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Editor´s Note

Family and friends who know me will know that I am not and never have been a sports fan. Baseball was the only exception. I followed the minor league Tucson Cowboys in the mid-1950s, and I actually attended several games of the Durham Bulls in the 1970s since the stadium was only a few blocks from where I lived then. I was a fan of the Boston Red Socks and watched on television as long as David Ortiz was there. But since then I have never watched any sport except possibly in a bar when the TV was unavoidable.

I was certainly aware of soccer (football), but never knew enough to follow a game with any understanding. But when Cape Verde made it to the World Cup Round of 32, I began to pay attention. Even if I don´t understand the game, I began to understand the global significance of the sport that many of my African friends were already well aware of. So I started to compile some YouTube playlists as a more accessible way to share than trying to excerpt some written essays.

The result is this post, longer than usual but in a different format, which viewers/readers can sample as they wish. The message: Cape Verde is better known now because of sport. But this small country has also had an impact far greater than its size in two other realms: in music and in Pan-African and global progressive thinking and practice.

I hope that this post can serve to introduce more people to the unique contributions of this set of islands and its far-flung diaspora.

[End editor´s note]

Playlist 1: Introducing Cape Verde

This first playlist focuses on the World Cup and general background about Cape Verde. Image and selected live video links included.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcd22M-Hp6gTIVQIdLINpUgRBE8ABjfDg

Books

For those who want to read as well as watch, here is a short selection of recommended books. If you purchase through this link on Bookshop.org, AfricaFocus receives 10% of the list price.

https://bookshop.org/lists/cape-verde-and-amilcar-cabral-recommended-books

Available for free reading online

Transnational Archipelago

Superb set of essays on the Cape Verdean diaspora

Playlist 2: Musical Crossroads

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVBs-pMywTFU

Playlist 3: Amilcar Cabral

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRbA8jxF25G0

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Editor´s Note

This week I am sharing with you a variety of things I think worth sharing. Your feedback is most welcome, whether a like or “I´m not interested in that.” But in any case I will see how many people click on different links.

The selections below include Solidarity Songs, News, and Books Recommended.

But first an update on the fundraiser.

Support Erick Kibigo in completing his doctoral journey: Updated

While the GoFundMe has only raised a total of $2,750, Erick has also reduced the balance owed from $31,000 to $23,714 through scrimping on his expenses and paying down the debt by using part of his stipend, by additional part-time work, and by direct appeals to friends outside the GoFundMe framework that takes a commission for each donation. Erick has already personally thanked those of you who contributed and it is on my to-do list to send my personal thanks as soon as possible to those of you I know personally.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-erick-kibigo-in-completing-his-doctoral-journey

William Minter - “I am an author, a social justice activist, and a computer programmer. You can find out more about me by searching for “William Minter Africa” on Google. I am raising money for tuition for Erick Kibigo, a Kenyan doctoral student at Howard University whose tuition fellowship was cancelled when Trump abolished USAID.”

Kenyan Doctoral Student at Howard Needs Urgent Assistance after USAID Fellowship Axed by Trump

Needed to pay backlog of tuition to Howard as of May 22: $23,741, down from $31,000 as of last post.

About GoFundMe

Teachers, students, parents, clubs, and more use GoFundMe as a trusted and easy way to raise money for education needs. Education fundraising is available for your classroom, tuition assistance, after school program, or school supplies.

Effects of Trump Shutdown of USAID

Trump has done so much damage in so many ways to people in the USA and around the world that no one could possibly list them all. But one of these ways is the fallout from shutting down USAID, which has hurt many people in different ways. For just two examples, there are unemployed USAID staff who are struggling to find new jobs and pay their expenses in the meantime, as well as HIV/AIDS survivors in Zambia losing access to vital medications previously paid for by USAID.

Given my fairly secure economic situation, race, and other privileges, I have not been directly affected by Trump’s attacks. Nor have many people who I know personally. But this is different: I know the person involved, we are working together, and we have become friends and comrades.

Summary of Background

When experienced Swahili scholar and teacher Erick Kibigo got on the flight from Nairobi to Washington, DC on 27th August 2025 for a Ph. D. at Howard University, he had a full fellowship for tuition and a green card for supplementary work. He also had a B.A. and a M.A. from Kenyan universities and fifteen years of experience in teaching Swahili to Kenyans who were not native speakers of Swahili, and evaluating educational policies on the teaching of Swahili. For more on Erick´s background, click here.

When he arrived in Washington, DC, he discovered that while he was in the air, Trump was abolishing USAID and that his fellowship had disappeared with it. He was able to find temporary housing with friends of friends in Baltimore. But he lacked funds for tuition, and his modest stipend of $2,000 / month was drained by having to take the MARC train to DC for every day he had classes.

Coincidentally, at the same time, I was asking my friend Anita Plummer, director of graduate programs in African Studies, if she had any graduate students who could help me with inventories of my books and research files as I was moving from DC to Oberlin, Ohio later that month. Fortunately she recommended Erick, and I agreed to pay him for 8 hours a week to assist. I was also fortunate to be in touch with David Cohen, a Portuguese American scholar who was applying for doctoral studies at several U.S. universities to study U.S. policies toward Angola during the Angolan liberation struggles. Without the aid of the two of them, I have no idea how I would have been ready in time to load what I was taking to Oberlin on the moving truck.

Personal Message from Erick

I am a doctoral student at Howard University and a proud scholar from Kenya whose journey reflects perseverance, sacrifice, and an unwavering belief in the power of education. From humble beginnings, I worked tirelessly to support myself through my undergraduate studies at University of Nairobi and later earned my master’s degree at Daystar University. Through hard work, determination, and faith, I achieved a lifelong dream when I was admitted in a Ph. D. program in African Studies at Howard University.

Currently, I have a financial hold on my student account with a balance of $23,741 [down from $31,000 as of May 8). Due to budget cuts within the Federal government, I lost my fellowship for tuition, making it impossible to register for continued courses until it is fully paid off.

I am a devoted father of two children, whom I left behind for this academic journey. I have devoted my life to teaching and empowering African communities through education. My work spans teaching Swahili Language at multiple levels, including at Howard University. Beyond teaching, my deepest focus is on education policy reform to tackle the learning gap in African countries, working toward a future where African education systems are accessible and equitable. In other words, as the saying goes here in the United State, ensuring that no child is left behind.

If you are able to make a contribution it would be more than just financial help to me as an individual. It would be an investment in an educator who is committed to uplift communities through education. By supporting me, you are lighting a candle for the future of educational systems, to expand for generations to come.

[End editor´s note]

Solidarity Songs

Each song below is part of a playlist (watch and listen to one and you can save the playlist link and go back to it whenever you feel like it).

From Last Week

From Older Playlists

News and commentary of note

On a daily basis, I am posting links to news and commentary as well to music. Bookmark this link and check it out whenever you feel like it.

The one just posted a few hours ago was this, from a public interest state publication in Arizona.

I am also following m\new commentaries on YouTube, including the highly informative posts by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman on both economics and politics and keen insights on foreign policy, particularly Iran, by University of Chicago political realist. Two recent examples:

Nonfiction Books Read (or Reading) and Recommended

https://bookshop.org/lists/best-nonfiction-read-recommended-in-2026

Mystery Novels Read & Recommended in April and May 2026

https://bookshop.org/lists/mystery-novels-read-recommended-2026-april-june

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Editor´s Note

The most important reason that you have not heard from me in a while is simple. As you know from a couple of posts last year, I moved from the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Washington, DC, where I had lived since 1982, in mid-September 2025, to Oberlin, Ohio. And as those of you who have moved half-way across a country or between continents well know, moves are almost always more complicated than we might like them to be.

That said, the move in September went quite smoothly, and I now feel at home in Oberlin as well as in DC. But there are still many steps to fully complete moving, and I am in DC now to continue the process of quadrillage (it is a word - I looked it up) of my boxes of research files. Right now I am going through about 60 remaining bankers boxes of files to sort into (1) recycling or trash, (2) preparing inventories to go to the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, (3) preparing inventories to go to the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University, and (4) the remainder I really want to take to my apartment in the Kendal at Oberlin retirement community.

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The move itself is better described in my wife Cathy Sunshine´s substack blog ThirdAge than I could ever match. See in particular A Swirl of Emotions on leaving DC, Small-town Girl on Oberlin in the fall, and Finding community in the age of Trump earlier this year.

This post from me will be in two parts. The most substantive relates to my research files. But it is not about the files themselves. It is a copy of the GoFundMe for one of the doctoral students who is assisting me with that task but who has been left without a fellowship by Trump´s demolition of USAID. There is a link to make a contribution, which I hope you will consider doing.

Then I will share some of the ways I am trying to adjust my communications strategies for AfricaFocus to the fast pace of events and news coverage. I will ask for your feedback as I get started on that process in the coming months as I try out various options.

But I am not asking for paid subscriptions as I usually do. Instead, I am asking for you to donate to this GoFundMe which will both be a small fightback against Trump and a contribution to the future of education in Kenya as well as indirectly supporting my work to make my research files available to students and other researchers at Howard and at Duke.

Support Erick Kibigo in completing his doctoral journey

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-erick-kibigo-in-completing-his-doctoral-journey

William Minter - “I am an author, a social justice activist, and a computer programmer. You can find out more about me by searching for “William Minter Africa” on Google. I am raising money for tuition for Erick Kibigo, a Kenyan doctoral student at Howard University whose tuition fellowship was cancelled when Trump abolished USAID.”

Kenyan Doctoral Student at Howard Needs Urgent Assistance after USAID Fellowship Axed by Trump

Needed to pay backlog of tuition to Howard by May 11: $31,000.

About GoFundMe

Teachers, students, parents, clubs, and more use GoFundMe as a trusted and easy way to raise money for education needs. Education fundraising is available for your classroom, tuition assistance, after school program, or school supplies.

Effects of Trump Shutdown of USAID

Trump has done so much damage in so many ways to people in the USA and around the world that no one could possibly list them all. But one of these ways is the fallout from shutting down USAID, which has hurt many people in different ways. For just two examples, there are unemployed USAID staff who are struggling to find new jobs and pay their expenses in the meantime, as well as HIV/AIDS survivors in Zambia losing access to vital medications previously paid for by USAID.

Given my fairly secure economic situation, race, and other privileges, I have not been directly affected by Trump’s attacks. Nor have many people who I know personally. But this is different: I know the person involved, we are working together, and we have become friends and comrades.

Summary of Background

When experienced Swahili scholar and teacher Erick Kibigo got on the flight from Nairobi to Washington, DC on 27th August 2025 for a Ph. D. at Howard University, he had a full fellowship for tuition and a green card for supplementary work. He also had a B.A. and a M.A. from Kenyan universities and fifteen years of experience in teaching Swahili to Kenyans who were not native speakers of Swahili, and evaluating educational policies on the teaching of Swahili. For more on Erick´s background, click here.

When he arrived in Washington, DC, he discovered that while he was in the air, Trump was abolishing USAID and that his fellowship had disappeared with it. He was able to find temporary housing with friends of friends in Baltimore. But he lacked funds for tuition, and his modest stipend of $2,000 / month was drained by having to take the MARC train to DC for every day he had classes.

Coincidentally, at the same time, I was asking my friend Anita Plummer, director of graduate programs in African Studies, if she had any graduate students who could help me with inventories of my books and research files as I was moving from DC to Oberlin, Ohio later that month. Fortunately she recommended Erick, and I agreed to pay him for 8 hours a week to assist. I was also fortunate to be in touch with David Cohen, a Portuguese American scholar who was applying for doctoral studies at several U.S. universities to study U.S. policies toward Angola during the Angolan liberation struggles. Without the aid of the two of them, I have no idea how I would have been ready in time to load what I was taking to Oberlin on the moving truck.

Personal Message from Erick

I am a doctoral student at Howard University and a proud scholar from Kenya whose journey reflects perseverance, sacrifice, and an unwavering belief in the power of education. From humble beginnings, I worked tirelessly to support myself through my undergraduate studies at University of Nairobi and later earned my master’s degree at Daystar University. Through hard work, determination, and faith, I achieved a lifelong dream when I was admitted in a Ph. D. program in African Studies at Howard University.

Currently, I have a financial hold on my student account with a balance of $31,000. Due to budget cuts within the Federal government, I lost my fellowship for tuition, making it impossible to register for continued courses.

I am a devoted father of two children, whom I left behind for this academic journey. I have devoted my life to teaching and empowering African communities through education. My work spans teaching Swahili Language at multiple levels, including at Howard University. Beyond teaching, my deepest focus is on education policy reform to tackle the learning gap in African countries, working toward a future where African education systems are accessible and equitable. In other words, as the saying goes here in the United State, ensuring that no child is left behind.

If you are able to make a contribution it would be more than just financial help to me as an individual. It would be an investment in an educator who is committed to uplift communities through education. By supporting me, you are lighting a candle for the future of educational systems, to expand for generations to come.

First Steps in a New Communication Strategy for AfricaFocus

• The first thing I have done is to start publishing short notes on the web with only a very short note and a link to an article I have read and found to be interesting to me and possibly to my readers. Sometime there are several, but most days there is at least one. You can always find the latest at this link: https://africafocus.substack.com/notes. I use a wide range of sources, including Africa-focused publications, other USA and global media, and about 30 different substacks. At some point I plan an issue on the substacks I find most useful.

• To the extent I have time, I repost links to these notes on Facebook and LinkedIn. media. But I only dabble in Instagram, and have no intention of trying the option of being a TikTok influencer, which would be totally beyond my capacity in any case.

• For some time, as regular readers will know, I have occasionally shared music videos or playlists of music videos from YouTube. This is a spin-off from my new method of trying to relax, forget work and the world, taking a short break during the day or a longer time in the late afternoon. I have a YouTube Channel called Solidarity Songs, which now has several years of accumulated playlists, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@solidaritysongs. I have recently added some weekly news playlists as well, but I have not yet figured out how to sort them separately from the music.

• As my friends already know, my lifelong favorite way to do this has been reading mystery novels with a sense of place. My legacy website on this is http://www.mysteryplaces.net, which still works on the basis of a database although I don´t often update it with newer authors.

• In the last few years, since https://bookshop.org was founded as an alternative to Amazon, I have had a affiliate shop there where I note mystery novels I read and recommend, with short comments about each. I get 10% of sales through links there. That has never amounted to more than a few hundred dollars a year, but I enjoy doing it as a way of keeping records myself of what I read. Its link is https://bookshop.org/shop/mysteryplaces.

• I also do still read nonfiction as well, and those appear in another affiliate bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/africafocus.

As you can see, that is quite enough to keep me busy. And I do not know which of these I may feature in a future AfricaFocus sent out by email. So if there are any that you would be particularly be interested in, or definitely not interested in, let me know and I will take that into account.

So thank you for being my readers and many of you my friends or colleagues over many years, and hope you are as well as possible in this era of the mad king and find ways to survive, to keep up hope, and do what you are able to advance his self-destruction as soon as possible.

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Editor´s Note

By now, all of you must have had as much news and commentary on the resistance to ICE by the people of Minneapolis as you wish to read or watch. So I am not following my usual practice of selecting some of the best of these to share with you.

But the greatest impact of these events, in my opinion, will come from songs. ”Streets of Minneapolis” by Bruce Springsteen, at the January 23 concert in Minneapolis has already gone viral, and evoked many covers. I have listed a few of the songs from this concert, as well as a few more original songs. Too many to watch in one session, of course. But I hope you will check out a few of them, and perhaps come back for a few more another time. Feel free to send me additional suggestions, and I may post short lists of others in future posts.

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Editor´s Note

The Sankofa bird image from Ghanaian Adinkra symbols has always been a favorite of mine. In Twi, it means “Go Back and Get it.” As a website on Adinkra explains, “Sankofa embodies humility, reflection, and respect for ancestry, teaching us that progress comes through understanding and honoring history.”

This AfricaFocus post is not a reflection on events of 2025, but rather of AfricaFocus in 2025. I hope this selection will remind readers of what has been shared with them. And perhaps some of you will decide to join those who support this work as paid subscribers. However, all AfricaFocus content remains free to all.

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Genocide Continues in Gaza, with Bipartisan USA Complicity

Regime Steps Up Killing with Bombs, Bullets, and Now Starvation

6 June 2025

If there is ever a comprehensive tribunal or truth commission to examine responsibility for the genocide is Gaza, US Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump will undoubtedly be in the dock together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sharing moral responsibility will be all the members of the US Congress who voted year after year to supply the weapons for the war crimes committed.

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Sudan at War, Part 1

Deaths from War and Famine Mount as World Looks Away

Nov 13, 2025

For the second year in a row, Sudan was number 1 out of the 10 global crises on the Emergency Watchlist of the International Rescue Committee in December 2024 as the country’s brutal civil war continued into 2025. The toll of war and famine has continued to mount. But the world has found it all too easy to ignore Sudan.

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Winter Books

Non-Fiction Books for Today´s Times

Nov 27, 2025

The chapters in this collection provide a rich resource for those engaged in the hard work of creating and sustaining solidarity networks of activists, organizations, and institutions. ... The voices you will find in these pages well illustrate these connections across borders that teach and inspire us all. —Graça Machel, First Lady of Mozambique (1975-1986) and of South Africa (1998-1999).

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Resisting the Miller/Trump Deportation Decree, Part 2

Immigrant Communities Take the Lead

Feb 05, 2025

Stephen Miller, the right-wing fanatic who guided the anti-migrant drive in Trump´s first term, is back, now as deputy chief of staff and top advisor on homeland security. Like Trump, Miller comes from immigrant roots, in his case from a Russian Jewish family. Trump is of German and Scottish descent, and two of his wives came from Eastern Europe. For both, their anti-immigrant rage targets only immigrants who are not of European descent, and is inextricably tied with the ideology of white supremacy.

The human suffering caused by this assault is incalculable. But immigrants themselves are leading the resistance. They deserve the support of the rest of us.

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New York Is Not For Sale

Mamdani Speaks to New Yorkers (and the rest of us too)

Oct 27, 2025

Watch and share this speech! It is for all of us.

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The graphic appeal of the red/blue/purple state color code is irresistible. And it does have real-world consequences, given the winner-take-all character of the electoral college and most other elections in the country. But it is misleading in two ways.

It does not take account of the fine-grained differences within each state. Even more important, it also does not allow for exceptional circumstances in which a national crisis is addressed by eloquent and clear-sighted nationally visible politicians. The “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez illustrates both points.

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Finally, a bit of a personal update on my move from Washington, DC to Ohio, where my votes later this year will actually count. DC is not a state, so its residents cannot elect two senators and a representative to the US Congress. Instead, they’re represented in the House by a “delegate” who does not have the right to vote on legislation. (That’s why DC license plates proclaim “Taxation Without Representation.”) As Ohio residents, Cathy and I have finally gained full voting rights after nearly half a century of disenfranchisement.

Trump’s aggression against vulnerable people has been intense in DC, as in other blue cities. Free DC is resisting the military occupation, but those of the wrong color of skin or accent rightly fear going out on the street. Our Mt. Pleasant neighborhood came together strongly last fall to protect and support its immigrant population. It was difficult for us to leave at such a time, but we’re finding a new progressive community in the Ohio town we now call home. Cathy tells the story of our move much better than I could.

https://thirdage.substack.com/p/a-swirl-of-emotion

Third Age

A swirl of emotions

Forgive the trite title. Three weeks before our move, it’s an apt description of the conflicting feelings tearing at me. There’s optimism, even excitement. The move will be good for us, we feel sure. And there’s grief. After 47 years in the same city and the same neighborhood, my roots here go deep. The thought of leaving my friends in Mt. Pleasant is almost too much to bear…

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a year ago · 16 likes · 10 comments · Cathy Sunshine

https://thirdage.substack.com/p/small-town-gir

Third Age

Small-town girl

Today marks six weeks since Bill and I landed in the Ohio college town that – to preserve a modicum of privacy for ourselves and our new neighbors – I will call My Town…

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10 months ago · 22 likes · 7 comments · Cathy Sunshine

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Editor´s Note

I saw this article in Al Jazeera when trying to think of a year-end post for AfricaFocus, having not published any new issue of AfricaFocus Notes by email this month.

So today I am featuring Palestinian Lutheran pastor Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac from Ramallah and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, followed by a short section of Christmas music.

I have, however, continued to do multiple posts on the short Notes tab during this month. Topics have ranged widely, from musical selections from YouTube (see this and that) to news of neighborhood ICE raids in DC and Chicago to the war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And Palestine, Sudan, books, climate, and much more.

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The sun rises over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on December 24, 2025 [Yosri Aljamal/Reuters]

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/12/24/christmas-is-not-a-western-story-it-is-a-palestinian-one

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Every December, much of the Christian world enters a familiar cycle of celebration: carols, lights, decorated trees, consumer frenzy and the warm imagery of a snowy night. In the United States and Europe, public discourse often speaks of “Western Christian values”, or even the vague notion of “Judeo-Christian civilisation”. These phrases have become so common that many assume, almost automatically, that Christianity is inherently a Western religion — an expression of European culture, history and identity.

It is not.

Christianity is, and has always been, a West Asian / Middle Eastern religion. Its geography, culture, worldview and founding stories are rooted in this land — among peoples, languages and social structures that look far more like those in today’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan than anything imagined in Europe. Even Judaism, invoked in the term “Judeo-Christian values”, is itself a thoroughly Middle Eastern phenomenon. The West received Christianity — it certainly did not give birth to it.

And perhaps nothing reveals the distance between Christianity’s origins and its contemporary Western expression more starkly than Christmas — the birth story of a Palestinian Jew, a child of this land who was born long before modern borders and identities emerged.

What the West made of Christmas

In the West, Christmas is a cultural marketplace. It is commercialised, romanticised and wrapped in layers of sentimentality. Lavish gift-giving overshadows any concern for the poor. The season has become a performance of abundance, nostalgia, and consumerism — a holiday stripped of its theological and moral core.

Even the familiar lines of the Christmas song Silent Night obscure the true nature of the story: Jesus was not born into serenity but into upheaval.

He was born under military occupation, to a family displaced by an imperial decree, in a region living under the shadow of violence. The holy family were forced to flee as refugees because the infants of Bethlehem, according to the Gospel narrative, were massacred by a fearful tyrant determined to preserve his reign. Sound familiar?

Indeed, Christmas is a story of empire, injustice and the vulnerability of ordinary people caught in its path.

Bethlehem: Imagination vs reality

For many in the West, Bethlehem – the birthplace of Jesus – is a place of imagination — a postcard from antiquity, frozen in time. The “little town” is remembered as a quaint village from scripture rather than a living, breathing city with actual people, with a distinct history and culture.

Bethlehem today is surrounded by walls and checkpoints built by an occupier. Its residents live under a system of apartheid and fragmentation. Many feel cut off, not only from Jerusalem – which the occupier does not allow them to visit – but also from the global Christian imagination that venerates Bethlehem’s past while often ignoring its present.

This sentiment also explains why so many in the West, while celebrating Christmas, care little about the Christians of Bethlehem. Even worse, many embrace theologies and political attitudes that erase or dismiss our presence entirely in order to support Israel, the empire of today.

In these frameworks, ancient Bethlehem is cherished as a sacred idea, but modern Bethlehem — with its Palestinian Christians suffering and struggling to survive — is an inconvenient reality that needs to be ignored.

This disconnect matters. When Western Christians forget that Bethlehem is real, they disconnect from their spiritual roots. And when they forget that Bethlehem is real, they also forget that the story of Christmas is real.

They forget that it unfolded among a people who lived under empire, who faced displacement, who longed for justice, and who believed that God was not distant but among them.

What Christmas means for Bethlehem

So what does Christmas look like when told from the perspective of the people who still live where it all began — the Palestinian Christians? What meaning does it hold for a tiny community that has preserved its faith for two millennia?

At its heart, Christmas is the story of the solidarity of God.

It is the story of God who does not rule from afar, but is present among the people and takes the side of those on the margins. The incarnation — the belief that God took on flesh — is not a metaphysical abstraction. It is a radical statement about where God chooses to dwell: in vulnerability, in poverty, among the occupied, among those with no power except the power of hope.

In the Bethlehem story, God identifies not with emperors but with those suffering under empire — its victims. God comes not as a warrior but as an infant. God is present not in a palace but in a manger. This is divine solidarity in its most striking form: God joins the most vulnerable part of humanity.

Christmas, then, is the proclamation of a God who confronts the logic of empire.

For Palestinians today, this is not merely theology — it is lived experience. When we read the Christmas story, we recognise our own world: the census that forced Mary and Joseph to travel resembles the permits, checkpoints and bureaucratic controls that shape our daily lives today. The holy family’s flight resonates with the millions of refugees who have fled wars across our region. Herod’s violence echoes in the violence we see around us.

A message to the world

Bethlehem celebrates Christmas for the first time after two years without public festivities. It was painful yet necessary for us to cancel our celebrations; we had no choice.

A genocide was unfolding in Gaza, and as people who still live in the homeland of Christmas, we could not pretend otherwise. We could not celebrate the birth of Jesus while children his age were being pulled dead from the rubble.

Celebrating this season does not mean the war, the genocide, or the structures of apartheid have ended. People are still being killed. We are still besieged.

Instead, our celebration is an act of resilience — a declaration that we are still here, that Bethlehem remains the capital of Christmas, and that the story this town tells must continue.

At a time when Western political discourse increasingly weaponises Christianity as a marker of cultural identity — often excluding the very people among whom Christianity was born — it is vital to return to the roots of this story.

This Christmas, our invitation to the global church — and to Western Christians in particular — is to remember where the story began. To remember that Bethlehem is not a myth but a place where people still live. If the Christian world is to honour the meaning of Christmas, it must turn its gaze to Bethlehem — not the imagined one, but the real one, a town whose people today still cry out for justice, dignity and peace.

To remember Bethlehem is to remember that God stands with the oppressed — and that the followers of Jesus are called to do the same.

Musical Postlude

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Editor´s Note

Today´s AfricaFocus Notes is limited to non-fiction books, with particular emphasis on those I hope may be useful in interpreting today´s times and perhaps helpful in reflecting on our collective path ahead.

I begin with a special offer for AfricaFocus subscribers on None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, co-edited by Imani Countess and me, designed by Gail Oring, and published with Africa World Press in May this year (https://africaworldpressbooks.com/none-of-us-is-free-until-all-of-us-are-free-new-perspectives-on-global-solidarity/).

This is followed by selected titles of books I have read this year or have noted as ones that I would like to read. Links for ordering these books go to bookshop.org. The links for those are from https://bookshop.org/info/about-us, an alternative to Amazon which donates its surplus income to independent bookshops ($40 million to date). At the end of this post, I list other alternatives for finding non-fiction books in libraries or on-line. I myself rarely buy books these days, but most often I can find them somewhere if I am willing to wait. I have not offered any comments below in order to save space, but I do recommend them all.

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The chapters in this collection provide a rich resource for those engaged in the hard work of creating and sustaining solidarity networks of activists, organizations, and institutions. ... The voices you will find in these pages well illustrate these connections across borders that teach and inspire us all. —Graça Machel, First Lady of Mozambique (1975-1986) and of South Africa (1998-1999).

Order from Africa World Press for yourself or as a gift.

https://africaworldpressbooks.com/none-of-us-is-free-until-all-of-us-are-free-new-perspectives-on-global-solidarity/

10% rebate for subscribers of AfricaFocus Notes. Send proof of purchase to wminter@gmail.com.

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Books Read and Recommended in 2025

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High Priority Books I Want to Read

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Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

Most of my posts are about current crises or history relevant for understanding them. This year, it was difficult to to share hope for the future or even to point to silver linings. One of the things I do to take a break from such discouraging realities is to watch and listen to songs on YouTube, and then compile playlists to go back to myself or share with friends or family.

I have decided to share some of these with my readers, in the hope that some of you will also find them helping to lift your spirits in these times. I can not promise to do these weekly, but I will see if I can do so occasionally. So this is for this week. It would be very helpful to have any feedback you might have.

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The full playlist is at this link on YouTube. The videos below are among my favorites from Songs around the World, by Playing for Change.

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Thanks to all my subscribers for continuing to follow AfricaFocus Notes.

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Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

For the second year in a row, Sudan was number 1 out of the 10 global crises on the Emergency Watchlist of the International Rescue Committee in December 2024 as the country’s brutal civil war continued into 2025. The toll of war and famine has continued to mount. But the world has found it all too easy to ignore Sudan.

The snapshot below from Google Trends shows the comparative news coverage of Sudan compared with Ukraine and Gaza as of November 10. You can click on the link to see how the trend continues, or add in other crises for comparison.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?gprop=news&q=Gaza,Ukraine,Sudan&hl=en

These two issues of AfricaFocus Notes features two documents supplying analysis and background on the current war.

The first is an appeal for action by Alex de Waal, a leading expert on the Sudan who has lived in the country and published extensively on Sudan and wider issues of famine, human rights, and peace since the 1980s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_de_Waal).

That article is reproduced in full here.

This second issue contains excerpts from an extensive background primer on the conflict by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). This is the cover article in the Spring issue of the Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). MERIP, founded in 1971, has long been the most highly respected source in English for critical analysis of the Middle East.

In addition to these sources, a recent article is Le Monde detailed the reliance of the Rapid Support Forces, responsible for an ongoing genocide in Darfur, on the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the complicity of the USA and Europe for which the UAE is a key ally in the Middle East.

https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2025/11/03/au-soudan-le-jeu-trouble-des-emirats-arabes-unis-et-le-desinteret-coupable-des-occidentaux_6651268_3212.html

In a forthcoming Part 3, AfricaFocus Notes will provide links to a wide variety of other recent articles on the war in Sudan.

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The Struggle for Sudan

A Primer

Khalid Mustafa Medani

[Excerpts only. The full version of this article, with additional references and footnotes, is available at this link: https://merip.org/2024/04/the-struggle-for-sudan/

In April 15, 2023, an alliance between General Abdelfatih Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”), the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), collapsed, catapulting the country into an unprecedented war.

The war initially began around the capital city of Khartoum, but it quickly spread to other parts of Sudan, including Darfur, Port Sudan and by December 2023 the previously peaceful Gezira state, the country’s agricultural heartland situated at the meeting point of the Blue and White Nile rivers.

The nature of the fighting—spanning both rural and urban settings—and its scale, has led to a severe humanitarian crisis. As many as 9 million Sudanese have fled, more than one million of them across the country’s borders. Human Rights Watch has reported ethnic cleansing in Khartoum and Darfur and the targeting of thousands of civilians and villages. The crisis has been compounded by food insecurity, affecting some 60 percent of the population, as fighting disrupts agricultural production across much of the country. The WFP recently warned that the country is facing “the world’s largest hunger crisis.”

On the ground humanitarian delivery has been hampered by bureaucratic blockages, including the denial of travel permits to aid organizations and their inability to enter areas in need due to active fighting. What assistance has been delivered, meanwhile, is at risk of being captured or redirected by both the army and the RSF, as part of the war effort and to penalize civilian opposition to the war. Both warring parties have targeted medical facilities. 70 percent of hospitals and medical facilities are not functional, and people are dying from the spread of curable diseases and operable injuries.

The present is both a stark contrast to and the direct result of late 2018–2019, when the world watched Sudan with admiration as a popular uprising toppled the Islamist-militant regime of President Omar al-Bashir. The revolution promised to usher in a new, albeit fragile, era of democracy after three decades of authoritarian rule. Instead, the current protracted conflict in Sudan is threatening the very foundation of the Sudanese state and hence the stability of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.

Economic Crisis and the Roots of Popular Protest

To a large extent the war in Sudan is a direct result of the sheer strength and scale, across social, regional and ethnic divides, of what Sudanese term the “Glorious Revolution” of 2018.

...

As of 2009 (a decade before the uprising) the incidence of poverty among the rural population was 58 percent, compared to 26 percent among the urban population. Moreover, figures in this period show that poverty levels were far higher in Darfur and in the east than in Khartoum and the central states.

The inequality across regions and between the center and the peripheries of the country partially explain why the initial protests that led to the 2018 popular uprising erupted, for the first time in Sudan’s history, in the periphery of the country rather than in the capital.

Within days, however, anti-government demonstrations spread across a wide range of cities and towns throughout the northern region and in the capital city of Khartoum. Protestors chanted slogans, such as the well-known chant from the Arab uprisings: al-sha’ab yurid isqat al-Nizam, “the people want the fall of the Regime”.

New Networks of Popular Mobilization

Following the lead of cities in the periphery, demonstrations in Khartoum also began as protests against a deep economic crisis associated with the rise in bread and fuel prices and a severe liquidity crisis. But their demands quickly evolved into calls for al-Bashir’s ouster.

In the run up to the revolution, Sudan’s youth leaders linked up with the unions of physicians, pharmacists, lawyers and secondary school teachers. The Sudanese Professional Association (SPA)—a network of parallel (or unofficial) trade and professional unions composed of doctors, engineers and lawyers among others—took the lead in organizing and scheduling the protests. In late December 2018, they called for a march to the parliament in Khartoum, demanding the government raise public sector wages and legalize the informal professional and trade unions. After security forces used violence against peaceful protests, their demands escalated into the call for the removal of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), the structural transformation of governance in Sudan and a transition to democracy.

Their demands echoed those of previous popular protests, including in 2011, 2012 and 2013. But the 2018–19 protests were unprecedented in terms of their length and geographic breadth. They also followed a remarkably new, innovative and sustained process. Demonstrators learned from the mistakes of previous protests, which were highly centralized, mostly limited to middle class Sudanese and lacking in strategies for confronting the state’s ubiquitous security forces.

...

Beyond the regional scale, the protests were also distinguished by never-before-seen levels of solidarity across class and ethnic lines. Youth activists and members of professional associations not only challenged the political discourse of the Islamist state, they played a significant role in engineering cross-class alliances in the context of these demonstrations. The slogans they used were designed to resonate and mobilize support across ethnic, racial and regional divides.

Over the course of the six-month long protests, strikes, work stoppages and sit-ins were held, not only on university campuses and secondary schools, but also among private sector and public sector workers. Among the most important examples were the strikes by workers of Port Sudan on the Red Sea, demanding the nullification of the sale of the southern Port to a foreign company, and several work stoppages and protests led by employees of some of the country’s most important banks, telecom providers and other private firms.

While much focus is rightly placed on the central role of the street protestors, resistance committees and the SPA, Sudanese opposition parties also played a role: not only in organizing protests but also by providing the ideational support to the demands of the protests. The political parties took the lead in drafting the Declaration of Freedom and Change in January 2019 at the very height of the protests. Along with the SPA, Sudan’s main political party coalitions, most notably the National Consensus Forces and Sudan Call (Nida al-Sudan), drove the formation of the wide network of opposition, which was united under the banner of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). The FFC was primarily responsible for coordinating across social classes, including those working in the informal sector.

Indeed, and most importantly, the FFC engaged not only middle-class youth associations and groups but informally organized neighborhood resistance committees—some of which represented the poorer urban quarters. These NRCs had their roots in 2013 civil disobedience against al-Bashir and served as the foot soldiers of the protests. They took the lead in redirecting protestors away from the security forces and played a central role in sustaining the protests despite the great violence deployed by the security forces and militias to quell the uprising.

...

Counterrevolutionary Violence

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After the fall of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, however, Sudan remained a quintessentially hybrid authoritarian regime.

Initially, al-Bashir was replaced by a military junta in the form of the Transitional Military Council (TMC). The TMC was headed by General Burhan of the Sudanese army (SAF), and its deputy leader was Dagalo, the commander of the RSF. In response to the military’s assumption of power, sit-ins and protests continued, demanding a transition to full civilian rule. On June 3, 2019, security forces of the TMC, including the RSF militia, violently dispersed one of these sit-ins, killing hundreds and injuring thousands in what became known as the Khartoum “Sit-in Massacre.”

The civilian leadership, represented by the FFC, finally reached an agreement with the military in July. By August 2019, the parties had signed an ostensible power-sharing agreement in the form of a constitutional charter, and the FFC put forward Abdalla Hamdok as prime minister. This charter was amended with the 2020 Juba Agreement, signed between the transitional government and several opposition groups.

The transitional government, however, never established a clear separation of the branches of power: Through the constitutional charter, the military maintained the right to reject any items put forth by civilian leaders in the coalition. Moreover, they were granted immunity from investigation of past crimes (including the Sit-in Massacre) and wielded veto power over civilian ministerial appointments, like the chief justice and attorney general. The transitional government thus operated with a marked imbalance between the authority of the military and civilian leadership.

...

On October 25, 2021, General Burhan of the SAF and RSF commander Dagalo jointly instigated a coup against Hamdok. Persistent widespread protests immediately followed, calling for a return to civilian rule. These protests, led by the popular resistance committees, forced the SAF and RSF to agree to negotiations with the civilian opposition. The negotiations paved the way for the now annulled framework agreement, which sparked fierce rivalry between Burhan and Dagalo. More specifically, the SAF and RSF bitterly disagreed over the issue of merging the latter into the regular national standing army. Moreover, both forces rejected attempts to dismantle their vast economic fortunes—a key objective of the revolution.

The disagreement between the two generals over security sector reform and their mutually held ambition to retain control over vast swaths of the country’s wealth are two of the most important factors that drove Sudan into war.

The Origins of the RSF

If the rivalry between the Islamist-backed Sudanese army officers and the RSF militia now threatens to destroy the state, it is their long history of partnership that undergirds the present war.

The RSF’s emergence dates to the Darfur war of the early 2000s. Responding to an insurgency that began in Darfur in 2003, the Bashir regime executed a scorched earth counterinsurgency war that resulted in the death of over 200,000 civilians. The war was primarily waged by the so-called Janjaweed militias, which were created, financed and controlled by the regime in Khartoum. The current commander of the RSF, Dagalo, himself served as a commander of the Janjaweed during these years. (Burhan, too, was stationed in Darfur so that the SAF could coordinate counter-insurgency efforts on Khartoum’s behalf.)

Concerned over both the threat posed by insurgents in Darfur as well as repeated cycles of pro-democracy demonstrators in Khartoum, al-Bashir institutionalized the RSF as a counter-insurgency arm of the Sudanese army.

...

Following the revolution in 2019, Burhan allowed and promoted the expansion of the RSF throughout the residential areas of greater Khartoum, setting the stage for the capital city to become the epicenter of violence at the war’s onset.

It is a fatal irony of Sudanese history that the RSF—the ostensibly loyal militia arm of the former Islamist NCP regime—would, in April of 2023, take up arms against its former benefactor. Its primary reasons for doing so were twofold: its insistence on command-and-control autonomy and to realize Hemedti’s own rising ambition to gain economic and political dominance in the country.

A War Over the ‘Illicit’ economy

The power of the Sudanese army, especially among its upper ranks, has its roots in the foundation of Sudan’s present deep state and the linking of the domestic economy to military and security interests.

...

Military leaders, backed by Islamist hardliners, are struggling to retain and revive the vast financial wealth and political advantages they enjoyed because of their monopoly over a deep state. Burhan’s objectives in the current war are thus driven by SAF companies and investments as well as the long history of SAF and Islamist manipulation of the informal economy, which enabled their hold over the state. The fact that, together, they are intent on realizing this objective by any military means necessary and regardless of the human cost partially explains the logic of the mass-scale violence in the ongoing civil war and, in particular, the targeting of the civilian population—most of whom have struggled to dismantle the legacy of the deep state. ...

From Oil to Gold

The policies of empowerment (tamkeen) along with the oil boom fueled the rise of an Islamist-dominated deep state. In the current war, however, it is mining gold for export that is fueling Hemedti’s parallel militia and generating political violence.

Following the loss of oil revenue with South Sudan’s secession in 2011, al-Bashir turned to gold to bolster his weakened patronage networks. Between 2012–2017, gold production increased by an astronomical 141 percent. In 2018, one year before the revolution, the country was the world’s twelfth largest producer.

But unlike oil, the benefits from this new gold boom have been distributed in a far more decentralized fashion. Most gold exports are smuggled illegally out of the country, mainly to markets in the UAE. The bulk of the value of gold thus escapes the battered formal economy, undermining the state’s ability to generate revenue and allocate resources to its civilian population. A recent study found that the gap between Sudan’s reported gold exports and the imports recorded by trading partners equaled $4.1 billion. The discrepancy suggests an astronomical 47.7 percent of Sudan’s gold revenues end up in private hands.

While the military and the Islamist dominated security apparatus are fighting to control companies involved in oil, gum Arabic, sesame, weapons, fuel, wheat, telecommunications and banking, Hemedti is monopolizing gold (and to a lesser extent livestock and real estate), to expand his war effort. The violence underpinning the war is directly related to his personal wealth, which he amassed, in large part, from his participation in the illicit gold trade.

In 2015, a report released by the UN Security Council found that Hemedti’s forces were generating $54 million a year from control of the Jebel Amer gold mine. This revenue enabled him to recruit poor and unemployed youths from across the Sahel to the RSF, including from Libya, Chad, Mali and Niger, who are the main perpetrators of the violence in Darfur, Khartoum and central Sudan. His paramilitary force currently numbers an estimated 40,000. Compared to their counterparts in the SAF, its rank and file enjoy great access to financial resources and training from outside actors.

...

Fueling a Proxy War

While the primary dynamics driving the war in Sudan are internal, regional powers and others further afield are playing influential roles. Chief among them are the countries of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Here too the emergence of gold as Sudan’s most lucrative commodity is significant. Unlike oil, gold is a lootable resource, motivating external actors, like the UAE, to intervene on the side of the RSF, regardless of the consequences in terms of violence against civilians. The UAE is reportedly supporting Hemedti and his RSF with arms shipments through Chad and Libya.

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Beyond the illicit trade in gold, Hemedti has also benefited from the Gulf countries’ regional interests and concerns over the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have long worried about Iranian encirclement through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. These concerns were strengthened by Iranian support for the Houthi movement in Yemen, which led to military intervention by a Saudi-led coalition in 2015. Hemedti received millions of dollars from both Saudi Arabia and the UAE for sending his militia forces to fight in the war.

While the majority of RSF soldiers have returned from Yemen, the recent escalation of violence in the Red Sea due to Houthi attacks on commercial shipping vessels in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, has fueled the concerns of Saudi Arabia, in particular. Riyadh, along with the United States, has taken the lead in attempting to broker a cease-fire agreement between the two warring parties with a strategic view to retaining a strong alliance with whichever post-war regime emerges in Khartoum.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have successfully established military bases in the Horn of Africa—Saudi in Djibouti and the UAE in Eritrea. The UAE is also seeking to establish similar facilities in northern Somalia. But competition over influence in the Red Sea region is not limited to these states. Qatar, Turkey and Russia have all increased their engagement in the region and made overtures about establishing military bases off Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

...

Sudan’s agricultural lands are also crucial to helping the Gulf states meet the skyrocketing demand of food imports. In Sudan’s agricultural heartland the Gezira, for example, investments by Gulf countries (totalling an estimated $8 billion) were facilitated by neoliberal policies that plunged small farmers into debt and decimated the small-scale agricultural sector. Much of the land leased by Gulf investors has been transformed into large-scale agribusiness projects that have cut through herding routes and absorbed plots once used for rain-fed subsistence farming. Incidentally, the pauperization of Sudanese farmers and rural workers has helped fuel the success of the RSF’s militia recruitment, with fighters hailing from now dispossessed rural populations.

Egypt, for its part, supports General Burhan and the SAF. Not only is Cairo concerned over a revitalized Islamist influence along its southern flank, it is also worried about the Nile River basin. In 2020, Ethiopia started filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a $4.8 billion hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, which Cairo views as an existential threat to its own water resources. Hemedti has close ties to Ethiopia as well as to the UAE, which despite being a major benefactor of Egypt is also a regional rival for influence. As such, Egypt views an RSF dominated Sudan as a threat to its national interests.

One result of these competing rivalries is an array of “peace” efforts operating at cross-purposes. At the time of writing a total of four different forums are operating simultaneously to seek a ceasefire and a peace agreement between the warring factions: The Riyadh Talks (led by the United States and Saudi Arabia), the IGAD-African Union initiative led by Djibouti, talks in Cairo attempting to forge an alliance between the civilian opposition and Egypt’s ally, the SAF, and a more recent initiative led by the UAE but held under the auspices of the government of Bahrain.

...

The Enduring Promise of the Revolution

In contrast to other civil wars in Sudan’s history, the warring parties in Sudan at present have no significant constituency or legitimacy in civil society. Both parties are waging a war against the Sudanese people precisely because, in the wake of the wide-scale pro-democracy revolution of 2018, Sudanese civil society overwhelmingly rejected a future dominated by autocratic military leaders.

Indeed, the 2018–19 revolution clearly showed, and the present devastating war has affirmed, that prospects for peace and democracy lie in Sudan’s enduring civil society of professional associations, trade unions and its youth and women’s organizations. The war has only affirmed the importance of these networks. Even now, the youth-led resistance committees, despite their differences, agree that the priority is to end the war and restore peace by addressing the root causes of Sudan’s conflicts as the revolution intended.

During a devastating war and in the face of mass displacement, an influential grassroots youth-led movement has shown significant capacity to collaborate across ethnic, gender and social divides for democratic objectives. In the absence of adequate international aid, for example, youth-led emergency response rooms have mobilized mutual aid across the country.

Amid the waning legitimacy of political elites in Sudanese civil society, youth leaders continue to enjoy strong support among a wide spectrum of Sudanese. Leaders of the youth movement, women’s organizations, independent scholars, artists and millions of Sudanese in the diaspora are near unanimous in meeting the present challenge of the war by working toward strengthening civil society in ways that rebuild trust, resolve conflict and build a sustainable peace.

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Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

For the second year in a row, Sudan was number 1 out of the 10 global crises on the Emergency Watchlist of the International Rescue Committee in December 2024 as the country’s brutal civil war continued into 2025. The toll of war and famine has continued to mount. But the world has found it all too easy to ignore Sudan.

The snapshot below from Google Trends shows the comparative news coverage of Sudan compared with Ukraine and Gaza as of November 10. You can click on the link to see how the trend continues, or add in other crises for comparison.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?gprop=news&q=Gaza,Ukraine,Sudan&hl=en

These two issues of AfricaFocus Notes feature two documents supplying analysis and background on the current war.

This first issue is an appeal for action by Alex de Waal, a leading expert on the Sudan who has lived in the country and published extensively on Sudan and wider issues of famine, human rights, and peace since the 1980s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_de_Waal). This is reproduced below in full.

The second issue provides excerpts from an extensive background primer on the conflict by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). This is the cover article in the Spring issue of the Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). MERIP, founded in 1971, has long been the most highly respected source in English for critical analysis of the Middle East.

In addition to these sources, a recent article in Le Monde detailed the reliance of the Rapid Support Forces, responsible for an ongoing genocide in Darfur, on the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the complicity of the USA and Europe for which the UAE is a key ally in the Middle East.

https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2025/11/03/au-soudan-le-jeu-trouble-des-emirats-arabes-unis-et-le-desinteret-coupable-des-occidentaux_6651268_3212.html

In a forthcoming Part 3, AfricaFocus Notes will provide links to a wide variety of other recent articles on the war in Sudan.

Subscribe now

Terror Returns to Darfur

Only American Pressure Can Stop the Killing in Sudan

Alex de Waal

November 6, 2025

Alex de Waal is Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and co-author of Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People’s Revolution.

On October 26, a horrific massacre rapidly unfolded in North Darfur as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—one of two main factions in Sudan’s brutal two-and-a-half-year civil war—captured its capital, El Fasher. The world has finally turned its eyes toward this genocidal war, thanks to videos taken and circulated by the killers themselves. The unedited, close-up footage is too sickening for television and newspapers to show. But pools of blood can be seen from satellites in space. At just one hospital, according to the World Health Organization, fighters murdered 450 patients and health-care workers as well as their family members. The official death toll from the city’s occupation has risen to over 1,500, and thousands more civilians are missing.

Survivors have made their way to Tawila, a once sleepy town 45 miles west of El Fasher, where aid agencies such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee provide small quantities of assistance, and some protection is afforded by a rebel group that has thus far managed to stay neutral. Every child reaching Tawila’s clinics is malnourished. This week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s Famine Review Committee (FRC)—the premier multinational body that assesses hunger worldwide—declared a famine in El Fasher and its environs.

The FRC had, in fact, already declared a famine in the area well over a year ago. And although the war’s atrocities have recently captured worldwide attention, the RSF has never tried to hide them—in fact, it has long openly advertised its intent to destroy entire groups, whether for punishment or to seize their land. The mass killing of civilians in El Fasher was foreseeable and foreseen; genocide has been underway in Sudan since well before October. Official recognitions that a genocide is happening or even International Criminal Court (ICC) charges and sanctions cannot stop it. Indeed, to some observers, the war has acquired a brutal sense of inevitability.

But escalation is not inevitable. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s effort to secure a cease-fire in Sudan and the delivery of more humanitarian aid was tantalizingly close to success. In the aftermath of the shocking crimes in El Fasher, there is a chance that the Middle Eastern states that have backed Sudan’s warring parties may agree to fully adopt a peace template and force the factions they support into compliance. Such an outcome, however, would require a much bigger push from the White House. And that is a major ask of an administration often wary of becoming entangled in conflicts in which the United States has no clear, immediate interests. But the alternative is more civilians murdered, more children dying of hunger, and many more refugees fleeing a collapsing country.

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

The principal practitioners of Sudan’s genocide, RSF fighters led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), advertise their brutality on purpose. Since the RSF began fighting Sudan’s regular army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)—headed by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan—the conflict has destroyed much of Khartoum, Sudan’s capital; forced about a quarter of the country’s 45 million people from their homes; and created the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe. The RSF has intentionally sought to build a reputation for conspicuous atrocities, telegraphing its mercilessness through killing and raping and then circulating trophy videos among its network of social media influencers.

Over the course of 40 years of studying Sudan and working in the country, I have seen genocidal slaughter become a normalized strategy on the battlefield. In the 1980s, militia fighters and military intelligence officers dispatched to southern Sudan to put down rebellions massacred civilians and created widespread hunger. These fighters were told: do what you need to do and don’t report back. Slaughter and starvation unfolded in secret. Outside analysts had to rely on oral reports gathered by journalists and aid workers, most of them Sudanese.

As that civil war dragged on into the 1990s, organizations such as Human Rights Watch began to more systematically compile evidence of war crimes. Moved by harrowing stories of suffering in Sudan, including accounts of starvation and enslavement, a bipartisan coalition of American churches, charities, and human rights campaigners pressed the U.S. government to help end the war and punish the abusers.

President George W. Bush’s administration helped broker a peace deal in southern Sudan, but in 2003, a new rebellion erupted in the western province of Darfur; rebel leaders protested Khartoum’s neglect and opposed attacks by Arab militia units, including a clan led by Hemedti’s uncle. To beat back the rebels, President Omar al-Bashir licensed a local militia to wage a counterinsurgency on the cheap. Backed by regular army brigades and the air force, young men with rudimentary training—the Janjaweed—attacked villages suspected of harboring rebels. The criterion for their assaults was singular: if a community was the same ethnicity as a rebel leader, it was fair game. Because Janjaweed fighters often went without direct pay, they rewarded themselves with land, loot, and the bodies of women and girls. They murdered tens of thousands of civilians, and hundreds of thousands more perished of hunger and disease.

Foreign governments and multinational watchdogs used new technology to spotlight the abuses, mapping burned villages using satellite imagery. In 2004, U.S. State Department investigations prompted Secretary of State Colin Powell to declare that the Janjaweed had committed a genocide. A UN inquiry shortly afterward compiled irrefutable evidence of war crimes on a vast scale and pushed the Security Council to refer Darfur to the ICC. At the same time, a coalition of young American and European activists under the “Save Darfur” banner pressed for the protection of Sudanese civilians, the delivery of humanitarian aid, and justice for genocide victims. Bush stepped up humanitarian aid and backed the deployment of a joint UN–African Union peacekeeping force, the biggest in the world at that time. In 2008, then Senator Barack Obama made ending the genocide in Darfur a component of his presidential campaign.

GETTING AWAY WITH IT

But the trajectory of the Darfur conflict also taught Sudanese combatants that ultimately, even if their atrocities were aired worldwide, they wouldn’t be called to account. Just two months after the United States declared a genocide in Darfur and four months after the UN demanded that Bashir disarm the Janjaweed, African Union peacekeepers encountered Hemedti in a burned-out village. He made no secret of the fact that his forces had been responsible for the 126 bodies the peacekeepers found in the ashes, including 36 children.

Hemedti had no reason to worry about consequences. Khartoum had empowered the Janjaweed to do its dirty work and, by then, could not crack down on the thuggish group even if it wanted to. Bashir decided that his best bet was to formalize the Janjaweed into the RSF, immensely upgrading the militia’s status, in return—he hoped—for loyalty. Despite occasionally paying rhetorical lip service to accountability, the Sudanese authorities have never brought any Janjaweed commander to trial.

The ICC has done better—but only just. In October, the court found a Janjaweed commander, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (known as Kushayb), guilty of 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity; the ICC will impose his sentence later this month. The trial was a model of due process, featuring a mountain of evidence painstakingly compiled and presented. But 20 years after the outbreak of genocide in Darfur, Kushayb is the only individual who has ever been brought to trial—and only because he surrendered to the ICC in 2020, worried that authorities in Khartoum might have something even worse in store for him.

History has taught many Sudanese fighters that they will not face consequences for genocide.

The ICC’s investigators are still at work in Darfur. They are particularly focused on a rampage committed by RSF fighters in mid-2023 against the Masalit, a non-Arab ethnic group that resides in western Sudan and Chad. The fighters killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people (including the governor of West Darfur state) and drove most survivors off their land. But so far, no charges have been brought against Hemedti, his lieutenants, or any of the commanders of the SAF, who themselves are responsible for many abuses in other theaters of war. One of the Biden administration’s last acts was to declare that the RSF was responsible for genocide, and in his early 2025 confirmation hearing, Rubio agreed with this determination. The United States has imposed financial and travel sanctions on Hemedti, but these have failed to have any discernible impact.

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Over the course of decades, many Sudanese fighters have become so confident that they will face no real consequences for genocidal acts that they now advertise such practices to terrorize any who stand in their way. Impunity reigns. In videos recently circulated by RSF fighters, they have forced their victims—before they were killed—to crawl and make animal sounds while calling them dogs, donkeys, or slaves. As the RSF has pillaged residential neighborhoods in Khartoum and elsewhere, committing murder and sexual assault and vandalizing schools, hospitals, and government offices, its fighters have continued promoting their most gruesome deeds and telegraphing their intent. They have promised to avenge any attack by the government tenfold and to wipe out any communities that resist them. In its siege of El Fasher, the RSF blocked aid and trade and intercepted all who tried to flee, overrunning a nearby camp for displaced people in April and killing hundreds, including nine nurses.

WASHINGTON’S UNUSED WEAPON

It is little wonder, then, that Hemedti and his band of killers remain unbothered by calls for accountability from the United States, European governments, and the United Nations. In late October, Hemedti did arrest one commander who was notorious for flaunting his crimes. But terror is simply woven into Hemedti’s modus operandi. RSF forces have encircled the city of El Obeid, the SAF’s main garrison on the road to Khartoum, and overrun the nearby town of Bara, killing 50 civilians—including five Red Crescent humanitarian workers who were distributing aid. Because the SAF (and especially its Islamist brigades) is also responsible for grave abuses, many Sudanese worry that the SAF’s rage and fear will further escalate the catastrophe.

Determinations of genocide, investigative commissions, and sanctions are nowhere near enough to curb the killing—nor are most of the peacemaking efforts mustered thus far. Days after the war broke out in 2023, the United States and Saudi Arabia summoned the RSF and the SAF to Jeddah for cease-fire talks. The two sides dutifully signed a “Declaration of Commitment to Protect the Civilians of Sudan” but then ignored its promises entirely.

It soon became clear that both Burhan and Hemedti believed they could win, or at least gain a decisive battlefield advantage—and, moreover, that they could each marshal enough foreign sponsors to sustain their violent campaigns. The United Arab Emirates quickly became the war’s most significant foreign patron, putting its weight behind the RSF. Although Abu Dhabi consistently denies backing the RSF, the evidence is overwhelming that it has armed the militant group, including with sophisticated drones. A coalition of other Middle Eastern powers, meanwhile, led by Egypt and Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, are arming the SAF—including its powerful Islamist brigades. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are rivals on the Arabian Peninsula, and UAE leaders were not going to accept Riyadh running peace talks without an equal say.

The UAE is unlikely to make serious concessions unless Trump wields direct pressure.

Although foreign backing has made it possible for Sudan’s generals to fight their war, that backing also creates leverage for ending it. The road to peace in Sudan runs through Abu Dhabi, Cairo, and Riyadh. The Biden administration knew this, but it failed to acknowledge that top-level leaders such as President Joe Biden himself or Secretary of State Antony Blinken would have to force these three capitals to set aside their differences long enough to impose a humanitarian truce. Instead, they placed responsibility for shepherding a peace process in the hands of the State Department’s Africa Bureau, which did not have the leverage to succeed.

Rubio grasped the formula that his predecessor had shunned by creating the “Quad”—a dialogue comprising the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—and putting a special envoy close to President Donald Trump, Massad Boulos, in charge day to day. The Quad’s template is workable: it calls for a cease-fire, humanitarian access, and political talks toward the formation of a civilian government. But the Biden administration’s missed opportunities has made Rubio’s job tougher; the scale of the atrocities has hardened each faction’s determination to fight on. Earlier this year, the UAE was dragging its feet. But it was the SAF’s Islamist faction—which is backed by Qatar and Turkey—that sabotaged the Quad talks in Washington at the end of October. Burhan had agreed on the Quad’s template with his closest sponsor, Egypt. But unlike Hemedti, whose word is the RSF’s law, Burhan heads a fractious coalition, and the Islamists vetoed a deal at the last moment.

The day after the talks collapsed, the RSF launched a full-scale assault on El Fasher. If Abu Dhabi gave Hemedti the green light, however, it surely did not anticipate the wave of revulsion that would follow the RSF’s killings or the reputational damage that the UAE would suffer. Rubio’s formula remains the right one. The backers of the SAF’s Islamist faction, however—Qatar and Turkey—need to be brought into the room, as does Trump himself. It remains unlikely that the UAE will draw back its support for the RSF’s military campaign or that other foreign actors will make serious and necessary concessions unless Trump wields direct pressure. Rubio, Boulos, and their counterparts in Arab capitals and in Ankara can work out the details, but the theatrics of a true deal require the Oval Office as a stage.

Without quick action, the RSF and its drones will close in on Khartoum, and the SAF will almost certainly attempt a vengeful counterattack. However terrible the war and its consequent famine in Sudan is today, it can still get much worse.

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Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

Watch and share this speech! It is for all of us.

[Update 10/30/2025: Since I myself normally prefer to read speeches rather than watch and listen, I should not be surprised that only 5% of you clicked on the video to watch it. But this is one of the rare occasions in which I made an exception. Mamdani’s eloquence and clarity is only matched among current public figures I know by P.M. Mia Mottley of Barbados, who we all should hope becomes the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. [You can watch her recent speech to the African Union here]

So I am resending with the transcript below the video of the speech. But I would urge you to also watch the speech.

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Transcript: Zohran Mamdani’s Historic Final Rally Speech Before NYC Election

https://singjupost.com/transcript-zohran-mamdanis-historic-final-rally-speech-before-nyc-election/

Read the full transcript of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s speech titled “We Will Not Bend” in Queens’ Forest Hills Stadium, October 27, 2025.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Thank you so much. Good evening, New York City! How we all doing? Habibi, how are you? It is so good to see you all here tonight.

Now as you know, a politician is only as good as the team around him. So I have to ask that team to start up this teleprompter. Because right now, it’s off the top of the dome. And while we wait, why don’t we actually begin?

Opening Acknowledgments

Can we first hear a round of applause for our incredible MC, Sarah Sherman. Can we hear it for the elected officials, the labor leaders, and the New Yorkers who have joined us this evening. And can we hear it for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Yeah, very good. You know, there are many things one can say about our Congresswoman, but I want to tell you a story about 2021. When we went on a 15-day hunger strike and won $450 million in debt relief for working-class taxi drivers, the Congresswoman was there with us on that picket line. She was there with us on the phone after everyone else had gone home. And she was there with us again in the primary of this election. And that’s because she’s there for working people.

And now we are just getting started. And let’s please make some noise for Senator Bernie Sanders.

The Movement That Built This Campaign

I stand before you tonight only because the Senator dared to stand alone for so long. I speak the language of democratic socialism only because he spoke it first. And when I ran for state assembly almost six years ago to the day, it was at Bernie’s rally in Queensbridge Park where I led our first canvas.

Signing people up for our email lists, asking them for $5 or $10 and encouraging them to believe that the politics of not-me-us applied to our state government just as much as our national one.

When we win on November 4th and then govern from City Hall with dignity as the foundation of our politics, it will be because of the movement that Bernie built.

I stand before you tonight as the nominee of a Democratic Party reinvigorated in its pursuit of making government work for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected.

From Statistical Anomaly to People’s Movement

Looking out at more than 13,000 of you here in Forest Hills Stadium, it is tempting to believe that this moment was always destined. Yet when we launched this campaign on October 23rd, one year and three days ago, there was not a single television camera there to cover it.

When we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, my name was a statistical anomaly in every poll. Four months later, as recently as this February, our support had reached the eye-watering heights of 1%. We were tied with noted candidate “someone else.” I always knew we could beat him.

When we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, the political world did not pay it much attention because we were looking to build a movement that reflected the city as it actually is, not just the one that political consultants think exists on a spreadsheet.

And when we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, we were dismissed as a punchline in the halls of power. The idea of fundamentally changing who government serves in this city was unimaginable. Even if we gained momentum, they asked, how would we ever overcome the tens of millions of dollars in attacks that would follow?

New York Is Not for Sale

Yet we knew then what we know now. New York is not for sale.

As young people showed up in record numbers, as immigrants saw themselves in the politics of their city, as seniors once skeptical dared to dream again, we spoke with one voice: New York is not for sale.

And now, as we stand on the precipice of taking this city back from corrupt politicians and the billionaires that fund them, let our words ring out so loud tonight that Andrew Cuomo can hear them in his $8,000 a month apartment. Let them ring so loud so that he can hear us even if he’s in Westchester this evening. Let them ring so loud that his puppet master in the White House hears us. New York is not for sale.

Thirteen days after we announced our candidacy, Donald Trump won the presidency once again. The Bronx and Queens saw some of the largest shifts to the right of any counties in our country.

No matter what article you read or channel you turned to, the story seemed to be the same. Our city was headed to the right. Obituaries were written about Democrats’ abilities to reach Asian voters, young voters, male voters. Again and again we were told that if we had any hope of beating the Republican Party, it would only be by becoming the Republican Party.

Andrew Cuomo himself said that we had lost not because we had failed to speak to the needs of working class Americans, but because we had spent too much time talking about bathrooms and sports teams. This was a moment where it seemed our political horizon was narrowing.

A Choice to Retreat or to Fight

And in this moment, New York, you had a choice. A choice to retreat or to fight. And the choice that we made was to stop listening to those experts and to start listening to you.

We went to two of the places that saw the biggest swings to the right, Fordham Road and Hillside Avenue. These New Yorkers were far from the caricature of Trump voters. They told us they supported Donald Trump because they felt disconnected from a Democratic Party that had grown comfortable with mediocrity and gave its time only to those who gave millions.

They told us that they felt abandoned by a party beholden to corporations, which asked them for their votes after telling them only what it was against rather than presenting a vision of what it was for. They told us they didn’t believe in a system anymore that did not even pretend to offer solutions to the defining challenge of their lives, the cost of living crisis.

Rent was too expensive, so were groceries, so was child care, so was taking the bus and working two or three jobs still wasn’t enough. Trump, for all his many flaws, had promised them an agenda that would put more money in their pockets and lower the cost of living.

Donald Trump lied. It was up to us to deliver for the working people he left behind.

A Movement Powered by Everyday New Yorkers

Over the eight months of the primary, we told New Yorkers how we intended to address that very same affordability crisis. We did not do it alone. This was a movement powered by tens of thousands of everyday New Yorkers who knocked doors between 12-hour shifts at work and phone-banked until their fingers were numb.

People who had never voted before became die-hard canvassers. Community formed. Our city got to know each other and itself. This, my friends, was your movement. And it always will be.

As the snow melted and the frost thawed, this campaign began to grow faster than anyone ever imagined possible. So many small donors chipped in that we had to ask you to stop donating. Please stop. We climbed the polls faster than Andrew Cuomo could dial Donald Trump’s number. People started to learn how to pronounce my name.

The Billionaires Got Scared

And the billionaires got scared. Or, as the New York Times would describe it, “the Hamptons was basically in group therapy about the mayoral race.”

Andrew Cuomo and his corporate cronies did everything they could to make this campaign one of fear and one of smallness. Hell yeah. Obviously. They pumped millions into this race. Artificially lengthened my beard to make me seem menacing. Painted our city as a dystopian hellhole. And worked night and day to divide the people of New York.

They failed.

When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me. And when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with betting odds that showed Cuomo’s chances of winning at nearly 80 percent, we knew that the so-called experts were set to get it wrong yet again.

Shattering the Inevitable

Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable, and then on June 24th, we shattered that inevitability. We won by 13 percent, with the most votes in any citywide primary in New York City history. Some of those New Yorkers had voted for Trump. Many others had never voted before, and when Andrew Cuomo called me to concede at 10:15 that night, he said over the phone that we had created a tremendous force.

When you insist on building a coalition with room for every New Yorker, that is exactly what you create, a tremendous force.

That force has only grown over these past four months. We now have more than 90,000 volunteers, and we have spoken to millions more New Yorkers. We have put forth new plans in these last few months for how we will govern, hiring thousands more teachers for our schools, taking on the consultants and the contracts in city government, and tackling the final boss of New York City infrastructure, scaffolding.

But over the past few weeks, as this race has entered its final days, we have witnessed displays of Islamophobia that shock the conscience. Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, and Curtis Lewa do not have an agenda for the future. All they possess is the playbook of the past.

They have sought to make this election a referendum, not on the affordability crisis that consumes New Yorkers’ lives, but on the faith I belong to and the hatred they seek to normalize. We spent months working to convince the world that New Yorkers have a right to afford this city that we all love. Now we are being forced to defend the idea that a Muslim is even allowed to lead it.

These same big-money donors and disgraced politicians have sought to rob us of our ambition, because they do not think that you deserve the beauty of a dignified life. And time and again they have encouraged you to imagine less, because they know that a reimagined New York hurts their bottom line.

A City as Ambitious as Its People

I believe that this city is like the universe, constantly expanding. We deserve a city government as ambitious as the working New Yorkers who make it the greatest city in the world. We cannot wait for someone else to deliver it. We are not afforded the luxury of waiting, because too often to wait is to trust those who delivered us to this point.

On November 4th, we will set the course of our city back in the direction it belongs. And in doing so, we will answer a question that our nation has wrestled with from the dawn of our founding: Who is allowed to be free?

The Oligarchs Who Oppose Freedom

There are some who hear that question and they know the answer without hesitation. They are the oligarchs who have accumulated vast wealth off those who labor from before the light breaks the horizon until long after color has drained from the sky. These are the robber barons of America, and they believe their money affords them a larger say than the rest of us.

I am not just talking about the Bill Ackmans and Ken Langones of the world. I speak of people whose names you are not familiar with, who have no qualms about contributing more to super PACs than we would ever tax them, and who celebrate when those PACs flood our airwaves with commercials that plaster the words “global jihad” over my face.

Their freedom doesn’t just come at the expense of dignity and truth. It comes at the expense of the freedoms of others, too. They are the authoritarians who seek to keep us pressed beneath their thumbs, because they know that once we shake ourselves loose, we will never be held down again.

Each and every one of these people think New York is for sale. For too long, my friends, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. The oligarchs of New York are the wealthiest people in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. They do not want the equation to change. They will do everything they can to prevent their grip from weakening.

Freedom for All

The truth is as simple as it is non-negotiable. We are all allowed freedom. Each one of us, the working people of this city, the taxi drivers, the line cooks, the nurses. All those seeking lives of grace, not greed, we all get to be free.

And on November 4th, thanks to the hard work of more than 90,000 volunteers across every corner of this city, that is exactly what we will tell the world. Because while Donald Trump’s billionaire donors think that they have the money to buy this election, we have a movement of the masses. And we are a movement that is not afraid of what we believe. And we’ve believed it for quite some time.

Those who worry about what this movement may look like on January 1st are the ones who worried on October 23rd what it may look like tonight. But our purpose has not changed and neither have our promises.

Our Concrete Promises

As I said on the evening I announced, the job of government is to actually make our lives better. And in the exact words I said on October 23rd, here is what we stand for, my friends.

We are going to freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants and use every resource at our disposal to build housing for everyone who needs it. We are going to eliminate the fare on every single bus line and make what are currently the slowest buses in the nation move around this city with ease.

And we are going to create universal childcare at no cost to parents so New Yorkers can raise their family in the city they love. Together New York, we’re going to freeze up. Together New York, we’re going to make buses fast in. Together New York, we’re going to deliver universal. We will make our city one where every person who calls it home can live a dignified life.

No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive. And we believe then, we believe today, we will believe tomorrow that it is government’s job to deliver that dignity. Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.

The Legacy of Government Action

Standing before you this evening, I take great strength from those who have labored mightily for the cause of freedom in America, who refused to accept that government could not meet what moments of crisis demanded from it. When the power of the people overwhelms the influence of the powerful, there is no crisis the government cannot meet.

It was government that enacted a New Deal to lift a generation out of poverty, to create beautiful public goods, and establish the right to unionize and collectively bargain. My friends, the era of government that deems an issue too small or a crisis too big must come to an end. Because we need a government that is every bit as ambitious as our adversaries.

A government strong enough to refuse the realities we will not accept and forge the future we know we deserve. A government that refuses to accept one in four New Yorkers living in poverty, that refuses to accept more than 150,000 public school students being homeless, that refuses to accept that two union salaries are not enough to put down a mortgage in this city. And a government that refuses to accept you being priced out of the very city you helped to build every single day.

Seizing the Moment for Change

Time and again, our nation has teetered on the precipice of hopelessness. Now is one of those times. But in each of these moments, working people have reached into the darkness and reshaped our democracy. No longer will we allow the Republican Party to be the one of ambition. No longer will we have to open a history book to read about Democrats leading with big ideas.

My friends, the world is changing. It’s not a question of whether that change will come. It’s a question of who will change it. We have an opportunity before us that few have ever received and even fewer have seized. It’s the opportunity to show the world what it means to win freedom. It is the opportunity to live up to the legacy left by those who came before.

We do not get to determine the scale of a crisis. Our choice is how we respond. Let us win a City Hall that works for those straining to buy groceries, not those straining to buy our democracy. And let us look forward to January 1st, when the hard work of governing will begin.

Policy Commitments That Demand Fulfillment

Those in power would like to describe our policy commitments as if they are illusions that will evaporate as soon as we approach City Hall. Let us show them instead that they are invocations of the future that we will win. And let us prove to each and every New Yorker that a politics of expansion does not just mean imagination. It insists upon fulfillment. We can make City Hall a place where New Yorkers come to expect the future, not just failure.

Rejecting Complacency in the Final Days

But we are not there yet. Just as Andrew Cuomo’s victory in the primary was thought to be inevitable, the same narrative has started to form around us today. When you read the articles that tell a post-election story of triumph while we are amidst early voting, when you see the calshy odds that have our chances of victory in the 90s, know this: you are reading the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June, believing that his victory was promised.

We cannot allow complacency to infiltrate this movement. So over these nine final days, I ask for only one thing from each of you: more. I know you are tired, and for that I recommend some Adani chai. And still, I ask for more. I know the attacks have intensified, that a warm bed is more inviting than a sixth-floor walk-up, that another evening spent knocking doors after a long workday feels daunting. And still, I ask for more.

I ask for more because that is the only way that we win a future of more. So if you are able, I urge you, my friends, stand up.

If you have knocked a door, turn your flashlight on. If you will knock a door, turn your flashlight on. If you have more to give, turn your flashlight on. Together, let us make a light bright enough to banish any darkness.

Over these final nine days, and the months and years that follow, the powers that be will throw everything in their arsenal against us. They will spend millions more dollars. They will attack us from every conceivable angle. But we will not bend. We will not flinch. We will triumph over the oligarchs, and we will return dignity to our lives.

Meeting Our Match and Our Master

Nearly eighty-nine years ago to the day, FDR spoke before a crowd of thousands at Madison Square Garden. He said, “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”

My friends, I should like to have it said of our campaign that in it the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match. And I should like to have it said of our city hall that in it these forces met their master.

New York, our work has only just begun. On November 4th, we set ourselves free. Thank you.

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

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Editor’s Note

I don’t often restack posts from other sources. But this one from an interview with Cathy Cohen is well worth an exception given her keen insights on the current political situation. The original source is here (https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/building-a-political-home/). I have included the full article below.

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Cathy J. Cohen is one of the most distinguished political scientists in the American academy. Over the course of her career, she has dramatically reshaped how many of us think about questions of inequality, stigma, and marginalization in American politics and pierced through unexamined assumptions about how Americans, especially youth, approach major questions of political life. Influenced by traditions of Black radical feminism, she is especially celebrated—as well as criticized—for her sharp critiques of mainstream Black and gay civil rights organizations, as well as the paradigms through which they are studied. While many scholars sought influence through more familiar venues of public intellectualism, Cohen quietly impacted successive generations of activists, organizers, students, and civic leaders in Chicago and elsewhere with her ideas and mentorship, especially in the early days of Black Lives Matter.

After a period where it seemed that many of the ideas and organizations she championed were ascendant, such efforts now face a wave of hostility and derision, as reactionary political forces elicit and extend outrage against the supposed excesses of the gains won by Blacks, immigrants, leftists, queer folks, and others. On July 3, I spoke with Cohen about the attacks on progressivism, what makes social movements work, and the challenge of the second coming of Trumpism.

—Brandon M. Terry

Brandon Terry: As I speak, Congress has passed Donald Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which some commentators consider one of the most consequential single pieces of legislation ever passed. And I think it also represents—alongside the dismantling of civil rights legislation and attacks on higher education—the larger ideological and political ambitions of the second Trump administration. How do you think Black politics ought to respond?

Cathy Cohen: We are in the midst of a fight like none we’ve ever seen before in our lifetimes. And there’s no denying the fundamental role of white supremacy, racial capitalism, and Christian nationalism in structuring Trump’s attacks on Black and brown people through this second term. The first round of this terror has come in the form of what we might call “anti-wokeism,” with the explicit goal of dismantling all things thought to be related to extending opportunity and possibly advancement to folks of color and fundamentally shifting power in this country. The right is using this anti-woke framework to explain away everything they contend is wrong with the country, from the problems at “elite universities” to the stunning claim that DEI caused a plane crash.

The attacks on DEI both target and represent Black and Brown folks as incompetent workers who, they say, have been given an advantage over white people by the government. We have to understand the expansive nature of this work: anti-wokeism is about giving ideological cover to longstanding priorities on the right—dismantling the welfare state and ramping up the carceral state, especially in the form of immigrant deportation and detention on the streets at home and militarism overseas.

BT: What is jarring to me is that we’ve lived through an explosion in popular education about race, especially in the last fifteen years. When I was in college, a graduate student advised me, “Whatever you do, don’t work on residential segregation. No one will want to hear about it.” Today many educated people know what redlining is. How could we have lived through this proliferation of interventions about the history of racial injustice and yet are also seeing this revived story of Black incompetence?

CC: We have to understand that many of Trump’s attacks are not “culture wars” as described in the media, but a generational war meant to win over, in particular, young white people. The success of our research, writing, and teaching the truthful narrative of the history of racism, empire, and white supremacy in this country is changing the way young people—and especially white people—think about institutions, about their role in society, about white privilege and racial capitalism. This has been especially true for young people with some access to college.

However, for non–college educated young white people—who have experienced an increasing vulnerability and precarity and declining access to the white privilege and state power they were told was theirs for the taking, even from their class position—this has built resentment around what is narrated as the unworthy advantages of communities of color, through policies like affirmative action or the expansion of the state for the social and economic mobility of, in particular, the Black middle class. Trump’s message to these young white people is that they have to stop this transgenerational transformation. And part of stopping it is controlling the university, controlling public education—taking back control of the narrative of this country and about people of color and promoting an explanation that white people have less because people of color have more. These two things are deeply influencing each other.

BT: But how do you explain the Trump movement’s appeal to so many Americans who would not understand themselves to be white? There was a lot of movement among Latino voters—Latino male voters in particular—with some movement among a very small segment of Black men, including high-profile online influencers like DJ Akademiks. If this is about white supremacy, why do we see this complex racial demographic mix-up?

CC: The broad agenda of the MAGA movement and the Trump administration is not just about white supremacy; it is also about Christian nationalism. Part of what Trump promises is that men will take what patriarchy tells us is their rightful place as the head of their family. So, even if they don’t have access to economic mobility, men are promised access to patriarchal power. And for men of color with limited access to the spoils of capitalism, he’s even offering new kinds of financial systems such as cryptocurrency.

My research project, the GenForward Survey, conducted focus groups with young Black men about Trump during the campaign. Our participants had an instrumental view of their possible support of Trump, and this has everything to do with the absence of deliverables from the left to those communities. Many of the young men we talked to had no illusions that Trump was on their side or would truly make their lives better. But they didn’t believe that Biden was on their side, either. What they believed was that Trump would at least try to pay them off: the last time Trump was in office, they got a check, and many of them noted they didn’t get that from Biden.

When we said to the participants in the focus group, “Well, Trump lies,” they said, “Everybody lies—this whole political system is built on lies.” And then when we said, “Well, what about the idea that Trump is racist?” they said, “They’re all racist. He just says what they think.” These young men had a deep—and I think appropriate—skepticism about the inherent racism of both political parties.

The young men considered voting for Trump because they believed they might get some symbolic representation or some minor policy wins that would temporarily enhance their lives. I’m not saying I agree with them, but they articulated a position that they’d rather go with the guy who gave them money, who’s trying to buy them off, and who performs a certain type of masculinity that maybe they aspire to. We know what Trump’s play is. The question is, what is the left offering these same young Black men? The gender politics of Trump’s Christian nationalism might be enticing for groups of racially and economically marginalized young men who feel like they don’t have access to power in a society that says men are supposed to.

BT: But even on the most charitable interpretation, Trump’s relationship to religion seems thin and instrumental, not deeply committed. Why does the Christian right see him as a vehicle for the restoration of a “postliberal” Christian era?

CC: He’s advancing their agenda. That’s the reality. He gave them Dobbs, which will then facilitate the mobilization at some point, maybe after the midterm elections, of a federal national ban on abortion. He has reinstated the centrality of the nuclear family and the heteropatriarchal roles in that family. He’s taking on gender nonconformity and destroying all the protections and services won by and for transgender communities. He is embracing the agenda of many white Christian nationalist churches, in particular. Would they prefer a person who articulated and lived their ideology exactly? Sure. But they can live with someone who’s going to deliver wins for them. Because in the end, the idea is to accumulate power so that you can transform and control institutions to advance your political agenda. It’s not complicated.

I think most people understand the pay-to-play relationship that surrounds evangelicals, for example, and their support of Trump. That has caused some fracture in those communities. But yesterday I heard an interview with a congressmember, House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, about the “big ugly bill” that I found revealing. When asked if he was “caving” by voting for the bill despite his concerns about its impact on the deficit, he replied: “Well, if winning is caving, then I guess we caved.” There you go.

BT: Your first book, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, gave such a sophisticated, empirically grounded theory of the cleavages within Black political life and the ways that they leave certain segments of the larger group marginalized, even in times of great emergency like the HIV crisis. You’ve been working on that theme since then: Black people disagree. They have deep conflicts. Their solidarity is fragile and contingent. It needs certain conditions to thrive, and may have objectionable consequences at times. But every election cycle, we continuously go through the ritual of being surprised by this. Why do you think your message is so hard for public commentators to digest?

CC: Boundaries was a case study about the politics of HIV and AIDS in Black communities, but it was really intended to help us think about who has power, legitimacy, voice, and resources in terms of defining “a” Black political agenda—even in, or especially in, life-and-death circumstances.

There are many people—W. E. B. Du Bois, Manning Marable, Angela Davis, Michael Dawson—who’ve written about the complexities and different ideological positions of Black people and communities. Many Black feminists have done this as well. Why do public commentators seem to miss this point? There are a couple reasons. The narratives of our diversity, our different positionalities, our different politics are sometimes in tension with what might be considered the unifying themes of Black solidarity that arise in response to a form of anti-Blackness and structural racism that negates the basic humanity of Black people. If I’m trying to respond to arguments about the dehumanization of Black people, I’m not going to focus on the very real differences in Black experiences and positionality—I’m going to make a unifying argument about our humanity.

Another reason is the way scholarship on Blackness is framed and considered relative to other groups. This is typical in political science: researchers often ask how Black people compare to white people, or how Black women compare to white women. But that framework of comparison flattens the specificity of Black experiences and Black politics. Sadly, this comparative approach defines far too much academic work, particularly in the social sciences and biological sciences.

We need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of Black communities, because we can never effectively represent and organize Black people without that. You can’t understand the carceral state and its targeting of Black communities without attention to gender, as extraordinary work by scholars such as Beth Richie and Sarah Haley has shown. Premilla Nadasen adds depth to our understanding of class politics in Black communities by detailing how poor Black women built movements of resistance to the contraction of the welfare state. C. Riley Snorton, Jafari Allen, Moya Bailey, and E. Patrick Johnson help us understand the intersections between gender, sexuality, and race and transgender politics in Black communities. I could go on and on highlighting more extraordinary work. The point is that all this scholarship is informing and advancing liberatory formations while paying attention to differential lived experiences and political positionings of Black people.

BT: Is there a place for Black solidarity going forward, then? Does the complexity of Black experiences still allow us to use that language, or is it time for a new vocabulary?

CC: I’m not invested in some magical, expansive Black solidarity that’s built around our lowest common denominator. Instead, I am committed to a Black solidarity that is built, as bell hooks would tell us, “from margin to center,” around our political commitments and liberatory vision. I am working to build a Black solidarity that includes and centers transgender Black people, Black women and gender non-conforming folks, poor and working-class Black people, disabled Black people. But here is the other dimension: we also have to think about a political formation of solidarity that extends beyond that Black community that includes all those with a shared commitment to fighting oppression in its many dimensions—and that includes, yes, some white people.

While I’m deeply committed to a solidarity that centers continuous resistance to anti-Blackness and structural racism, we have to think about how we can build an expansive and transformative kind of solidarity. I am rejecting a limited or traditional form of Black solidarity, which is often embedded in the ways people talk about institutions like the NAACP. I’m working to build a left Black solidarity that’s prepared to fight the emerging fascism taking root in this country and that’s built around some Black people and some Black communities. I never have the expectation that all Black people will line up together: my work around HIV/AIDS and my life coming from a working-class family and as a Black lesbian feminist has made that clear. My view of solidarity is built around meaningful political solidarity, not just identity-based solidarity.

BT: Zohran Mamdani just won a surprise upset over Andrew Cuomo in the New York Democratic primary. That has set the stage for what looks like a contentious general election between Eric Adams—who comes out of his own Black institutional and associational life in Reverend Herb Daughtry’s church and the nationalist organizing that was going on there—and Mamdani, whose politics, I think, are closer to yours (not to mention an independent Cuomo and the conservative Curtis Sliwa). Mamdani has pretty weak Black support, except when you zero in on young people and the self-described Black left.

You know something about these splits from your other career mentoring and supporting Black youth activists who work at a local level in Chicago with Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100). Since 2012 you’ve played an important role, giving them institutional resources and moral and intellectual support as well as helping people think about these complexities and try to put them into practice. How have you seen Black youth political engagement evolve, particularly across gender and generational lines?

CC: BYP100 emerged because of brilliant young activists. I was lucky to be able to watch and support their amazing work—for instance, holding police accountable for the killing of young Black people like Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald. They also offered a new framing of the history of neoliberal disinvestment in Black communities through the call to divest from the carceral state and invest in Black and other resource-marginalized communities.

But even though we talked earlier in the interview about generational differences, I’m always a little careful with that frame. There are real differences within generations that we can’t lose sight of. So when we talk about how generational politics have changed over time, I always like to remind people that the politics of young adults evolve most often in relation to the social and political context they encounter. Millennials and members of Gen Z, for example, have lived through the recessions of 2008, recessions related to COVID, and the impending recession that may come from Trump’s tariffs. In some ways they have had more opportunity than previous generations, but they have also had to take on more debt to access promised educational opportunity. They’re less likely to own a home at this point in their life cycle than other generations. These are young people who have experienced a neoliberal, multiracial politics that culminated in the election of the first Black president—an election that also helped to facilitate the election of Trump and his white, Christian nationalist agenda. They are much more skeptical of state-run institutions, even what we might call democratic institutions, than other generations. They largely don’t believe in the two-party system: they want a third party. And when we ask them in our GenForward surveys about the best way to make change in the country, they don’t say elections. They say organizing, activism, nonviolent protests, and even civic engagement. When we ask young Black people the best way to make racial progress, again, they don’t mention traditional forms of politics. One out of five say revolution.

These young people don’t believe that incremental change through traditional political institutions will ever deliver the transformational agenda that they embrace. This viewpoint has moved some to embrace social movement formations calling for radical transformative change. But for others, there is deep cynicism about the effectiveness of collective mobilization, which causes them to lean instead toward an individualized politics, often using social media platforms to register their preferences. And still for others, their skepticism has promoted the idea of distrust in any kind of institution, fostering a belief that they must provide for each other outside traditional institutions with practices that might be labeled mutual aid.

BT: There seems to be a widespread sense that the Black Lives Matter movement is essentially over—or if not over, then in decisive retreat, maybe even defeat. Do you agree, and if so, what are the chief causes of the movement’s decline?

CC: I participate in social movements, and I also study them. And that has taught me these lessons: first, movements are never steady and linear. We need ways of assessing the work of movements when their work is fever-pitched—what happened around Ferguson or the mass mobilizations of 2020. And we also must be able to assess work that happens in movement spaces when they appear more dormant. We are not currently seeing the same activity from movements that we witnessed in opposition to the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, but there’s still activity among organizations such as BYP100, Dream Defenders, the Movement for Black Lives, and the Rising Majority. All of these organizations are helping to analyze this moment and to build and maintain the spaces and campaigns meant to organize communities into resistance.

The second lesson is that social movements and their organizations are not meant to last forever. If an organization or even a movement fades, it doesn’t mean its work was irrelevant. Verta Taylor writes about social movement abeyance, where the most visible forms of movement activity may stop for a period of time only to be taken up later in a new formation. The organizations themselves may disappear, but their work or their influence continues.

But I don’t think that the Movement for Black Lives is over. If nothing else, the political impact of their decade or more of work will continue for some time. And their wins shape politics today. Because of their existence then and to some degree now in Chicago, we were able to elect a progressive Black mayor, Brandon Johnson, our former progressive Black state prosecutor, Kim Foxx, and progressive members of DSA to the city council. Their presence meant an expansion in the number of jobs for young people in Chicago, the reinstalling of mental health clinics through the Treatment Not Trauma campaign, and the revoking of cash bail in Illinois. Organizations like BYP100, Dream Defenders, and the coalition of organizations under the Movement for Black Lives provided a political home for young people led by other young people. They built an expansive political education project, sharpening political analysis and discourse in and outside of Black communities. They highlighted Black feminist approaches to strategy, analysis, and leadership. And they helped disseminate and popularize new political frameworks such as abolition. To understand all that these organizations won and their impact on our political landscape, I would recommend Barbara Ransby’s Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-first Century or Deva Woodly’s Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements.

But we should be honest about the fact that many of the movement organizations that emerged after the murder of Trayvon Martin faced real challenges and sometimes failed. I think some became too dependent on philanthropy—and money in general—instead of building a larger volunteer base. Their barriers for entry were sometimes too high and the pathways to engagement for a larger population were sometimes nonexistent.

There’s also the question of whether the organizations that we label BLM reached into and built inside Black working-class and poor communities. There’s an argument that they did not, but I think the answer is a bit more complicated. I know that there were poor and working-class Black people, young Black people in those organizations and in their leadership, but I don’t think the campaigns coming out of those organizations consistently targeted the organizing of Black working-class and poor people and communities. Another difficulty faced by these organizations was the work of what it meant to build and be a political home for folks who are on the margins of society and the margins of Black communities. Sometimes the work of building a political home for folks that protects them from daily attacks on one’s body and being may become so consuming that the collective politics of resistance and organizing become less of a priority.

And then there was the challenge of building democratic forms of accountability and participation among a population that’s rightly skeptical of organizations, centralized power, and money. These organizations faced enormous challenges. Sometimes they navigated them well and other times they didn’t. We have to hold up and celebrate their wins, try to assess their impact by looking at their long-term impact, and also learn from their challenges—and, yes, their failures.

I try to learn from every political experience. So, for example, while BLM rejected the approach of having one charismatic male leader, we still have yet to figure out what a fully accountable and functioning democratic process looks like in movement organizations even if they’re “leaderful”—where some people are given the opportunity to become, if not a figurehead for, then a figure publicly associated with the movement. That’s not an indictment. Our thinking about what accountability looks like just has to evolve. How do we build in and guarantee greater transparency?

This generation of activist organizers also took seriously self-care and self-preservation, a position I have learned to appreciate. However, at times, I—and others of earlier generations—wondered if the focus on self-care was getting in the way of the work. Many of the young people that I know and love would say, “Oh, you’re wrong on this, Cathy.” And I totally get the need to preserve people’s ability to do the hard work of activism and organizing. But I think it has to be balanced with actually doing the work. I’m not sure that balance was always right at times.

Again, there are many more things that this recent generation of activists have taught me and helped me to rethink—not least of which is how we can not only center poor and working-class people in our campaigns, but build political homes and institutions full of and accountable to those same communities. Of course, as folks are organized into movement spaces, they must feel safe, taken care of, and heard. But, as I mentioned earlier, there is a tension between creating those institutions and moving beyond those institutions to do the work of movement building. We have to be building political homes while also doing the door-knocking and organizing that builds power and changes lives. The duality of that work can be hard to hold. It is something I probably didn’t think enough about.

BT: And it speaks to that tension self-care creates—between the feeling of being at home and those difficult outward-facing demands for a more inclusive movement.

CC: Exactly. Then we also have to be prepared to deal with harm—and to navigate, which I think most of these organizations did, instances of harm inflicted too often by men on women. How do we deal with harm while also committing to not discarding anyone? What does it mean to take harm seriously, but also to take the learning, evolution, and care of those who’ve caused harm seriously? We’re asking a lot of these organizations relating to violence and care. Sometimes they handle such challenges well, and sometimes they don’t, but their effort to engage this challenge will inform how people move forward and build movements in the future.

BT: Your classic essay, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” helped a generation of readers articulate deep frustrations with the political rhetoric and strategies in civil rights activism, and offered a kind of queer politics as a radical alternative. People keep returning to it in part because you draw a sharp distinction between “civil rights-based” inclusion and a radical queer politics committed to unsettling the hierarchies and identity categories that structure domination. You also critique the presumed opposition between “mainstream” and “queer,” showing how that binary can obscure the messy and contradictory power relations within marginalized queer communities themselves.

Today, criticisms that seem like they target your position on this have gained renewed visibility and support. Andrew Sullivan recently argued in the New York Times that the post-Obergefell LGBTQ movement overreached—that it should return to a vision of civil rights inclusion and abandon what he calls “radical gender revolution,” because the latter is alienating the broader public and threatens to undermine the gains of earlier gay and lesbian activism. He says the movement is intolerant of dissent, obsessed with identity proliferation, and dangerously focused on youth and educational institutions. Congresswoman Sarah McBride has a similar view: she argues that some trans activists overplayed their hand and abandoned the politics of persuasion, losing the support of sympathetic liberals in the process. How do you respond to these accounts? Do they get anything right, or is this simply the latest chapter in the recurring debate between integration and transformation?

CC: Sullivan has always promoted a liberal, reductive understanding of LGBTQ politics that seems nostalgic for a time when white gay men were understood as the normative category of gay politics. I’m less persuaded by his call for the simpler times uncomplicated by the different gender, race, and class positions of those he understands to be gay or queer. For me this was a position too often articulated, for example, by some white gay men in the ’80s and ’90s in ACT UP New York meetings, which I attended and participated in. Those individuals seemed to think that their access to white privilege would be tainted by the non-normative and uncompromising positions of radical queer people who sought freedom, not acceptance from the respectable middle class of gays. The truth is, a politics of inclusion based on the civil rights framework was never meant to address the issues of queers of color and poor and working-class queers, whether they were folks of color or white. Sullivan is interested in a politics of inclusion where we conform to hetero- and homo-normative standards and, as a reward, are included—allowed to marry and serve in the military, and accepted because we demand little or nothing from the state.

I count myself among those who believe that same-sex marriage only helps to legitimize a process intent on producing a hierarchy of citizenship and rights bolstered by the institution of marriage. In the 2000s, gay leadership largely sought normality: marriage, military, and electoral power. The cost, of course, of being on the other side of normal, as Michael Warner, Lauren Berlant, Lisa Duggan, and others have warned, is that you must participate in the process of excluding those deemed “deviants” and give up on the cause of radical transformation. It produces, as Duggan explains, a depoliticized, privatized gay community committed to shrinking gay public spaces while expanding the gay market and consumption. So for me, that makes Sullivan’s critique problematic and really not new.

Now, McBride’s argument is different. There is something to her demand that we engage people continuously, moving them to our position and being informed by people’s concerns, even their apprehension—and yes, their misinformation too. I try to say this repeatedly about all sectors of politics, not only queer politics: we have to persuade, we have to organize, we have to talk to people, we have to engage with folks and their ideas to move them to our side and to have our side informed by people’s lives. We have to be committed to building sustainable power. To do so, we need to think about how we can build a majority around our positions. How are we organizing people to our positions? How are we winning their hearts and minds? If we are truly trying to expand our base so that we can move a left agenda meant to radically transform people’s lives, we have to take McBride’s argument a bit more seriously than I take Sullivan’s position.

BT: Boundaries of Blackness is a book that changed my life. It helped me understand a lot more about the community I grew up in—in particular, the way people treated queer people in my family and the things they were trying to work through, often in spaces that weren’t visible to everyone else. That affected what I thought were some of the central questions of Black politics. So when people ask me, “What should I read?” I often recommend your book. Let me ask you the same: What have you read that has fundamentally shaped you as a thinker, and is there something you wish more people were reading now?

CC: There are so many texts that have influenced my thinking, but I’ll give you three. As a budding Black feminist, bell hooks’s Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was a critical text. It taught me the limits of second-wave feminist theory and what happens when we allow ourselves to center the people around us. For me that was the experiences of Black women. How does that change not only the stories we tell, but the theories we produce and the political work we pursue?

Another was James C. Scott’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance. It reminded me to be attuned to the ways that people are consistently, and sometimes in cloaked ways, engaged in resisting their oppression. In political science, there is a standard way that we operationalize something we might call “politics,” but Scott suggested that people are always thinking, collaborating, and evolving in the ways they preserve limited agency. That emphasis on quotidian power was an important lesson.

The third book is Manning Marable’s Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1982. Manning himself had a huge impression on me. He was a generous scholar and mentor, and he modeled what it meant to be in the academy but not of the academy. He took data and statistics seriously as another method of conveying the complexity and beauty of Black people. And his book was important for me in its thinking through of the multiple dimensions of resistance in the history of Black people.

All these texts have changed how I think about my work—and especially in the ways that work can move outside the academy and have an impact on the work of activists and organizers.

BT: You have moved creatively between different communities: mentoring youth activists, participating in local government, teaching in local high schools, helping organize academics for political change. What have you learned in practice about the relationship between academic work and political organizing?

CC: My work outside of the academy has everything to do with my discomfort within it. I come from a working-class family in Toledo, Ohio, that has experienced both the opportunities provided by the welfare state and the penalties extracted from the carceral state. I was a first-generation college student, and I remember feeling like I never fully understood what was expected of me in college and grad school. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the work and assignments in those environments—it was the culture of the institutions, even among the Black people there. Since I never felt fully at home, I was always committed to expanding, and hopefully transforming, the academy so people like me could be there and I would feel less like an outsider.

I also come from a family where union organizing and political engagement—whether through electoral politics, movements, or the church—was expected. I bring that instinct with me into the academy. The people I gravitated to, especially at the University of Michigan, where I was in graduate school, were the scholar-activists. I became friends and chosen family with folks like Barbara Ransby, Tracye Matthews, Premilla Nadasen, Kim Smith, Jocelyn Sargent, and Regina Freer. I was taught by folks like Robin D. G. Kelley, Michael Dawson, Tom Holt, and Elsa Barkley Brown. Thus, I was welcomed into a community who understood its work to be both learning and making legible the complicated and beautiful histories, politics, and intimacies of often-ignored communities, especially Black communities, but also transforming institutions of higher education.

At this very dangerous moment, some will turn to the scholar-activist model. That is fine. But I might suggest a more intentional focus on how we think about and build a broad movement in the academy—one intent on reimagining the university and our role in it. I am grateful to be working with an amazing group of comrades in the organization Scholars for Social Justice (SSJ), a group that believes we must work with an expansive analysis of the academy and the work of universities. As Davarian Baldwin, another member of SSJ, highlights in his wonderful book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, we have to understand that the university extends beyond what we do in the classroom to include running police forces and charter schools and being an employer, health care provider, and landlord.

Folks in SSJ also recognize that the dismantling of the academy through an attack on critical race theory and DEI was never enough for this administration, so it has also mobilized claims of rampant antisemitism and threats to safety to justify the imposition of policies meant to end student protest in general and especially protests against the genocide and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Therefore, we must organize on our campuses and across our campuses to build power. That means we have to talk to colleagues we normally would not. We have to do one-on-ones with folks in and out of the university about the issues that are important to them. We might start with the topic of faculty governance or the deporting of students in their labs and move on from there.

BT: I think many faculty want to start with the defense of academic freedom. What do you think universities and faculty members ought to do to today preserve our precarious scholarly freedom — especially those of us interested in questions of class conflict, ethnic and religious violence, or hierarchies built on race, gender, and sexuality?

CC: Truthfully, while academic freedom is something we should defend, especially as it provides a platform for allowing faculty to teach and say what they want, I don’t believe that is the primary struggle that should animate our work right now. As I argued earlier, we have to understand that the right sees its war on the academy and education in general as part of a generational war over what young people, especially young white people, will be taught, how they will be socialized, and how they will align themselves politically. We have to also understand this as a battle for the power to shape the political terrain on which we will define truth, facts, and history.

As Trump seeks to shrink the higher education sector, we have to make a claim for providing more access to folks who want a college education. And as Trump asks students and families to take on more debt to go to college, we have to demand that more colleges are free for the public. As Trump seeks to control administrators, we have to demand that faculty, students, staff, and community members have more power throughout higher education, including on schools’ boards of trustees. Only with the most expansive conceptualization of the university and the centralized financial and political power of the board of trustees can we effectively mount resistance and reimagine the work of the academy during these very dangerous times.

Independent and nonprofit, Boston Review relies on reader funding. To support work like this, please donate here.

Cathy J. Cohen is David and Mary Winton Green Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

Brandon M. Terry is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and author of Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement.

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

I almost always prefer reading a transcript to watching and listening to someone speak. One of the few people I will always make an exception for is Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados. She is not just a speaker, but a consummate orator—eloquent, erudite, down-to-earth, and truth-teller to the world.

So I don’r want to add any more words to distract from her address to the UN General Assembly last week. A transcript is available at https://gadebate.un.org/en/80/barbados.

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

Officially, the Trump´s military occupation of Washington, DC, ended Wednesday night. That ends his official control of the D.C. police force. But Mayor Muriel Bowser continues to play the role in the Trump regime comparable to that of Vichy officials in German-occupied France.

The National Guard presence, from D.C. and from six Republican states, will continue, as will highly aggressive immigration action headed by ICE with participation from other agencies. And the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, by a 6 to 3 vote, ruled that racial profiling on immigration raids could continue.

Justice Sotomayor, one of the three Justices who dissented, raised a clear alarm in her dissent. She warned that this decision risks turning Latinos into second class citizens. In her words: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

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Community Reactions to ICE Raids

A Real News Network video from August 28 featured interviews about the occupation with people at 14th & U Street.

A Sampling of FreeDC Protests in September

FreeDC is a community organization established at a People´s March on January 18. when Trump was sworn in for his second term of office.

Press conference, September 4.

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September 6 March

A very short video by photographer Sue Dorfman showing the September 6 "We Are All DC” march down 16th Street from Malcolm X Park passing under Scott Circle on the way to the White House

Two very amateur cellphone videos by me after I stepped to the side to watch after marching partway, one 6-minutes long and the other 12-minutes long.

Visit the FreeDC Website at https://freedcproject.org/

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

Officially, the Trump´s military occupation of Washington, DC, ended Wednesday night. That ends his official control of the D.C. police force. But Mayor Muriel Bowser continues to play the role in the Trump regime comparable to that of Vichy officials in German-occupied France.

The National Guard presence, from D.C. and from six Republican states, will continue, as will highly aggressive immigration action headed by ICE with participation from other agencies. And the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, by a 6 to 3 vote, ruled that racial profiling on immigration raids could continue.

Justice Sotomayor, one of the three Justices who dissented, raised a clear alarm in her dissent. She warned that this decision risks turning Latinos into second class citizens. In her words: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

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ONE ICE RAID IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

For a vivid first-hand description of one of the early ICE raids in our neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, see this August 28 post by Cathy Sunshine in her Substack blog (apologies for duplication for those who have already read this).

Third Age

A swirl of emotions

Forgive the trite title. Three weeks before our move, it’s an apt description of the conflicting feelings tearing at me. There’s optimism, even excitement. The move will be good for us, we feel sure. And there’s grief. After 47 years in the same city and the same neighborhood, my roots here go deep. The thought of leaving my friends in Mt. Pleasant is almost too much to bear…

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a year ago · 15 likes · 10 comments · Cathy Sunshine

For a video report on the same incident and others in DC in late August, see this report by Sky News USA correspondent Mark Stone:

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Roundup Video Report on Raids in DC

Evident Media, September 9, 2025

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Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

A new Pentagon report on Islamist violence in Africa over the last ten years released in July (https://africacenter.org/spotlight/en-2025-mig-10-year/) reported that:

Militant Islamist groups in Africa continue to be highly active agents of instability across five theaters on the continent The 22,307 fatalities linked to these groups over the past year sustain a record level of lethality observed since 2023 and represent a 60-percent increase from the 2020-2022 period.

Nearly half of the fatalities (10,685) in the past year have been in the Sahel. Somalia represents roughly a third of the continental fatalities (7,289). Along with the Lake Chad Basin, these three regions account for 99 percent of the militant Islamist-linked fatalities in Africa the past year.As a result of the rapid deterioration of security in the Sahel, Somalia and the Sahel have now experienced more militant Islamist-related fatalities over the past decade (each over 49,000) than any other region. The Lake Chad Basin countries have suffered an estimated 39,000 fatalities over this timeframe. Collectively, Africa has experienced roughly 155,000 militant Islamist group-linked deaths over the past decade.

This AfricaFocus contains a article by investigative journalist Turse analyzing the implication of this report for analyzing U.S. counterterrorism strategy. The conclusion: U.S. intervention was not only ineffective but also counterproductive.

That conclusion is not new. See, among many other sources, USA/Global: Divest from Violent Policing and Endless Wars (AfricaFocus Bulletin, August 24, 2020) and the open-access book by Elizabeth Schmidt (Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror).

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Pentagon: U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Have Failed Africans

A new Pentagon report sheds light on AFRICOM’s disastrous counterterrorism campaigns.

Nick Turse

The Intercept, August 5, 2025

https://theintercept.com/2025/08/05/pentagon-africa-counterterrorism-failure/

Senegalese, Dutch, Mauritanian, Ivorian, and American soldiers take part in an exercise at the Colonel Thierno Ndiaye Tactical Training Center during the joint multinational exercise African Lion 2025 in Dodji, Senegal, on May 15, 2025. Photo: Seyllou/AFP via Getty Images

The Intercept has been chronicling the U.S. military’s futile counterterrorism efforts on the African continent for the last decade. We have reported on increases in the number and reach of terror groups, rising militant attacks, spikes in fatalities, destabilizing blowback from U.S. operations, humanitarian disasters, failed secret wars, coups by U.S. trainees, human rights abuses by allies, massacres and executions by partner forces, civilians killed in drone strikes, and a litany of other fiascos and failures.

A new Pentagon report offers the grimmest assessment yet of the results of the last 10 years of U.S. military efforts on the continent. It corroborates years of reporting on catastrophes that U.S. Africa Command has long attempted to ignore or cover up.

Fatalities from militant Islamist violence spiked over the years of America’s most vigorous counterterrorism efforts on the continent, with the areas of greatest U.S. involvement — Somalia and the West African Sahel — suffering the worst outcomes.

“Africa has experienced roughly 155,000 militant Islamist group-linked deaths over the past decade,” reads a new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. “Somalia and the Sahel have now experienced more militant Islamist-related fatalities over the past decade (each over 49,000) than any other region.”

“What many people don’t know is that the United States’ post-9/11 counterterrorism operations actually contributed to and intensified the present-day crisis and surge of violent deaths in the Sahel and Somalia,” Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, told The Intercept, referencing the frequent targeting of minority ethnic groups by U.S. partners during counterterrorism operations.

The U.S. provided tens of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the governments of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger, which are experiencing the worst spikes in violent deaths today, she said. “In those critical early years, those governments used the infusion of U.S. military funding, weapons, and training to target marginalized groups within their own borders, intensifying the cycle of violence we now see wreaking such a devastating human toll.”

U.S. Africa Command acknowledged The Intercept’s questions about the report and its findings but did not answer them.

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Terrorist groups are also gaining ground at an exponential rate. “The past year has also seen militant Islamists [sic] groups in the Sahel and Somalia expand their hold on territory,” according to the Africa Center. “Across Africa, an estimated 950,000 square kilometers (367,000 square miles) of populated territories are outside government control due to militant Islamist insurgencies. This is equivalent to the size of Tanzania.” And as militant groups have expanded their reach, Africans have paid a grave price: a 60 percent increase in fatalities since 2023, compared with deaths from 2020 to 2022, according to the report.

Even these grim statistics don’t capture the true size and scope of U.S. counterterrorism failures. In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. was just beginning its decades- long effort to provide billions of dollars in security assistance, train many thousands of African military personnel, set up dozens of outposts, dispatch its own commandos on a wide range of missions, create proxy forces, launch drone strikes, and even engage in ground combat with militants in Africa. In those years, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks, resulting in a combined 23 casualties across the entire continent. Last year, there were 22,307 fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa. This represents an almost 97,000 percent increase. Somalia and the Sahel saw the most acute violence.

U.S. Special Operations forces were first dispatched to Somalia in 2002, followed by military aid, advisers, private contractors, bases, helicopters, and drones. The Pentagon was well aware of fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa as early as 2007, according to a study conducted for the military that was obtained exclusively by The Intercept. Almost two decades later, U.S. troops are still conducting counterterrorism operations there against the Islamist militant groups al-Shabaab and the Islamic State.

Earlier this year, the U.S. carried out an attack in Somalia that one top U.S. commander called the “largest airstrike in the history of the world.” The Trump administration has already conducted 54 attacks in Somalia in 2025, exceeding the total number of strikes by the Biden administration last year. This mirrors the spike in attacks during President Donald Trump’s first term. Despite, or perhaps because of these relentless attacks, al-Shabaab’s “capabilities have expanded in the past year,” according to the Africa Center, and its annual revenues — up to $200 million — are “on par with Somalia’s federal member states.”

“Somalia faces Africa’s most enduring militant Islamist group with al-Shabaab sustaining extremist violence since it was established in 2006,” according to the Africa Center analysis. “Somalia has seen a spike in violence linked to al Shabaab since 2023. … The 6,224 fatalities linked to al Shabaab over the past year are double that of 2022.”

The findings are even more damning for West Africa, where an increasing number of nations are plagued by terrorist groups that have grown, splintered, reconstituted, and spread across the region. Under the black banners of Islamist militancy, men on motorcycles and armed with AK-47s thunder into villages to impose their harsh brand of Sharia law and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians. Attacks by these militants and government atrocities against civilians in response have destabilized Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger and, increasingly, threaten bordering countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, and Togo.

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“The Sahel has experienced a sustained high level of lethality tied to militant Islamist groups in recent years,” reads the new Africa Center report. “The nearly 10,500 average annual deaths over the past 3 years are more than double the 4,900 annual fatalities experienced between 2020 and 2023. This represents a sevenfold increase in annual fatalities since 2019.”

As violence spiraled in the region over the past decades, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance were key leaders in a dozen coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel including Burkina Faso (in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022) and Mali (in 2012, 2020, and 2021).

The U.S. has poured billions of dollars in military assistance into Burkina Faso, Mali, and its neighbors over roughly two decades, enabling human rights abuses by providing weapons and training to militaries that have terrorized civilians, according to the United Nations, human rights advocacy groups, and the U.S. State Department. The Africa Center found that Malian and allied security forces were responsible for 82 percent of all civilian fatalities over the past year. In Burkina Faso, the figure was 41 percent.

In 2023, The Intercept reported from neighboring Niger on the failure of 20 years of counterterrorism efforts, the spread of Islamist militancy, and abuses of minority ethnic groups by U.S. partner forces. AFRICOM pretended the problems did not exist and said the U.S. was “further[ing] our mutual security goals.” But Niger has been “experiencing a rapid deterioration in its security since the military coup against the democratic government of President Mahmoud Bazoum in 2023,” according to the Africa Center. Left unsaid was that at least five leaders of that coup d’état received American assistance. Since then, fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence have quadrupled, including a 49 percent increase in civilian deaths in Niger over the past year.

The Africa Center’s new analysis echoed a grim assessment of security on the African continent offered by AFRICOM chief Gen. Michael Langley during a June press conference with various media outlets, including The Intercept. The West African Sahel, he said, was now the “epicenter of terrorism,” and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were “unfortunately right here on the African continent.”

Katherine Ebright, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and one of the foremost experts on the legal authorities behind secret military efforts in Africa, noted that the U.S. continued to double down on expenditures of blood and treasure without measuring the effectiveness of its counterterrorism initiatives. “Clearly, there’s been too little congressional and public oversight of these military efforts to determine whether they are strategic and effective,” she told The Intercept, noting that the Department of Defense long delayed compliance with a law that requires it to monitor and evaluate its work with partner forces.

Ebright pointed out that during the Biden administration the Pentagon finally published a first-of-its-kind analysis of its long-running counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel. The findings spotlighted shortcomings that have contributed to mass displacement, humanitarian crises, coups, atrocities, and the deaths of around 155,000 Africans.

Trump’s effort to scuttle the U.S. Agency for International Development and slash funding to the United Nations and other foreign aid this year have further exacerbated humanitarian crises that have deepened over the last two decades. One recent Lancet study warned that USAID funding cuts “could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4·5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years.”

The United Nations recently warned that almost 30 million people across the Sahel “require life-saving aid and humanitarian protection in 2025.” But only 8 percent of the required $4.3 billion in humanitarian funding had been received by May, forcing aid agencies to reduce assistance to 8.8 million of the most vulnerable people.

The Pentagon report on efforts in the Sahel found, notably, that traditional, nonmilitary diplomacy and aid are necessary tools for addressing the economic and governance problems that allow militant groups to proliferate. It also determined that U.S. military involvement was “insufficient for fundamentally changing the security environment” and that traditional U.S. “security cooperation programs are unlikely to lead to notable changes in the security environment.”

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

It has been a full month since I sent out the last issue of AfricaFocus Notes. The reasons were family travel as well as a number of other unavoidable obligations. Most were related to downsizing my collection of boxes of books and research file in my basement in preparation for a move sometime in the fall. Personal friends who want to know more are welcome to send me a note by email, and I will share privately when I have time to do so.

Since similar time pressures are likely to continue, I will be experimenting with a new format of AfricaFocus Updates, including recommendations on sources that readers can use if they wish to keep up on a topic themselves since it may be some time before I get to that topic again in a new posting.

This issue focuses on the critical global issue of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, perpetrated with the full collaboration of the U.S. security state and defended by apologists in the U.S. media despite overwhelming evidence even in mainstream media coverage and available as well by first-hand video reports from journalists in Palestine as well as from other Palestinians with access to cell phones.

First, to explain my headline. The perpetrators include not only the Netanyahu regime in Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces, but also the United States government which supplies the essential weaponry and shares valuable intelligence data. That engagement is still a bipartisan endeavor. Those responsible include former President Joe Biden (rightly called “genocide Joe” by demonstrators), and President Donald Trump, who despite anti-war posturing on occasion, has chosen in this case to fully embrace Netanyahu.

However unlikely the contingencies may be, if there were ever to be a Nuremberg-style war trial or an international truth commission about the war, Biden and Trump, and other high officials in those administrtions, those officials would be in the dock. The evidence available in plain sight would be more than sufficient for verdicts of guilty of genocide.

A recent example of an apologist for genocide is right-wing New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, noted also for his skepticism about global warming. His recent op-ed entitled, “No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” shows his willingness to disregard evidence even on the front pages of his own newspaper.

And while information on the war in Gaza is easily accessible to anyone with access to social media or news media, the most recent Gallup poll showed that a plurality of those polled (42%) say they do not know enough to have an opinion.

In this posting, I share:

• Excerpts from an oped in The New York Times by Israeli-American scholar Dr. Omer Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at Brown University.

• An article quoting Dr. Alex de Waal, leading expert on famine: “Israel's Starvation of Gaza Most 'Minutely Designed and Controlled' Since WWII.”

Following these articles, I also provide (1) a link to a suggested list of books with background on Israel and Palestine, (2) a note on online sources that provide regular and reliable coverage of Gaza, and (3)a link to a spreadsheet of recent articles I have found of interest on the topic.

I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

by Omer Bartov

New York Times, July 15, 2025

A month after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, I believed there was evidence that the Israeli military had committed war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity in its counterattack on Gaza. But contrary to the cries of Israel’s fiercest critics, the evidence did not seem to me to rise to the crime of genocide.

By May 2024, the Israel Defense Forces had ordered about one million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah — the southernmost and last remaining relatively undamaged city of the Gaza Strip — to move to the beach area of the Mawasi, where there was little to no shelter. The army then proceeded to destroy much of Rafah, a feat mostly accomplished by August.

At that point it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of I.D.F. operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised that the enemy would pay a “huge price” for the attack and that the I.D.F. would turn parts of Gaza, where Hamas was operating, “into rubble,” and he called on “the residents of Gaza” to “leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

Mr. Netanyahu had urged his citizens to remember “what Amalek did to you,” a quote many interpreted as a reference to the demand in a biblical passage calling for the Israelites to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings” of their ancient enemy. Government and military officials said they were fighting “human animals” and, later, called for “total annihilation.” Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Parliament, said on X that Israel’s task must be “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israel’s actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population. I believe the goal was — and remains today — to force the population to leave the Strip altogether or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group.

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. So has Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and Amnesty International. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

The continued denial of this designation by states, international organizations and legal and scholarly experts will cause unmitigated damage not just to the people of Gaza and Israel but also to the system of international law established in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, designed to prevent such atrocities from happening ever again. It is a threat to the very foundations of the moral order on which we all depend.

***

The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” In determining what constitutes genocide, therefore, we must both establish intent and show that it is being carried out. In Israel’s case, that intent has been publicly expressed by numerous officials and leaders. But intent can also be derived from a pattern of operations on the ground, and this pattern became clear by May 2024 — and has since become ever clearer — as the I.D.F. has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip.

Most genocide scholars are cautious about applying this term to contemporary events, precisely because of the tendency, since it was coined by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, to attribute it to any case of massacre or inhumanity. Indeed, some argue that the categorization should be entirely discarded, because it often serves more to express outrage than to identify a particular crime.

Yet as Mr. Lemkin recognized, and as the United Nations later agreed, it is crucial to be able to distinguish the attempt to destroy a particular group of people from other crimes under international law, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is because, while other crimes entail indiscriminate or deliberate killing of civilians as individuals, genocide denotes the killing of people as members of a group, geared at irreparably destroying the group itself so that it will never be able to reconstitute itself as a political, social or cultural entity. And, as the international community signaled by adopting the convention, it is incumbent upon all signatory states to prevent such an attempt, to do all they can to stop it while it is occurring and to subsequently punish those who were engaged in this crime of crimes — even if it occurred within the borders of a sovereign state.

The designation has major political, legal and moral ramifications. Nations, politicians and military personnel suspected of, indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide are seen as beyond the pale of humanity and may compromise or lose their right to remain members of the international community. A finding by the International Court of Justice that a particular state is engaged in genocide, especially if enforced by the U.N. Security Council, can lead to severe sanctions.

Politicians or generals indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide or other breaches of international humanitarian law by the International Criminal Court can face arrest outside of their country. And a society that condones and is complicit in genocide, whatever the stand of its individual citizens may be, will carry this mark of Cain long after the fires of hatred and violence are put out.

***

Israel has denied all allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The I.D.F. says it investigates reports of crimes, although it has rarely made its findings public, and when breaches of discipline or protocol are acknowledged, it has generally meted out light reprimands to its personnel. Israeli military and political leaders repeatedly describe the I.D.F. as acting lawfully, say they issue warnings to civilian populations to evacuate sites about to be attacked and blame Hamas for using civilians as human shields.

In fact, the systematic destruction in Gaza not only of housing but also of other infrastructure — government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks — reflects a policy aimed at making the revival of Palestinian life in the territory highly unlikely.

According to a recent investigation by Haaretz, an estimated 174,000 buildings have been destroyed or damaged, accounting for up to 70 percent of all structures in the Strip. So far, more than 58,000 people have been killed, according to Gazan health authorities, including more than 17,000 children, who make up nearly a third of the total fatality count. More than 870 of those children were less than a year old.

More than 2,000 families have been wiped out, the health authorities said. In addition, 5,600 families now count only one survivor. At least 10,000 people are believed to still be buried under the ruins of their homes. More than 138,000 have been wounded and maimed.

Gaza now has the grim distinction of having the highest number of amputee children per capita in the world. An entire generation of children subjected to ongoing military attacks, loss of parents and long-term malnutrition will suffer severe physical and mental repercussions for the rest of their lives. Untold additional thousands of chronically ill persons have had little access to hospital care.

The horror of what has been happening in Gaza is still described by most observers as war. But this is a misnomer. For the last year, the I.D.F. has not been fighting an organized military body. The version of Hamas that planned and carried out the attacks on Oct. 7 has been destroyed, though the weakened group continues to fight Israeli forces and retains control over the population in areas not held by the Israeli Army.

Today the I.D.F. is primarily engaged in an operation of demolition and ethnic cleansing. That’s how Mr. Netanyahu’s own former chief of staff and minister of defense, the hard-liner Moshe Yaalon, in November described on Israel’s Democrat TV and in subsequent articles and interviews the attempt to clear northern Gaza of its population.

On Jan. 19, under pressure from Donald Trump, who was a day away from resuming the presidency, a cease-fire went into effect, facilitating the exchange of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But after Israel’s breaking of the cease-fire on March 18, the I.D.F. has been executing a well-publicized plan to concentrate the entire Gazan population in a quarter of the territory in three zones: Gaza City, the central refugee camps and the Mawasi coastline in the Strip’s southwestern edge.

Using large numbers of bulldozers and huge aerial bombs supplied by the United States, the military appears to be trying to demolish every remaining structure and establish control over the other three-quarters of the territory.

This is also being facilitated by a plan that provides — intermittently — limited aid supplies at a few distribution points guarded by the Israeli military, drawing people to the south. Many Gazans are killed in a desperate attempt to obtain food, and the starvation crisis deepens. On July 7, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the I.D.F. would build a “humanitarian city” over the ruins of Rafah to initially accommodate 600,000 Palestinians from the Mawasi area, who would be provisioned by international bodies and not allowed to leave.

***

[remainder of article omitted - you can read the full oped here.]

Famine Expert: Israel's Starvation of Gaza Most 'Minutely Designed and Controlled' Since WWII

"This is preventable starvation," said Alex de Waal. "It is entirely man-made."

Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams, July 22, 2025

A leading global authority on famine on Monday accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip, remarks that came amid a steadily rising death toll from malnutrition caused by the 654-day U.S.-backed Israeli siege and obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.

"I've been working on this topic for more than four decades, and there is no case since World War II of starvation that is being so minutely designed and controlled," Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Al Jazeera.

"This is preventable starvation. It is entirely man-made," de Waal added. "And every stage of this has been predicted, and at every stage action could have been taken—by Israel, by the international authorities, [the] international community, those who back Israel—to prevent what is happening now... Those steps have simply not been taken."

The Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies—said Tuesday that 15 more Palestinians, including four children, died from malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of starvation deaths in the coastal enclave to at least 101, including 80 children, since October 2023. The ministry said that 21 Gaza children have starved to death over the past three days alone.

When combined with lack of medicine, malnutrition has claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives in Gaza, according to officials there.

"I am so hungry," Ruwaida Amer, a 30-year-old Gaza woman, wrote for +972 Magazine Monday. "We are starving. My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid. Gaza's children are dying in front of our eyes, and we are powerless to help them."

Another Gaza woman, Amina Badir, told Amer while clutching her starving 3-year-old: "Tell me how to save my daughter Rahaf from death. For a week she's eaten nothing but a single spoon of lentils each day."

"She's suffering from malnutrition. There's no treatment, no milk at the hospital," Badir added. "They've taken away her right to live. I see death in her eyes."

Gaza medical officials say 17,000 children are severely malnourished in the strip. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, also known as the IPC scale, 85% of Gaza's people are in Phase 5, defined as such "an extreme deprivation of food" that "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident."

The "complete siege" imposed on Gaza immediately following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel has fueled widespread starvation and disease, and has been condemned as a war crime. The International Criminal Court last year ordered the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged murder and forced starvation of Gazans. The International Court of Justice is also weighing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa.

Amid intense international pressure, Israel partially lifted its siege of Gaza in May. However, de Waal and others say the move is wholly inadequate to prevent the famine taking hold in the strip.

"The partial lifting was not to bring in the kind of humanitarian program that we have been familiar with as humanitarians over the decades," de Waal told Al Jazeera Monday. "It was to bring in a type of rationed program that is simply an arm of the Israeli military."

Israel has also come under intense criticism for its method of delivering aid in Gaza via the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose distribution points have been the sites of near-daily massacres. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and troops say they were ordered to shoot and shell desperate aid-seekers at GHF distribution centers. Officials said at least 10 aid-seekers were killed on Tuesday alone.

"The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible."

"As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near [United Nations] and other humanitarian organizations' aid convoys," U.N. human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told Agence France-Presse.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said Tuesday that "the killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible," adding that the "IDF must stop killing people at distribution points."

Overall, at least 59,029 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 142,000 others have been wounded, and at least 14,000 more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.

Other international humanitarian experts also weighed in on the growing Gaza famine, with Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, telling Al Jazeera Monday that the "man-made" starvation in the strip "is a war crime."

"Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians and has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid," he said. "What we're seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israel's 20-month starvation campaign."

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters Tuesday that "our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left."

"Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in," he explained. "That's why we are so angry. Because our job is to help."

"Israel is not yielding," Egeland added. "They just want to paralyze our work."

https://bookshop.org/lists/recommended-reading-on-israel-and-palestine

Online Sources Providing Regular and Reliable Coverage of Gaza

Democracy Now!

“Why Is the World Letting It Happen?”: U.K. Surgeon, Back from Gaza, on Starving Children https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/25/nick_maynard_gaza

The Beinart Notebook

“More deaths than Kishinev, Sharpeville or Bloody Sunday. Every Day. The astonishing scale of the killing in Gaza,” Jul 21, 2025

Sharif Abdel Kouddous: Independent news from the Middle East and North Africa

“Israel Bombs Gaza School With U.S.-Made Missile During Friday Prayers. The school was sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.” July 25, 2025

Recent-Reading-Worth-Reading 2025 - Jul-Sep

Screenshot above is not clickable. Go to this link instead.

[End]

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

I rarely send out two posts on the same day, but I am making an exception today in order to share reflections on the political road ahead. In this post reflections by Max Elbaum on the strategic road ahead to push MAGA out of power in 2028. In an earlier post today, a commentary on No Kings Day by Cathy Sunshine and the inspiring speech by Zohran Mamdani speech on his first-round victory in the race for mayor of New York City.

A Path to Pushing MAGA Out of Power

by Max Elbaum

Convergence, June 17, 2025

Only a new governing coalition capable of expanding political democracy and beginning a process of structural change can push MAGA back to the margins. Lessons from the 2020 election and the Biden years help show a path toward that goal.

We have a treacherous road to travel before we can push MAGA out of political power. But even as we prioritize resistance to the administration’s daily barrage we need an eyes-on-the-prize vision of a post-MAGA government. What kind of governing bloc is both possible to achieve and capable of providing more than temporary respite from fascism’s forward march?

For determining what is essential in such a government and charting a path to reach that goal, there is a lot to learn from the dynamics of the 2020 election and what did and did not happen during the Biden administration.

There is no going back

The Biden years and the 2024 election made it clear that an administration unable or unwilling to push through major political and economic changes cannot beat back authoritarianism. The pre-2016 status quo (neoliberalism anchored by U.S. global hegemony) was and is unsustainable. An exit from that order either in the direction of autocracy/fascism or robust democracy and people-over-profit economics has been on the agenda since the 2008 financial crisis.

The strategists and power-brokers who laid the groundwork for Trump 2.0 have understood this for at least a decade. That’s why the MAGA bloc, having captured all three branches of the federal government, has been able to move so quickly toward the goal of consolidating authoritarian rule.

The narcissistic obsessions of their demagogue-in-chief (tariffs, vendettas against Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, etc.) are weak points in their blitzkrieg. The re-emergence of the anti-MAGA majority and increasingly large protest actions are major obstacles in their path. With a further uptick in resistance—including non-compliance and other actions aimed at the “key pillars” of U.S. authoritarianism—along with heightened popular disapproval, it may be possible to preserve significant democratic space, including enough space for competitive elections and the basic right to protest.

If our resistance efforts achieve that goal, breaking MAGA’s grip on power at the federal level and weakening its strength at the state level is the next urgent step. But even that is not enough. If today’s Project 2025 regime is not replaced by a governing coalition that moves aggressively on a program of political democratization that prioritizes racial and gender justice, pro-working class economic reform, and an end to U.S. forever wars, MAGA will again brand itself as the change agent the country needs and come roaring back.

Elected officials and an energized mass base

The governing coalition we need must have clout both inside and outside the political system.

On the inside, its partisans need to be in elected office at every level. Wielding the power of the presidency and holding majorities in both Houses of Congress is essential, not least to break the power of the current MAGA majority on the Supreme Court. And given the extensive powers reserved for state governments in the U.S. federal system, eliminating some of the 23 GOP state trifectas and winning our own trifectas in 15-20 states by 2028 is a necessary target as well.

The capacity to exercise power outside the formal political system is equally important. No progressive program will make it from policy to law to tangible change on the ground (and no new coalition will come to power in the first place) without constant pressure and active participation by an energized grassroots base. And that energy can only be sustained by a cluster of combative, mass-based organizations implementing a common strategy which their members shape and “own.”

Only this combination of elements can sustain the kind of “co-governance” dynamic necessary for a durable and accountable governing coalition.

A short-lived glimpse in 2020

For getting to that kind of multi-leveled governing bloc, there are important lessons from the 2020 election. That contest put President Biden in the White House, flipped the Senate to Democratic control (with Vice President Harris able to break the 50-50 Senate tie) and expanded the Squad to six as Democrats retained control of the House.

Going into that election, mass protest was at a fever pitch. The day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration saw the massive Women’s March, at the time the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Militant protests at airports across the country in response to Trump’s “Muslim ban” were the next high-water mark in the stream of anti-Trump protests. The George Floyd uprising at the height of the pandemic then surpassed the Women’s March and still stands as “very likely the largest collective action ever on U.S. soil.”

Much of the energy unleashed by all this grassroots ferment flowed into the electoral arena, the lion’s share fueling Bernie Sanders’s second presidential campaign. Most organized radical groups in the country backed Bernie’s insurgent effort, either participating directly in the campaign structure or using their own distinct structures for electoral work. The result was a leap in the sophistication with which existing and new formations approached electoral work and in the connection and cooperation among different groups.

Though Bernie did not win the nomination, the scale of his support (and to a lesser degree, Elizabeth Warren’s) moved the party leftwards and forced most primary candidates to support Medicare for All. It put Bernie in position to represent U.S. progressives in negotiations with the winning Biden team over the character of the general election campaign and at least some components of administration policy. This took the form of joint task forces which produced a detailed policy statement that included recommendations for funding universal prekindergarten, expanding Social Security, raising the national minimum wage, and eliminating cash bail, among many other long-sought progressive programs.

A second factor that produced what amounted to a Biden-Bernie alliance was recognition by at least some sectors of Democratic Party establishment that a shift away from neoliberalism was in their own class and political interest. The Hewlett Foundation’s 2020 “Economy and Society Initiative to support growing movement to replace neoliberalism” was the clearest expression of that sector’s viewpoint.

The result of these two factors was a general election campaign that did not rely exclusively on an anti-MAGA message. The prospect of winning changes that would benefit the majority of workers, poor people, and constituencies facing special oppression was also present. As a result, almost all the organizations that had backed Bernie (or Warren) threw down against MAGA in the general election and provided a big part of the margin of victory in battleground states.

And after the election victory, the Biden administration’s initial legislative priority—the Build Back Better plan—included numerous provisions long advocated by progressives, drawing from, among other efforts, the extensive grassroots organizing for a Green New Deal.

Falling short leads to falling back

The political trajectory after that, however, was downhill. Any brief summary is over-simplified. But the central dynamic is clear enough.

Quick to recover from the wave of disapproval that followed January 6, MAGA practiced all obstruction, all the time. The Biden administration, still trapped in the fantasy that the “traditional norms” of U.S. politics were operative, tried to reason with GOP so-called “moderates” and the reactionary Manchin-Sinema duo within the Democratic ranks. The narrowness of the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate was a real problem; conciliating the obstructors didn’t work and the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures that finally passed were a shadow of the original “Build Back Better” proposal.

The Biden team proved inept even at promoting what they did achieve. And then, starting two years in, Biden made a whole series of right turns. Administration messaging on rebuilding the economy shifted from benefitting the majority to competing with China. Biden and other mainstream Democrats capitulated to MAGA’s anti-immigrant crusade. The President bear-hugged Netanyahu and became the main enabler of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Though increasingly unpopular and frail, Biden refused to withdraw until it was too late for a competitive presidential primary, thereby preventing the launch of a campaign that might have energized increasingly alienated progressives as Bernie did in 2016 and 2020. By the time of the 2024 general election, Harris and mainstream Democratic candidates for the House and Senate had little to run on besides anti-MAGA sentiment and abortion rights.

As a result, the political situation today is worse than 2016. A cadre of loyal MAGA operatives is running the federal government and implementing a well-prepared plan. Mainstream Democrats, with a few individual exceptions, are in near-total disarray, unable to formulate much less agree upon or carry out a serious opposition strategy. The broad Left has grown in both size and sophistication compared to 2016, and important sections of it are working together and utilizing the “Block and Build” strategic framework. But we are still playing catch-up and only since the Hands-Off demonstrations in April that we are able to draw strength from an outpouring of bottom-up protest. Yet intensifying climate change and the rapid deployment of AI are speeding up the things-must-change calendar.

Stay grounded and go beyond 2020

Digging ourselves out of this hole requires a process that accurately assesses the difficult balance of forces, learns from what worked to drive politics forward in 2020, and goes a lot further.

MAGA’s drive for unlimited power is moving fast. But one of the reasons for MAGA’s haste is that its program is unpopular and grows more so by the week. Turning public disapproval into enough actions and votes to stop MAGA’s advance is the immediate priority. Every rapid response to an ICE raid, every town hall calling out those who vote to cut Medicaid, every lawsuit/picket line combination to defend federal workers, every protest against sending arms to Israel makes a difference by energizing those already opposed to MAGA, exploiting the fissures among Trump voters, or both. But we are in a tougher spot than we were in 2020, so we need to reach for the additional types of protest in our arsenal, such as strikes and other workplace actions, civil disobedience, disruptive protests, and organized noncompliance.

If the next 18 months of resistance efforts succeed in protecting the electoral process, big gains are possible in 2026 and then 2028 with an all-out “margin of effort.” For a new governing coalition to be more than a holding action, winning the presidency and larger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate than were won in 2020 are necessary—but not sufficient. The strength of progressives relative to the corporate and centrist factions in the Democratic Party must be significantly greater than in 2020. Protecting every incumbent who will be targeted by AIPAC and the Crypto lobby, and replacing several incumbents with Squad-like progressives, are realistic goals.

It will take longer than four years to build an organizing and media infrastructure and financial base strong enough to make progressives a majority of non-MAGA Representatives and Senators. But we can and should aim to punch above our weight in numbers seated in Washington. Key planks in our program for structural change (Medicare for All, expansion of voting rights and an end to the Citizens United role of money in politics, overhaul of the tax system to tax the rich, PRO-Act and related expansions of trade union rights) command majority support.

As struggles against authoritarianism intensify, participants and their supporters move toward more combativeness and more openness to radical ideas. And though it is dormant, the willingness among mainstream Democrats to explore a shift away from neoliberalism has not completely disappeared.

Toward synergy: a presidential run, Left unity, and grassroots organizing

These factors could give us leverage in contending with the corporate and centrist forces for influence in the anti-MAGA front. A key tactic will be finding a progressive to make a serious bid for the presidential nomination.

Win or lose, an insurgent campaign promoting an anti-oligarchy, pro-working class program will be essential for gaining more influence on the 2028 Democratic election campaign and incoming administration than progressives had in 2020. It will allow us to define the election as a chance to both repudiate MAGA and make the shift away from neoliberalism that was glimpsed but not accomplished in 2020-2021. An insurgent campaign is also needed to increase our influence on U.S. foreign policy, immigration, racial justice, and other issues which are crucial for putting any new governing coalition on a durable foundation.

Maximum Left unity behind the candidate running in the “progressive lane” of the 2028 Democratic primary will be critical. This is another lesson from 2020 (and from Bernie’s 2016 campaign and Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 Rainbow efforts) that is applicable in 2028 and beyond. Given the undemocratic structure of the U.S. electoral system, a presidential campaign is one of the very few ways to galvanize united action by different sectors of the broad Left and project a distinct vision and program before the country.

Thus, it is no surprise that informal discussions are already underway in progressive circles about potential candidates, with many speculating that AOC is positioning herself to fill that spot.

An equally important lesson from Bernie and Jesse’s runs is that grassroots-based organizations with a clear political strategy operating at scale are needed to consolidate the energy unleashed by any insurgent campaign. It is therefore urgent to seize the opportunities that now exist to make leaps forward on that front. The new stirrings of labor militancy and the shift among major unions toward embracing a broader progressive agenda—including opposition to U.S. backing for Israeli genocide—is especially promising. The UAW-led initiative to align contract expiration dates and conduct united labor actions on Mayday 2028 is a potential focal point for activity that starts today. It also holds out the prospect of synergy with a progressive presidential campaign in spring 2028.

There is also potential for accelerating the motion toward strategic alignment and organizational cooperation in the broad Left, especially between groups that already have adopted a power-building strategy that meshes electoral and non-electoral work.

Everything we have will be needed to protect the results of elections if they are competitive and if anti-MAGA wins. Trump did not accept defeat in 2020 and there is no reason to expect today’s GOP to accept defeat in 2026 or 2028.

Putting the pieces together

The challenges we face are daunting. Progressives alone do not have the strength to prevent MAGA from consolidating authoritarian rule. Even the much broader gathering of all anti-MAGA sectors needs to become more combative and united to accomplish that task. And if we succeed in ousting MAGA, the coalition that comes to power will need to have enough strength inside and outside government to kick-start significant changes that are felt on the ground. It is unrealistic to expect that every part of our agenda can be won quickly. But we must win enough to spark the enthusiasm in the majority of the multi-racial and gender-diverse U.S. working class and broader population while at least neutralizing a sizeable number of 2024 Trump voters.

All we can say with confidence today is that the strands that could produce such an outcome exist. The anti-MAGA majority is re-emerging. There is motion toward revitalizing the labor movement at both the leadership and rank-and-file levels. Strategic ideas drawn from the experience of fighting authoritarianism in other countries are taking hold within the anti-MAGA opposition. Power-building progressive organizations have grown in sophistication and are united on most elements of a program that could kick-start a cycle of political and economic change. Important voices within the progressive world are locating that program within the deep patterns of U.S. history, promoting the framework of a Third Reconstruction which highlights the synergy between democratic and working-class struggles and the special role of the Black Freedom Movement.

If all these strands mature, we can achieve what today’s circumstances allow and make 2028 a turning point in the long march toward a different world.

Editor´s Note

By William Minter

William Minter is the editor of the Substack blog AfricaFocus Notes. His latest book, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity, edited in collaboration with Imani Countess, is available from Africa World Press.

I rarely send out two posts on the same day, but I am making an exception today in order to share reflections on the political road ahead. In this post a commentary on No Kings Day by Cathy Sunshine, and the inspiring speech by Zohran Mamdani on his first-round victory in the race for mayor of New York City. In another post today, reflections by Max Elbaum on the strategic road ahead to push MAGA out of power in 2028.

No kings in my neighborhood

Why I stayed close to home on June 14

Cathy Sunshine

Third Age, June 20, 2025

When air travel stinks, it really stinks. I’m not talking here about catastrophic events, but about mundane ordeals such as weather delays. Yesterday Bill and I spent nine hours in the Cleveland airport, waiting for a line of storms to cross the East Coast. Having left our Airbnb for the airport at noon, we finally boarded the plane at 10:20 p.m., arriving home in DC at 1:30 in the morning.

I’m exhausted, so this post will be short. But I do want to share a few reflections about last Saturday, June 14 – No Kings Day – because it gave me more hope and optimism than I’ve felt in a long time.

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It had partly to do with what the day wasn’t. It wasn’t the Women’s March, a centralized, leader-driven event drawing millions in their pussy hats to the National Mall. That made a big statement in 2017. It would likely be met with shrugs today.

Instead, the core of the nation’s capital was depopulated, left to Trump and his minions along with a small crowd of onlookers who showed up for the Army parade. Across the country, meanwhile, an estimated 5 million people turned out in big cities, small towns, and rural areas to protest. The message was simple: The United States is a country of laws. No one is above the law. The president is not a king.

The actions were leaderless, at least in the sense of any top-down direction. Many were spontaneous, with people gathering on short notice to wave banners from highway bridges or in front of Fox News. They were, above all, local, melding seamlessly with homegrown community events like picnics and Pride parades. And that, I believe, was their strength.

How I spent the day

Every large city had marchers, in the tens of thousands, but the flagship march was in Philly. I debated taking the train up, but opted instead to stay in DC. I’m glad I did.

In the morning, Bill and I, with several neighbors, waved “No Kings” signs to traffic streaming down 16th Street NW, a commuter artery that runs through my neighborhood, Mt. Pleasant. The response was a cacophony of honks: one car would start, then they’d all join in. Even Metrobus drivers gave brief, professional toots. I know: it’s a blue city. If you don’t get honks here, where would you get them? Still, the message – “We’re in this together” – resonated.

After picking up some NOPE flyers to hand out, I went across town to what was billed as a “pro-democracy picnic” in a public park. With food trucks, live music, and families relaxing on blankets on the grass, it could have been any community get-together, but for all the “No Kings” signs toted by picnic-goers and the tables with sign-up sheets for joining local Dems and like-minded groups.

My last stop of the day was the best. The Mt. Pleasant 5th Annual Pride Popup, held in an alley a few blocks from my home, drew a large part of the neighborhood, gay and straight. We didn’t have Tara Hoot, DC’s drag queen, this year, but there were games and rainbow tattoos, burgers on the grill, and best of all, Gina DeSimone and the Moaners, an all-female, DC-based dance band. And we danced! I didn’t think my aging body could do that, but somehow, it did.

At the Pride fest, I sat for a while at the Mt. Pleasant Village table, where we sold T‑shirts and signed up new members. The Village is an all-volunteer neighborhood association formed 10 years ago, and to my surprise, it has changed my life, greatly expanding my circle of friends. The membership skews older, and one of the goals is to “meet the challenges of aging in the community.” There are exercise programs and field trips, as well as a “neighbors helping neighbors” program for requesting rides, tech support, or other such help. No one thought it odd that I taped my “No Kings” sign behind the Village table and handed out NOPE flyers along with Village lit. Officially nonpartisan, the Village reflects the progressive ethos of the neighborhood and counts many activists among its members.

Building local power

The Trump administration’s capture of elite social institutions such as universities, law firms, and media outlets has triggered alarm. Just as consequential, I would argue, is the MAGA movement’s steady, long-term entrenchment in local communities through its members’ participation in churches, fraternal orders, parent-teacher organizations, and similar entities. From there it’s a short jump to local governance structures like school boards, city councils, and county commissions, and then to state legislatures. And we know how that’s worked out for the GOP.

Those who value democracy and oppose autocracy need to follow a similar strategy. We need to embed. So on No Kings Day I stayed home, joining others in communities across the country to say no to democratic backsliding. We showed the power of our numbers that day, not by convening one massive march but by gathering locally in more than 2,000 cities and towns. Protests erupted in blue and red states, even deep in Trump country, places like Cooper County, Missouri, and Brazos County, Texas. Hundreds of organizations took part, from national networks like Indivisible down to hyperlocal groups.

Apparently hoping for violence, Trump blustered, “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.” But on No Kings Day, the force was with us.

Zohran Mamdani: “We Can Demand What We Deserve”

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/mamdani-nyc-mayoral-election-speech

Zohran Mamdani represents New York’s 36th district in the state assembly.

Tonight we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it is done.” My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.

An hour ago, I spoke with Andrew Cuomo about the need to bring this city together, as he called me to concede the race. And I want to thank Brad Lander. Together we have shown the power of the politics of the future. One of partnership and of sincerity.

Today, eight months after launching this campaign with the vision of a city that every New Yorker could afford, we have won.

We have won from Harlem to Bay Ridge. We have won from Jackson Heights to Port Richmond. We have won from Maspeth to Chinatown.

We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford. A city where they can do more than just struggle. One where those who toil in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the day. Where hard work is repaid with a stable life. Where eight hours on the factory floor or behind the wheel of a cab is enough to pay the mortgage. It is enough to keep the lights on. It is enough to send your kid to school. Where rent-stabilized apartments are actually stabilized. Where buses are fast and free. Where childcare doesn’t cost more than CUNY. And where public safety keeps us truly safe.

And it’s where the mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism. To stop ICE agents from deporting our neighbors. And to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party. A party where we fight for working people with no apology.

A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few. It should be one that city government guarantees for each and every New Yorker.

If this campaign has demonstrated anything to the world, it is that our dreams can become reality. Dreaming demands hope. And when I think of hope, I think of the unprecedented coalition of New Yorkers that we have built. For this is not my victory. This is ours.

It is the victory of the Bangladeshi aunty who knocked on door after door until her feet throbbed and her knuckles ached. It is the victory of the eighteen-year-old who voted in their first-ever election. And it is the victory of the Gambian uncle who finally saw himself and his struggle in a campaign for the city that he calls home.

Dreaming demands solidarity. And when I look out at this room and out onto the midnight skyline, that is what I see.

Canvas launches that continued in the pouring rain. Children who called parents. Strangers who care about those they will never meet. A New York that believes in each other and in itself. This is solidarity, and it defines our victory.

And above all, dreaming demands work. Last Friday night, as the sun began to drop in the sky, I set off on a 13-mile walk from the northernmost tip of Manhattan to the base of the island. We began in Inwood, where music played and neighbors set out dominoes on the sidewalk. It was 7 p.m. The weekend had arrived. For most people, the time for work was over.

But this is New York, where the work never ends. Waiters carried plates on 181st Street. Conductors drove the subways that rattled high above 125th. And world-class musicians tuned instruments as we passed Lincoln Square.

By the time we made it downtown, a crowd marched behind us, a living embodiment of the energy and purpose that defines this campaign. Still, long past midnight, New York worked. Garbage trucks weaved through empty streets. Fishmongers carried in tomorrow’s wares. And when we finally arrived at the Battery at 2:20 a.m. in the morning, the workers who run the Staten Island Ferry were on the job, too. Just as they are every hour of the day, every day of the week.

Each of these New Yorkers carried a dream with them that night as they labored, just as each of us dreams of a New York that is more hopeful and affordable for all, and we have worked hard for our dream. This has been a historically contentious race, one that has filled our airwaves with millions in smears and slander.

I hope now that this primary has come to an end. I can introduce myself once more. Not as you’ve seen me in a thirty-second ad or in a mailer in your mailbox. But as how I will lead as your mayor.

I will be the mayor for every New Yorker. Whether you voted for me for Governor Cuomo or felt too disillusioned by a long-broken political system to vote at all, I will fight for a city that works for you, that is affordable for you, that is safe for you. I will work to be a mayor you will be proud to call your own. I cannot promise that you will always agree with me, but I will never hide from you.

If you are hurting, I will try to heal you. If you feel misunderstood, I will strive to understand. Your concerns will always be mine. And I will put your hopes before my own.

And I know that those hopes extend beyond our five boroughs. There are millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas. I am one of them. And while I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth, you have my word to reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree, and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements.

Let me close with this. In these dark times, I know that it is harder than ever to keep faith in our democracy. It has been attacked by billionaires and their big spending, by elected officials who care more about self-enrichment than the public trust, and by authoritarian leaders who rule through fear.

But above all, our democracy has been attacked from within. For too long, New Yorkers have strained to find a leader who represents us, who puts us first. And we have been betrayed, time and again.

After so many disappointments, the heart hardens, belief becomes elusive. And when we no longer believe in our democracy, it only becomes easier for people like Donald Trump to convince us of his worth. For billionaires to convince us that they must always lead.

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations. Not because the people dislike democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and weakness. In desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.” New York, if we have made one thing clear over these past months, it is that we need not choose between the two.

We can be free and we can be fair. We can demand what we deserve. And together, we have built a movement where every day, New Yorkers recognize themselves in our vision of democracy. Every new voter registered. That is faith renewed.

Every voter who traveled through withering heat to the polls — that is faith renewed. And every New Yorker who sees solutions to the daily challenges they face in this campaign — that is faith renewed. Together, New York, we have renewed our democracy. We have given our city permission to believe again.

And I pledge to you that we will remake this great city not in my image but in the image of every New Yorker who has only known struggle. In our New York, the power belongs to the people.

And as I thank the people that are here with me today, and as I thank the incredible leaders who have long fought for those people who are here across this crowd and across these five boroughs, and standing next to me is the attorney general of this state, is the public advocate of this city, our congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, and our comptroller, Brad Lander, and is every single person who believed in this campaign long before it was easy to do so. And you believed when it was difficult.

We dreamt in the night. And we are now building in the dawn. That new day, the one that we have yearned for, the one that we have struggled for. The one that we have knocked for, have texted for, have called for. The one that we have obsessed over. That new day is finally here. And it is here because you have delivered it.