The 2024 Class of Gaza: The Students Have Done Their Part
As pro-Palestinian college students confront weekend commencements - with walkouts, keffiyeh-draped gowns, signs noting, "There Are No Universities Left In Gaza" - their historic role as "the most reliably correct constituency in America" is celebrated by an earlier generation of activists "seeing them, just as we were, sick at heart," willing to "stand firm for their beliefs" against a genocidal war and its systemic support. To a more judicious generation, they urge, "Don’t emulate us. Transcend us."
Thousands of students at over 100 U.S colleges in all but four states have embarked on protests and encampments denouncing an Israeli genocide in Gaza that's now killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Their righteous actions have resulted in nearly 3,000 arrests, often by over-zealous, riot-geared police in a response widely deemed "unhinged," and a similarly over-the-top propaganda campaign by cartoon-villain Republicans hysterically labeling them "terrorists," "anti-Semites," "dangerous mobs" or "campus criminals." As to the once-cherished right to free speech: Marco Rubio has revived an effort to deport protesters who have "endorsed or espoused the terrorist activities of Hamas," Texas Rep. Beth Van Duyne helpfully introduced a deportation bill called the "Hamas Supporters Have No Home Here Act," and Tom Cotton recently said people "who get stuck behind pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic" should "take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way," but no of course he wasn't endorsing violence.
Still, the protests have spread among students often showing a striking awareness of the systemic forces arrayed against them. "Even at Princeton," notes Sarah Sakha of a now-common call at what was once a bastion of white privilege but where diverse students and faculty have sat in, built a Gaza Solidarity Encampment (where administrators even forbade tents in the rain) and taken part in a hunger strike, all despite "the larger apparatus working against them." Sakha cites Noam Chomsky's “manufactured consent" by which mass media and those in power coalesce around a simplified reality that becomes accepted truth, and Edward Said's charge Palestinians have been robbed of the right to narrate their own history. "To whom do we extend the permission to narrate?" she asks of an administration that has co-opted that right by demanding "we reconsider our tactics, our lexicon, our politics." "No matter how peaceful a protest may be" - or how rooted in histories of resistance - "Palestinian solidarity protesters will never be able to be in the right."
And no matter how peaceful they've been, administrators have often, unconscionably called in police. At Columbia, they burst in, "incredibly vicious," armed with tasers, batons, and zip ties amidst students screaming in rage and terror. At Virginia Tech, a professor was violently arrested for standing in solidarity with students; he says the administration has fostered a hostile climate for Palestinian students and faculty. At Indiana's Bloomington campus, snipers set up on a roof overlooking the encampment, and a black activist, writer and PhD student was arrested and banned from campus for five years. With commencement ceremonies on the horizon, some schools - Brown, Northwestern, Rutgers, Minnesota - made concessions or agreed to consider divestment demands in exchange for encampments disbanding. But protests still disrupted weekend ceremonies at multiple schools - Duke, Emerson, Berkeley, Virginia, Chapel Hill. Students wore keffiyeh, waved Palestinian flags, turned their backs on and walked out of speeches, acknowledged on their caps "Those Who Will Never Graduate" and proclaimed themselves, "The Class of 2024 of Gaza."
A social work grad getting her master's at Columbia strode on stage with her hands zip-tied above her head to honor the violent arrests that came before, and ripped up her diploma as she was handed it. A month before, Lebanese-American master's student Tamara Rasamny chose to forfeit her Columbia ceremony by getting arrested and suspended for a sit-in. Instead, she spoke at a class day, arguing, "My speech is a testament to courage and the power of speaking up. If I cannot adhere to my own words, then what right do I have to speak at all?" Lebanese schools hope to award her an honorary degree; meanwhile, her father, Walid Rasamny, praised her decision as "not just a personal victory but a call to all parents to support our children as they stand firm for their beliefs." "As a father, I am inspired by her resilience and dedication to peaceful protest and justice," he said. "Let us foster a world led with integrity and passion."
"The student left is the most reliably correct constituency in America," writes Osita Nwanevu. "Over the past 60 years, it has passed every great moral test American foreign policy has forced upon the public," from Vietnam to South Africa to Iraq, along with fights for civil, women's, LGBTQ, economic and climate rights. "Time and time and time again...straining against an ancient and immortal prejudice against youth, it has made a habit of telling the American people, in tones that discomfit, what they need to hear before they are ready to hear it." Thus have they condemned not just the slaughter of 35,000 and Israel's criminal collective punishment but the willingness of this country - from pols to private institutions beholden to the power and profits of arms manufacturers - to "sanction Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights for decades." "The students have done their part," writes Nwanevu. "Now it’s up to the rest of us" to honor protests that Gazans say, "echo all the way to the Occupied Territories." "Your actions are our hope," says one. "You're either with humanity or against it."
"What is the ethical response to witnessing a great moral crime?" asks Mark Rudd, who in 1968, as head of Columbia's Students for a Democratic Society, helped organize protests that saw hundreds of students occupy five buildings and lead a mass strike that closed the campus for over a month. In the face of the Vietnam War and the subsequent invasion of Cambodia, a mass murder against a civilian population undertaken by "our own government, with the complicity of our university," students "felt the imperative to act." In response, "Columbia called on New York City cops to empty the buildings, badly beating and arresting 700 students," he writes. "56 years to the day later, the NYPD were again called in... All the rest is commentary." Today's activists, he argues, are smarter, calmer, more nonviolent, more diverse - where he is not "an unJew." He cites a Community Values post from the Gaza encampment asserting a movement "united in valuing every human life." He confirms, "Setting up tents and praying for the souls of the dead, all the dead, is not violence."
Today's activists in Berkeley set up their encampment on the steps of Sproul Hall, site of the birth of the Free Speech movement and Vietnam and apartheid protests; they also broadcast the sounds of Israeli drones for a grim reality check from Gaza. Their organizing smarts are praised by Michael Albert, who, as student body president, led 1968 anti-war protests at MIT, which he dubbed “Dachau on the Charles” for war research whose victims were "half a torn-up world away in Vietnam." "History sometimes repeats," he writes, citing both ironic and healthy differences. "We were inspired. We were hot. But here comes this year and it is moving faster," he writes. "We were courageous, but we also had too little understanding of how to win...On your campuses, do better than us. Fight to divest but also fight to structurally change them so their decision makers - which should be you - never again invest in genocide, war, and indeed oppression of any kind. Tomorrow is the first day of a long, long, potentially incredibly liberating future....Persist."
'Sad What We Are Doing': Global CO2 Increase Sets New All-Time Record
The average monthly concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by a record 4.7 parts per million between March 2023 and March 2024, according to new data from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
The spike, reported by the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Wednesday, reveals "the increasing pace of CO2 addition to the atmosphere by human activities," the university said.
"I'd make this the lead story in every paper and newscast on the planet," author and long-time climate activist Bill McKibbenwrote on social media in response to the news. "If we don't understand the depth of the climate crisis, we will not act in time."
"Human activity has caused CO2 to rocket upwards. It makes me sad more than anything. It's sad what we are doing."
Scientists have been tracking rising CO2 concentrations from Mauna Loa since 1958, and their upward trajectory has come to be known as the "Keeling Curve," named for Charles Keeling, who began the measurements. The curve has become an important symbol of the climate crisis—making visible how the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of vegetation has released more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, where it traps heat from escaping into space and raises global temperatures.
For most of human history, concentrations have hovered around 280ppm, and the curve's first measurement put them at 313. Sixty-five years later, C02 concentrations averaged 419.3 ppm in 2023, a level not seen since 4.3 million years ago when sea levels were around 75 feet higher and parts of today's Arctic tundra were forests. As of Wednesday, the Keeling Curve reported a daily concentration of 426.72 ppm.
The record jump from March 2023 to March 2024 surpasses the last record jump of 4.1 ppm from June 2015 to June 2016.
"We sadly continue to break records in the CO2 rise rate," Ralph Keeling, Charles' son who now directs the Scripps CO2 Program, said. "The ultimate reason is continued global growth in the consumption of fossil fuels."
The record leaps from both 2015-2016 and 2023-2024 were also influenced by active El Niño events. The El Niño phenomenon increases atmospheric carbon dioxide because it leads to warmer, drier temperatures in the tropics, which decrease vegetation and encourage fires. Atmospheric CO2 levels tend to rise especially quickly toward the end of an El Niño cycle, and last March's CO2 levels were unusually low, leading to a larger gap in the 12-month period.
This year's rate of increase during the current El Niño is significantly larger than the one that took place in 2016. As Scripps explained:
The increase from February 2023 to February of this year was 4.0 ppm, compared to 3.7 for the 2016 El Niño. The increase from January 2023 to January of this year was 3.4 ppm, compared to 2.6 for the 2016 El Niño.
The growth rate from April 2023 to April 2024 dropped to 3.6 ppm, but taking into account the first four months of 2024, the growth rate is well above that for 2016. If this El Niño follows the pattern of the last El Niño, the world might experience a very high growth rate for several more months, Keeling said.
However, any regular climate variations such as El Niño events occur over the longer-term rise in both fossil fuel emissions and greenhouse gas levels.
"The rate of rise will almost certainly come down, but it is still rising and in order to stabilize the climate, you need CO2 level to be falling," Keeling toldThe Guardian. "Clearly, that isn't happening. Human activity has caused CO2 to rocket upwards. It makes me sad more than anything. It's sad what we are doing."
Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First, wrote in response, "We're riding the Venus Express."
The record jump in CO2 concentrations comes as 2023 was the hottest year both on record and in around 100,000 years. Of the 12 months covered by the March 2023 to March 2024 period, 10 of them (June through March) were the hottest of that month on record.
'Argentina Stopped': Unions Hold Second General Strike Over Milei Austerity
Argentina's primary trade union federation on Thursday held another nationwide general strike, the second called since President Javier Milei, a far-right economist, took office in December and began pursuing sweeping austerity and deregulation.
The South American nation's unions organized the strike "in defense of democracy, labor rights, and the living wage," according to a statement from the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the Argentine Workers' Central Union (CTA), and the Autonomous CTA.
"It is a day of resistance and demand," the groups said, blasting the Milei government's "brutal" attacks on labor rights, social security, public health, education, science, and "our cultural identity." The policies of austerity, say opponents, have disproportionately impacted working people and retirees.
The labor groups called out the government for promoting "dangerous policies for the privatization of public enterprises" and pushing for "a phenomenal transfer of resources to the most concentrated and privileged sectors of the economy."
CGT celebrated the 24-hour strike's success on Friday, declaring that "Argentina stopped," and sharing photos of sparsely populated roads, transit hubs, and other public spaces.
As the
Buenos Aires Timesreported:
In the nation's capital, streets were mostly empty, with very little public transport. Many schools and banks closed their doors while most shops were shuttered. Garbage was left uncollected.
Rail and port terminals were closed, while the industrial action forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights, leaving airports semi-deserted. Some buses—from firms that did not take part in the strike—were running in the morning, although with few passengers. Cars were circulating, but traffic levels were similar to that seen on weekends.
The port of Rosario, which exports 80% of the nation's agro-industrial production, was all but paralysed in the midst of its busiest season.
A spokesperson for Milei, Manuel Adorni, claimed the nationwide action was "an attack on the pocket and against the will of the people" by those "who have curtailed the progress of Argentines over the last 25 years," the newspaper noted.
Meanwhile, union leaders stressed that the strike was the result of "a government that only benefits the rich at the expense of the people, gives away natural resources, and seeks to eliminate workers' rights," as CTA secretary general Hugo Yasky put it.
As the action wound down Thursday, Yasky described it as a "display of dignity of the Argentine people" that sent "a strong message" to Milei's government as well as the International Monetary Fund "that intends to govern us" and the country's senators.
Argentina's Senate is now debating an "omnibus" bill that contains some of Milei's neoliberal economic policies—including making privatization easier—after the package was approved last week by the Chamber of Deputies, the lower congressional body.
Rubén Sobrero, general secretary of the Railway Union, signaled that more strikes could come if lawmakers continue to advance the president's policies, tellingThe Associated Press that "if there is no response within these 24 hours, we'll do another 36."
From Europe to North America, trade groups around the world expressed solidarity with Thursday's strike.
"Milei's policies have not tackled the decadence of the elites that he decries, instead he has delivered daily misery for millions of working people. Plummeting living standards, contracting production, and the collapse of purchasing power means some people cannot even afford to eat," said International Trade Union Confederation general secretary Luc Triangle in a statement.
Triangle noted that "the government is targeting the rights of the most vulnerable sectors of the population and key trade union rights, such as collective bargaining, that support greater fairness and equality in society, while threatening those who protest with police repression and criminalization."
"In this context, the work of the trade unions in Argentina is extraordinary. They have emerged as the main opposition to the government's dystopian agenda, uniting resistance and building a coalition in defense of workers' rights and broader democratic principles," he added. "The demands of the trade unions in Argentina for social justice, democracy, and equality are the demands of working people across the world. Their fight is our fight and that is why the global trade union movement stands with them."
'Billionaire Bully' for Big Business Defeated in Record-Setting Maryland Primary Race
Despite spending over $61 million of his own money in the Democratic Primary, wealthy business owner and state Rep. David Trone came up short in Maryland's Democratic primary race for an open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, bested by Angela Alsobrooks, executive of Prince George's County.
Due to the self-funding of Trone, co-owner of the Total Wine & More retail chain, the primary became the most expensive in state history. Despite polls showing Trone as the clear favorite leading up to Tuesday's vote, Alsobrooks won by a full 12 points. According to the Baltimore Sun, with 100% of precincts reporting, the final tally was 54% to 41.9%.
"For anyone who has ever felt counted out, overlooked, and underestimated, I hope you know that the impossible is still possible," Alsobrooks, who had the support of most major players in the Maryland Democratic Party apparatus, told supporters during a victory speech on Tuesday night.
She vowed to defeat the Republican nominee for the seat, former two-term governor Larry Hogan, and said the Democratic Party was "united in our focus to keep the Senate blue."
Political observers took note of the unexpected margin of victory as well as the dynamic of Trone's outsized spending.
"So…. Not a single poll had Alsobrooks winning by anywhere close to double digits, elections absolutely can break late, and campaigns matter," said Colin Seeberger, senior communications director for the Center for American Progress. "Feels like there are some lessons to be learned here for, I don't know, future elections."
Fight Corporate Monopolies, a progressive advocacy group opposed to concentrations of corporate power, opposed Trone based on his fealty to monopoly interests during the primary and called him "just another billionaire bully who thinks he can buy himself a Senate seat."
The group ran one ad comparing Trone to former president Donald Trump and documenting his attacks on rival small businesses and workers:
“I will f*#%ing end you. I will execute you!” - David Trone to a delivery worker.
That’s a billionaire bully for you. pic.twitter.com/cjyuJ3GAVq
— Fight Corporate Monopolies (@fightmonopolies) May 13, 2024
Following Tuesday's defeat, Faiz Shakir with Fight Corporate Monopolies, said: "I believe [our] ad against Trone—both in timing and in message—played a key role in changing the trajectory of the Senate race."
John Nichols, veteran political reporter for The Nation, said: "Maryland Democratic voters rejected mega-rich corporate monopolist David Trone in their Senate primary and instead chose highly qualified Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks to take on Republican Larry Hogan. Good move."
Critics Compare Biden's Proposed Asylum Rule to 'Failed Trump-Era Policies'
Immigrant rights advocates on Thursday slammed the Biden administration's proposal to fast-track the rejection of certain migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
On Thursday the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule that would empower immigration officials to disqualify certain asylum-seekers during their initial eligibility screening—called the credible fear interview (CFI)—using existing national security and terrorism-related criteria, or bars.
DHS said the rule would apply to noncitizens who have "engaged in certain criminal activity, persecuted others, or have been involved in terrorist activities."
"I urge President Biden to embrace our values as a nation of immigrants and use this opportunity to instead provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation."
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the proposed rule "yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here."
However, Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, argued that while "bars are an important feature of our immigration laws to ensure that dangerous individuals are not allowed into the country," they must be "accurately applied where warranted."
"This change could make the process faster by excluding people who would not be entitled to stay," he noted. "However, due process will likely be eroded by accelerating what is a highly complex legal analysis needed for these bars and conducting them at the preliminary CFI screening."
As Chen explained:
At that early stage, few asylum seekers will have the opportunity to seek legal counsel or time to understand the consequences of a bar being applied. Under the current process, they have more time to seek legal advice, to prepare their case, and to appeal it or seek an exemption. Ultimately to establish a fair and orderly process at the border, Congress needs to provide the Department of Homeland Security with the resources to meet its mission and also ensure the truly vulnerable are not summarily denied protection without due process.
Democratic lawmakers—some of whom held a press conference Wednesday on protecting undocumented immigrants in the U.S.—also criticized the proposal.
"As the Biden administration considers executive actions on immigration, we must not return to failed Trump-era policies aimed at banning asylum and moving us backwards," said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), referring to former Republican President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee to face President Joe Biden in November.
"I urge President Biden to embrace our values as a nation of immigrants and use this opportunity to instead provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation," he added.
One year ago, critics accused Biden of "finishing Trump's job" by implementing a crackdown on asylum-seekers upon the expiration of Title 42—a provision first invoked during Trump administration at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued by Biden to expel more than 1 million migrants under the pretext of public safety.
Earlier this week, the advocacy group Human Rights First released a report detailing the harms of the policy on its anniversary. The group held a press conference to unveil the report and warn of the dangers of further anti-migrant policies.
"The interviews with hundreds of asylum-seekers make clear that the asylum ban and related restrictions strands in danger children and adults seeking asylum, punishes people for seeking protection, leads to the return of refugees to persecution, spurs irregular crossings, and denies equal access to asylum to people facing the most dire risks," Human Rights First director of research and analysis of refugee protection Christina Asencio said during the press conference.
"The Biden administration and Congress must not erect any more unjust barriers to asylum that will sow further disorder and result in irreparable harm," Asencio added.
On Wednesday, three advocacy groups—Al Otro Lado, the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, and the Texas Civil Rights Project—sued the federal government on behalf of noncitizens with disabilities seeking more information regarding CBP One, the problem-plagued Customs and Border Protection app migrants must use to schedule asylum interviews at U.S. ports of entry.
"We have and continue to see migrants with disabilities facing unlawful discrimination and unequal access to the asylum process due to the inaccessibility of the app," said Laura Murchie, an attorney with the Civil Rights and Education Enforcement Center involved in the case.
"CBP needs to release these documents so we can advocate for and ensure compliance with the law so asylum-seekers with disabilities do not continue to be harmed by CBP's disregard for rights that are guaranteed by federal disability law," she added.
Record 76 Million Internally Displaced in 2023, Largely Due to Violence
War, conflict, and environmental disasters displaced a record 75.9 million people from their homes at the end of 2023, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported Tuesday.
The vast majority of the displaced—68.3 million—were forced from their homes due to conflicts, the highest number since data became available 15 years ago.
"Millions of families are having their lives torn apart by conflict and violence," Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council—which houses IDMC—said in a statement. "We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities. It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
"This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
The IDMC publishes its Global Report on Internal Displacement every year, which is considered the definitive source for data on internal displacements worldwide. This year's report notes that the number of people displaced within their own countries increased by 51% in the last five years while the number displaced by conflict alone swelled by 49%, spiking in 2022 and 2023. The uptick was primarily due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as renewed or ongoing conflicts in Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
"Over the past two years, we've seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving," said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. "Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from re-building their lives, often for years on end."
In addition to tracking the number of displaced people, the IDMC also looked at the total number of new displacements in 2023. It recorded 46.9 million new movements—20.5 million due to war and conflict and 26.4 million due to natural disasters.
"As the planet grapples with conflicts and disasters, the staggering numbers of 47 million new internal displacements tells a harrowing tale," International Organization for Migration Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement. "This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
Of the 20.5 million conflict-driven displacements last year, nearly two-thirds were due to violence in Sudan, Congo, and Palestine.
In Sudan, renewed hostilities between government and paramilitary forces ignited in April of last year, forcing 6 million new movements and leaving 9.1 million displaced.
"This figure is the highest ever reported for a single country globally since 2008," the report authors wrote.
All told, conflict forced 13.5 million displacements in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest number for the region in 15 years.
Nearly 17% of total conflict displacements in 2023 were forced in Gaza, even though Israel only began its war on the enclave during the last quarter of the year. Although it was only home to around 2.3 million people at the start of the war, Gaza saw 3.4 million displacements, as many people were forced to move multiple times.
"This figure should be considered conservative, because many people were displaced within governorates before moving across them, but such movements were unaccounted for," the report authors explained.
By the end of 2023, around 1.7 million people in Gaza—or 83% of the population— were displaced, "all of them facing acute humanitarian needs," the authors wrote.
The report also says that 7.7 million people were living outside their homes by the end of 2023 due to disasters such as extreme weather and geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The 26.4 million disaster-driven displacements were the third-highest amount in the last 10 years.
Displacing disasters in 2023 included climate change-fueled events like cyclone Freddy—which caused 1.4 million displacements in southeast Africa—and Canada's record wildfire season, which fueled 185,000 displacements, the highest number for Canada on record.
"No country is immune to disaster displacement," Bilak said. "But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don't. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response, and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better."
Egeland called for more attention to the plight of displaced people after the initial trigger fades from the headlines.
"The suffering and the displacement last far beyond the news cycle," Egeland said. "Too often their fate ends up in silence and neglect. The lack of protection and assistance that millions endure cannot be allowed to continue."
'Jews for Jamaal' and Squad Push Back Against AIPAC Attack on Bowman
"It's our duty to fight back," said Rep. Summer Lee, arguing that no super PAC "should be able to drop millions to usurp the conversation for their agenda."
As the leading U.S. pro-Israel lobby's political action committee unleashes a nearly $2 million ad blitz targeting Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Jewish allies of the New York Democrat—who is an outspoken critic of what he and many experts call Israel's genocide in Gaza—on Thursday joined progressive lawmakers in condemning right-wing efforts to defeat pro-Palestine incumbents.
United Democracy Project (UDP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) super PAC, has booked $1.9 million in television ads to influence the outcome of the Democratic primary in New York's 16th Congressional District, according to Wednesday reporting by Sludge's David Moore.
"This new ad spending in New York shows once and for all that my opponent, George Latimer, is bankrolled by a right-wing super PAC that has received over $40 million from Republican megadonors who want to defend Republican insurrectionists, overturn voting rights, and ban abortion nationwide," Bowman said in a statement.
"Democrats across New York deserve better, and will reject these attempts to buy our elections and undermine our democracy," he added.
Jews for Jamaal, a pro-Bowman coalition spearheaded by the group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice Action, said in a statement that "we recognize this media blitz for what it is: a desperate move by powerful interests to silence the district's first Black representative in history."
"UDP is overwhelmingly spending its millions in Democratic primaries, mostly against Black and brown Democratic incumbents who speak out against war and for the human rights of Palestinians," the coalition continued. "This massive amount of spending distorts the political landscape, drowning out the needs and voices of everyday constituents with the interests of a few wealthy donors."
"It undermines the very foundation of our democracy, which must be built on the principles of transparency, accountability, and genuine representation," Jews for Jamaal added.
As more and more Democrats speak out against Israel's assault on Gaza—which according to Palestinian health officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 125,000 people—and violent repression by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, AIPAC has lashed out at even the mildest criticism of Israeli government policies and practices, which many experts around the world call genocidal.
Last November, Slate's Alex Sammon reported that UDP was set to spend approximately $100 million in a bid to unseat both pro-Palestine congressional progressives and more moderate Democratic candidates who the powerful lobby group believes don't sufficiently support Israel. Sammon said that Bowman, along with fellow "Squad" members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), and Summer Lee (D-Pa.) are among UDP's top targets.
Some of those lawmakers also rallied to Bowman's defense on Thursday.
"It's our duty to fight back," Lee said on social media. "As somebody who knows these folks intimately, I can speak to the damage UDP causes not just to the candidates they target and smear, but to the communities attached to us and democracy itself."
The congresswoman—who won her primary last month—continued:
Their campaign against me in 2022 was steeped in dog whistles and disinformation. Their most shameful million-dollar attack against me was just unsubtly implying I was a [former U.S. President Donald] Trump supporter... in mailers where my skin was oddly shadowed or darker. For three weeks, they plastered the airwaves and mailboxes in wall-to-wall attacks that overwhelmed our midsized media market. Cable and broadcast, digital and streaming... even children's programming on YouTube was targeted.
Omar asserted on social media that "a people-powered movement will always be stronger than special interest groups."
"We got your back, Jamaal Bowman," she added.
Bush said that Latimer "is being used as a Trojan Horse for far-right billionaires and anti-abortion extremists."
"But from the Bronx to St. Louis, we won't let them win," she vowed.
Bowman, in turn, posted in support of Bush, whom he pledged to defend against "Republican billionaires... coming for her."
Last month, another coalition—the youth-led Protect Our Power campaign—was launched in support of progressive congressional incumbents under attack by AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups.
"The only thing that beats organized money is organized people," the young organizers said at the time. "Fortunately, that's what we know how to do best."
'Which Side Are You On?' Mountain Valley Pipeline Foes Block Road to Fracking Project
"I see no choice but to rebel against these systems in any small way I can," said a campaigner. "To choose to fight on the side of the mountains, the rivers, the critters, and the people. Against the extraction, empires, and all death-making institutions."
Decrying both the environmental harms and the U.S. fossil fuel industry's support of Israel's assault on Palestinian rights, a pipeline opponent on Thursday morning locked themself to two barrels in the middle of a road on Poor Mountain in Roanoke County, Virginia, blocking access to the Mountain Valley Pipeline easement.
The campaigner, who was supported by other demonstrators in the road, was identified by Appalachians Against Pipelines as Mullein. The protest took place close to where environmental protectors spent more than two and a half years holding the Yellow Finch Tree Sit protest, stopping the destruction of the last remaining trees in the MVP's path.
Mullein said they were driven to block the road by "the interlocking systems of colonization and capitalism," in light of Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, for which MVP would provide support.
"Today, as I sit in the road on so-called Poor Mountain, it is the day after Nakba Day," said Mullein, referring to the anniversary of more than 700,000 Palestinians' forced displacement when Israel declared statehood. "Today, through this ongoing genocide, Palestinians have been resisting colonization for over 76 years. MVP claims that this pipeline would supply fracked gas to various U.S. military locations including the Pentagon and the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, which is operated by BAE systems, a weapons company supplying weapons to 'Israel' during their genocidal campaign."
"The destruction of land and lifeways is interconnected, from Turtle Island to Palestine," said Mullein, using the Indigenous name for North America. "As a settler here, these systems have disconnected me from land, from others, from myself.
Appalachians Against Pipelines reported that the blockade went on for seven hours. Mullein was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors, with their bail set at $2,000.
The protest comes a week ahead of a deadline for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to grant MVP permission to place the pipeline in service, despite a recent citation by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for over a dozen violations. The fracked gas pipeline would stretch across at least 300 miles of the Appalachian region, and has been opposed by local and national environmental justice groups.
"I'm sitting locked to two barrels today because I see no choice but to rebel against these systems in any small way I can," said Mullein. "To choose to fight on the side of the mountains, the rivers, the critters, and the people. Against the extraction, empires, and all death-making institutions. Which side are you on?"
Don't Say 'Climate': DeSantis Signs Bill Removing References From State Law
"This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry," one climate advocate said.
Forida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a bill that erases most references to climate change in state law, deprioritizes it in policy decisions, and eases regulations for natural gas pipelines while banning offshore wind installations in state waters.
DeSantis signed the bill despite the fact that Florida is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the climate crisis—both from sea-level rise and extreme weather such as heatwaves and hurricanes. Indeed, on the day of the signing, Key West tied for its highest heat index on record at 115°C, heat that was made at least five times more likely because of the burning of fossil fuels.
"This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry," Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of climate education nonprofit the Cleo Institute, toldThe Associated Press.
The bill's opponents told AP that it exes out nine references to climate currently on the books. It also takes steps to promote fossil gas—which already provides nearly three-quarters of Florida's electricity—and makes it harder to ban gas stoves and other appliances.
Further, AP reported:
The legislation also eliminates requirements that government agencies hold conferences and meetings in hotels certified by the state's environmental agency as "green lodging" and that government agencies make fuel efficiency the top priority in buying new vehicles. It also ends a requirement that Florida state agencies look at a list of "climate-friendly" products before making purchases.
The law, which goes into effect July 1, "is very much out of line with public opinion," Greg Knecht, director of the Nature Conservancy in Florida, toldThe Washington Post. A full 90% of Floridians believe climate change is occurring, 69% of them want the state government to act on it, a Florida Atlantic University survey found.
Florida is already seeing the impacts of the climate crisis from Wednesday's high heat and humidity in the Keys to last year's Hurricane Idalia. Moving forward, Florida was ranked 10th in a list of states or provinces with the most physical infrastructure at risk from climate impacts by 2050.
"This feels like Act 1 of a Greek tragedy," the Environmental Voter Project wrote on social media in response to the signing.
Knecht told the Post that DeSantis and Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature were willing to address the effects of the climate crisis—the governor earmarked more than $28 million to study flooding vulnerability in each county last year—but would not acknowledge the cause of the problem or discuss solutions that involved reducing emissions.
"On one hand, we recognize that we're seeing flooding and we're seeing property damage and we're seeing hurricanes, and we're conveying to the public that we can build our way out of these problems," Knecht said. "And then on the other hand, we're turning around and saying, 'Yeah, but climate change isn't really real, and we don't need to do anything about it.'"
This may partly be because, as green advocates told Post, the climate crisis has become a culture war issue that DeSantis can use to attract media attention and right-wing voters, as he has done with high-profile attacks on abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
Others blamed the influence of the fossil fuel industry.
"Fossil fuel companies don't like competing with clean energy," Democratic Florida Senate candidate Carlos Guillermo Smith wrote on social media. "So they donated to Ron DeSantis who signed a law that bans offshore wind, eliminates energy efficiency grant programs, and deletes any reference to 'climate change' from state statute."
"GOP = Profits over people always," Smith said.
Progress Florida wrote: "While Gov. Ron DeSantis does the dirty work of corporate polluters, Floridians are left to suffer as the state becomes more unaffordable and the natural treasures of the people who have farmed, hunted, and worshipped here for generations are destroyed."