Everything is Political

As ICE Violence Escalates, So Should Our Solidarity On a cold evening in March 2021, my wife and I attended a vigil in Union Square for the victims of a shooting in Atlanta. A lone gunman had driven to three Asian spas and killed eight people, six of them Asian women. There were hundreds of us there that night, packing the steps facing 14th Street.

The Billionaires Buying Our Attention Are Buying Our Reality Paying attention to who owns our media is a tradition and counteraction as tale as old as capitalism. Who impacts the messages and narratives we are subjected to? Why did Larry Ellison’s Oracle insist on buying a significant stake in TikTok’s U.S. operation? Why is the merger between Warner Bros. and Paramount so alarming in a climate where misinformation, authoritarianism, and fascism are rampant and go hand-in-hand?

I have been carrying this day in my chest for almost two years. Through the jungle. Through more than ten trips to Ecuador, dozens of hours of footage, and more tears than I can count. Tonight, my film When Waterfalls Die goes online for the whole world to see. Join me at 6pm ET for a live conversation with my friend, human rights activist and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, presented by The Slow Factory and Everything is Political. The screening follows right after.

Author Elena Dudum on how Abdelrahman ElGendy’s HUNA, like all revolutions, is driven by a love deeper than love for the self. I came across Abdelrahman ElGendy in a thumbnail. A small headshot cramped amongst other headshots of writers who had won the 2024 Courage to Write grant with The De Groot Foundation. In the winter of 2024, I clung to victories that were not mine. I searched for spaces that were openly supporting work by outspoken Arab writers. No, no, no. Not outspoken: unafraid.

New Documentary “When Waterfalls Die” Chronicles Shuar Arutam Fight to Save Ecuadorian Amazon from Open-Pit Copper Mining Directed by award-winning journalist Brandi Morin, the film follows the Maikiuants community’s battle against a Canadian mining company’s plans to convert 268 square kilometers of pristine rainforest into industrial mines A powerful new short documentary chronicles the urgent struggle of the Pueblo Shuar Arutam, from the Maikiuants community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, as...

As you chose to remain anonymous, we can’t help but identify with you. In the future record of this heinous crime you have survived, future generations will continue fighting for you. I know this to be true, because what you are representing is the ultimate symbol of survival of a self-destructive patriarchal society that is designed to rape bodies and Land, and get away with it.

The Standardization of Clothing and Bodies Before patterns, there was fabric and a body. Cloth was wrapped, folded, and adjusted to changing weather, movement, landscape and individual needs. Garments adapted to the body rather than forcing the body to adapt to them. Today, most clothing begins with a pattern - a template based on measurements, averages, and assumptions about what a body should be.

First, you get the alarming news of an incoming airstrike. Or you don’t. Then you hear what can only be described as thundering sounds overhead. This is usually when you start to hear your own people firing gunshots into the sky, warning anyone in the vicinity of the airstrike. There is no need to point a firearm at your own people when the enemy is overhead. At night, these pretty little red bullets shine bright and illuminate the sky, shooting at an enemy they cannot reach.

This month, the Internet has been abuzz with calls to “De-Flock America” on Halloween. People are being encouraged to wear costumes that cover their face, leave their debit and credit cards at home, and destroy or at least decommission Flock cameras and automated license plate readers created by Flock Safety in their neighborhood.

Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor, which premiered at Sundance in January, is 93 minutes of vérité filmmaking about three physicians who volunteer at a besieged hospital in Gaza. It is also a film about determination, of materialist courage—to heal, to do no harm—persisting under the relentlessness of genocide and occupation.