ZNetwork

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work. If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

“We have nothing to do with that.” An American Medical Association staff member said this to me with a look of disdain on her face. I was at the AMA’s annual conference in Chicago, urging the doctors in attendance to speak up for their imprisoned Palestinian colleague, pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. My group posted up outside conference rooms and handed out informational flyers uplifting his story.

The federal monitor charged with rooting out “fraud, corruption, illegal behavior, dishonesty, and unethical practices” in the Auto Workers union issued a report today accusing UAW President Shawn Fain of “retaliation” against Vice President Rich Boyer. Earlier reports by Monitor Neil Barofsky had made similar claims regarding Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock.

Let’s consider a fact so stark it barely registers: the world’s five richest billionaires have more than doubled their wealth since 2020. Meanwhile, 60 percent of humanity has grown poorer over the same period. At current trajectories, we will see the world’s first trillionaire within a decade. We have grown so accustomed to statistics like these that they have lost their capacity to shock. But they should shock us.

Turnwait Otu Michael Turnwait Otu Michael is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. His research focuses on population health, demography, health governance, sexual and reproductive health, and health in conflict-affected settings, with particular interest in the intersections of conflict, development, and public health across Africa.

Americans usually think about confrontation with Iran in terms of sanctions, warships, nuclear sites, and diplomatic ultimatums. But an equally important front doesn’t involve firepower or government threats: the media space. Here, political narratives are built, repeated, legitimized, and eventually translated into pressure. That’s why the financing of the media network Iran International deserves closer scrutiny in Washington. The question is not whether Iranians deserve independent journalism.

On Sunday, June 21, Colombian voters went to the polls to vote in the second round of the presidential election. That same night, after an intense campaign, Abelardo de la Espriella and the political and media apparatus supporting him proclaimed victory based on preliminary results. Iván Cepeda and Aida Quilcue’s campaign waited for the official tally from electoral magistrates before acknowledging the final result of the runoff.

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work. If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

As an African feminist pushing against how systems of oppression endeavor to constrain and diminish, I am concerned with the functions of violence. Violence in its myriad forms serves to inscribe who is deemed human and who is not, who is considered deserving of dignity and who must be stripped of it. It is a language of demarcating society’s status quo and the bounds of acceptable identities and behaviors.

While El Salvador’s government promotes its countries’ beaches, volcanoes, and safe streets in gentrified neighborhoods, thousands of Salvadoran families are denouncing arbitrary detentions and seeking justice for relatives imprisoned under President Nayib Bukele’s extended state of emergency. The contrast is stark: the country welcomes tourists with open arms while ruthlessly imprisoning its own people, drawing widespread international criticism for human rights abuses.