ICE Agents Are Harassing the Courthouse Volunteers Who Assist Besieged Immigrants

A reminder of the value of observing and recording

"'Our observers,' responds Gonzalez of NorCal Resist, are 'everyday community members who want immigrant families to feel safe in court. To call them ‘rioters’ or claim that they are assaulting ICE agents, who have guns and are in tactical gear, is absurd.'"

Facing the Future

Getting Started On Our Long-Game
— Scot Nakagawa

"We are at a potentially paradigm-shifting moment in the history of global politics. The liberal assumption that, with the end of the Cold War, democracy would inevitably prevail was taken too literally, but it’s not too late to make that prediction come true. We need to address the emergency at hand, and do so while developing a long-game through which to vet our immediate-term strategies and tactics."

Scot Nakagawa is a political strategist and organizer with more than four decades of experience exploring questions of structural racism, white supremacy, and social justice. He is the cofounder and director of the 22nd Century Initiative, a national strategy and action hub building power at the intersection of opposition to authoritarianism and expanding democratic governance in the US.

This article provides useful and specific srategies for moving forwards.

Right-Wing Supreme Court Acts Again
& the "Rescissions" Before Congress

Heather Cox Richardson

"Without any explanation, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay on a lower court's order that the Trump administration could not gut the Department of Education while the issue is in the courts. The majority thus throws the weight of the Supreme Court behind the ability of the Trump administration to get rid of departments established by Congress—a power the Supreme Court denied when President Richard M. Nixon tried it in 1973.

"This is a major expansion of presidential power, permitting the president to disregard laws Congress has passed, despite the Constitution's clear assignment of lawmaking power to Congress alone."

This article by Richardson goes into several critical recent moves to grab more powers for the Executive Branch. She provides a very helpful explaination of what is happening & who might be driving it.

Dismantling It All With A Whisper

The Big Picture and Jay Kuo

"The Supreme Court's 'Shadow Docket' is letting the Trump White House burn it all down.

"One of the most historically consequential rulings of the Supreme Court came down yesterday. But you wouldn't know it from the order itself.

"That's because it comes to us again off the Supreme Court's so-called "Shadow Docket," which the radical majority of justices has wielded to horrifying effect. All we get is a decision, without explanation, and we must rely upon the dissent (once more, of the three liberal justices) to try to parse what just happened."

One Million Rising: One Million Trained, Millions More Empowered

Hosted by No Kings

Indivisible National is strongly encouraging folks to attend.

When:

Wednesdays, 7:00–8:00pm CDT

Where:

Online

"The masks are off. Trump, MAGA Republicans, and their billionaire donors have given up on even pretending to govern for the people and are solely looking to line their own pockets and consolidate power.

"We're in a period of what the experts call 'authoritarian breakthrough' — a short period where a would-be authoritarian (i.e. Trump) sprints to rapidly concentrate and consolidate their power while eroding the norms and institutions that could serve as checks on that power. We're witnessing this in real time through lawless executive orders, willful disregard for the courts, and vicious attacks on higher education, media, and state governments -- and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

"One Million Rising — a national effort to train one million people to help lead in this moment and gain the skills to lead others. This is how we build people power that can't be ignored. You're invited to join us—and lead."

In Honor of Joanna Macy, 1929-2025

Rebecca Solnit

"The woman that was Joanna Macy is gone. And still here as books, teachings, in students, friends, and through broad influence even beyond those who know her and her work. She's a tree that's fallen; she's a tree that trees have grown out of; she's now part of the past, but also she fed and nourished and loved and guided a possible future, a hopeful and demanding future, demanding in that we would have to change ourselves and our society to make it.

"It's almost strange to think about her integrity, her compassion, her generosity at a time when the news is full of stories about cruel and corrupt men and the wreckage they've strewn all around them, but she's a reminder that their opposite is also present in the world and even in the nation; the same society produced them both. Joanna Macy is gone. Joanna Macy is with us in a thousand ways..."

Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment

from the Poetry Foundation

Poetry is necessary and sought after during crises.

"Pithy and powerful, poetry is a popular art form at protests and rallies. From the civil rights and women’s liberation movements to Black Lives Matter, poetry is commanding enough to gather crowds in a city square and compact enough to demand attention on social media. Speaking truth to power remains a crucial role of the poet in the face of political and media rhetoric designed to obscure, manipulate, or worse. The selection of poems below call out and talk back to the inhumane forces that threaten from above. They expose grim truths, raise consciousness, and build united fronts. Some insist, as Langston Hughes writes, “That all these walls oppression builds / Will have to go!” All rail against complacency and demonstrate why poetry is necessary and sought after in moments of political crisis."

Angela Davis — Tanner Lectures on Human Values

Held at Yale in April

"Angela Y. Davis is professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974) to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (2015). Her most recent books include Abolition. Feminism. Now., written with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, and a book of essays Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, vol. 1.

"She is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia, that works in solidarity with people in women’s prisons.

"Like many educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a twenty-first-century abolitionist movement."