the vote means defending the foundation of our democracy,” said King III in a statement. “Sixty-three years after my father stood at the Lincoln Memorial, we are called to march again, not only in remembrance, but in action.”

According to the organizers, the march aims to “confront the systemic rollback of civil rights at this critical moment,” referring to President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb mail-in voting, weaken anti-discrimination protections across the federal government and fundamentally shift what civil rights are.

“We stand on the same ground because the work is not finished,” Sharpton wrote in a letter to supporters. “The right to vote, the very foundation of our power, is being chipped away in statehouse after statehouse. When the vote is weakened, every other right grows fragile with it.”

The program began at 9 a.m. ET with confirmed speakers U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“Black unemployment is up, Black homeownership is down and Black political representation is under assault with Jim Crow-like tactics all throughout the South — challenging times,” Jeffries said, referring to the system of state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the American South until the 1960s.

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

Interview with Combatants for Peace

DISARMAMENT AND SECURITY .

The members of the Israeli-Palestinian movement Combatants for Peace fight for peace on behalf of the Palestinians in Israel. Here are excerpts from articles in Pressenza: part one and part two published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0)

Combatants for Peace Iris Gur (Israeli) and Mai Shahin (Palestinian) will be attending the Re-Imagine Peace event in Florence; both have been invited to the screening of the film *There is Another Way*. Daniela Bezzi of Pressenza interviewed them:

DB – Let’s start with your personal stories: how did you decide to join Combatants for Peace?

Iris Gur – Throughout my adult life, I worked in education as a teacher and as a school principal. I always saw education not just as a profession, but as the way of life I had chosen for myself. I grew up in a Jewish Israeli Zionist family. My parents arrived in Israel as refugees from Europe after the Second World War, and I grew up on stories of the Holocaust and survival. The only narrative I knew was that we, the Jewish people, had always been persecuted, and that we had no choice but to defend ourselves and our small country. The only thing I knew about Arabs was that they all wanted to destroy us.

My father was a military officer. I grew up on army bases and was very proud of the Israeli army. For most of my life, I had no opportunity to become familiar with either the Palestinian narrative or with Arab friends. I deliberately use the word “Arabs” because, in the environment where I grew up, the term “Palestinians” simply did not exist. Neither did the concept of the occupation.

Today, I can see that there were cracks in my worldview over the years, but I never allowed them to grow. The person who ultimately transformed my perspective was my daughter, Noa. 11 years ago, when she was seventeen, she decided to refuse military conscription. Through her, an entirely new world of values, ideas, and community opened up before me.

Her decision meant four months in military prison for her, and for me was the beginning of a journey of discovery – one that confronted me with the reality of the occupation, apartheid, and above all, the Palestinian people.

My decision to join Combatants for Peace came from the realization that if I truly wanted to help change the reality we are in, it could only be done in full partnership with Palestinians and through nonviolent actions.

Mai Shahin: I didn’t arrive at Combatants for Peace as a single decision. I joined through a long process of living under occupation in the West Bank, where control is not only political, but physical, emotional, and psychological. It shapes movements, breath, relationships, and the ability to imagine a future beyond survival. In that environment, resistance is not abstract. It is daily life. But over time, I began to ask a deeper question: how to resist without losing our own humanity in the process? A question that led me into trauma work, community healing, and nonviolent communication. I began to understand that occupation does not only control land – it enters the nervous system, it fragments trust, it isolates communities, and it produces cycles of grief that, if unprocessed, repeat themselves across generations.

This is where my connection with Combatants for Peace begins. It was the first space I encountered where Palestinians and Israelis were not asked to erase reality to speak. We were rather asked to stay inside reality together, while refusing violence as a response.

What makes Combatants for Peace so powerful is that it is not only a dialogue space. It is a joint movement of resistance. It insists that ending occupation, dismantling systems of domination, and protecting human dignity are not separate from relationship-building: they are part of the same struggle.

Alongside this work, and deeply connected to it, I co-founded Satyam Homeland together with Palestinians, Israelis, and international practitioners. It emerged from the same understanding: that resistance requires spaces where people can learn to remain human even inside the struggle. Satyam Homeland is a community space where Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals come together to engage in trauma and grief work, embodied healing, nonviolent resistance education, dialogue, and storytelling—and from that ground, move into action in the world. It is not separate from Combatants for Peace. It is part of a broader ecosystem of what I do: one holds the political courage of joint resistance, the other holds the communal practices that make sustained nonviolent engagement possible. They speak to each other constantly.

After October 7, this connection became even more visible. As Palestinians witnessed mass killing and destruction in Gaza, and escalating violence, settler attacks, and displacement in the West Bank, the instinct toward separation was immense. Fear and grief were not theoretical – they were lived, immediate, and heavy. And yet within Combatants for Peace, something held. We did not collapse into silence or separation. We turned toward each other – not to soften reality, but to remain capable of facing it. We cried together. We named what was happening. We disagreed. But we stayed.

And then we asked the only question that matters when everything is breaking: What do we do now? A question that we can afford thanks to the several years of building relationships that can survive rupture. This is how to be with Combatants for Peace is not only part of my work – it is the central part of what I do.

This is also why I continue this work from the West Bank, where every act of nonviolent resistance, every meeting, every step of presence carries real risk – and yet also real meaning, faith, responsibility. . . .

(Editor’s note: Two question/responses from part one are omitted here:
1. DB – This year marks the 20th anniversary of Combatants for Peace. What makes this movement so successful among the young people, in your opinion?
2. DB – It is quite extraordinary to see so many Israeli and Palestinian organizations mobilizing in coalition. What is the ingredient in your opinion for this kind of activism, based on cooperation despite the differences?
You can find the omissions here. )

DB – Both of you are often involved in actions of “Protective Presence”. Can you share some moments from your experience?

Iris – Thank you for this question, so important for me at a personal level that I feel tears in my eyes! I am part of a group called “Jordan Valley Activists.” It was established about 17 years ago by activists from Combatants for Peace and has grown into a group in its own right, thanks to the initiative of Israelis who provide accompaniment and a protective presence to Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the Jordan Valley.

We provide physical presence and assistance with food, water, legal support and any other help we can offer to the last remaining communities that are still holding on, in the face of violence by settlers and the Israeli military: demolition orders, threats of displacement, restrictions on grazing, denial of water and livelihoods and so on.

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(For a French version of this article, click here.)

Question related to this article:

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

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I joined this ‘protective presence’ activity in November 2023, when settler and military violence escalated dramatically. The violence was no longer directed only at shepherds in the fields, but also at families in their own homes. As a result, the presence of activists was expanded into 24/7 shifts.

I became closely connected with one specific community called ‘Farsiya al-Razala’, which consists of five families, including children, women, and elderly people. It is one of the last ten shepherd communities remaining in the Jordan Valley, and sadly, their time before being forcibly displaced may also be coming very soon.

Last week, I accompanied two young shepherds who were grazing their flocks in an area called Hammam al-Malih. Until a few months ago, there was a large community there: families, fields, herds, children, and even a regional elementary school. Everything was destroyed by the State of Israel. The people were violently displaced, despite the fact that the land is privately owned by a church. Across the road, alongside the community, there is a military base that has existed for many years.

In recent months, the soldiers have taken upon themselves the task of ensuring that, even after the families were expelled and the place was emptied, shepherds from nearby communities would not return to graze their flocks. In the past, there was also a spring there, that provided drinking water for both people and animals.

On the day I was there, the two young shepherds asked us not to leave them alone, because if we did, the soldiers would come and arrest them. One of them told us about his previous arrest:

“Female soldiers, 18 or 19 years old, were shouting at us and putting plastic restraints tightly around our hands. I asked them: Why? There is room for everyone here. I am only asking to live in peace.” The soldiers shouted at them: “Leave this place.”

He answered: “Where will we go? We have nowhere else to go. This is our home. We have lived here all our lives.” That day, the shepherds were able to finish grazing peacefully.

Yesterday, in the same place, two soldiers arrived and arrested one of those young men. The other managed to escape. One of the soldiers fired his M16 rifle into the air and claimed that he was not afraid of anyone. The Palestinian shepherd was taken, handcuffed, to the military base several kilometers away. A few hours later, he was released, bruised and beaten. This is only one story among hundreds of daily incidents of abuse.

Yousef, a 13-year-old boy with special needs, called me to tell me that his family had received a demolition order for their home in Farsiya. I had no words to answer him. This child and his family have no other home.

Mai – Protective Presence is where everything becomes real. It is standing with communities under immediate pressure. Farmers, shepherds, families, children who are trying to remain on their land and continue ordinary life under extraordinary conditions.

In the West Bank, especially since October 7, the level of violence, uncertainty, and instability has increased. Communities face settler attacks, military incursions, and ongoing displacement pressure every day.

In that context, presence is not symbolic. It is a form of protection, but also a form of witnessing.

It communicates something simple and essential: you are not alone.

Sometimes it prevents violence, sometimes it doesn’t. But it always interrupts isolation and isolation is one of the core tools of oppression. And this is where the connection to CFP becomes tangible, because CFP is not only dialogue, it is joint resistance in action.

And ‘Protective Presence’ is one of its clearest expressions in the field. It is also where the embodied and trauma-aware practices from Satyam Homeland become essential, because staying present in such moments requires inner grounding, not only political conviction.

Both dimensions are always present in our work.

DB –  Last but not least: what can we do in order to contribute to your endeavor?

Iris – There is a lot that can be done. Beyond providing financial support, people can also come to the region and join protective presence activities as international volunteers. This does involve risks: there is a physical risk of violence from settlers, as well as the possibility of being expelled by the Israeli authorities. At the same time, visiting both the West Bank and Israel is safe and can allow people to develop a deeper and more accurate understanding of the reality. There is nothing like seeing things with your own eyes, and there is nothing like experiencing reality directly.

History has shown us that pressure from international communities can influence leaders, change policies, and even transform the course of history. People can take action by reaching out to the media, politicians, artists, public figures; by changing the public discourse; and by demanding an immediate end to violence, abuse, occupation, apartheid, and displacement.

This includes demanding access to water and livelihoods, freedom of movement, and the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. It means demanding the release of all human beings from lives shaped by fear and violence. The demand must be for security, freedom, and equal rights for every person living between the river and the sea.

The conversation needs to change: from supporting one side of the conflict against the other, toward understanding that the goal must be a safe and free life for all human beings.

There are 14 million people living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River: about 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians. Neither of them will go anywhere. Our future is shared, whether we like it or not. The question is not whether we will live together, but how. Our children deserve to grow up in freedom, security, and dignity.

Mai – The first responsibility is clarity. Reject antisemitism completely. Reject Islamophobia completely. Reject anti-Palestinian racism completely. Reject any framework that assigns unequal value to human life.

The second responsibility is truth. We cannot build justice based on denial. We must be able to name occupation, displacement, structural inequality, and violence without euphemism.

The third responsibility is support for movements that combine resistance and healing. Because this is what makes long-term transformation possible.

Combatants for Peace holds the political spine of nonviolent resistance and joint struggle. Satyam Homeland holds the embodied, emotional, and communal capacity that allows that resistance to continue without collapse. Together, they represent something rare: a way of staying human inside struggle.

For me, as a Palestinian woman working from the West Bank, this is not theory. It is daily life, shaped by risk, responsibility, grief, and also by deep commitment and trust in the relationships we have built across divides.

That is what keeps this work alive. Because in the end, what we are building is not only political change. It is the possibility that we can remain fully human while refusing systems that deny humanity to others.

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DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast

Open Letter from Global Jewish Organizations in Support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article from the Transcend Media Service

A call for Jewish organizations around the world to publicly endorse the BDS movement and support coordinated nonviolent pressure to end Israeli impunity.

8 Aug 2026 – We, the undersigned Jewish organizations, collectives, and community members around the world, write today out of profound moral urgency.

The Israeli state is accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through mass displacement, settler violence, and the destruction of Palestinian communities. In Gaza, Israel is carrying out a genocide that has killed tens of thousands of people, devastated civilian infrastructure, displaced the vast majority of the population, and subjected Palestinians to starvation and collective punishment.

These crimes demand concrete action from us, in whose name they are being committed.

Members of Zidovsky Hlas Solidarity (Jewish Voice of Solidarity) at a protest in Prague.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has expressed principled support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), demonstrating that Jewish ethical principles can and must be mobilized in opposition to oppression.

The scale of devastation has reached a point where silence is no longer defensible.

We therefore call upon Jewish organizations around the world to publicly endorse the BDS movement and to support coordinated nonviolent pressure to end Israeli impunity. We also urge governments and international institutions to respond to growing calls from civil society, human rights organizations, and citizens for concrete measures of accountability, including the suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement.

We affirm support for:

° Boycott, divestment, and sanctions as legitimate, nonviolent tools for advancing

° 
Palestinian freedom, equality, and human rights;

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Question related to this article:

How can war crimes be documented, stopped, punished and prevented?

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° Economic, cultural, academic, and institutional pressure on Israel until it ends its

violations of Palestinian rights and complies with international law;

° The right of individuals, organizations, and institutions to advocate for and participate

in BDS without censorship, retaliation, or legal penalty;

° Building broad Jewish support for BDS globally as an expression of solidarity with Palestinians and opposition to Israeli oppression.

This is not a moment for maintaining old divisions and political boundaries while an entire society is being destroyed. We may not agree on every political framework, but we believe the time has come to place our collective moral weight behind meaningful action, publicly support BDS, and demand accountability.

Supporting Organizations

Umbrella Networks

European Jews for Palestine (EJP)
Global Jews for Palestine (GJP)

Organizations

A Different Jewish Voice (Een Ander Joods Geluid) (Netherlands)
AJAB – Antizionist Jewish Alliance (Belgium)
Erev Rav (Netherlands)
Jewish Call for Peace (JCP) (Luxembourg)
Jewish Network for Palestine (United Kingdom)
Jewish Peaceniks (United Kingdom)
Jewish Voice of Solidarity (Židovský hlas solidarity) (Czech Republic)
Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) (United Kingdom)
Jøder for Retfærdig Fred (af 5784) / Jews for Just Peace (5784) (Denmark)
Jødiske stemmer for rettferdig fred (Jewish Voices for Just Peace) (Norway)
Judeobolschewiener*innen (Austria)
Jüdische Stimme (Germany)
Junts Associació Catalana de Jueus i Palestins (Catalonia/Spain)
Loud Jew Collective (Melbourne, Australia)
Shoresh EU
The Vilne Bund (Lithuania)

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Comments

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global, HUMAN RIGHTS

India: Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article by Arundhati Roy in Transcend Media Service

The student-led protests that have convulsed the Indian capital this week are showing us a different future for India and spreading to other cities, as organisers call for nationwide demonstrations tomorrow, 24 July. The cautious hope stirred by this youth uprising – and the Modi government’s desperate struggle to contain it.

For the first time in years, it feels wonderful to be Indian. Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge  and a joke.


Photo by Gayatri N.

We all know the story, but here it is, for the record. In response to an arrogant, contemptuous comment  by the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, calling some unemployed young Indians cockroaches, Abhijeet Dipke, a student living in Boston, posted a comment on Instagram: “What if all cockroaches come together?” Millions responded. And thus was born the Cockroach Janta Party. Dipke became the Pied Piper of cockroaches. Its first demand was the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister who sits smugly atop a corrupt, rotten ministry under which public exam papers are regularly leaked. An estimated 152 since 2014, according to opposition parties. These leaks have devastated the lives of millions of young people who spent years preparing for these exams, some of whose parents have had to sell their land or homes to support their children’s studies and pay the fee for the right to appear for these exams. A novel form of legal extortion. After the recent leak of the exam paper for medical college admissions, 12 distressed students died by suicide.

As cockroach anger grew into an online tsunami, Dipke returned from Boston on 6 June and went straight from the airport to Delhi’s famous protest grounds at Jantar Mantar. Sonam Wangchuk, the well-known activist and education reformer from Ladakh joined him and declared an indefinite hunger strike. Six university students – Neha Bora, Manish Kumar, Aameen Amitosh, Danish Ali, Hrishikesh and Deepak, members of the All India Students Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Liberation) – declared they would fast too, and took up position on an adjacent stage. Protests began in other cities. As the condition of those on fast grew critical, the young roaches who had swamped the internet began to show up at Jantar Mantar for real. The Cockroach Janta Party announced that on 20 July, the day parliament was to open for its monsoon session, they would march on Parliament. Two days before the planned march, Sonam Wangchuk was snatched off the stage by the police and held in detention, first in a government hospital, and later at his wife’s insistence, in a private hospital. He still remains on fast. On the morning of 20 July, the day of the march, the AISA students ended their fast.

The cockroaches took the capital city by storm. They came by train, by bus, by air, by metro, their numbers increasing by the hour. Hours before the first rays of sun lightened Delhi’s monsoon skies, they began to pour into Jantar Mantar in the tens of thousands. By sunrise it was clear that a generation of desperate and furious young people, who have seen their future snuffed out before their eyes, intended to reclaim what their parents and grandparents’ generations had conceded: our dignity as a people and as a country. Our rights as citizens of a democracy. The protesters exorcised the corrosive fear that has become second nature to us all with their sheer courage and grace. And humour. By the end of the day it was clear that the protest had become about something far bigger than what the protesters or their leaders were demanding. Dharmendra Pradhan is small change now. The stakes are far bigger. The rot in the whole system of governance, from top to bottom, is clearly visible and has begun to stink like a decomposing corpse. Even the tiniest of the cockroaches, some no more than seven or eight years old, were able to clearly articulate that.

Despite the quick and almost clandestine appointment of a new police chief days before the march, and despite worried whispers about the terrifying proficiency of our terrifying home minister, both the police and the home ministry completely miscalculated the scale of the tsunami that engulfed Delhi on 20 July.

They tried everything. They blocked buses and roads and metro stations. It didn’t help. They tried to jam the internet. But the young roaches – creatures of the internet – somehow subverted that effort with a deluge of memes and videos that made you laugh and cry at once. In Delhi, of all the places in the world, young women who were part of the protest said that they felt safe in the crowd – although some complained about being groped by the police. We saw Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, people belonging to every caste and class coming together, helping each other, protecting each other as they faced down the police. Instead of lecturing us, or giving us grand speeches, they showed us, demonstrated for us, the possible India, the beautiful India of our dreams.

To deal with this danger, the police welded together their yellow metal barricades, and brought their tried and tested props: trucks full of stones, and pre-damaged vehicles in the hope that they could make it look as though the young people had turned violent and the police were acting in self-defence. They brought in an army of plainclothes goons  armed with batons and clubs. To prepare for action, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) removed their name-tags  from their uniforms. The faithful mainstream TV channels were lined up, primed to report the lies. (Some jumped the gun and began to report things that hadn’t happened yet. News in India tends to be about the future, not the present.) Nothing worked. The police and RAF swung their lathis wildly, broke children’s heads and fractured limbs. They fired tear gas. But the young kept marching. Straight towards parliament. Straight to where they said they would go.

As they approached, security forces took position, their AK47s aimed at the unarmed students. Still, the cockroaches marched. And as they marched, they stripped away any remnants of the velvet glove that masks the government’s iron fist and exposed the current regime for what it is and always has been. A fascist iron fist. A confederacy of brutes with no capacity to understand the history and the diversity of the country which it governs. People who only know how to hate, but have no idea how to love. Or think.

As the marchers approached, our brave, boastful prime minister was whisked away to safety. Members of Parliament were prevented from leaving the gleaming new Samvidhan Sansad building whose whole purpose seems to be to undermine the constitution daily.

By evening the police had broken the main stage at the protest site. By night the people had reclaimed it once again. As the police withdrew for the night the cockroaches gave them a standing ovation. For beating children. Wah Modi ji! Wah!

It’s silly to expect major political change to come from this. But to dismiss it as just a heady moment would be obtuse. It’s no surprise that the wires and live-screaming TV channels are burning up with gossip and innuendo and conspiracy theories about foreign-funding and CIA plots. Speaking as a proud andolanjeevi  (Modi’s derisive name for people like me), I confess that when it all began, I was wary too. I worried that we were heading into another Anna Hazare moment – that so-called anti-corruption movement, which, regardless of its early intentions, eventually gifted us three terms of being ruled by a political party that has destroyed every institution in this country, one that sees no separation between itself as a political party and the government of India, one that respects neither the country nor its citizens, and one that has shamed us internationally and brought India to its knees.

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Questions related to this article:

How effective are mass protest marches?

Is there a renewed movement of solidarity by the new generation?

(Article continued from left column)

But my suspicions about the Cockroach Janata Party were allayed when I saw the hostility of the mainstream media towards them. That, to me, was the first and most reassuring sign. I was thrilled that Abhijeet Dipke was from a Dalit community, and even more thrilled that that wasn’t what anybody was focused on. Everything changed for me when I heard him say, “If my name had been Khalid, or if I were a Muslim, I would have been in jail by now.” He had the courage to call out the vulgarity of how things actually work in India – the fact that in our country everything (including and especially the law) does not apply equally to everybody. Everything depends entirely on your religion, caste, class, ethnicity and gender. It was a profound observation, simply made. For him to say this publicly, when even opposition politicians will only say “minority community” instead of “Muslim” for fear of a “Hindu backlash” made me head for Jantar Mantar right away. I also knew that when Dipke picked the name “Khalid” he could well have been speaking of Umar Khalid, the JNU scholar who, along with Sharjeel Imam and many others, has been in prison without trial for close to six years now. Umar’s crime? Urging protesters to remain non-violent during the 2020 protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, even while Delhi was convulsed by a spate of arson, murder and mosque-burning instigated by Hindu vigilante goons watched over by the benign, and occasionally participating police. Appeal after appeal for bail was turned down by judges who seem to have lost the courage to do, or even understand, what is right.

As the cockroaches marched and their numbers burgeoned, I caught myself thinking: Thank goodness they aren’t mostly Muslim, or Sikh, or Christian or Adivasi. They would have been flattened, killed, shot, jailed. Thank heaven they aren’t Kashmiri. They might have been blinded (although some did receive their share of pellet-like injuries). Thank goodness they are mostly Hindu. That’s how sad this moment is in India. However, things could change in a minute. We are in what they call a “developing situation”. Reports are coming in of thousands of paramilitary troops  being flown in from other states. We don’t know what the coming days will bring.

Where does all this leave us? Unlike the Anna Hazare movement which had weeks of frenzied, non-stop 24×7 coverage on hysterical, corporate owned TV channels, the Cockroach Janata Party has only itself and the internet to bank on. Unlike the Anna movement, which had been penetrated and taken over by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, with the Modi-led BJP massing at the gates, fully prepared to capitalise electorally on the TV-generated frenzy, the cockroaches have no organised opposition parties waiting in the wings, poised to take things further. The spontaneous rage we are witnessing will dissipate unless some real political work begins. Unless adults and opposition parties stop their jockeying and petty squabbling and show some solidarity. The government knows that this is unlikely. It remains unmoved because it feels that all it needs to do is wait. States have the power to wait. People don’t.

At this moment the cockroach uprising is one of several protests taking place across India. Adivasis in Madhya Pradesh are protesting the Ken-Betwa river-linking project. Villagers in Uttarakhand are protesting the mass felling of trees. People are protesting the environmental desecration of the Greater Nicobar Islands. Manipur is boiling. Jobs are disappearing. Prices are soaring. Fury is building. And the BJP-RSS’s ‘God’ game is getting exposed for what it always has been. A hoax. A gangster-driven gold-rush. The looting of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya  has given us a bad Bollywood script which is playing out before our eyes: sleek godmen and corrupt politicians building hotels, accumulating real-estate, driving around in SUVs, fattened on the faith of the poor and unsuspecting. The tentacles of corruption and daylight robbery snaking all the way up to the top.

Can cockroach energy pull us out of this pit? Not easy. A quick look at the outcome of people’s movements in India is not encouraging. It’s a potted history of shrinking ambitions and broken dreams. In the sixties and seventies various movements – including the armed rebellion by the Naxalites – demanded the redistribution of wealth and land to the tiller. They were crushed. In the eighties and nineties, social movements, most famously the Narmada Bachao Andolan and later the Maoists in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand fought against the displacement of farmers and indigenous tribespeople from their land. In other words, they were asking for what the poor still had to not be snatched away. They were crushed too. By the 2000s, they had been reduced to being grateful for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The right to three months’ employment at minimum wages – an amount which works out to the price of a good meal at an expensive restaurant in a city. That too has been shelved by this regime, and replaced with survival level rations – bags of provisions with Modi’s face on them – thrown contemptuously at people, like alms to beggars from moving cars, in return for gratitude and votes. As the economy flounders, even this is in jeopardy.

Today, in 2026, we have been reduced to fighting for our right to vote and our citizenship. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) are a Hindu Rashtra version of the 1935 Nuremberg laws, under which German citizens were granted citizenship by the Third Reich depending on their “legacy papers”. (How many in India have these papers?) The anti-CAA-NRC moment faded away after the mass protests led to the murder of protesters and the incarceration of activists. But the protests caused the government to slow down the implementation of those new laws.

But now the CAA-NRC, which many correctly believed was aimed mostly at Muslims, has returned, disguised as the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) of electoral rolls. We have casually been informed that even our passports are not proof  of citizenship. Millions are being struck off electoral rolls. The whole country is desperately searching for “legacy papers”. We don’t know where we stand. Are we legitimate? Illegitimate? Do we have rights? Which of us belongs in those massive detention centres being constructed for “doubtful citizens”? Will we spend our days running from Tribunal to Tribunal? Fascists love chaos and confusion.

Our panic and anguish may lead us to pin too much hope on the cockroach uprising. Some have already compared it to the uprising of young people that led to regime change in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. But India is too vast a country for that to happen. Others compare it to the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan that toppled Indira Gandhi in 1977. These comparisons are not helpful. The Cockroach Janta Party is neither of those things. It is a thing of its own. A unique product of its times. It is vulnerable young people up against a vicious, vindictive government that has shown itself to be merciless to those who oppose it. Revenge is surely being planned and will be visited on those it sees as the main instigators.

How does a regime which is clearly becoming hugely unpopular have the confidence to not make any concessions to the people who voted for it? Probably because it feels it has successfully gamed the election business. It has captured the machinery. The Election Commission is flawed in its very composition and can no longer be counted upon to be neutral. The electronic voting machines have been managed, the electoral rolls now exclude millions of real people and include millions of phantom names, the bureaucracy that oversees elections have shown themselves to be utterly complicit, the courts can be depended upon to delay or turn a blind eye to egregious malpractice, the police have no idea what neutrality is, the press genuflects each time someone in power clicks their fingers. Constituencies are going to be re-mapped to make sure that it is always Advantage BJP. What does the ruling party have to fear? Why should it listen to anyone? It is the richest political party on earth, backed by the richest industrialists in the world. It can buy anything. And anyone. Or so it believes.

But can this game last forever? Can all the people be fooled all the time? Can a country with a population of a billion-and-a-half be dragged around like a corpse forever? It cannot. The cockroaches are out and about. The farmers have begun marching to Delhi  once more, this time to protest the India-US trade deal – the death warrant the government of India has slavishly agreed to sign  on their behalf. The borders of the city have been sealed but that is unlikely to stop them. Perhaps the rest of us can take lessons from our farmers and our cockroaches on how to become a little dangerous. The young have given us a gift. It is up to us all, every one of us to make what they have done matter.

Once a prime minister flees physically, it can’t be long before he has to flee politically.

But this regime will not go easily. It will not tolerate being humiliated on the streets of the capital. We are likely to see blood. Young tempers are fraying. How long will it be before someone in that youthful, fired-up crowd loses their cool and provides the police an excuse to open fire? They will do everything they can to break us. We must do everything we can to stop them.

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HUMAN RIGHTS, South Asia

US: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights alarmed at deaths in ICE custody, calls for urgent preventive action

…. HUMAN RIGHTS ….

An press release from the United Nations Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday [June 26] urged prompt action to prevent further loss of life in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and called for independent investigations into all deaths under ICE custody.

Türk said that it is alarming that, according to US Government official data, in the first five months of this year, 18 people had died in ICE detention. A further case of death in ICE custody has been reported this month. In 2025, a total of 33 deaths were registered, compared with 11 in 2024.

The lack of transparency and clarity surrounding the circumstances of these deaths in custody undermines accountability for them, the High Commissioner added.


ICE detention centre in Newark, New Jersey on June 6, 2026 © RYAN MURPHY / AFP

“I call for prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations into all deaths in ICE custody. Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld,” said Türk.

These deaths occurred in a context of broad expansion of the US immigration detention system, with ICE currently holding over 60,000 individuals compared to approximately 40,000 in early 2025, according to the latest official data. There are plans to further increase the detention capacity up to 90,000 people by the end of 2026.

Detainees, who include entire families with children, and medically vulnerable people, are frequently reported to face inhuman conditions of detention and treatment, including inadequate healthcare and food, and exposure to disease outbreaks in overcrowded facilities. There have been concerning allegations regarding the use of force. Additionally, five of the officially reported deaths in 2026 were classified as suicides.

A lack of information regarding the whereabouts of detainees during transfers has been reported, causing significant distress among families, while prolonged uncertainty surrounding legal status and processes contributes to psychological distress among detainees.

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Question related to this article:

What is the state of human rights in the world today?

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Türk also expressed alarm over the reported use of solitary confinement, which should be an exceptional measure, and, particularly when prolonged or indefinite, could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

“All these factors exacerbate vulnerability and raise serious concerns as to whether some of these deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented,” said the High Commissioner.

He stressed that alternatives to detention should be prioritized. Immigration detention should be an exceptional measure of last resort and should generally be avoided for people with significant medical or mental health conditions, as well as pregnant women. Regardless of their immigration status or that of their parents, children should not be subjected to immigration detention.

US immigration authorities must ensure that their detention facilities comply with international human rights norms and standards. This includes upholding dignity, avoiding overcrowding, providing timely access to healthcare, including mental health services, family notification, consular assistance, legal representation, and necessary interpretation services for all individuals in immigration detention.

The High Commissioner urged the full restoration and strengthening of independent oversight mechanisms for immigration detention, highlighting their importance as a key safeguard against abuse. He also stressed the crucial role of Congressional bodies in overseeing immigration enforcement practices and associated public funding, to ensure better compliance with international human rights law.

Türk strongly denounced the continued dehumanisation and criminalisation of migrants and refugees. He expressed support for all those who continue to advocate for dignity, fairness, and the protection of their human rights, including lawyers, journalists, faith-based organisations, and civil society groups.

He emphasised that no one should be sent back to a place where they could face serious human rights violations or other irreversible harm.

For more information and media requests, please contact:
In Geneva
: Ravina Shamdasani – ravina.shamdasani@un.org
    
Marta Hurtado – marta.hurtadogomez@un.org

In New York
: Laura Gelbert – gelbert@un.org
WhatsApp
X: @UNHumanRights

Facebook: unitednationshumanrights
Instagram: @unitednationshumanrights

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global, HUMAN RIGHTS, North America, United Nations, ,

Edgar Morin deplores “the world’s silence in the face of the carnage in Gaza”

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article from L’Orient le Jour (translation by CPNN)

(Editor’s note: Edgar Morin passed away on May 29, 2026, at the age of 104 years.)

While Edgar Morin’s public appearances are rare, this one will undoubtedly remain one of his most striking. “I am both stunned and outraged by the fact that those who represent the descendants of a people who have been persecuted for centuries (…) can not only colonize an entire people (…) but, in addition, after the massacre of October 7, have committed a veritable, massive carnage against the people of Gaza.”


An extremely popular intellectual figure in France, Edgar Morin is the author of a transdisciplinary body of work translated into 27 languages ​​and published in 42 countries. Photo AFP)

With shining eyes and a high-pitched voice, emphasizing each word, the 102-year-old French philosopher and sociologist delivered a short plea on Saturday, February 10 [ 2024], to a packed house at the Marrakech African Book Festival, where he was the guest of honor, deploring “a horrific tragedy.” The Israeli offensive has killed more than 28,000 people in Gaza since the start of the war more than four months ago, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.

(Article continued in the column on the right)

(Click here for the original version in French)

Questions related to this article:

How can we carry forward the work of the great peace and justice activists who went before us?

How can we best express solidarity with the people of Gaza?

(Article continued from the column on the left)

Jewish Resistance Fighter

The message is all the more powerful because it comes from the son of Jewish immigrants from Thessaloniki, born Edgar Nahoum, who joined the Resistance in 1943 as a lieutenant in the Free French Forces formed by General de Gaulle, later adopting his Resistance name, Morin. Influenced by Marx, this man, who studied philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the history of political science, has always aspired to become what he calls a “humanologist,” or to understand what it means to be human by combining different fields of knowledge.

The excerpt in question has been shared tens of thousands of times on X, where the intellectual’s humanity has been widely praised, including by some French political figures on the left. “Edgar Morin thinks and speaks truthfully on behalf of all those who still possess a human touch in the face of the genocide in Gaza,” lauded Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), on X. “A century and a perspective still capable of indignation, of condemning the silences,” tweeted Olivier Faure, First Secretary of the Socialist Party.

In a recent opinion piece in Le Monde, Edgar Morin had already addressed the tragedy in Gaza, while also expressing alarm at the proliferation of conflicts worldwide and climate change. “Crises feed off one another in a kind of multi-faceted ecological, economic, political, social, and civilizational crisis that is steadily intensifying,” he wrote, before calling for “fundamental resistance of the mind” against “hatred and contempt.”

In his final address, the sociologist denounced “the silence of the world, the silence of the United States, protectors of Israel, the silence of the Arab states, the silence of the European states that claim to be defenders of culture, humanity, and human rights.” He concluded: “The only thing left, if we cannot resist in a concrete way, is to bear witness.”

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Europe, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast,

‘A Voice That Upholds the Conscience of the World’: Spain Honors Francesca Albanese for Efforts to Stop Gaza Genocide

. HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article by Stephen Prager in Common Dreams (licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez honored  Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, on Thursday, in a display of solidarity as she faces sanctions from the United States over her outspoken advocacy against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Citing her work to document human rights violations over more than two years of conflict, Sánchez awarded Albanese the Order of Civil Merit, a knighthood granted to Spanish and foreign citizens for extraordinary services benefiting the state or society.

“Public responsibility… entails the moral obligation not to look the other way,” Sánchez said in a social media post. “It is an honor to award the Order of Civil Merit to a voice that upholds the conscience of the world: Francesca Albanese.”

Earlier this week, Sánchez petitioned  the European Commission to intervene to stop compliance with the Trump administration’s efforts to punish Albanese, as well as members of the International Criminal Court who have brought arrest warrants  against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
How can we best express solidarity with the people of Gaza?

Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

(continued from left column)

Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has held the role of special rapporteur since 2022, a year before Israel launched a war in Gaza in response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Human rights organizations  and UN experts  have described Israel’s assault as a genocide.

In March 2024, Albanese released  the UN’s first major public report, making the legal case that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe a genocide was being committed, referring to a litany of statements by Israeli officials establishing intent to destroy the Palestinian population.

In addition to documenting Israel’s actions, she has published  research demonstrating the “complicity” of nations that supply weapons and other support to Israel in what she has called a “collective crime” that they should also face responsibility for.

According to official estimates, at least 72,000 Palestinians have been killed  since October 2023, many of them women and children, while independent analyses suggest the death toll is much higher, in part due to the near-total destruction of health and other public infrastructure.

Many of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed by over two years of relentless bombings, leaving most of its 2.1 million people displaced  and living in tent cities.

Albanese told  a Spanish broadcaster that the US and other nations attempting to punish her and other international authorities for speaking out against atrocities in Gaza were “like an international mafia.”

“They want to silence everyone who demands an end to genocide, an end to the crimes,” she said.

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Europe, HUMAN RIGHTS, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

‘Workers Over Billionaires’: Over 3,000 Events Planned for May Day Across US

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article by Brad Reed from Common Dreams (reprinted according to Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A broad coalition of organizations is banding together to stage thousands of planned May Day events across the US based around the theme of building an economy for “workers over billionaires.”

May Day Strong, an initiative anchored by 500 labor and community organizations, is set to host more than 3,000 events throughout the country to demand higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, an end to US Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the war with Iran, and an expansion of democracy over corporate rule.

Organizers of the events are asking participants to refrain from engaging in any economic activity on May 1, which means “no work, no school, no shopping.” This particular action was inspired by the one-day general strike that residents of Minneapolis waged in January to protest against the occupy of their city by federal immigration enforcement officers.

Photo from Labor Day mobilization last year

Flagship demonstrations will be held in major US cities from coast to coast, with thousands of smaller events scheduled to take place in all 50 states.

Neidi Dominguez, executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, said the rallies are being organized to ensure “our tax dollars going to good jobs, schools, and housing, not to sending federal agents into our cities to attack our neighbors.”

Rebecca Winter, executive director of Mass 50501, framed the events as a way for Americans to exert economic leverage to protest injustice.

“The American people are done grinding to get by while our tax dollars fund wars abroad and concentration camps at home,” said Winter. “We pay more for everything while those in power cash in. On May 1, we hit back with our wallets—no work, no school, no shopping. We the people are the economy, and we decide when it stops.”

Greg Nammacher, president of Minnesota-based Service Employees International Union Local 26, drew on the Minneapolis experience to explain what the May Day protests are trying to achieve.

“In January in Minnesota this year we experienced the power when community and workers act together to defend our rights and shared values,” Nammacher said. “This May Day is a chance for us locally, and nationally, to build on those lessons: We are ready to fight to protect our families and our cities from the billionaire agenda of division and hate.”

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said the protests would also highlight inhumane US immigration policies and demand a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“On May Day, we rise because worker justice is immigrant justice,” Salas said. “It’s been 40 years since the last time this nation recognized the contributions of immigrants by approving a pathway to citizenship. And it’s been 20 years since La Gran Marcha—when millions of people took to the streets to reject exclusion, racism, and criminalization of immigrant communities—and we are still facing the same forces, especially under the Trump administration.”

(Article continued in the right column)

Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

How can we be sure to get news about peace demonstrations?

(Article continued from the left column)

Braxton Winston, president of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, described the demonstrations as a good way to bring new people into the movement and strengthen future actions.

“Now is the time to build coalitions between unorganized workers, unions, and community members for mass actions to disrupt the well-organized, joint efforts of corporations and the White House to exploit American workers,” Winston said. “The actions we take on International Workers Day are about building the political, social, community, and labor coalitions needed to disrupt the status quo. The power we flex this May Day will fuel our unwavering commitment to building a bigger, more effective, unified labor movement to win victories for working families.”

. . . . COALITION . . . .

The coalition for May Day Strong lists many hundreds of sponsors.

These include the two leading sponsors of the NoKings demonstrations that have drawn huge crowds in the past two years:

Indivisible
MoveOn

As should be expected from the fact that Mayday is the traditional celebration of workers, there are many sponsors from the labor movement, led by the national associations of teachers and professors :

AAUP, American Association of University Professors
AFT, American Federation of Teachers
APWU, American Postal Workers Union
Jobs with Justice
National Nurses United
NEA, National Education Association
Starbucks Workers United
United Steelworkers of America
USSW, Union of Southern Service Workers
VSEA, Vermont State Employees Association

Other major American trade unions are not represented nationally, but by a few locals:

AFSCME, American Federation of State, City and Municipal Employees
CWA, Communication Workers of America
IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
IBT, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
SEIU, Service Employees International Union
UAW, United Auto Workers
UFCW, United Food and Commercial Workers
UNITE HERE

Other important sponsors include:

50501
CODEPINK
Common Cause
Democratic Socialists of America
Fridays for Future, USA
Greenpeace USA
United States Student Association

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America