We are featuring here some of the voices of individuals and organizations—coming from a diverse range of political perspectives and viewpoints—who are courageously speaking against the brutal inhumanity of the Trump/MAGA fascist regime. Now is a time to unite all who can be united to demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go! In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America!
For more voices speaking out in protest see Sights and Sounds: Protests break out across the U.S. demanding MAHMOUD KHALIL MUST BE FREED!
[TEMPLATE] Voices from [mo] [date] to [date], 2025
Voices from March 24 to 30, 2025
Lutheran bishops take a stand "For Religious Liberty and Against Christian Nationalism"
On March 11, five Lutheran bishops in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan stated their concern about Trump's February 6 executive order, "Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias":
This executive order is a threat to the religious pluralism enshrined in the constitution and does not protect Christians; rather it aligns the federal government with Christian Nationalism.
With the executive order for “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias”, the federal government has given itself the authority and mandate to define what might be considered “anti-Christian,” and therefore also the authority to define what is Christian - a power which belongs to the Church alone, not the federal government. This executive order violates religious freedom, corrupts the separation of Church and State, and creates a more hostile environment for Christians and all citizens who believe differently than the current administration and its religious advisors...
Since then the statement has been signed by 1062 other religious leaders and church members. Read the complete statement here.
Trump has turbocharged the attacks on free speech at US universities. I have seen it first-hand
Sandy Tolan
Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles
In an opinion piece published in The Guardian, March 20, 2025, Professor Sandy Tolan writes—
Trump administration officials have made it clear that their aim is to cripple universities. The goal, the senior Trump strategist Christopher Rufo told the New York Times, is to put “universities into contraction, into a recession … in a way that puts them in an existential terror."
In response he insists
Universities must become centres of resistance. Silence is not a solution to the mounting tyranny – not on DEI, not on federal interference, and certainly not on the exercise of free speech on Gaza, Israel and Palestine. Whatever the issue, we are called to continue the fight, along with our students, to show the humanity, the dignity, and the rights of our communities at risk.
The forces of darkness have the upper hand. We must counter with facts, context, reason, compassion and, above all, courage, for as long as we possibly can.
Read the complete essay here.
Japanese-American Voices:
From Nichi Bei News, San Francisco, March 27:
Susan Hayase and her husband Tom Izu...are now co-founders of the San Jose Nikkei Resisters, a Japanese grassroots community organization that formed in 2018 to respond to Trump’s immigration policies, particularly the “Muslim Ban.”:
“The smearing of Japanese Americans is identical to what is happening now with Khalil,” [Hayase] continued, adding that the current targeting of community leaders also echoes the government’s targeting Japanese Americans as national security threats.
“The people picked up under the Alien Enemies Act were community leaders, spokespeople, teachers, publishers, religious leaders,” explained Hayase. “Khalil was a leader. He was not dangerous, except to the idea that the government should be able to squash all political speech.”
“Everybody in this country, according to the Bill of Rights, has individual due process rights,” said Tom Izu.
“Once you start taking that away, you’re basically allowing the executive branch to do whatever it wants. They could declare anybody an enemy of the state,” he added. “And then if people believe it, then democracy is really in danger.”
Read the complete article here.
From Rafu Shimpo newspaper, Los Angeles, March 27:
“President Trump is weaponizing this legislation to target, detain and deport Venezuelan immigrants without due process of law,” Abigail Chun of Nikkei Progressives said during a press conference at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. “Following his invocation, President Trump defied of federal judge’s order to pause the deportation of Venezuelan and other immigrants, demonstrating a blatant disregard for the rule of law.
“Japanese Americans know the devastating consequences of the Alien Enemies Act. The last time this authority was invoked, it was used to arrest and detain, without trial, first-generation Japanese immigrants in Department of Justice prisons and paved the way for the unconstitutional incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps across the country.
“The use of the Alien Enemies Act is as wrong today as it was in 1941, and we call on all justice-loving people to speak out against this dangerous repetition of history.”
Read the complete article here.
Open Letter From Actors Condemning Academy for Lack of Support for Hamdan Ballal
AMPAS members respond to the lack of support for filmmaker Hamdan Ballal from AMPAS leadership
On 26 March 2025, the leadership of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences emailed its membership a statement with the subject line, “Our Global Film Community.” The statement was ostensibly responding to the detention of Palestinian filmmaker and 2025 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of “No Other Land,” although it failed to mention either Ballal or the film by name, nor did it describe the events it was responding to.
The statement by Bill Kramer and Janet Yang fell far short of the sentiments this moment calls for. Therefore we are issuing our own statement, which speaks for the undersigned members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
***
We stand in condemnation of the brutal assault and unlawful detention of Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank.
As artists, we depend on our ability to tell stories without reprisals. Documentary filmmakers often expose themselves to extreme risks to enlighten the world. It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later.
To win an Oscar is not an easy task. Most films in competition are buoyed by wide distribution and exorbitantly priced campaigns directed at voting members. For “No Other Land” to win an Oscar without these advantages speaks to how important the film is to the voting membership.
The targeting of Ballal is not just an attack on one filmmaker—it is an attack on all those who dare to bear witness and tell inconvenient truths.
We will continue to watch over this film team. Winning an Oscar has put their lives in increasing danger, and we will not mince words when the safety of fellow artists is at stake.
Sincerely,
1. Marjan Safinia, Documentary
2. Julia Bacha, Documentary
3. Alison Klayman, Documentary
4. Mark Ruffalo, Actors
5. James Schamus, Writers
6. Christine Vachon, Producers
7. Jane Fonda, Actors
8. Ava DuVernay, Directors
9. Alfonso Cuaron, Directors
10. Jim Jarmusch, Directors
11. Olivia Colman, Actors
12. Denis Villeneuve, Director
13. Sandra Oh, Actors
14. Edward Norton, Actors
15. Sandra Hueller, Actors
16. Julie Huntsinger, Executives
17. Riz Ahmed, Actors
18. Ruth Negga, Actors
19. Javier Bardem, Actors
20. Penèlope Cruz, Actors
21. Boots Riley, Directors
22. Natasha Lyonne, Actors
23. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Actors
24. Peter Sarsgaard, Actors
25. Emma Thompson, Actors
26. Andrew Garfield, Actors
27. Pedro Pascal, Actors
28. Christine Baranski, Actors
29. Michael Mann, Directors
30. Elizabeth Olsen, Actors
31. Tony Kushner, Writers
32. Joaquin Phoenix, Actors
33. Eliza Hittman, Writers
34. Richard Gere, Actors
35. Adam McKay, Directors
36. Jonathan Glazer, Directors
37. James Wilson, Producers
38. Sarah Polley, Writers
39. Raul Castillo, Actors
40. Marisa Tomei, Actors
41. Laura Poitras, Documentary
42. John Cusack, Actors
43. Susan Sarandon, Actors
44. Greta Lee, Actors
45. Carey Mulligan, Actors
46. Jay Roach, Directors
47. Kristin Scott Thomas, Actors
48. Tahar Rahim, Actors
49. Peter Ramsey, Animation
50. Alma Harel, Director
51. Andrew Ahn, Directors
52. Todd Haynes, Directors
[As of 3/30/2025, 857 people have signed. For complete list go here.]
Click to see performance. Photo: screenshot @chazzviolin
Hannah Einbinder Acceptance Speech for the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award, March 24, 2025, Los Angeles.
University of Kentucky law professors condemn US deportation of Mahmoud Khalil
On March 28, five law professors from the University of Kentucky published a letter to the editor in the Louisville Courier Journal :
“If one of our students,” they said, “were to question our nation’s policy of support for Israel in class, or demonstrate against it on campus, could immigration agents swoop into our classrooms and drag the student away for detention and deportation — unless the student happens to be a U.S. citizen? The government’s position appears to be yes. That is intolerable. The First Amendment protects the right to express ideas. The government should not deport people for expressing ideas it finds disagreeable.
“The detention of this protest leader and the government’s broader policy targeting critics of our government’s policy of support for Israel, which it calls ‘catch and revoke,’ amount to political persecution. They are inconsistent with the values of a free society. We call upon the White House to discontinue this policy immediately, to restore the liberty of Mahmoud Khalil and all others swept up by the policy and to preserve their immigration status."
Read the complete letter here.
Letter from Jewish USC Faculty and Staff regarding the Executive Order on Antisemitism
Dear President Folt and Provost Guzman,
We write as Jewish and Jewish Studies faculty, staff, and allies to call on the University to pledge to protect the rights of all students, staff and faculty in response to the President’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism. This Executive Order has many alarming elements, including the exhortation to “monitor for and report activities by alien students." It weaponizes antisemitism to attack intellectual and academic freedom as well as the university writ large. Moreover, it does not clearly distinguish between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, which will have a chilling effect on free speech.
Read the complete letter here.
Statement by SEIU President April Verrett on Tufts Graduate Student Detained by ICE
April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), issued the following statement after a graduate student at Tufts University was detained by federal immigration authorities Tuesday evening:
WASHINGTON, DC – “Rumeysa Ozturk, graduate student at Tufts University and an SEIU Local 509 member, was snatched by masked federal immigration authorities on Tuesday night on her way to Ramadan services. Her arrest, with no charges filed, is yet another chilling example of this administration’s efforts to use immigration actions to target and silence people merely for criticizing U.S. policy in the Middle East. Ozturk, from Turkey, had a valid student visa, and her lawyer has no idea where she has been taken or why, though she had recently co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper in support of the people of Palestine.
“This is about the freedom we all have to speak our minds without fear of government attacks. The First Amendment is being burned before our very eyes by an administration that has shown that it is willing to do whatever it takes to carry out its extremist agenda. In recent weeks, the administration has threatened university funding and arrested foreign graduate students with little or no explanation. We will not forget Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student activist from Columbia University, Badar Khan Suri, a professor and postdoctoral scholar on religion and peace studies from Georgetown University, Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine and kidney transplant specialist from Brown University, and others whose names we don’t yet know.
“America’s role as a beacon of freedom and human rights is being extinguished, and our leading universities are rapidly becoming graveyards for free speech rights, with students and faculty living in fear. As a union representing workers across higher education, including faculty, graduate workers and administrative staff, we call upon university officials, elected leaders and the courts to stand together to defend the rights of students and faculty. We demand that this administration respect due process, transparency, free speech, and basic decency when it wields its vast immigration powers.”
Voices from March 17 to 23
“Speak up, speak out, be bold”: Former Governor Inslee urges action from civil society leaders.
Columbia professor Joseph Howley speaks in front of the courthouse demanding Mahmoud Khalil be freed
Rachel Cohen: Lawyer resigns in protest of law firms’ capitulation to Trump
Rachel Cohen: Lawyer resigns in protest of law firms’ capitulation to Trump
Rachel Cohen was an associate for Skadden, one of the biggest law firms in this country. After another major law firm, Paul Weiss, caved in to pressure from Trump and agreed to to his demands, such as $40 million in pro bono work for pro-Trump groups, Cohen quit her firm and publicly released her resignation letter, which said in part, “This is a moment that demands urgency. Whether we are failing to meet it because we are unprepared or because we don't wish to is irrelevant to me and to the world, where the outcome is the same."
In a March 21 PBS NewsHour segment, Cohen explained how Paul Weiss’s capitulation to Trump is “incredibly troubling.” First, in terms of the $40 million in pro bono work, that includes work for Trump’s “Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.” As Cohen noted, that outfit has nothing to do with fighting actual antisemitism but has “played an integral role and will continue to play an integral role in the type of actions that we have seen very recently in terms of storming of Columbia University dorms, removing people who have legal status in this country and holding them in indefinite ICE detention for exercising free speech rights…” Second, part of Paul Weiss’s agreement with Trump is to provide names, addresses, and other personal information of people who have been hired under the firm’s diversity programs, which had actively recruited Black law students. Cohen said that “now they are taking those associates and throwing them under the bus” and she refuses to “throw my colleagues of color under the bus.”
Before she resigned from Skadden, Rachel Cohen was an organizer of an open letter from hundreds of associates at major law firms calling on their employers to defend their colleagues and stand up to Trump’s attacks.
Letters from an American, March 19, 2025
by Heather Cox Richardson
(American historian, whose Substack newsletter has over a million subscribers)
On the Fox News Channel’s The Five yesterday, the panel of Fox personalities expressed outrage that federal judge James Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to stop its deportation of migrants based on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. That act permits the president to arrest and deport citizens of other countries that are at war with the U.S. or invading it. If Trump’s claim that Venezuelan gang members are acting in concert with the Venezuelan government to invade the U.S. stands, it gives the president extraordinary scope to take power over immigration away from Congress by declaring any foreign country is invading the United States and thus making its citizens subject to deportation without going through the normal legal process.
The Fox News Channel hosts were also unhappy that when President Donald Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts issued a relatively mild statement that did not mention the president by name but criticized his call for Boasberg’s impeachment by saying: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Roberts was nominated for his position by Republican president George W. Bush and was the author of the Donald Trump v. United States decision establishing that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties, a decision that upended centuries of precedent to allow Trump to avoid criminal prosecution. Roberts can hardly be considered a member of the radical Left.
And yet, on The Five, Greg Gutfeld exploded: “Maybe a guy in a robe in D.C. can follow all the protocols, but Trump is the ‘f-ing’ president of the United States who protects 300 million plus people. He is a leader who does not have the luxury of opening up his little books to read ‘Oh my god, maybe he didn’t do it the right way.’ Roberts, shut the ‘f’ up. This is something that a president has to do. He HAS to do this.”
Gutfeld’s outburst shows just how far today’s right wing has slid toward autocracy. It is a grim marker for our democracy, when a commentator with a wide audience openly calls for the replacement of the rule of law with a dictator. Read more
New England Scholars Speak issued a “2025 EMERGENCY NATIONAL STATEMENT TO UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE PRESIDENTS” to “Defend Our Campuses by Contesting—Not Capitulating to—Authoritarianism and Repression”
It states:
At this dangerous juncture for the future of academic freedom, free speech, and due process on all our campuses, we call on you to stand together, hold your ground firmly, and vigorously defend the core values and principles which bind us as scholars and educators.
To read the complete statement go here.
March 03, 2025 From the American Bar Association
“The ABA rejects efforts to undermine the courts and the legal profession”
In an important follow up to the statement issued on February 10, the ABA in a new statement recounts the recent actions taken by the Trump Administration to undermine the rule of law and firmly states:
We reject efforts to undermine the courts and the profession. We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not. Words and actions matter. And the intimidating words and actions we have heard must end. They are designed to cow our country’s judges, our country’s courts and our legal profession. Consistent with the chief justice’s report, these efforts cannot be sanctioned or normalized.
There are clear choices facing our profession. We can choose to remain silent and allow these acts to continue or we can stand for the rule of law and the values we hold dear. We call upon the entire profession, including lawyers who serve in elected positions, to speak out against intimidation. We acknowledge that there are risks to standing up and addressing these important issues. But if the ABA and lawyers do not speak, who will speak for the organized bar? Who will speak for the judiciary? Who will protect our system of justice? If we don’t speak now, when will we speak?
The American Bar Association has chosen to stand and speak. Now is the time for all of us to speak with one voice. We invite you to stand with us.
– William R. Bay, president of the American Bar Association
Read the complete statement here.
1300+ Associates Sign Open Letter Calling On Big Law Leaders To “Defend” The Legal Profession
The open letter begins:
Over the past several weeks, the Executive Branch has launched an all-out attack aimed at dismantling rule-of-law norms, including by censuring individual law firms by name because of past representation. On March 6, the Trump administration widened the scope of its attack to target firms with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. This is not normal. We call on our employers, large American law firms, to defend their colleagues and the legal profession by condemning this rapid purge of “partisan actors,” a group that seems to be synonymous with those the President feels have wronged him.
And closes with this challenge:
When we are united, we cannot be intimidated. These tactics only work if the majority does not speak up. Our hope was that our employers, some of the most profitable law firms in the world, would lead the way. That has not yet been the case, but it still very much can be. It is easy to be afraid of being the first to speak. We are removing that barrier; we are speaking. Now it is our employers’ turn.
Read the open letter here.
“First They Came for Columbia”
Two Harvard professors, Ryan D. Enos, a professor of Government, and Steven Levitsky, the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and a professor of Government, published a sharply worded opinion piece in the Harvard Crimson on March 14, “First They Came for Columbia.”
In the face of the recent devastating attacks Donald Trump has launched at university campuses—cancelling $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University and $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University; investigating 60 universities, including Harvard, over politicized allegations of antisemitism; and then the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist, recent graduate from Columbia University and a green card holder, arrested not for a crime but for his political speech on campus—the professors warn:
...America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education. That must change. Harvard must stand up, speak out, and lead a public defense of our freedom to speak and study freely.
Read the complete piece here.
Not In Our Name
UCLA Jewish Faculty and Staff Letter
We, Jewish faculty and staff members at UCLA, join with colleagues around the country to express our unequivocal opposition to the arrest and detention of former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, and Columbia University’s subsequent expulsion, suspension, and diploma revocation of dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors, apparently in response to demands from the Trump administration. We are vehemently opposed to efforts by the federal government to arrest, deport, or pressure universities to discipline students, staff, or faculty at UCLA or at any university who are deemed politically unacceptable by virtue of their support of freedom for the Palestinian people. We resist all calls to assist in compiling lists of those targeted for arrest, deportation, or discipline, and reject without equivocation any attempt to invoke our name to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities. These actions do not protect Jewish people but instead are a direct attack on democracy and freedom of speech.
(To read and sign letter, see https://sites.google.com/view/not-in-our-name)
Renowned Concert Pianist András Schiff Cancels Performances in the U.S. Because of Trump’s “Unbelievable Bullying”
Sir András Schiff Photo: via x.com@antoniom646
World renowned concert pianist András Schiff announced on March 19 that he was cancelling his upcoming performances in the United States, including with the New York Philharmonic and at Carnegie Hall, because of Trump’s “unbelievable bullying.” According to the New York Times, which interviewed him, Schiff was “alarmed” by Trump’s “admonishments of Ukraine; his expansionist threats about Canada, Greenland and Gaza; and his support for far-right politicians in Germany.” Schiff’s family in Hungary had gone through the horrors of the Holocaust and, according to the Times, “Trump’s calls for mass deportation reminded [Schiff] painfully of efforts to expel Jews during World War II.”
Schiff has long spoken out against the fascist leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban, an ally of Trump. In a 2013 interview with the BBC, Schiff explained why he had stayed away from that country for years: “I have been threatened that if I return to Hungary, they will cut off both of my hands.”
In a statement about the cancellation of his U.S. appearances, Schiff said, “Some people might say, ‘just shut up and play.’ I cannot, in good conscience, do that. We do not live in an ivory tower where the arts are untouched by society. Arts and politics, arts and society are inseparable. Therefore, as artists, we must react to the horrors and injustices of this world. Have we learned nothing from the course of history—as recently as Europe in the 1930s? Perhaps not.”
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Mahmoud Khalil Is One of the Most Upstanding People I Have Ever Met
We cannot allow fascists to use the pretext of Jewish safety to attack our communities.
Jonathan Ben-Menachem
March 16, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil
As a Jewish student at Columbia University, I was disgusted by the White House’s cynical, smirking claim that it is acting in the interests of Jewish safety in detaining my Palestinian comrade, Mahmoud Khalil, last weekend. To announce Mahmoud’s abduction, the White House pushed social media posts reading “SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” The Christian fascists are gleefully, wickedly invoking the Hebrew goodbye as they terrorize us.
Mahmoud is one of the most upstanding people I have ever met. Alongside other Jewish student activists, I only ever felt Mahmoud’s respect, solidarity, and strength. As Mahmoud told CNN last spring, “I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.” Anyone who has met Mahmoud knows that the White House’s smear campaign is just a shallow pretext to unleash state violence against student activists and further divide already traumatized communities.
Who Will Be Left to Fight With Us?
Read full statement on here or here (subscriptions required).
Quotes from the Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine: Live Event in New York City
March 22, 2025
Macklemore: I was on the road at the time touring in the States when October 7 happens. In previous eras in my life I could have ignored it, maybe I could have scrolled past the days, months, and almost a year and a half of what was to come…. But with my heart already being in the raw and vulnerable state it was in, and the genocide that was underway in Gaza, it was impossible to ignore. I couldn’t get on stage and pretend that I was OK, because I was not OK. I started learning about the history of the occupation, the political ideology of Zionism, Israeli settlers of the West Bank. I was watching videos coming out of Gaza and crying with friends. I started learning about how colonization, capitalism and white supremacy need each other to exist and how they were the root of the Nakba 76 years ago. It never ended for the people of Palestine. I was taking it all in and I was silent. I was scared. I was thinking about myself. I didn’t want to be labeled antisemitic, I didn’t want to get cancelled and lose my career. I didn’t want to lose fans. I didn’t want to offend anyone. But at a certain point I couldn’t believe those voices anymore. My heart had just enough cracks in it that the light of Palestinian resistance, struggle and unwavering faith cracked it open. I was experiencing what happens when the internal pain from being silent outweighs the risk of speaking up in moments of injustice. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it…. I believe it is our moral obligation to adamantly protest the atrocities we are witnessing and funding or we are complicit.
Susan Sarandon: I mourn for those who have been quiet during this televised genocide because their loss is greater than death. Theirs is the loss of compassion and a shared humanity. And what is happening now... here... that makes it possible to happen, what is happening in Palestine cannot ever be normalized.
She then quoted from the journalist Caitlin Johnstone on X:
You Cannot Separate Yourself From What’s Happening In Gaza
The Gaza holocaust has reignited with as much sadistic fury as it ever saw under the Biden administration. More than five hundred people have reportedly been killed by Israeli bombardment since the onslaught resumed early Tuesday morning, including at least 200 children and 112 women.
I will admit to having been hopeful. I know it’s illegal to express hope online, but I really did hope that by some miracle peace would find some way forward in Gaza in spite of the frenetic efforts by Trump and Netanyahu and their cohorts to sabotage it. I had hope, and now I have grief.
Now this constant mass atrocity has been fully reanimated. And the people who rule over us are actively supporting this, while working to imprison, fire, silence and deport anyone who opposes it.
This is a broken civilization. A warped and twisted dystopia. The waking nightmare we are witnessing in Gaza is the result of everything that we have become as a society. Those dead and mutilated children on your social media feed are the fruit on the tree of the western world.
Please understand that this is personal now. This isn’t only about some strangers in the middle east. It’s also about you. It’s about your rights. It’s about your freedom to speak out against the criminality of your rulers. It’s about the kind of society you want to live in. It’s about the kind of future you want for your children.
We are not separate from what’s happening in Gaza, as hard as we might try to make ourselves feel that way. Gaza is here. The waves of blood are lapping at your doorstep. The dead and mutilated children are strewn about your living room and kitchen. They were placed there by the powerful people who run your government and its allies.
There’s no getting away from it. Gaza has been brought right to you and laid at your feet.
And it’s up to you how you’re going to respond to it.
[HIDDEN] Voices from March 17 to 23
“Speak up, speak out, be bold”: Former Governor Inslee urges action from civil society leaders.
Columbia professor Joseph Howley speaks in front of the courthouse demanding Mahmoud Khalil be freed
Rachel Cohen: Lawyer resigns in protest of law firms’ capitulation to Trump
Rachel Cohen: Lawyer resigns in protest of law firms’ capitulation to Trump
Rachel Cohen was an associate for Skadden, one of the biggest law firms in this country. After another major law firm, Paul Weiss, caved in to pressure from Trump and agreed to to his demands, such as $40 million in pro bono work for pro-Trump groups, Cohen quit her firm and publicly released her resignation letter, which said in part, “This is a moment that demands urgency. Whether we are failing to meet it because we are unprepared or because we don't wish to is irrelevant to me and to the world, where the outcome is the same."
In a March 21 PBS NewsHour segment, Cohen explained how Paul Weiss’s capitulation to Trump is “incredibly troubling.” First, in terms of the $40 million in pro bono work, that includes work for Trump’s “Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.” As Cohen noted, that outfit has nothing to do with fighting actual antisemitism but has “played an integral role and will continue to play an integral role in the type of actions that we have seen very recently in terms of storming of Columbia University dorms, removing people who have legal status in this country and holding them in indefinite ICE detention for exercising free speech rights…” Second, part of Paul Weiss’s agreement with Trump is to provide names, addresses, and other personal information of people who have been hired under the firm’s diversity programs, which had actively recruited Black law students. Cohen said that “now they are taking those associates and throwing them under the bus” and she refuses to “throw my colleagues of color under the bus.”
Before she resigned from Skadden, Rachel Cohen was an organizer of an open letter from hundreds of associates at major law firms calling on their employers to defend their colleagues and stand up to Trump’s attacks.
Letters from an American, March 19, 2025
by Heather Cox Richardson
(American historian, whose Substack newsletter has over a million subscribers)
On the Fox News Channel’s The Five yesterday, the panel of Fox personalities expressed outrage that federal judge James Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to stop its deportation of migrants based on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. That act permits the president to arrest and deport citizens of other countries that are at war with the U.S. or invading it. If Trump’s claim that Venezuelan gang members are acting in concert with the Venezuelan government to invade the U.S. stands, it gives the president extraordinary scope to take power over immigration away from Congress by declaring any foreign country is invading the United States and thus making its citizens subject to deportation without going through the normal legal process.
The Fox News Channel hosts were also unhappy that when President Donald Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts issued a relatively mild statement that did not mention the president by name but criticized his call for Boasberg’s impeachment by saying: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Roberts was nominated for his position by Republican president George W. Bush and was the author of the Donald Trump v. United States decision establishing that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties, a decision that upended centuries of precedent to allow Trump to avoid criminal prosecution. Roberts can hardly be considered a member of the radical Left.
And yet, on The Five, Greg Gutfeld exploded: “Maybe a guy in a robe in D.C. can follow all the protocols, but Trump is the ‘f-ing’ president of the United States who protects 300 million plus people. He is a leader who does not have the luxury of opening up his little books to read ‘Oh my god, maybe he didn’t do it the right way.’ Roberts, shut the ‘f’ up. This is something that a president has to do. He HAS to do this.”
Gutfeld’s outburst shows just how far today’s right wing has slid toward autocracy. It is a grim marker for our democracy, when a commentator with a wide audience openly calls for the replacement of the rule of law with a dictator. Read more
New England Scholars Speak issued a “2025 EMERGENCY NATIONAL STATEMENT TO UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE PRESIDENTS” to “Defend Our Campuses by Contesting—Not Capitulating to—Authoritarianism and Repression”
It states:
At this dangerous juncture for the future of academic freedom, free speech, and due process on all our campuses, we call on you to stand together, hold your ground firmly, and vigorously defend the core values and principles which bind us as scholars and educators.
To read the complete statement go here.
March 03, 2025 From the American Bar Association
“The ABA rejects efforts to undermine the courts and the legal profession”
In an important follow up to the statement issued on February 10, the ABA in a new statement recounts the recent actions taken by the Trump Administration to undermine the rule of law and firmly states:
We reject efforts to undermine the courts and the profession. We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not. Words and actions matter. And the intimidating words and actions we have heard must end. They are designed to cow our country’s judges, our country’s courts and our legal profession. Consistent with the chief justice’s report, these efforts cannot be sanctioned or normalized.
There are clear choices facing our profession. We can choose to remain silent and allow these acts to continue or we can stand for the rule of law and the values we hold dear. We call upon the entire profession, including lawyers who serve in elected positions, to speak out against intimidation. We acknowledge that there are risks to standing up and addressing these important issues. But if the ABA and lawyers do not speak, who will speak for the organized bar? Who will speak for the judiciary? Who will protect our system of justice? If we don’t speak now, when will we speak?
The American Bar Association has chosen to stand and speak. Now is the time for all of us to speak with one voice. We invite you to stand with us.
– William R. Bay, president of the American Bar Association
Read the complete statement here.
1300+ Associates Sign Open Letter Calling On Big Law Leaders To “Defend” The Legal Profession
The open letter begins:
Over the past several weeks, the Executive Branch has launched an all-out attack aimed at dismantling rule-of-law norms, including by censuring individual law firms by name because of past representation. On March 6, the Trump administration widened the scope of its attack to target firms with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. This is not normal. We call on our employers, large American law firms, to defend their colleagues and the legal profession by condemning this rapid purge of “partisan actors,” a group that seems to be synonymous with those the President feels have wronged him.
And closes with this challenge:
When we are united, we cannot be intimidated. These tactics only work if the majority does not speak up. Our hope was that our employers, some of the most profitable law firms in the world, would lead the way. That has not yet been the case, but it still very much can be. It is easy to be afraid of being the first to speak. We are removing that barrier; we are speaking. Now it is our employers’ turn.
Read the open letter here.
“First They Came for Columbia”
Two Harvard professors, Ryan D. Enos, a professor of Government, and Steven Levitsky, the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and a professor of Government, published a sharply worded opinion piece in the Harvard Crimson on March 14, “First They Came for Columbia.”
In the face of the recent devastating attacks Donald Trump has launched at university campuses—cancelling $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University and $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University; investigating 60 universities, including Harvard, over politicized allegations of antisemitism; and then the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist, recent graduate from Columbia University and a green card holder, arrested not for a crime but for his political speech on campus—the professors warn:
...America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education. That must change. Harvard must stand up, speak out, and lead a public defense of our freedom to speak and study freely.
Read the complete piece here.
Not In Our Name
UCLA Jewish Faculty and Staff Letter
We, Jewish faculty and staff members at UCLA, join with colleagues around the country to express our unequivocal opposition to the arrest and detention of former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, and Columbia University’s subsequent expulsion, suspension, and diploma revocation of dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors, apparently in response to demands from the Trump administration. We are vehemently opposed to efforts by the federal government to arrest, deport, or pressure universities to discipline students, staff, or faculty at UCLA or at any university who are deemed politically unacceptable by virtue of their support of freedom for the Palestinian people. We resist all calls to assist in compiling lists of those targeted for arrest, deportation, or discipline, and reject without equivocation any attempt to invoke our name to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities. These actions do not protect Jewish people but instead are a direct attack on democracy and freedom of speech.
(To read and sign letter, see https://sites.google.com/view/not-in-our-name)
Renowned Concert Pianist András Schiff Cancels Performances in the U.S. Because of Trump’s “Unbelievable Bullying”
Sir András Schiff Photo: via x.com@antoniom646
World renowned concert pianist András Schiff announced on March 19 that he was cancelling his upcoming performances in the United States, including with the New York Philharmonic and at Carnegie Hall, because of Trump’s “unbelievable bullying.” According to the New York Times, which interviewed him, Schiff was “alarmed” by Trump’s “admonishments of Ukraine; his expansionist threats about Canada, Greenland and Gaza; and his support for far-right politicians in Germany.” Schiff’s family in Hungary had gone through the horrors of the Holocaust and, according to the Times, “Trump’s calls for mass deportation reminded [Schiff] painfully of efforts to expel Jews during World War II.”
Schiff has long spoken out against the fascist leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban, an ally of Trump. In a 2013 interview with the BBC, Schiff explained why he had stayed away from that country for years: “I have been threatened that if I return to Hungary, they will cut off both of my hands.”
In a statement about the cancellation of his U.S. appearances, Schiff said, “Some people might say, ‘just shut up and play.’ I cannot, in good conscience, do that. We do not live in an ivory tower where the arts are untouched by society. Arts and politics, arts and society are inseparable. Therefore, as artists, we must react to the horrors and injustices of this world. Have we learned nothing from the course of history—as recently as Europe in the 1930s? Perhaps not.”
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Mahmoud Khalil Is One of the Most Upstanding People I Have Ever Met
We cannot allow fascists to use the pretext of Jewish safety to attack our communities.
Jonathan Ben-Menachem
March 16, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil
As a Jewish student at Columbia University, I was disgusted by the White House’s cynical, smirking claim that it is acting in the interests of Jewish safety in detaining my Palestinian comrade, Mahmoud Khalil, last weekend. To announce Mahmoud’s abduction, the White House pushed social media posts reading “SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” The Christian fascists are gleefully, wickedly invoking the Hebrew goodbye as they terrorize us.
Mahmoud is one of the most upstanding people I have ever met. Alongside other Jewish student activists, I only ever felt Mahmoud’s respect, solidarity, and strength. As Mahmoud told CNN last spring, “I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.” Anyone who has met Mahmoud knows that the White House’s smear campaign is just a shallow pretext to unleash state violence against student activists and further divide already traumatized communities.
Who Will Be Left to Fight With Us?
Read full statement on here or here (subscriptions required).
Quotes from the Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine: Live Event in New York City
March 22, 2025
Macklemore: I was on the road at the time touring in the States when October 7 happens. In previous eras in my life I could have ignored it, maybe I could have scrolled past the days, months, and almost a year and a half of what was to come…. But with my heart already being in the raw and vulnerable state it was in, and the genocide that was underway in Gaza, it was impossible to ignore. I couldn’t get on stage and pretend that I was OK, because I was not OK. I started learning about the history of the occupation, the political ideology of Zionism, Israeli settlers of the West Bank. I was watching videos coming out of Gaza and crying with friends. I started learning about how colonization, capitalism and white supremacy need each other to exist and how they were the root of the Nakba 76 years ago. It never ended for the people of Palestine. I was taking it all in and I was silent. I was scared. I was thinking about myself. I didn’t want to be labeled antisemitic, I didn’t want to get cancelled and lose my career. I didn’t want to lose fans. I didn’t want to offend anyone. But at a certain point I couldn’t believe those voices anymore. My heart had just enough cracks in it that the light of Palestinian resistance, struggle and unwavering faith cracked it open. I was experiencing what happens when the internal pain from being silent outweighs the risk of speaking up in moments of injustice. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it…. I believe it is our moral obligation to adamantly protest the atrocities we are witnessing and funding or we are complicit.
Susan Sarandon: I mourn for those who have been quiet during this televised genocide because their loss is greater than death. Theirs is the loss of compassion and a shared humanity. And what is happening now... here... that makes it possible to happen, what is happening in Palestine cannot ever be normalized.
She then quoted from the journalist Caitlin Johnstone on X:
You Cannot Separate Yourself From What’s Happening In Gaza
The Gaza holocaust has reignited with as much sadistic fury as it ever saw under the Biden administration. More than five hundred people have reportedly been killed by Israeli bombardment since the onslaught resumed early Tuesday morning, including at least 200 children and 112 women.
I will admit to having been hopeful. I know it’s illegal to express hope online, but I really did hope that by some miracle peace would find some way forward in Gaza in spite of the frenetic efforts by Trump and Netanyahu and their cohorts to sabotage it. I had hope, and now I have grief.
Now this constant mass atrocity has been fully reanimated. And the people who rule over us are actively supporting this, while working to imprison, fire, silence and deport anyone who opposes it.
This is a broken civilization. A warped and twisted dystopia. The waking nightmare we are witnessing in Gaza is the result of everything that we have become as a society. Those dead and mutilated children on your social media feed are the fruit on the tree of the western world.
Please understand that this is personal now. This isn’t only about some strangers in the middle east. It’s also about you. It’s about your rights. It’s about your freedom to speak out against the criminality of your rulers. It’s about the kind of society you want to live in. It’s about the kind of future you want for your children.
We are not separate from what’s happening in Gaza, as hard as we might try to make ourselves feel that way. Gaza is here. The waves of blood are lapping at your doorstep. The dead and mutilated children are strewn about your living room and kitchen. They were placed there by the powerful people who run your government and its allies.
There’s no getting away from it. Gaza has been brought right to you and laid at your feet.
And it’s up to you how you’re going to respond to it.
Voices from March 10 to 16
[HIDDEN] Voices from March 10 to 16
Charles Mingus was a giant of avant-garde jazz from the 1950's until his untimely death in the 1970s. Mingus was a radical humanist, speaking out on many questions. Here he adapts Martin Niemöller's poem "First they came for the communists..." and adapts it to the genocidal war then being waged by the U.S. in Vietnam.
Today is a time for artists of conscience.
Charles Mingus Septet - September 19, 1965, Don't let it happen here
At the Village Gate in New York City, Charles Mingus, b. recitation, Charles McPherson, as. Lonnie Hillyer, tp. Jimmy Owens or Hobert Dobsons, tp. Julius Watkins, frh. Howard Johnson, tuba, Jacky Byard, p. Danny Richmond, dr.
We Can’t Give In to Fear
It seems that everyone is afraid — afraid that Donald Trump will target them next, afraid that Elon Musk may single them out on his social media platform. No one wants to speak up. Everyone wants to hide or lay low.
Government workers fear losing their jobs. Corporate CEOs fear losing government business. Media giants fear legal attacks. Billionaires fear losing some wealth. Republican politicians fear their next election.
Even big law firms — whose ethical obligations are to zealously represent clients and uphold the rule of law — fear being targeted by an irrational, vindictive president.
It is often said: When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. If that is true, then only weeks into Donald Trump’s four-year term, we are approaching tyranny.
It does not surprise me that people are worried. I expected many to be concerned. But I did not anticipate that so many leaders across industries and professions would allow fear to silence them.
Even worse than their silence in the face of Trump’s actions against our democracy is their silent complicity as they watch their peers be targeted, humiliated and punished.
Voices from February 24 to March 9
[HIDDEN] Voices from February 24 to March 9
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: “If you’re really about human freedom and justice you have no choice but to speak up”
Etan Thomas is a former NBA player who was outspoken against U.S. wars when he was an active player in the early 2000s and has continued to speak out—most recently being one of the athletes signing a statement against Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. In a March 6 article in the Guardian, Thomas interviewed another former NBA player and activist, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Abdul-Rauf was suspended by the NBA in 1996 for refusing to stand for the pre-game national anthem, saying the U.S. flag was a symbol of oppression. Abdul-Rauf was also one of the signatories to the athletes’ statement against what Israel is doing to Palestinian people.
In the Guardian piece, Thomas begins by noting how Trump has “taken a blowtorch to America,” including pardoning the January 6 rioters and vilifying immigrants. In the interview, Abdul-Rauf speaks to the importance of athletes speaking out now about what is going on, because of the enormous influence they can have. In fact, he says, it’s “mandatory” for athletes—and others—to speak out. In the conclusion of the interview, Abdul-Rauf says: “If you’re really about human freedom and justice you have no choice but to speak up. With everything going on right now, it’s crucial for everyone to use whatever platform they have – not just athletes but everyone. I want to make that point clear. We can’t put this all on athletes even though we know and understand the level of influence athletes have. Silence is acceptance, compliance and ultimately agreement with the status quo. It was Huey P Newton who said: ‘I do not think life will change for the better without an assault on the establishment.’ With the magnitude of where we are right now, remaining silent isn’t an option. Either you’re part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem. And that goes for everyone, not just athletes.”
Read Etan Thomas’s interview with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf here.
Jane Fonda: Life Achievement Award Acceptance Speech | The 31st Annual SAG Awards
Jane Fonda gives a moving speech as she receives the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award for her remarkable contributions throughout her career. “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like Apartheid or our Civil Rights Movement or Stonewall, and asked yourself: Would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?” “We don’t have to wonder anymore, because we are in our documentary moment.”
During a recent White House event advertised as being for Black History Month, Black Trump supporters joyously announced the confirmation of Kash Patel as Trump’s FBI chief—with one saying, “Who’s getting ready for heads to roll?” and specifically naming Pastor Jamal Bryant, leader of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia. In his fiery response, above, Bryant declared, “I ain't ever scared. In case you forgot, I'm from the west side of Baltimore!” February 23, 2025
Richard Gere calls Donald Trump a ‘bully and a thug’ in his acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award at Spain’s Goya Awards, February 8, 2025.
Rep. Al Green: “We've got to demonstrate, and we’ve got to protest and be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
The fascist regime of horrors now on top in America was on full display when Trump addressed Congress and the world on Tuesday night, March 4, spewing out vicious lies, bragging, and threats. Meanwhile, the Democrats sat silent and paralyzed, some waving ineffectual little signs saying “false” and “Musk steals.” The one notable exception was Rep. Al Green, from Houston, who rose up and, waving his cane, interrupted Trump’s speech—denouncing Trump’s claim to have a “mandate” and in particular the threats to cut Medicaid. When he refused to sit down and be silenced, Green was forced out of the Congressional chambers. Two days later, Green was officially “censured” by the House for his action, with 10 Democrats joining in this outrageous punishment.
In an interview on Democracy Now!, Green was unrepentant, saying, “I will stand on what I have done. I’m not ashamed of what I have done” and that he was “prepared to suffer the consequences.” Green pointed to the historic example of the Selma march 60 years ago when hundreds of people courageously protesting for Black civil rights were violently attacked by Alabama state troopers in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday. Green said in the interview: “We have to have that kind of courage now. We’ve got to take a stand against what this president is doing with his incivility. We are going to have to demonstrate. We’re going to have to protest. I don’t want us to have to harken back to the '60s, but we are being treated as though we are in the ’60s. We have to do more than simply say that we want legislation. We've got to demonstrate, and we’ve got to protest and be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
Read/watch the interview here.
Rev. Michael Pfleger: “America, we must resist nonviolently, yes, but resist! Or we will find ourselves repeating Nazi Germany”
In an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune on February 25, Rev. Michael Pfleger tells why his church, St. Sabina Catholic church in the city’s Black far south side, has been flying the U.S. flag upside down. He begins with a warning: “There is a danger of what’s happening in America become normalized. We have watched thousands of federal workers fired from their jobs, with no reason, putting their homes and families at risk. This administration has demonized thousands of Haitian, African, Venezuelan and Mexican immigrants as criminals and scooped them up like cattle, often separating parents and children and deporting them rather than fix the border.” Pfleger cites a number of other outrages being carried out by the Trump regime, including the “takeover and ethnic cleansing of Gaza” and banning of Black history in schools.
Flying the U.S. flag upside down, he writes, “is a symbol of distress and emergency, and our actions are to proclaim that America is in distress, and we are in a ‘state of emergency.’”
He says there is a choice facing everyone in this country: “There are those who truly seek and believe in building a country where there is freedom and justice for all, and another group that will fight, lie and steal to build a country of white supremacy and control by oppression. We must decide whose team we are on because history will judge us. We need to decide whether we will repent of our injustices and commit ourselves to being who we say we are or continuing on this path of wickedness.”
And Pfleger concludes with an urgent, righteous call: “America, we must resist nonviolently, yes, but resist! Or we will find ourselves repeating Nazi Germany.”
Voices from February 17 to 23, 2025
Governor of Illinois JB Pritzker, invokes specter of Nazi Germany in rebuke of Trump administration. | Eyewitness News WTVO WQRF
Former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe is arrested for protesting a MAGA sign at the Huntington Beach (California) Library | DW News | See also, Laura Coate's interview with Kluwe on CNN.
"I know what John Lewis would have done. He would have gotten arrested that day" | NowWeKnowNews | A teacher speaks at Congressman Paul Tonko's town hall meeting on Feb 21, 2025
Political scientists' statement, February 2025
Over twelve hundred political scientists from major universities in the U.S. have signed a statement that says,
In its early days, the second administration of Donald J. Trump has disregarded existing laws and regulations. It threatens to undermine the division of powers and checks and balances, hallmarks of America’s constitutional order.”
It lists as evidence six major actions Trump has taken. The statement ends with:
History tells us that actions like these by elected leaders can undermine democracies and destroy the rule of law. We urge the Administration to reverse course immediately.
Read the complete statement here.
Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College recently posted an opinion piece “Why Are Campuses Quiet and College Leaders Silent When U.S. Democracy Is in Crisis?” on Inside Higher Ed —
The silence of college leaders is matched by the absence of student protests on most of their campuses. Recall that in 2016, when President Trump was first elected, “On many campuses, protests exploded late into election night and lasted several days.”
Nothing like that is occurring now, even as the Trump administration is carrying out mass deportations, threatening people who protest on college campuses, attacking DEI, calling for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, ending life-saving foreign aid programs and trampling the norms of constitutional democracy.
He then writes,
It is the job of those of us who teach at colleges and universities to help them [the students] see what is happening. This is no time for business as usual. Our students need to understand why democracy matters and how their lives and the lives of their families will be changed if American democracy dies.
Ultimately, we should remember that the costs of silence may be as great as the costs of speaking out.
Read the complete essay here.
Close
Governor of Illinois JB Pritzker, invokes specter of Nazi Germany in rebuke of Trump administration. | Eyewitness News WTVO WQRF
Former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe is arrested for protesting a MAGA sign at the Huntington Beach (California) Library | DW News | See also, Laura Coate's interview with Kluwe on CNN.
"I know what John Lewis would have done. He would have gotten arrested that day" | NowWeKnowNews | A teacher speaks at Congressman Paul Tonko's town hall meeting on Feb 21, 2025
Political scientists' statement, February 2025
Over twelve hundred political scientists from major universities in the U.S. have signed a statement that says,
In its early days, the second administration of Donald J. Trump has disregarded existing laws and regulations. It threatens to undermine the division of powers and checks and balances, hallmarks of America’s constitutional order.”
It lists as evidence six major actions Trump has taken. The statement ends with:
History tells us that actions like these by elected leaders can undermine democracies and destroy the rule of law. We urge the Administration to reverse course immediately.
Read the complete statement here.
Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College recently posted an opinion piece “Why Are Campuses Quiet and College Leaders Silent When U.S. Democracy Is in Crisis?” on Inside Higher Ed —
The silence of college leaders is matched by the absence of student protests on most of their campuses. Recall that in 2016, when President Trump was first elected, “On many campuses, protests exploded late into election night and lasted several days.”
Nothing like that is occurring now, even as the Trump administration is carrying out mass deportations, threatening people who protest on college campuses, attacking DEI, calling for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, ending life-saving foreign aid programs and trampling the norms of constitutional democracy.
He then writes,
It is the job of those of us who teach at colleges and universities to help them [the students] see what is happening. This is no time for business as usual. Our students need to understand why democracy matters and how their lives and the lives of their families will be changed if American democracy dies.
Ultimately, we should remember that the costs of silence may be as great as the costs of speaking out.
Read the complete essay here.
Voices from February 10 to 16, 2025
Kendrick Lamar started in on "tv off", the last number in his Superbowl halftime show. At the same time Zül-Qarnain Nantambu, a New Orleans-based artist and one of 400 dancers on the stage, unfurled a joint Palestinian and Sudanese flag, raised it high and ran among the dancers. He had questioned himself, he told The Intercept, “Are you going to be brave? Are you going to be a coward? Are you going to take a stand?” And then decided, “What’s going on in these places are inhumane. The civil war in Sudan, the oppression and the war and the tyranny that’s going on in Gaza, is inhumane. And these people are connected with us all as humans, and especially with me in faith.” “I can’t live in America — live in a lap of luxury — while those are suffering, without trying to help or bring attention to it.”
Acceptance speech of Tilda Swinton, recipient of the Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement at the festive Opening of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival on February 13th, 2025.
George Conway: "J.D. Vance is telling us something we should've already known..."
On February 10 the American Bar Association, the largest voluntary association of lawyers and legal professionals in the world, issued a statement signed by its president, William R. Bay.
The ABA supports the rule of law
It has been three weeks since Inauguration Day. Most Americans recognize that newly elected leaders bring change. That is expected. But most Americans also expect that changes will take place in accordance with the rule of law and in an orderly manner that respects the lives of affected individuals and the work they have been asked to perform.
Instead, we see wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself, such as attacks on constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, the dismantling of USAID and the attempts to criminalize those who support lawful programs to eliminate bias and enhance diversity.
. . .
We call upon our elected representatives to stand with us and to insist upon adherence to the rule of law and the legal processes and procedures that ensure orderly change. The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear. The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law.
We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law. It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less. Read the complete statement.
Rev. Raushenbush: Trump is “waging war” on religious communities
In a February 10 opinion piece on the Religion News Service website titled “Trump isn’t defending religious communities—he’s waging war on them,” Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, head of the Interfaith Alliance and a Baptist minister, exposes the reality behind Trump’s creation of a new task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” Citing actions and statements from Trump, as well Vice President Vance and Elon Musk, Raushenbush writes that “it’s the political right and its Christian nationalist allies who are proving to be a grave threat to faith communities — including most Christians. In just its first few weeks since taking office, the Trump administration has quickly become the most harmful to religious freedom in modern American history.”
Raushenbush ends by writing, “Throughout history, authoritarians have attempted to force faith communities to bend the knee. We must stand strong and speak out knowing that faith-based activism is a powerful counterforce to extremism.”
Go here to read the whole opinion piece by Raushenbush.
Close
Voices from January 21 to February 9, 2025
Burning poster of Trump and swastika at a rally protesting Marco Rubio's visit to Panama City, February 2, 2025. Photo: AP
Teachers, students and others in Panama demonstrated against the visit of Marco Rubio (Trump's secretary of state). Diogenes Sanchez, the teachers’ union leader said protesters “categorically rejected the United States’ attempts to turn Panama into a protectorate and a colony again.” “We are going to fight to defend our national sovereignty.”
Outernational: Todos Somos Ilegales
The revolutionary band Outernational has been holding a Todos Somos Ilegales Concert Series, with different guest artists—broadcasting live and direct from First Live in Brooklyn, NYC, every Wednesday and livestreaming on YouTube and Instagram. Miles Solay of Outernational says: “I have put out an open call for a galvanizing cultural uprising amongst the artists in the USA who hate the ascendant fascist USA.”
World Fellowship Center Board Statement & Call to Action
“...We know that we are living through a moment in history that future generations will look back at and ask how certain things could possibly have taken place. We know that the founders of the World Fellowship Center hoped to create a space and foster a movement that would stand firm against such horrors as those listed above—and the more unthinkable horrors that will certainly come if we all do not take immediate action.
“And so we start with this statement and an open invitation to join us in concerted action to defend our core values and our collective future. We also reaffirm our commitment to sustaining and growing our supportive community spaces where we can come together, connect, reflect, strategize, heal, and find safety whatever the broader context.” Read the complete statement.
─ The WFC Board of Trustees
ICE Raids & African Americans
ICE vs Teachers? Don't mess with us.
Paul Street:
Vichy Times: On “Anticipatory Obedience”
Some News Not "Fit to Print"
I’ve been writing and speaking here about Vichy Dem capitulation — advance surrender really — to the insane Republi-fascist Amerikaner takeover of the United States in the wake of Mein Trump’s so-called election mandate... Read more
from The Paul Street Report
January 27, 2025
Paul Street is an independent progressive policy researcher, award-winning journalist, historian, author and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois. He writes daily at The Paul Street Report on the moves of the fascist Trump/Maga movement.
Bishop Mariann Budde: “May I ask you to have mercy Mr. President...”
Light projection by artist @lightguerrilla, Cal Anderson Park, Seattle, Washington, January 24, 2025. Photo: @streetphotojournalism
Abiodun Oyewole