https://znetwork.org/category/topic/activism/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Tue, 27 Jan 2026 21:31:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/category/topic/activism/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/justice-or-amnesia-americas-defining-choice-in-2026-and-2028/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/justice-or-amnesia-americas-defining-choice-in-2026-and-2028/#respond Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:45:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294050 Like many Americans right now, I want to believe that the 2026 and 2028 elections will offer a reprieve from the chaos that increasingly defines our political life. There is a widespread hope that one or both cycles will somehow reset the country and restore a sense of normalcy. But that hope, however emotionally understandable, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/justice-or-amnesia-americas-defining-choice-in-2026-and-2028/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/after-the-devastation-of-trumps-first-year-these-popular-rebellions-offer-hope/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/after-the-devastation-of-trumps-first-year-these-popular-rebellions-offer-hope/#respond Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:45:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294073 When President Trump was reelected in 2024, few predicted the speed and ferocity with which his administration would dismantle basic human rights, economic security, the global diplomatic order, and environmental protections. Even fewer anticipated how readily elected officials from both parties and many institutions — universities, courts, major corporations — would bow down or cut [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/after-the-devastation-of-trumps-first-year-these-popular-rebellions-offer-hope/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-block-ice-in-your-city/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-block-ice-in-your-city/#respond Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294018 ICE and the Border Patrol’s terror campaign has taken the lives of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and led to the abduction of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, among countless others. Minneapolis has answered with an astonishing surge of courage. Neighborhood Signal chats and daily community-watch patrols have turned sidewalks into lines of mutual aid and [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-block-ice-in-your-city/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/this-is-the-deep-state-that-trumpists-love/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/this-is-the-deep-state-that-trumpists-love/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:10:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294002 I’ve lived in or near Burlington, Vermont for most of the last thirty-five years.  In 1999 I wrote a piece for a local Burlington agitational monthly called the Old North End Rag (or The Rag) that discussed the various permutations of the encroaching police state then being developed in the United States.  One of the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/this-is-the-deep-state-that-trumpists-love/feed/ 3 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-chapters-1-2-a-history-of-social-strikes/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-chapters-1-2-a-history-of-social-strikes/#respond Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:43:47 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1293939 As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power — who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn — are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-chapters-1-2-a-history-of-social-strikes/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/striking-spanish-workers-just-showed-that-amazon-is-not-invincible/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/striking-spanish-workers-just-showed-that-amazon-is-not-invincible/#respond Sat, 24 Jan 2026 14:31:41 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293885 The latest flashpoint of resistance to global logistics juggernaut Amazon has proven, once again, that collective worker power can force the company into improving its miserable working conditions. Amazon workers in Murcia, in southeastern Spain, struck twice at the RMU1 fulfillment center during the 2025 holiday “peak” season and forced the company into a negotiated [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/striking-spanish-workers-just-showed-that-amazon-is-not-invincible/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-an-introduction-to-social-strikes/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-an-introduction-to-social-strikes/#respond Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1293814 As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power — who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn — are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-an-introduction-to-social-strikes/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-minneapolis-to-portland-state-violence-and-how-communities-are-responding/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-minneapolis-to-portland-state-violence-and-how-communities-are-responding/#respond Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293789 The killing this January of unarmed Minnesota woman Renee Nicole Good in her car by an ICE agent has sparked nationwide alarm and civil protest. It marks the latest escalation in the political violence risk environment in the United States, which in just the last year has seen high-profile political assassinations, a rise in death [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-minneapolis-to-portland-state-violence-and-how-communities-are-responding/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whats-it-going-to-take-to-get-to-mass-strikes/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whats-it-going-to-take-to-get-to-mass-strikes/#respond Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293786 On Jan. 23, Minnesotans will witness a new tactical experiment in resisting authoritarian consolidation: a one-day call for no work, no school, no shopping — an economic blackout across the state (www.iceoutnowmn.com). The call is coming from a rapidly growing coalition that includes the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, Service Employees International Union Local 26, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whats-it-going-to-take-to-get-to-mass-strikes/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-left-needs-bureaucrats/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-left-needs-bureaucrats/#respond Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293764 After MAGA, the left will need to be ready with a theory of how to rebuild the federal administrative state—not as it was before Trump, but as something better. With Zohran Mamdani’s ascent to Gracie Mansion, a democratic socialist is now chief executive for the largest municipal bureaucracy in the United States, meaning that he [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-left-needs-bureaucrats/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ratify-the-r-word-bruce-minneapolis-revolution-and-us/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ratify-the-r-word-bruce-minneapolis-revolution-and-us/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293677 Twenty four years ago I wrote an essay titled “Resurrect the R Word.” To many people back then revolution meant chaos, violence, and death. Disagree? Me too. But should we resurrect the R-Word? My answer back then was that we should and I have the same answer now. But now we should Resurrect and also [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ratify-the-r-word-bruce-minneapolis-revolution-and-us/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today/#respond Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:11:26 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293672 Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, elected officials quote King while standing safely at a distance from the risks he embraced. His name is invoked, his image sanitized, and his politics stripped of urgency. The U.S. celebrates a softened King who spoke about love but not power, unity but not confrontation, peace but [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-american-declaration/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-american-declaration/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:56:20 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293667 WHEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary to decide that a government that purports to represent the union of states has failed to do so; that the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness have been trampled upon by that government; and that the rule of law and the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-american-declaration/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/hungering-for-solar-and-more/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/hungering-for-solar-and-more/#respond Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:24:49 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293659 “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, Letter from a Birmingham Jail From January 5-7 I must have seen these words of Dr. King flash many hundreds of times. That happened because over those three days, from 7 am to 5 pm, I engaged in a 72-hour, water-only hunger [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/hungering-for-solar-and-more/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/its-time-again-for-good-trouble/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/its-time-again-for-good-trouble/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:07:54 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293652 Today we honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Trump has removed MLK Jr.’s birthday from the National Park Service’s fee-free days and substituted his own birthday of June 14 as a fee-free day. I write this more in sorrow than in anger. All told, I feel profound sorrow for America. Sorrow for the people of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/its-time-again-for-good-trouble/feed/ 3 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/stephen-miller-trump-aide-iron-laws-of-the-world-and-human-rights/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/stephen-miller-trump-aide-iron-laws-of-the-world-and-human-rights/#respond Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293662 President Donald Trump’s long-serving aide, Stephen Miller, recently opined: “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”  What Miller said is resonant with declarations by tyrants: “Political power grows out [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/stephen-miller-trump-aide-iron-laws-of-the-world-and-human-rights/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-in-a-crisis-how-to-build-communities-that-can-respond/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-in-a-crisis-how-to-build-communities-that-can-respond/#respond Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:36:39 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293640 The U.S. is in a crisis of historic proportions, scaling to previous eras such as the Civil War and 1930s Depression. It is a systemic crisis in the sense its political system is failing to respond either to immediate challenges or more deeply rooted problems out of which those challenges rise. The immediate challenge is [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-in-a-crisis-how-to-build-communities-that-can-respond/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tesco-worker-fefusing-to-handle-israeli-products-reinstated-after-campaign/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tesco-worker-fefusing-to-handle-israeli-products-reinstated-after-campaign/#respond Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:22:49 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293630 A worker suspended for refusing to handle ‘Israeli’ products in a Northern Irish Tesco branch has won a major victory. The price-gouging retailer has now reinstated their employee, after a two-month long campaign that saw a wave of protests erupt across Ireland and Britain. The worker – who wishes to remain anonymous – is employed at the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tesco-worker-fefusing-to-handle-israeli-products-reinstated-after-campaign/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-life-of-civil-rights-hero-claudette-colvin-should-teach-us-this-resistance-is-collective-and-it-never-stops/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-life-of-civil-rights-hero-claudette-colvin-should-teach-us-this-resistance-is-collective-and-it-never-stops/#respond Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:04:38 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293606 “In life, there’s the beginning and the end,” John Carlos, the African American sprinter who raised his fist in a black power salute from the podium of the 1968 Olympics, once told me. “The beginning don’t matter. The end don’t matter. All that matters is what you do in between – whether you’re prepared to do [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-life-of-civil-rights-hero-claudette-colvin-should-teach-us-this-resistance-is-collective-and-it-never-stops/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/will-ice-ignite-a-mass-strike-in-minnesota/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/will-ice-ignite-a-mass-strike-in-minnesota/#respond Sat, 17 Jan 2026 14:39:27 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293588 Minnesota appears to be in gear for a mass uprising. Unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and small businesses there are calling for a statewide day of “no work (except for emergency services), no school, and no shopping” on January 23. Festering grievances swelled into a national outcry on January 7, after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed poet and mother [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/will-ice-ignite-a-mass-strike-in-minnesota/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/social-strikes-confronting-ice-and-resisting-authoritarianism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/social-strikes-confronting-ice-and-resisting-authoritarianism/#respond Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:59:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293569 As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power — who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn — are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/social-strikes-confronting-ice-and-resisting-authoritarianism/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ehren-watada-the-duty-to-oppose-crimes-of-state/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ehren-watada-the-duty-to-oppose-crimes-of-state/#respond Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293536 The US attack on Venezuela and its kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife has launched the US on a new round of crimes against US law, international law, and the US Constitution. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has started proceedings against military veteran Sen. Mark Kelly for saying military officers have a duty to disobey [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ehren-watada-the-duty-to-oppose-crimes-of-state/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-ashes-of-the-arab-spring/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-ashes-of-the-arab-spring/#respond Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:56:00 +0000 On January 14, 2011, Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to resign, after four weeks of revolt in the north African country. It was a first major scalp for the wave of upheaval known as the Arab Spring — a democratic upsurge across the region, which, however, also ended in many defeats. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-ashes-of-the-arab-spring/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-black-feminist-collective-that-gave-us-identity-politics/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-black-feminist-collective-that-gave-us-identity-politics/#respond Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:54:00 +0000 Hammer & Hope co-founder Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has written a new introduction for an expanded second edition of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, which includes the groundbreaking statement, along with interviews and essays reflecting on its impact, among them a new interview with Angela Y. Davis. In this excerpt from the introduction, Taylor describes the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-black-feminist-collective-that-gave-us-identity-politics/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-facing-a-tsunami-of-hate-amid-ice-crackdown-unions-and-community-groups-call-for-minnesota-shutdown-in-10-days/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-facing-a-tsunami-of-hate-amid-ice-crackdown-unions-and-community-groups-call-for-minnesota-shutdown-in-10-days/#respond Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:59:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293513 Following the ICE murder of Renee Good and an assault on the state by federal immigration forces, a labor-community coalition is calling for residents to refuse to work, shop or go to school on January 23. Unions and community groups gathered in front of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota this morning [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-facing-a-tsunami-of-hate-amid-ice-crackdown-unions-and-community-groups-call-for-minnesota-shutdown-in-10-days/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton-trial-reminds-jury-of-its-right-to-defy-judge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton-trial-reminds-jury-of-its-right-to-defy-judge/#respond Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293510 Starmer and the media need convictions to justify Palestine Action’s proscription as a terrorist group. Rajiv Menon KC spells out to the jury why it is a vital last defence against government tyranny. My thanks to Craig Murray, former UK ambassador turned whistleblower, for alerting me to what he rightly calls “one of the greatest legal speeches [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton-trial-reminds-jury-of-its-right-to-defy-judge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/digital-socialism-or-extinction-venezuelas-lesson-amid-capitalisms-most-ferocious-phase/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/digital-socialism-or-extinction-venezuelas-lesson-amid-capitalisms-most-ferocious-phase/#respond Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293473 1. The Lesson of Venezuela At the dawn of an ordinary day in early January of this year, 2026, the world woke up to shocking news whose repercussions were not clear at first glance: a brutal U.S. military aggression and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a complex [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/digital-socialism-or-extinction-venezuelas-lesson-amid-capitalisms-most-ferocious-phase/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/three-strategic-issues-what-to-say-or-write-what-to-do-and-who-to-do-it-with/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/three-strategic-issues-what-to-say-or-write-what-to-do-and-who-to-do-it-with/#respond Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:53:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293467 My goal in this oddly titled and rather short episode is to suggest a near universally applicable strategic measuring stick for choosing among different progressive actions and choices those we wish to undertake. In some respects my observations are quite elementary. In others, though, regarding actual day-to-day choices we make, I suspect they are pretty [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/three-strategic-issues-what-to-say-or-write-what-to-do-and-who-to-do-it-with/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-significance-of-last-weekends-1200-local-actions/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-significance-of-last-weekends-1200-local-actions/#respond Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:53:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293477 The new year began on a very foreboding note. First was the Trump regime’s invasion of Venezuela to kidnap its President with the explicit purpose being to get control of its oil. Then, a few days later, came the killing of 37-year-old, mother of three Renee Nicole Good by ICE in Minneapolis, followed by Trump [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-significance-of-last-weekends-1200-local-actions/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifteen-thousand-new-york-city-nurses-strike/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifteen-thousand-new-york-city-nurses-strike/#respond Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:52:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293463 Fifteen thousand nurses across 10 campuses in New York City’s three biggest hospital systems are on an open-ended strike. It’s the city’s largest nurse strike in decades. Picket lines stretched for blocks at Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and New York Presbyterian hospitals on January 12, thronged with nurses plus Teamsters, hotel workers, and university staff showing [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifteen-thousand-new-york-city-nurses-strike/feed/ 0