Everything is Political

CÉLINE SEMAAN: How did the Orange Tree Series come about for you? VIC MENSA: I was between albums and looking for a way to express myself, connect to people, and fill that time meaningfully. CÉLINE: The Orange Tree Series establishes you as a politically savvy individual with a lot to teach. When did you start connecting with politics? VIC: Music is political because the people who make the music exist inside of systems, and systems are dictated by politics.

Do You Love Me? Still from Whispers (1980) by Maroun Bagdadi Do You Love Me is a personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage. It is a love letter to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss.

CÉLINE SEMAAN: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I know the situation in Lebanon is really stressful. How has it been for you as creatives? Can you tell me a little bit about how your life has been since the Israeli occupation of Lebanon started again? NASRI SAYEGH: Exhausting. It’s been nonstop. I don’t call myself an artist, even if you do… The people working on the battlefield, in the bakeries, they are all also artists, because resistance is an art form.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory proves that people are not buying Israel’s war crimes The election victory of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is one of the most stunning defeats for Israel’s foreign policy since the state came into existence. The country’s US lobbying arm spent a record $30 million to defeat one man who called out the country’s horrid human rights record.

From the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the Balfour Declaration to Dr. Jason Arday When Dr. Jason Arday was appointed at Cambridge in 2023, the University celebrated him. He was thirty-seven, a tenured Professor of the Sociology of Education, the youngest Black person to hold a chair there in the institution’s history. Cambridge, ever eager to promote itself as a bastion of progress in a modern, multicultural world, celebrated Arday’s appointment.

Across Borders, We Choose Each Other Refuge, relationality, and Indigenous feminist solidarity across Abya Yala and Turtle Island I grew up with remnants of war around me. Bombings, town takeovers, kidnappings - they were everyday news. It was normal to me to hear how conflict and war was impacting Colombians. I did not have the analysis yet, but as an adult I see how all that violence was mainly perpetrated in rural areas with Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and peasant communities affected the most.

I was at the European Union (EU) Cotton Alliance informational lunch this spring, trying to neatly nibble on European cheeses when I was passed a plain brown Pima Cotton shirt with a QR code brandished on its tag. Within seconds of scanning I was directed to a website: “You know what you choose! From farm to end product, EU Cotton ensures full transparency and responsibility at every stage of production.” I was able to access information about farms, suppliers, and production facilities.

"Accepting the reality that "pure objectivity" is a dangerous myth, and acknowledging both the effects of implicit bias and the validity of emotion, allow the opportunity for transparency about what happens in reality-and then for accountability."

It has always been us How East African Communities Are Building Power Beyond the Ballot There is a woman I know, and I will call her Mama Zawadi because she sells mitumba near the roundabout and she has seven children and the energy of a person who has decided, somewhere deep in the middle of her life, that exhaustion is for people with options, and last election season she woke up at four in the morning, stood in a queue for six hours in the kind of sun that doesn’t care about your schedule,...

More than 4,000 Lebanese killed by Israel since March 2026 have barely been laid to rest. Yet on June 26, Lebanon and “Israel” struck a trilateral framework agreement in Washington to “proceed in good faith until a full and lasting peace is achieved.” Let’s call it what it is: capitulation. The agreement conditions an end to Israel’s occupation on Hezbollah’s disarmament, a demand Lebanon cannot meet without risking civil war.