Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by LA Progressive
Welcome To The AI Ripoff Economy
Where Every Consumer Has a Different Price. Corporations are transforming shopping into a data-driven extraction system, using surveillance, pricing algorithms, and hidden fees to maximize what they can take from you. Every day, companies find better, and sneakier, ways to reach deeper into our wallets. They trap us in subscriptions, bury fees until checkout, use algorithms to collude with competitors, and mine our personal data to charge us the most we’re willing to pay.
Congressional Black Caucus: When Black Excellence Is Not Black Power
At CBC Weekend, corporate influence, political prestige, and radical organizing collide over the question of what Black power actually requires. I am still unpacking from the Congressional Black Caucus’ Annual Legislative Conference, literally and figuratively… I went to “CBC Weekend” for the first time when I was 26 or 27. I didn’t even know that they had panels during the day. I rolled to DC, hair done and dressed to the nines to party hop and see who I could meet.
America Sends Bombs: Gaza’s Children Need Pencils
The contrast between a massive U.S. weapons package and the daily needs of displaced Palestinians could hardly be starker. After spending millions of dollars redecorating the White House and transforming D.C. monuments, President Trump approved, on September 15, 2026, an additional 2.8 billion dollar sale of heavy bombs to Israel, including 40,000 one-ton bombs, 20,000 of the 2,000 lb. bombs, and 20,000 bunker-busting penetrator warheads.
Nonviolent Solutions Are Everywhere And They’re Already Working
From restorative justice and peacebuilding to climate action and civil resistance, communities around the world are proving that violence is not the only option. Nonviolent solutions are everywhere! Tens of thousands of people are joining the annualCampaign Nonviolence Action Daysfrom September 21 to October 2.
How the Media Turned Jason Arday Into a Racialized Spectacle
The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution. Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society.
LA Landlords Have A New Way To Make Renters Pay More
Above photo: Hanna Yoseph speaks at a tenant group rally outside of Los Angeles City Hall on August 10. Erin Rode. Tenant advocates say Ratio Utility Billing Systems function like hidden rent increases. By shifting unpredictable building costs onto renters. In Alicia Yu’s first post-college apartment, a studio in Burbank, monthly utility costs were calculated through a process she’d never heard of.
ICE Killing in Maine Shows Why Vets Need Vetting—And Not Just in Politics
Even after Graham Platner abandoned his U.S. Senate bid, his friends and foes argue about whether service-related conditions—which earned him a 100 percent disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—contributed to past substance abuse, mental health problems, and aggression against intimate partners. Now, in the same state, the spotlight has shifted to David Brouillette, a troubled Afghan war vet who might also have been better off harvesting oysters.
The Collapse Of Nuclear Arms Control Puts The World In Peril
Above photo: Sean Delonas/Cagle Cartoons. Nuclear weapons spending is soaring, arms-control treaties are collapsing. And national leaders are once again threatening mass destruction. Although 81 years have passed since the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945, the rulers of major nations continue their reckless march toward a nuclear holocaust.
From El Paso to ICE: When Anti-Immigrant Hate Becomes Government Policy
On July 7, 2026, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a 52-year-old father of three, a homebuilder who’d lived here 35 years — left before dawn to pick up his crew. An ICE agent shot him in the abdomen during a stop. He died at Ben Taub Hospital. DHS has since admitted he wasn’t the man they were looking for. Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, an ICE officer shot 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero to death during an enforcement operation. Same admission: wrong man.
AI Is the New Plastic
The insertion is the business model Plastic didn’t win because it was better than wood or metal or bamboo at any one task. It won because a small number of petrochemical companies, sitting on a captive input, could make it cheaper than anything else and then sell it into every possible application at once. The generalization was the product.
Activists Throw Wet Blanket On FERC’s ‘Blanket Certificate Policy’ Changes
Above photo: Police warned the sit-in participants of their being arrested if they continued their sit-in. Before the July 16 meeting, BXE members began an early morning sit-in to protest FERC’s proposed blanket certificate policy changes.
No More Dollars For Walmart After Kohen Wiley’s Death
A national boycott campaign seeks to hold the retail giant accountable for its role in a police encounter that ended with a Black baby dead. I spoke with Davion Williams the day before the 21-year-old Black father had to bury his 1-year-old baby, murdered by police in Senatobia, Mississippi. “Justice for Kohen Wiley!” he chanted, fist raised, and also dazed, trying to find his footing in the midst of the unimaginable theft of his beautiful baby boy’s life.
‘Hondurasgate’: A Warning For Latin America
And Symptom of Deeper Crises in Honduras. Hondurasgate is symptomatic of a much more ambitious project to exploit Honduras and impose the “Donroe Doctrine” across the region. Governance in Honduras shifted sharply to the extreme right within months of National Party’s Nasry Asfura taking office on January 27, succeeding the Libre party’s progressive Xiomara Castro.
The Spirit Of Chavismo: Why Trump Must Not Invade Venezuela
Above photo: Free Pix. And so it is written—tragically, predictably—that Venezuelans and Americans will bleed because power prefers spectacle to accountability. In his excellent and provocative article, Roger D. Harris posed the following question in a recent edition ofLAProgressive:Will the U.S. Attack Venezuela?His essay served as a warning, a fiery herald no eye could ignore. I do not rise to echo that caution across the void; I come to bear witness, a sentinel tracing its contours through time.
Fentanyl Gets Cheaper, Venezuelans Get Bombed
The U.S. war on drugs remains what it has long been. Not a public health strategy, not even a serious global interdiction campaign, but a political weapon aimed at adversaries. In October 2025, the United States cut a deal with China to reduce tariffs on imports tied to fentanyl — the synthetic opioid responsible for more than70,000U.S. overdose deaths annually.
Never Forget What?
Never forget meant never forgive. Never forget meant someone would pay. And with my Muslim name, my South Asian heritage, I knew who that someone would be. Twenty-four years later, I was right. The War Without End The Brown University Costs of War project has done what our government would not: counted the actual toll of the “War on Terror.” The numbers stop you cold. Over 4.5 million dead from direct violence and war’s reverberating effects. Let that sink in. That’s more than 1,500 9/11s.
As ICE Raids Intensify, Trained Volunteers Patrol LA Streets
Above photo: Francisco Romero of Unión del Barrio patrols the streets of South Los Angeles for signs of ICE activity. Marco Amador. Neighborhood groups monitor immigration enforcement. Amid rising fear and federal scrutiny. The day after families across the country gathered to celebrate Father’s Day, Francisco Romero huddled at dawn with 10 volunteers in a South Los Angeles parking lot. The group was preparing to patrol the neighborhood for signs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
How Structural Racism Fuels America’s Endless Wars
Above photo: Cagle Cartoons. From Segregation To The Backdoor Draft. De jure segregation, the backdoor draft, and elite immunity are part of a recurring cycle of American inequality. As the U.S. threatens new war in Iran, history again points to who will bear the cost—and who will benefit. From housing discrimination to military recruitment, from school segregation to foreign policy, some issues in American life may seem disconnected—mere fragments of a chaotic system.
The Human Cost Of Syria Sanctions
Above photo: Ahmed akacha. Israel, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies are pleased with the removal of the Assad government. However, a very heavy price has been paid by the majority of Syrians. And the cost is ongoing. On May 13, Trump announced he is ordering the removal of sanctions on Syria. Some of the U.S. sanctions can be quickly terminated because they were issued by Executive Order.
On The 77th Anniversary Of The Nakba And Israeli Support Of Genocide
Above photo: war on children. The genocide carried out against the Palestinians is not covered up. It cannot be. Not in the age of the Internet. Jew hatred in Germany, as compared to the Israeli hatred of Arabs, was not as intense or broadly supported. The industrial murder of Jews was a late development in Nazi Germany. It was not that well known and took place mostly outside of the country.
Latin America Three Months into Trump
Above photo: Cagle Cartoon: Angel Boligan. If there is an upside to Trump’s return to the Oval Office, it is that he unapologetically exposes the core imperialist drive for naked domination. Making explicit the coercive foundations of US hegemony in the region. Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean beingneglectedby the hegemon to the north.
Plutonium is one of the most dangerous substances known to humanity. Even microscopic exposure can cause cancer, birth defects, and long-term environmental contamination of water, air, and soil for 100,000 years. If a truck carrying this material were to be involved in an accident, spill, or even targeted by bad actors, the consequences would be catastrophic. A single breach of containment could expose millions of Angelenos to radiation.
More Than Jobs At Stake In Attack On Pro-Palestinian Campus Speech
Above photo: Matt Hrbak / Flickr. Students and professors across the country are being witch-hunted for their position on Palestine. In a serious threat to democracy, dissent, and the ability of ordinary people to resist authoritarianism. For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life.
Suicide by Rental Truck: Why The U.S. Gets Violent
In his insightful and prophetic book, Hatch warned that his generational cohort of “special operators,” who experienced a similar “volume of fighting,” were now facing: “A serious volume of aftermath. Marriages falling apart. Alcoholism. Guys getting kicked out of their houses. Guys drowning in opioids.
Running In Circles On Racial Justice
Above photo: Thomas G. on Pixabay. The reaction to racial justice is relentless. And comes whenever strives are made to make the nation more inclusive. We keep running in circles when it comes to addressing racial justice in the US. This means that with every advance we almost come back to the same place and must fight the battles all over again.
What Threats Face Pro-Palestine Activists As Trump Returns?
Trump has signalled his intentions this time around by the people he has selected for key positions. Mike Huckabee, his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, is a religious fanatic who doesn’t think Israeli settlements are illegal and says “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria [the territory’s biblical name, revived in Israeli propaganda].” He even insists there is no such thing as a Palestinian.
Elon Musk And His Dangerous, Stupid DOGE Plans
By Tom Hastings, LA Progressive Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are partnering to create and new US government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk underwrote the Trump campaign with $200 million in donations (AP estimate) and his own brand of buying votes. Supposedly, the acronym comes from Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, the Doge. Whatever. When Heather Cox Richardson says the name of the pending Musk/Ramaswamy agency, she pronounces it doggy.
Reviving The Peace Movement In The Age Of Trump
By William Hartung, LA Progressive To his credit, Reagan developed a visceral opposition to such weaponry, while his wife, Nancy, urged him to reduce nuclear weapons as a way to burnish his legacy.
Why Does Israel Inspire Such Transparent, Fanatical Lying?
By Mike Males, LA Progressive Is there another explanation than crude racism? The devaluation of everything Palestinian and grotesque official license for Israelis to break laws, commit violence and vandalism, and act in viciously bigoted fashion while officials and media reporters tar anyone who opposes them as “anti-Semitic” was repeated in microcosm in Amsterdam and Los Angeles, as in many other settings.
Saving the bumblebee starts with changing our farming practices
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Jimmy Videle is a farmer, naturalist, and researcher. He is the author of The Veganic Grower’s Handbook: Cultivating Fruits, Vegetables, and Herbs from Urban Backyard to Rural Farmyard (Lantern Press, 2023), the co-founder of NAVCS-Certified Veganic, and a contributor to the Observatory. His writing has appeared in CounterPunch, Countercurrents, and LA Progressive, among others. The weather warms.
US Seizes Venezuelan Jet Plane, Confirming Who Is The Rogue Nation
Increasingly, countries throughout the Global South are rejecting and criticizing Washington’s intervention. The Biden/Harris administration is renewing its attacks on Venezuela. On Monday, September 2, US officials seized a jet plane belonging to the Venezuelan government when it was in the Dominican Republic for servicing, then flew it to Florida. Contrary to a false report in the NY Times, the plane was not “owned by Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro”.
The Condition Of The American Working Class Today
Above photo: Haymarket Square Monument. Labor Day 2024. American households carry probably the highest load of any advanced economy, estimated at 54% of median family household disposable income. And that’s rising. On Labor Day this writer has summed up the condition of the American working class over the past year. This national election year it is perhaps useful to review not only the past year but what has happened since the last election in 2020.
Capitalism And Democracy Are Opposites
Above photo: Cagle Cartoons: Peter Kuper. When you cross the threshold into a workplace, you leave whatever democracy might exist outside. You enter a workplace from which democracy is excluded. Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably. No matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true and never was.
Starvation In Sudan
Above photo: Operation Lifeline Helps Displaced in Southern Sudan. United Nations Photo / Flickr. As in Gaza, the deprivation is deliberate. For months, we’ve all been able to stay reasonably informed about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But there’s another horrific war that’s gotten so little coverage you could be excused for not knowing anything about it. What we have in mind is the seemingly never-ending, utterly devastating war in Sudan. Think of it as the missing war.
Europe At The ‘Hot Gates’!
Above photo: Ava Babili/Flickr. Like the 300 Spartans before them at Thermopylae, the West’s distribution to Ukraine of Russia’s $300 billion of assets will not be able to prevent eventual defeat. 2,500 years ago, the myth goes, 300 Spartans faced a much larger military force from the East at Thermopylae, a small mountain pass in ancient central Greece. Thermopylae is the Latin word for ‘Hot Gates’, as the area featured hot springs.
170 Years Of United States Aggression Against Nicaragua
Above photo: Roberto Zuniga. Nicaragua has good reason to be wary of the US. They interfered with Nicaragua’s independence for 170 years. The vast majority of Nicaraguans continue to resist. When the Monroe Doctrine was declared in 1823 it was aimed at European colonial powers. It told them to butt out: the US “sphere of influence” included all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Presidential Debate That Wasn’t
Above Photo: Cagle Cartoon: Rayma Supani Very little was revealed by either candidate during the debate as to how they planned to deal with the voters’ top issues of War and the Economy. In the days immediately following the first US presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, countless analyses have appeared. Nearly all have focused on the candidates’ delivery, less on what they said, and almost nothing about what should have been but was not said.
What Excuse Do Democrats Now Have For Holding A Virtual Convention?
Biden’s debate meltdown has Democrats scrambling, but they no longer have an excuse for holding a virtual nomination. By Ann Garrison, LA Progressive The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been planning a virtual, videocast, online convention like that occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Air pollution is killing millions and rising exponentially-a shift in agriculture can solve it
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Jimmy Videle is a farmer, naturalist, and researcher. He is the author of The Veganic Grower’s Handbook: Cultivating Fruits, Vegetables, and Herbs from Urban Backyard to Rural Farmyard (Lantern Press, 2023) and the co-founder of NAVCS-Certified Veganic. He is a contributor to the Observatory. His writing has appeared in CounterPunch, Countercurrents, and LA Progressive, among others.
The Corporate Media Is Failing Us At A Critical Moment
The corporate media undermines moral witnessing by often prioritizing the discredited notion of balance over the more crucial goal of seeking truth in the service of accountability and democracy. By Henry A. Giroux, LA Progressive Bearing witness is a crucial marker of a responsible press and media. It brings to light the unnecessary suffering and hardship of those rendered voiceless and disposable, as well as the underlying forces that produce such conditions.
Biden’s Creeping “Red Line” Allows More Israeli Atrocities in Gaza
By Khalil Al-Wazir and Dan Kovalik, LA Progressive, June 9, 2024 What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians, which the Biden Administration continues to try to downplay, excuse, and explain away.
What Leading Consumer Brands Drive Global Deforestation?
Above photo: Activists protest P&G’s role in deforestation and human rights abuses. Rainforest Action Network. Despite corporate commitments, deforestation rates remain high. And community land conflicts continue. Since the turn of the century, there has been a consistent average annual loss of 3 to 4 million hectares (7.4 to 9.9 million acres) of tropical forest globally.
Despite Biden's Claims, The U.S. Still Has Lots Of Leverage With Israel
This is not defense of any kind. This is retribution. This is vengeance. This is not even an eye for an eye. This is eyes, ears, nose, arms, legs, and life for an eye. by W. D.
Veganic Growing And Animal-Free Agriculture: The Path Forward
Above photo: Lum3n. Veganic growing seeks to cultivate food for humans. But in a way that benefits all floral and faunal biodiversity, as much as is humanly possible. Nature is complex. Her underground web is as intricate as her above-ground diversity. Below our feet, bacteria, microorganisms, mycorrhizae, and roots of perennial plants work symbiotically, absorbing and moving nutrients to wherever the need arises.
Will Biden's Bellicose Rhetoric Lead Us To War?
The U.S., Russia, and China must engage in serious diplomacy now. Name calling and personal insults do nothing for the peace effort. They only bring us closer to war. by Jeffrey Sachs, LA Progressive There has been a complete collapse of diplomacy between the US and Russia, and a near-total collapse between the US and China. Europe, which has made itself far too dependent on the US for its own good, simply follows the Washington line.
The Ghost Of Clausewitz And The Ukraine War
Above photo: Wikimedia Commons. How have the two sides—NATO/Ukraine on the one hand and Russia on the other— applied (or misapplied) the Principles of War to date? “This week, February 24, 2024 marks the beginning of the third year of the war in Ukraine. Hundreds, if not thousands, of assessments of the first two years of the war will be published, heard, or viewed.
How US Government Statistics Are Like The Bible
Above photo: Public Domain. The economic reality the US public deals with differs so much from selective statistics reported by the media that there’s a split in perceptions of the actual US economy. This week on February 2nd, the US Labor Department released its monthly jobs report for January. One of the Department’s two surveys showed +353,000 jobs created in January.
Forever War Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry
The U.S. has a long history of killing civilians in air strikes, failing to investigate the deaths, and ignoring pleas for apology and compensation. by Nick Turse, LA Progressive In war, people die for absurd reasons or often no reason at all. They die due to accidents of birth, the misfortune of being born in the wrong place — Cambodia or Gaza, Afghanistan or Ukraine — at the wrong time.
A Ten-Step Guide For Peace In The Middle East
For 2024, we need to build a broad critical mass to convince the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support international calls for a ceasefire – as in this moment, right now. by Nadia Ahmad, LA Progressive In January, as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we need to know if our elected officials will be hiding in their offices on the Hill, participating in sanctimonious MLK celebrations, or out in the streets calling for peace.
In Gaza, Killing Children And The Burdens of Conscience
We condemn the attacks by Hamas deliberately targeting Israeli civilians for killing and kidnapping. And we condemn Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, which is again killing large numbers of Palestinian civilians. We grieve for all the lives lost and for all those injured and traumatized. The root of the current violence is the oppression and abuses suffered daily by Palestinian people as a whole under decades of cruel Israeli occupation and expansionism.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with LA
Contact LA, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack