Dissent

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Among the most beautiful cities in world, my hometown Chicago has been defiled, violated, and ravaged by Trump’s paramilitary shock troops under the pretext of immigration enforcement. Though confronted by an anti-immigration army, neighborhoods throughout Chicagoland have mobilized in experimental and collective ways to push back against the […]

Cartoon

Famed Cartoonist Jules Feiffer Taught Us to Fail Up and Never Surrender

Tomdispatch

By Robert Lipsyte ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It’s been more than nine months now since my friend, famed cartoonist Jules Feiffer, died, a week before his 96th birthday after continually warning me that the evil spirit that had descended on this country was leaving him frightened and dispirited. He was glad, he told me, that […]

Academic Freedom

Academic Freedom Under Siege: Right Wing Repression and Principled Resistance

Mehmet Rakipoglu and İbrahim Ozcosar

By Mehmet Rakipoğlu and İbrahim Özcoşar | – Exeter, UK and Mardin, Türkiye (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In the aftermath of 7 October 2023 – when Hamas’s surprise “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack and Israel’s devastating genocidal war on Gaza shook global politics – Western academia has entered its own crisis. From the United States […]

Authoritarianism

We Must Not Look Away from Palestine: Resisting Oppression and Pursuing Justice

Roy Eidelson

Roy Eidelson Note: This essay is adapted from the author’s August address at the American Psychological Association annual convention and from a webinar he presented in early September. The webinar includes many visual depictions of the topics discussed here. ( Counterpunch ) – Welcome everyone. I’m Roy Eidelson, president of the Society for the Study of Peace, […]

Dissent

A Case for Nonviolent Resistance: MAGA Men and Rage

Andrea Mazzarino

( Tomdispatch.com ) – One strangely hot November afternoon, I waited for my elementary-school-aged kids to arrive at their bus stop. The quiet in our rural area was eerie. It captured the mood in the days after a national election that no one in my little community yet knew exactly how to respond to. In […]

Authoritarianism

The 6 Superpowers that Faith Communities bring to nonviolent Struggle

Waging Nonviolence

While religion has far too often been a tool of authoritarianism, faith institutions and communities have also been the life force of so many freedom movements. Maria J. Stephan ( Waging Nonviolence ) – In June, Catholic Bishop Michael Pham of San Diego, who fled Vietnam as a 13-year-old refugee in 1980, was part […]

Authoritarianism

A Strategy for Controlling an Out-of-Control Government: Alliance, Defiance, Noncompliance

Tomdispatch

By Nan Levinson ( Tomdispatch.com ) – On July 17th, I joined a group of Vermonters for a Good Trouble Lives On action in a village near where we were staying that month. Over the past 161 straight days, a small but determined contingent of mostly White, mostly grey-haired, mostly too-polite-to-make-much-trouble residents had been gathering […]

Authoritarianism

New data shows No Kings was One of the largest Days of Protest in US history

Waging Nonviolence

The historic number of No Kings Day protesters and their expansive geographic spread are signs of a growing and durable pro-democracy movement. Erica Chenoweth, Soha Hammam, Jeremy Pressman, and Christopher Wiley Shay ( Waging Nonviolence ) – No Kings Day on June 14 was one of the largest single days of protest in United States […]

Authoritarianism

Saudi Arabia: Executions Surge in bid to Crush Dissent (HRW)

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Saudi authorities have been carrying out an unprecedented surge in executions in 2025 without apparent due process, Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center said today. The June 14 execution of Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family, raises concerns that the […]