In case anyone was wondering why police unions shouldn’t be welcome in our union coalitions nor conversations about workers, look no further than their response to the LA May Day celebration.

There couldn’t be a clearer way to articulate how the police “protect and serve” property and Capitalism, not us, than to attack those who come out in support of the International Workers Day. May Day is the one day that acknowledges the struggles and achievements of the labor movement, pushing back on the constant adulation of bosses and Capitalists. It reminds me of when a kid will ask “Why is there no Kids Day?” Because everyday, including Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, is entirely about you. Now make your mom a card you ungrateful little shit (laudatory).

But it’s not about individual jobs, or individual bosses, which might be fine, good, or even great. It’s about the system. Not systems, because it’s all one system, you just usually only get to see bits and pieces, making it hard to connect the dots. But our path forward, our path out of this mess, our path to repair, our path to accountability, requires connecting those dots.

I attended a screening of the documentary, Seeds for Liberation, which connects the dots of police brutality, ICE agents terrorizing communities, civil rights organizing, immigration, and US Imperialism to Palestine, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the West Bank, and genocide and war crimes in Gaza.

Had it been made a few months later, it would also connect Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, where Israeli leaders state they are following the “Gaza model.” If it was being made today, it would include the Republicans’ plan to lock Black and brown communities out of representation in the House now that the Supreme Court has declared that racism is over, or more specifically, that racist gerrymandering is great again.

It’s eye opening to see how the struggles across our communities, across our religions and skin colors, and across the globe share the common thread of US imperialism, which has always been and always will be, a deeply anti-liberation enterprise.

I don’t know how you could sit in the room and watch a Palestinian man share that he doesn’t just see his kids in the children he sees executed, shredded, and incinerated on live stream every day, but that those dead children look like his children, and not have your breath be sucked out of your lungs. That has to be an extra level of mindfuck, to see that even for a second, before your brain can reassure you that no, your kid is in the other room. Safe.

And it’s all around us:
Parents seeing the children crying as ICE agents kidnap their parent.
Parents hearing the tiny voice of Philando Castile’s girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter telling her mom, “It’s O.K. I’m right here with you” after watching a police officer fire 7 bullets into the car they were sitting in. Parents seeing Emmett Till’s deformed face or parents now being told their Black child supposedly hung themself from a tree.
Parents hearing Hind Rijab begging rescuers to save her and her family as they were being executed by the IDF.

If you are not a parent, I cannot express in words how privileged I am to not see my child on the screen daily while watching a livestreamed genocide, continuing year after year.

So to my friends with those kids and the families who have adopted me as your own: I cannot express deep enough or heartfelt enough grief, anguish, and anger over the fact that you might see even a flash of your children in those photos and videos.
That you have to fear that the Black body in the street, executed by police, might have your kid’s face.
That you have to worry that your own child knocking frantically at your door might be sent there to trick you into coming out and being kidnapped by ICE or CBP, never to see them again.

I’m not naive enough to promise you that justice will happen, that the people making these decisions and doing these things will be held accountable. I can’t promise that we’ll vote people out or hold the types of truth and reconciliation commissions we’d need to truly and accurately take ownership of what has been done in our name and change the rules and the system to make sure they can’t happen again. I won’t lie to you and tell you that this will be over soon, or that the process for bringing people to account will be swift.

But I can say, I will spend every possible dollar, every possible minute, every possible word and breath, pushing us in that direction. Because as a parent, that’s the least I can do for your kids.

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

James Baldwin
Notes on the House of Bondage

Acting

Watching

https://vimeo.com/1129678511/53923d1d57?fl=pl&fe=vl

Reading

Melissa Hortman Died in a Shocking Act of Political Violence. This Is the Story of Her Life by Stephen Rodrick

Political violence haunts our history, a black car idling outside a diner while folks talk to reporters about American exceptionalism over bacon and eggs. It is a patient virus, waiting for chaos and confusion, and then finding a new victim. It metastasizes slowly and then explodes. Lincoln and his cabinet after Appomattox. A century later, JFK, RFK, and MLK fall, creating so much terror that everyone understands what Mick Jagger is singing about:

I shouted out, “Who killed the Kennedys?”*
*When after all, it was you and me.

Here we are again. Hortman’s murder was preceded by two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, a botched murder plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the fire-bombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home. It is followed by the Charlie Kirk assassination three months later.

The murder of innocents has always been a historical fact, whether committed by Sudanese warlords or American drones. These days, we doomscroll to the next atrocity, our outrage for the anonymous dead anesthetized like an alcoholic who feels nothing after downing a pint of gin.

…

None of that is important. Williams, Hortman’s best friend, tells me she doesn’t even know the name of Melissa and Mark Hortman’s killer. “It does not matter how Melissa died,” Williams says in a whisper. “All that really matters is how she lived.”

Following the attempted assassination of Former President Trump, President Biden decided to take a swing at the campus protests that had been held in support of Palestine, against the war machine, and to demand their colleges and universities divest from both war and Israel’s system of apartheid. This is an interesting direction politically as not only did he take the political violence both-sidesing hook line and sinker, but he also chose a target for his attacks that enjoys better polling within his base, and the country at large, than he does. But as we all know, most campus protests were non-violent from end to end. Those where violence did occur, the vast majority of violence was perpetrated by police or counter-protestors, not students encamped in quads or sitting in inside campus buildings.

There are no both sides to our political violence by me, July 2024

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/melissa-hortman-minnesota-speaker-political-violence-1235486292/

‘I’ve become stronger:’ Leqaa Kordia on life after ICE detention by Sam Judy

First of all, I’ve never committed any crime. I was very shocked and disappointed to know that the reason for my arrest in 2025 was because I practiced my freedom of speech. It was because I called for the end of the genocide. I called for a ceasefire. I called for peace. That was very disappointing and very shocking.

…

I’ve become stronger. Don’t forget that I’m a Palestinian – it runs in my blood. I would often be thinking of my family and my people in Gaza and Palestine, and their resilience would inspire me. Their strength would lift up my spirit. I would be inspired by them, their resilience, and their stories.

I would often also think of the Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli military prisons. There are thousands of Palestinians being held, many of them without trial, many of them without charges, being tortured, abused, denied basic human rights, starved on a daily basis. This would give me the power to continue to tell the story, to tell my story, because I’m one of them. I’m a Palestinian. I can’t separate my story from the Palestinian story.

…

Yes. The humiliation, stripping people of their dignity, not calling us by names but calling us by numbers. Or seeing children – like this girl, she was 16 years old. She told me how ICE agents stormed her school and dragged her in front of her classmates. I saw this happen to my classmates in the West Bank.

Israel is one of the only countries that arrests children and puts them in military prisons, without charges, without trials. And ICE is doing the same. They arrest children, they jail them, they kill them. My experience in ICE jails brought back all these bad memories of the West Bank and the checkpoints, the surveillance, the humiliation, the controlling. It’s extremely similar.

https://mondoweiss.net/2026/04/ive-become-stronger-leqaa-kordia-on-life-after-ice-detention/

We Are the Baddies by Megan Wachspress

Now, this same microgeneration is staring down middle age as denizens of a country that bombed a school full of young girls, killing at least 175 people, in the opening hours of a war begun by our government without any coherent justification, much less one that would pass muster under international law, and without the Congressional authorization required under U.S. law. It is a war our government was no doubt emboldened to begin because it previously suffered no ill consequence—domestic or otherwise—from kidnapping the leader of another country. And it is a war that has distracted from the fact that, simultaneously, our government was also imposing a blockade on Cuba that has led to blackouts and an unknown number of deaths as hospitals were unable to power respirators and NICU units.  

In short, in the language of the memeified Mitchell and Webb sketch, we are the baddies. 

In that sketch, after making that realization (arising from the protagonists’ close examination of a Totenkopf, an artistic choice that has its own hyper-contemporary political resonance), the Mitchell and Webb characters run offscreen. But we—anti-Trump Americans—can’t escape the consequences of our government’s actions quite so easily. 

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/we-are-the-baddies/?ref=extra-writing-newsletter

Who Decided to Indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia Over a Years-Old Traffic Stop? by Liliana Segura

Crenshaw has already found some evidence to support these allegations  writing last fall  that there was a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” against Abrego. He pointed to numerous public statements made by top Trump officials, particularly that of then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal defense attorney, who told Fox News  that the Justice Department began investigating Abrego after “a judge in Maryland” interfered with Trump’s decision to deport him.

…

In its 24-page filing, which contained the word “undisputed” 20 times, the DOJ insisted that it proved once and for all that Abrego’s prosecution was rooted in evidence of criminality rather than revenge. “Regardless of the tale Defendant invites this Court to believe,” wrote Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, “any narrative of animus has been affirmatively disproven by the Government’s undisputed evidence.”

In reality, the testimony offered by the government raised more questions than answers — while revealing that DOJ higher-ups were involved at every step leading up to Abrego’s indictment. Though Woodward cast the prosecution as one steered by law enforcement officers duty-bound to the evidence and their own moral compass, this was hard to take seriously. Donald Trump, after all, has spent the past 15 months trying to transform the DOJ into his personal law firm, demanding that prosecutors go after his political enemies.

https://theintercept.com/2026/04/28/kilmar-abrego-garcia-trump-justice-department/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

Federal move to cut benefits for disabled adults is heinous by Terrence T. McDonald

This is a personal issue for me. My 53-year-old sister has Down syndrome, and my parents spent most of her life fighting school districts, county agencies, and the federal government on her behalf. I know from their experience that when you have a special needs child, you often have to battle to get what’s owed to them. That’s why I fear this planned change by the Trump administration will lead to too many vulnerable people losing aid they deserve.

The supplemental security income benefit my sister receives, by the way, doesn’t even cover half the cost of the two-bedroom apartment she rents with my mother, let alone other necessities like food and clothing.

Back in October, Trump issued a message commemorating Down Syndrome Awareness Month and reiterating that he proclaims “the sanctity and beauty of every human life.”

“This month, I renew my commitment to protecting the health and well-being of all the men, women, and children living with Down syndrome — and we recommit to forging a culture, a government, and a Nation that upholds the dignity of life and respects the divine spark imprinted on every human soul,” he said.

Nice words. It would be nicer if the administration’s actions matched them.

Israel and Max Makoka Are Coming Home After ICE Arrests Galvanized Their Mississippi Community by Nick Judin

And that detail is important. Max, 15, remains underage in the eyes of the federal government, which is why he was not taken to Jena with his brother. But Israel, too, was underage for virtually the entire period he fell out of status, with no warning reaching his guardians or the brothers themselves that their stay in the U.S. was at risk. He turned 18 only a matter of weeks before ICE descended upon Diamondhead to surveil and eventually detain him just over a month before he was set to graduate from Hancock High School.

At minimum, Maldonado said, the seizure of Max Makoka was entirely unjustifiable, even by ICE’s contemporary standards.

“Max has legal guardians in the United States. ICE took him into custody and then put him in a shelter for unaccompanied alien children,” she said. “The legal definition of an unaccompanied alien child is one without a parent or legal guardian in the U.S.”

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/israel-and-max-makoka-are-coming-home-after-ice-arrests-galvanized-their-mississippi-community/

The Comey Threat Indictment Is A Grave Embarrassment To The United States Department of Justice And The Rule of Law by Ken White

I could now cite to you a legion of cases for that proposition, finding rhetoric far more concerning than this protected by the First Amendment, analyzing language and context to show this is protected. But it wouldn’t matter, would it? If you are a minimally rational person, you don’t need to see the precedent, and if you’re a cultist, no amount of precedent matters to you.

As a lawyer commenting on the Trump administration’s legal arguments, I face a challenge: how do I convey to non-lawyers, or even lawyers in different fields, the shameless fatuity of some of the Trump Justice Department’s arguments? Words fail. This case is overtly, obviously, on its face, ridiculous and premised on a foolish and unconstitutional theory. …

Yet we live under a Department of Justice that will commit this travesty and argue it’s valid. Even now, members of Congress — nominally sworn to defend the Constitution — are defending it. And soon enough, some puerile throne-sniffer of the legal academy — some Wurman, some Barnett, some Turley — will emerge to argue that it’s plausible, so thoroughly has Trumpism corrupted us.

https://www.popehat.com/p/the-comey-threat-indictment-is-a-grave-embarrassment-to-the-united-states-department-of-justice-and