(Statement) International call to strengthen antifascist and anti-imperialist action

By Various

Published date 21 January, 2026

The extreme right and neo-fascist forces are advancing on every continent. 

While the threat manifests itself in different ways depending on the country or region, its common elements are readily identifiable: the goal of annihilating labor rights and protections, the suppression of workers’ organizations, the dismantling of social security and the imposition of a precarious existence for both employed and unemployed workers, the privatization of public services, the denial of climate change, the use of the high level of public debt as an excuse for intensifying austerity policies, the dispossession of peasants to clear the way for agribusiness, the displacement of indigenous peoples to promote unbridled extractivism, the tightening of inhumane migration policies, and an increase in military spending. 

Enforcing these policies requires restrictions on the right to strike, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly; the silencing of the press and of critical voices in schools and universities; denying scientific findings that contradict these policies; and strengthening of the structures and mechanisms of repression and surveillance.

The extreme right is co-opting discontent with the disastrous consequences of neoliberalism to accelerate these policies. To achieve this, like classical fascism, it seeks to direct this discontent against oppressed and dispossessed groups: migrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, those who benefit from inclusion programs, racialized people, and national or religious minorities. National chauvinism, racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, incitement to hatred, and the normalization of cruelty accompany the advance of the radical right at every step, depending on the specific circumstances of each country.

The desire to accumulate wealth in the hands of capital and the relentless pursuit of maximum profit that underpins far-right policies are also manifested by the intensification of imperialist aggressions aimed at seizing resources and exploiting populations. This phenomenon is intertwined with the perpetuation of colonial situations, exemplified by the case of Palestine, where it takes the form of a genocide orchestrated by the State of Israel with the complicity of its imperialist allies.

Beyond its complicity with the Netanyahu government, the far right is forging international ties: congresses, think tanks, joint declarations, mutual support in electoral processes, collaboration among podcasters, propagandists, and specialists in disinformation. It is urgent that we advance the struggle against the right and imperialist aggression, and to be effective our struggle must be international.

The forces fighting against the rise of the far right, fascism, and imperialist aggression are neither monolithic nor homogeneous, nor have they ever been. They are diverse, and there are significant differences in analysis, strategy and tactics, programs, and alliance policy, as well as sensibilities and priorities. Experience teaches us that while it is important to recognize these differences, coordinating the struggle against increasingly menacing enemies is essential. This convergence can and must include all forces willing to defend the working class, farmers, migrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, racialized people, oppressed national or religious minorities, and indigenous peoples; to defend nature against ecocidal capitalism; to combat imperialist and colonial aggression, regardless of its origin; and to support the struggle of the peoples who resist, even when they are forced to take up arms.

It is urgent that we share analyses, strengthen ties, and agree on concrete actions. Those are the goals that inspired the convening of an International Antifascist and Anti-imperialist Conference in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, from March 26 to 29, 2026.

The Porto Alegre conference is an important step on a much longer path. The undersigned organizations and individuals commit to continue, tirelessly and in the most unified way possible, the struggle against the rising far right and imperialist aggressions, which is an essential dimension of our emancipatory, socialist, ecological, feminist, anti-racist, and internationalist project.

As Che Guevara wrote to his children: “Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.”

Sign the call here

Initial signatories:

Argentina
1. Atilio A. Boron, professor at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of Avellaneda.
2. Verónica Gago, feminist activist and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires.
3. Julio Gambina, Corriente Politica de Izquierda - CPI (Left Political Current), ATTAC Argentina, CADTM AYNA.
4. Claudio Katz, professor at the University of Buenos Aires and researcher at CONICET.
5. Beverly Keene, Diálogo 2000-Jubileo Sur Argentina (Dialogue 2000-Jubilee South Argentina) and Autoconvocatoria por la Suspensión del Pago e Investigación de la Deuda (Coalition for the Suspension of Payment and Investigation of the Debt).
6. Claudio Lozano, President of the Instrumento Electoral por la Unidad Popular (Electoral Instrument for Popular Unity).
7. Jorgelina Matusevicius, representative of Vientos del Pueblo Frente por el Poder Popular (Winds of the People Front for Popular Power).
8. Felisa Miceli, Economist, Former Minister of Economy of Argentina 2005/2007.
9. Martín Mosquera, editor of Jacobin Latin America (Jacobinlat).
10. María Elena Saludas, member of ATTAC-CADTM Argentina, Corriente Politica de Izquierda - CPI (Left Political Current).

Australia
11. Federico Fuentes, editor of LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
12. Pip Hinman, Co-editor of Green Left.
13. Susan Price, Co-editor of Green Left.

Basque Country
14. Garbiñe Aranburu Irazusta, General Coordinator of the LAB Trade Union.
15. Igor Arroyo Leatxe, General Coordinator of the LAB Trade Union.
16. Josu Chueca, former professor at the UPV/EHU. Historical memory activist.
17. Irati Jiménez, parliamentarian in Navarre, EH Bildu.
18. Mitxel Lakuntza Vicario, general secretary of the ELA Sindikatua Trade Union.
19. Oskar Matute, deputy in the Congress of the Spanish state, EH Bildu.
20. Luisa Menendez Aguirre, anti-racist and feminist activist, Bilbao.
21. Amaia Muñoa Capron-Manieux, deputy general secretary of the ELA Sindikatua Trade Union.
22. Anabel Sanz Del Pozo, feminist activist, Bilbao.
23. Igor Zulaika, parliamentarian in the CAPV, EH Bildu.

Belgium
24. Vanessa Amboldi, Director of CEPAG popular education movement.
25. France Arets, retired history teacher, active in supporting undocumented people, CRACPE.
26. Eléonore Bronstein, federal secretary of the Mouvement Ouvrier Chrétien Brussels (Christian Labour Movement Brussels).
27. Céline Caudron, Gauche Anticapitaliste (Anticapitalist Left), union and feminist activist.
28. Giulia Contes, Co-president of the Coordination Nationale d’Action pour la Paix et la Démocratie – CNAPD (National Coordination for Action for Peace and Democracy).
29. Paul-Emile Dupret, jurist, former official of The Left in the European Parliament.
30. Pierre Galand, former senator, president of the Association Belgo-Palestinienne (Belgian-Palestinian Association), president of the Conférence européenne de coordination du soutien au peuple sahraoui – EUCOCO (European Conference on Coordination of Support for the Sahrawi People).
31. Corinne Gobin, professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles.
32. Henri Goldman, Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique (Union of Jewish Progressives of Belgium).
33. Jean-François Tamellini, general secretary of the trade union FGTB wallonne.
34. Éric Toussaint, spokesperson for CADTM international.
35. Felipe Van Keirsbilck, general secretary of the Centrale Nationale des Employés - CNE/CSC (National Employees’ Centre).
36. Arnaud Zacharie, lecturer at ULB and ULiège, general secretary of the Centre National de Coopération au Développement – CNCD (National Centre for Development Cooperation).

Benin
37. Émilie Atchaka, feminist, president of CADD Benin.

Bolivia
38. Gabriela Montaño, physician, former President of the Chamber of Deputies and Senators, former Minister of Health.

Brazil
39. Ricardo Abreu de Melo “Alemão”, FMG.
40. Luana Alves, black feminist, PSOL municipal councilor in São Paulo.
41. Frei Betto, writer.
42. Sâmia Bomfim, PSOL federal deputy.
43. Bianca Borges, president of UNE.
44. Ana Cristina Carvalhaes, Journalist, Inprecor magazine.
45. Raul Carrion, Historian, former deputy, member of the FMG and the Secretariat of International Relations of the PC of Brazil.
46. Rodrigo Dilelio, president of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Worker’s Party) of the city of Porto Alegre; Organizing Committee.
47. Israel Dutra, Secretary of Social Movements of PSOL, member of the National Directorate of PSOL.
48. Olívio Dutra, Former Governor of the State of Rio Grande do Sul; Former Minister of Cities (PT).
49. Luciana Genro, state deputy of Rio Grande do Sul and president of the Lauro Campos/Marielle Franco Foundation.
50. Tarso Genro, Former Governor of the State of Rio Grande do Sul; Former Minister of Justice (PT).
51. Socorro Gomes, CEBRAPAZ and the World Peace Council.
52. Amanda Harumy, International and Latin American affairs analyst.
53. Elias Jabbour, Geographer and China specialist.
54. Joao Machado, economist, PSOL.
55. Fernanda Melchionna, federal deputy of RS.
56. Maria do Rosário Nunes, Federal Deputy; Former Minister of Human Rights (PT).
57. Misiara Oliveira, assistant secretary of International Relations / National Executive Commission (PT).
58. Raul Pont, historian, former mayor of Porto Alegre, PT.
59. Ana Maria Prestes, historian, PhD in Political Science and secretary of International Relations of the CC of the PC of Brazil.
60. Edson Puchalski, president of PC do B Rio Grande do Sul.
61. Roberto Robaina, councilor and president of PSOL in Porto Alegre.
62. Miguel Rossetto, PT leader in the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul.
63. Juliana Souza, PT leader in the Municipal Council of Porto Alegre.
64. Joao Pedro Stedile, social activist, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement).
65. Gabi Tolotti, president of PSOL Rio Grande do Sul.
66. Thiago Ávila, international coordination of the Global Sumud Flotilla for Gaza.

Catalonia
67. Ada Colau, social activist, former Mayor of Barcelona, President of the Sentit Comú Foundation.
68. Gerardo Pisarello, deputy in the Congress for Comuns. Professor of law. University of Barcelona.
69. Daniel Raventós, professor at the University of Barcelona. Editorial Board of the magazine Sin Permiso and President of the Red Renta Básica (Basic Income Network).
70. Carles Riera, sociologist, former deputy and member of the Board of the Parliament of Catalonia for the CUP (2016-2024), president of the FDC Foundation, president of the Global Network for the Collective Rights of Peoples.

Chile
71. Daniel Jadue, Communist Party of Chile.
72. Jorge Sharp Fajardo, former mayor of Valparaíso, member of Transformar Chile (Transform Chile).

Colombia
73. Wilson Arias, senator of the Republic.
74. Isabel Cristina Zuleta, senator of the Pacto Histórico (Historical Pact).

Congo, Democratic Republic of
75. Yvonne Ngoyi, feminist, president of the Union of Women for Human Dignity (UFDH).

Ivory Coast
76. Solange Kone Sanogo, President of the Forum national sur les stratégies économiques et sociales - FNSES (National Forum on Economic and Social Strategies), National Coordination of the World March of Women.

Cuba
77. Rafael Acosta, writer, academic and researcher.
78. Aurelio Alonso, deputy director of the magazine Casa de las Américas.
79. Katiuska Blanco, writer and journalist, RedEDH.
80. Olga Fernández Ríos, Institute of Philosophy and Vice President of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba.
81. Norma Goicochea, president of the Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas (Cuban Association of the United Nations), member of the Red en Defensa de la Humanidad - REDH (Network in Defense of Humanit).
82. Georgina Alfonso González, Dr., Director of the Institute of Philosophy.
83. Rafael Hernández, political scientist and professor. Director, Temas magazine.
84. Marilín Peña Pérez, popular educator, Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Center (CMLK).
85. Pedro Prada, journalist, researcher and diplomat.
86. Abel Prieto, writer, former Minister of Culture, deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power, president of Casa de las Américas (House of the Americas).
87. Raul Suárez, Rev., pastor emeritus of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Founder of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center.
88. Marlene Vázquez Pérez, director of the Center for Martí Studies.

Denmark
89. Per Clausen, member of the European Parliament, GUE/NGL, Red-Green Alliance.
90. Søren Søndergaard, member of Parliament, Red-Green Alliance.

Ecuador
91. Alberto Acosta, former president of the Constituent Assembly in 2007-2008.

France
92. Manon Aubry (LFI), co-president of the Left group (The Left) in the European Parliament.
93. Ludivine Bantigny, historian.
94. Olivier Besancenot, NPA - l’Anticapitaliste.
95. Leila Chaibi, member of the European Parliament, La France Insoumise (LFI), The Left.
96. Fabien Cohen, General Secretary of France Amérique Latine-FAL.
97. Hendrik Davi, deputy in the National Assembly of the ecological and social group and member of APRES.
98. Penelope Duggan, member of the bureau of the Fourth International, editor-in-chief of International Viewpoint.
99. Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize in Literature 2022.
100. Angélique Grosmaire, General Secretary of the Fédération Sud PTT.
101. Rima Hassan, member of the European Parliament, LFI.
102. Michael Löwy, sociologist, ecosocialist.
103. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, La France Insoumise.
104. Ugo Palheta, editor of the Revue ContreTemps, author of “La nouvelle internationale fasciste”.
105. Patricia Pol, academic, representative of Attac France on the international Council of the World Social Forum.
106. Raymonde Poncet Monge, senator Les Écologistes (The Ecologists).
107. Thomas Portes, LFI deputy in the National Assembly.
108. Christine Poupin, Spokesperson for NPA - l’Anticapitaliste.
109. Denis Robert, founder and editorial director of Blast, independent media outlet.
110. Catherine Samary, researcher in political economy, specialist on the Balkans, member of the FI and the ENSU (European Network in Solidarity with Ukraine).
111. Aurélie Trouvé, deputy in the National Assembly, La France Insoumise (The Unsubmissive France).
112. Cem Yoldas, Spokesperson for the Jeune Garde Antifasciste (Young Anti-Fascist Guard).
113. Sophie Zafari, FSU trade unionist.

Galicia
114. Ana Miranda, member of the European Parliament, Bloque Nacionalista Galego – BNG (Galician Nationalist Bloc).

Germany
115. Angela Klein, chief editor in charge of the magazine SOZ.
116. Carola Rackete, biologist, activist, ship captain arrested in Italy in June 2019 for protecting refugees, former member of the European Parliament.

Greece
117. Zoe Konstantopoulou, lawyer, head of the Political Movement “Course to Freedom”, member of Parliament, former President of the Greek Parliament, initiator-president of the Truth Committee on Public Debt.
118. Nadia Valavani, economist and author, alternate finance minister in 2015 and former member of the Greek Parliament.
119. Yanis Varoufakis, leader of MeRA25, co-founder of DiEM25, professor of economics – University of Athens.

Haiti
120. Camille Chalmers, professor at the Université d’Etat d’Haiti (UEH), director of PAPDA, member of the regional executive committee of the Assemblée des Peuples de la Caraïbe – APC (Assembly of Caribbean Peoples), member of the Comité national haïtien pour la restitution et les réparations – CNHRR (Haitian National Committee for Restitution and Reparations).

India
121. Sushovan Dhar, Alternative Viewpoint magazine, member of the IC of the World Social Forum and of CADTM India.
122. Vijay Prashad, director, Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
123. Achin Vanaik, retired professor from the University of Delhi and founding member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP).

Indonesia
124. Rahmat Maulana Sidik, Executive Director, Indonesia for Global Justice (IGJ).

.Iraq
125. Noor Salem, radio journalist.

Ireland
126. Paul Murphy, member of Parliament.

Italy
127. Eliana Como, member of the National Assembly of the CGIL union.
128. Nadia De Mond, feminist activist and researcher, Centro Studi per l’Autogestione (Center for Self-Management Studies).
129. Domenico Lucano, mayor of Riace in Calabria, member of the European Parliament (left group The Left), persecuted for his humanist policy of welcoming migrants and refugees by the Italian judicial system and the far-right Interior Minister Mr. Salvini, unjustly sentenced to 13 years in prison before winning his appeal after a long legal battle and thanks to solidarity.
130. Cristina Quintavalla, philosophy teacher, decolonial activist, against privatizations and public debt.
131. Ilaria Salis, anti-fascist activist, unjustly imprisoned in Budapest until her election in June 2024, member of the European Parliament (The Left).

Kenya
132. Ikal Angelei, Dr., academic activist for indigenous rights.
133. David Otieno, General Coordinator, Kenya Peasants League and Convening Chair of the Civil Society Reference Group, member of La Vía Campesina.

La Réunion/France
134. Françoise Vergès, author, decolonial feminist activist.

Lebanon
135. Sara Salloum, co-founder and president of AgriMovement in Lebanon.

Luxembourg
136. Justin Turpel, former deputy of ’déi Lénk – la Gauche’ (The Left) in the Chamber of Deputies.
137. David Wagner, member of déi Lénk (The Left) in the Chamber of Deputies.

Madagascar
138. Zo Randriamaro, President of the Movement of the Peoples of the Indian Ocean.

Malaysia
139. Jeyakumar Devaraj, President of the Socialist Party of Malaysia.

Mali
140. Massa Kone, from the organizing committee of the World Social Forum 2026 in Benin.

Martinique/France
141. Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France, co-president of the Frantz Fanon International Foundation.
142. Frantz Fanon Foundation

Mexico
143. Armando Bartra, writer, sociologist, philosopher and political analyst.
144. Verónica Carrillo Ortega, member of the Promotora Nacional para la Suspensión de la Deuda Pública en México (National Coalition for the Suspension of Public Debt in Mexico), CADTM AYNA.
145. Ana Esther Ceceña, coordinator of the Latin American Geopolitics Observatory and the Latin American Information Agency. National Autonomous University of Mexico.
146. Martín Esparza Flores, General Secretary of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas – SME (Mexican Electricians Union).
147. Diana Fuentes, philosopher and political analyst, full-time professor-researcher at the Metropolitan Autonomous University.
148. María Auxilio Heredia Anaya, trade unionist and feminist, Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM).
149. Ana López Rodríguez, a founder of the PRT and peasant leader from Sonora, member of the MSP.
150. Sara Lovera Lopez, journalist/feminist.
151. Pablo Moctezuma Barragán, political scientist, historian and urban planner; researcher at the Metropolitan Autonomous University, spokesperson for the Congreso por la Soberanía (Congress for Sovereignty).
152. Massimo Modonesi, historian, sociologist and political scientist, Full Professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
153. Humberto Montes de Oca, secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas – SME (Mexican Electricians Union).
154. Magdalena Núñez Monreal, Federal Deputy in the Congress of Mexico.
155. César Enrique Pineda, sociologist and activist, teacher at the Faculty of Social Policies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
156. Mónica Soto Elízaga, feminist and co-founder of the Promotora Nacional para la Suspensión de la Deuda Pública en México (National Coalition for the Suspension of Public Debt in Mexico), CADTM AYNA.
157. Paco Ignacio Taibo II, writer and Director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica.
158. Carolina Verduzco Ríos, anthropologist, professor at the National Polytechnic Institute, member of Comité 68 (Committee 68).

Morocco
159. Fatima Zahra El Belghiti, member of Attac CADTM Morocco.

Nigeria
160. Emem Okon, founder and director of the Kebetkache Women’s Development and Resource Centre.

Pakistan
161. Sheema Kermani, Performing Artist, human rights defender.

Palestine/France
162. Salah Hamouri, Franco-Palestinian lawyer, former political prisoner for 10 years in Israeli prisons, deported to France in 2022.

Peru
163. Evelyn Capchi Sotelo, Secretary of National Organization of NUEVO PERÚ POR EL BUEN VIVIR (New Peru for Good Living).
164. Jorge Escalante Echeandia, political responsible for the SÚMATE current, national leader of the organization NUEVO PERÚ POR EL BUEN VIVIR (New Peru for Good Living).
165. Yolanda Lara Cortez, Feminist and socio-environmental leader of the province of Santa Ancash.
166. Flavio Olortegui, Leader of the Federación Nacional de trabajadores textiles del Perú (National Federation of Textile Workers of Peru).

Philippines
167. Walden Bello, co-chair of the board of directors, Focus on the Global South.
168. Jen Cornelio, President of Inged Fintailan (IP/Women’s Organization of Mindanao).
169. Dorothy Guerrero, consultant, African Womin Alliance; Co-chair of the board of directors of the London Mining Network.
170. Reihana Mohideen, International Office, Partido Lakas ng Masa-PLM (Party of the Laboring Masses).
171. Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator of the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development.
172. Reyna Joyce Villagomez, General Secretary of the Rural Poor Movement.

Portugal
173. Mamadou Ba, researcher, leader of SOS Racismo Portugal (SOS Racism Portugal).
174. Jorge Costa, journalist, member of the national leadership of Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc).
175. Mariana Mortágua, economist, Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc).
176. José Manuel Pureza, coordinator of Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc).
177. Alda Sousa, former MEP of Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc).

Puerto Rico
178. Manuel Rodríguez Banchs, spokesperson for the Instituto Internacional de Investigación y Formación Obrera y Sindical - iNFOS (International Institute for Labor and Trade Union Research and Training).
179. Rafael Bernabe, author and university professor; former member of the Puerto Rico Senate for the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (Citizen Victory Movement).

Senegal
180. Aly Sagne, founder and director of Lumière Synergies pour le Développement (Light Synergies for Development).

South Africa
181. Mercia Andrews, coordinator of the Assembly of Rural Women of Southern Africa, founding member of the Palestine solidarity campaign and active member of BDS South Africa.
182. Patrick Bond, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, where he directs the Centre for Social Change.
183. Samantha Hargreaves, founder and director of WoMin.
184. Trevor Ngwane, President, United Front, Johannesburg.

Spain
185. Fernanda Gadea, coordinator of ATTAC Spain.
186. Estrella Galán, Member of the European Parliament for SUMAR, The Left group.
187. Manuel Garí Ramos, ecosocialist economist, member of the Advisory Council of the magazine Viento Sur.
188. Vicent Marzà i Ibáñez, deputy in the European Parliament for Compromís, Valencian Country.
189. Fátima Martín, journalist, editor of the online newspaper FemeninoRural.com, member of CADTM.
190. Irene Montero, political secretary of PODEMOS, MEP and former Minister of Equality.
191. Jaime Pastor, editor of the magazine Viento Sur.
192. Manu Pineda, former deputy to the European Parliament and head of International Relations of the Communist Party of Spain.
193. Olga Rodríguez, journalist and writer.
194. Teresa Rodríguez, Spokesperson for Adelante Andalucía (Go ahead, Andalusia), secondary and high school teacher.
195. Isabel Serra Sánchez, Deputy in the European Parliament for Podemos/The Left.
196. Miguel Urban, former MEP, member of the editorial board of the magazine Viento Sur.
197. Koldobi Velasco Vázquez, participant in the Alternativa antimilitarista y del Movimiento Objetor de Conciencia/Acción Directa No Violenta (Anti-militarist Alternative and the Conscientious Objector Movement/Non-Violent Direct Action). University professor of Social Work, Canary Islands.

Sri Lanka
198. Swasthika Arulingam, President of the United Federation of Labour.
199. Kalpa Rajapaksha, Dr., senior lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Peradeniya.
200. Amali Wedagedara, Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.

Switzerland
201. Sébastien Bertrand, Enseignant.e.s pour le climat (Teachers for the climate), Syndicat des Services Publics (Swiss Union of Public Service Personnel) and member of solidaritéS Geneva.
202. Hadrien Buclin, deputy of Ensemble à Gauche (Together on the Left) in the Parliament of the Canton of Vaud.
203. Marianne Ebel, World March of Women and solidaritéS Neuchâtel.
204. Jocelyne Haller, solidaritéS, former cantonal deputy of Geneva.
205. Gabriella Lima, member of CADTM Switzerland and the Ensemble à Gauche (Together on the Left) platform.
206. Mathilde Marendaz, deputy of Ensemble à Gauche (Together on the Left) in the Parliament of the Canton of Vaud.
207. Aude Martenot, researcher and associative coordinator.
208. Mathieu Menghini, historian of cultural action.
209. Françoise Nyffler, Feminist Strike Collective Switzerland.
210. Stefanie Prezioso, former deputy, Swiss Parliament.
211. Juan Tortosa, spokesperson for CADTM-Switzerland and member of SolidaritéS Switzerland.
212. María Wuillemin, ecofeminist activist, member of the Colectivo Jaguar (Jaguar Collective).
213. Jean Ziegler, writer, former parliamentarian, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

Syria
214. Joseph Daher, academic and specialist in the political economy of the Middle East (resident in Switzerland).
215. Munif Mulhen, left-wing political activist. Former political prisoner for 16 years during the Hafez al-Assad regime (1970-2000).

Tunisia
216. Imen Louati, Tunisian activist, one of the founding members of the Arab food sovereignty network (Siyada).
217. Layla Riahi, member of the Siyada network for food sovereignty.

United Kingdom
218. Gilbert Achcar, professor emeritus, SOAS, University of London.
219. Jeremy Corbyn, member of Parliament, co-founder of Your Party.
220. Michael Roberts, economist and author.
221. Zarah Sultana, member of Parliament, co-founder of Your Party.

United States
222. David Adler, Deputy General Coordinator of the Progressive International.
223. Anthony Arnove, editor. Tempest Magazine and Haymarket Books.
224. Tithi Bhattacharya, professor of History, Purdue University, co-author of Feminism for the 99% : A Manifesto.
225. Robert Brenner, professor emeritus of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
226. Vivek Chibber, professor of sociology at New York University. Editor of Catalyst.
227. Olivia DiNucci, anti-militarism and climate justice organizer based in Washington D.C. and writer, affiliated with Code Pink, a grassroots feminist organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism.
228. Dianne Feeley, retired auto worker (UAW Local 235), member of Solidarity, Metro Detroit DSA and editor of Against the Current magazine.
229. Nancy Fraser, professor emerita, New School for Social Research and member of the Editorial Committee of New Left Review, co-author of Feminism for the 99% : A Manifesto.
230. Michael Hudson, professor of economics, emeritus, UMKC, and author of Super Imperialism.
231. Neal Meyer, member of DSA and editor for Socialist Call.
232. Christian Parenti, investigative journalist, scholar, author and contributing editor at The Nation.
233. Jana Silverman, Professor of International Relations, Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC) and co-chair, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) International Committee.
234. Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin, president of The Nation magazine.
235. Suzi Weissman, professor of Political Science at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Venezuela
236. Luis Bonilla-Molina, director of Otras Voces en Educación (Other Voices in Education).

Ivorian village remembers revolt that killed French colonial officer

Residents of the village of Rubino, in south-eastern Côte d'Ivoire, continue to commemorate an uprising against a French colonial army officer killed there on 7 July 1910.


Issued on: 18/01/2026 - RFI

Nanan Lambert Koffi Kokola, the chief of Rubino, shows the grave of the French colonial army officer killed by the Abbé people on 7 July, 1910. © Bineta Diagne / RFI

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The village is named after Rubino, the officer targeted in the revolt by the Abbé people. The uprising is remembered as an act of resistance against colonial rule, and the event is still commemorated more than a century later.

In the middle of a forest near Rubino, a dismantled bridge stands as a reminder of the revolt. The Abbé people removed its bolts by hand to stop a train carrying the officer.

Jean-Claude, a young man from the village, said the story is well known locally.

“When the train arrived, he couldn't cross. This is where Mr Rubino was caught and killed," Jean-Claude told RFI.

The old railway track, sabotaged by the Abbé people as a sign of revolt against the French colonists in 1910. © Bineta Diagne / RFI

Anger over forced labour

The revolt was not only directed at the officer himself, but at the system he represented. The Abbé people rebelled against forced labour imposed during the colonial period.

Rubino worked for the French Company of West Africa (CFAO), a trading business active in colonial West Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Eddie Patrick, a resident of Rubino, said the officer’s behaviour angered village elders.

“Rubino was a settler. He was presented as a trader, but in reality, he was trafficking gold. He harassed the villagers and robbed them of their possessions, which annoyed the village elders," Patrick explained.

"To put a stop to this behaviour, something had to be done."

The officer’s grave, located in the forest, has since become a spiritual place for the community.

Nanan Lambert Koffi Kokola, the chief of Rubino, said the site lies on sacred land.

“Because it is located on sacred land where spirits reside, of course, and rivers flow. For us, the Abbé people, it is a place where we come to meditate because it is here that our ancestors finally gained their freedom,” he said.

France passes law to allow return of Ivorian drum stolen by colonial troops

Railway history

After the revolt, a new railway line was built about 100 metres away from the original track.

Photographer François-Xavier Gbré documented the route in an exhibition titled Radio Ballast, revisiting different periods of the country’s history.

“This railway line has seen colonial times, modern times marked by independence, and is still in operation today. It spans three eras: colonial, independence and the contemporary period,” he said.

Today, the site attracts the occasional tourist or history enthusiast.

This article was adapted from the original version in French by RFI's Bineta Diagne.

FANON, Frantz

Frantz Fanon was a psychoanalyst who used both his clinical research and lived experience of being a black man in a racist world to analyse the effects of racism on individuals –particularly on people of colour- and of the economic and psychological impacts of imperialism. Fanon is an important thinker within postcolonial and decolonial thought whose work has had widespread influence across the social sciences and humanities.

 

Like many canonical postcolonial thinkers, Fanon’s personal biography is often viewed as important in understanding his published work. Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique in 1925. He studied at the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, where he was taught by writer and poet Aimé Césaire. Fanon was involved in supporting the French resistance against the Vichy regime in the Caribbean, and against the Nazis in France (though he experienced daily racism while serving in the army). After the Second World War he went to study medicine and psychiatry in Lyon. Following his studies Fanon became involved in struggles against colonialism under the influence of African freedom fighters who went to France to garner support for their struggles. In 1953 he went to Algiers as head of the psychiatric department at the Bilda-Joinville Hospital. In Algeria Fanon was appalled by the difference in living standards between the European colonizers and the indigenous population, and by the racism experienced by the Algerians.

 

The 1954 Algerian revolt was met with a violent response involving torture, repression, physical abuse and widespread killings of Algerians by the colonisers. This served to radicalise Fanon and he supported the revolutionaries in secret for two years before resigning from his job at the hospital in 1956 and joining the National Liberation Front. He moved to Tunis, founded the Moudjahid (Freedom Fighter) magazine, and became a leading ideologue of the Algerian revolution. He travelled widely in Africa to speak on his anti-colonial ideas and was ambassador to Ghana for a period. Though Fanon was from the Antilles, following his experiences in Algeria he came to think of himself as Algerian. He died of leukimia in Washington 1961.

 

Fanon’s key works are Black Skins White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth, and Toward the African Revolution. Black Skins White Masks was published in 1952 but did not gain widespread recognition until the late 1960s. This was one of the first books to analyse the psychology of colonialism. In it Fanon examines how the colonizer internalises colonialism and its attendant ideologies, and how colonized peoples in turn internalise the idea of their own inferiority and ultimately come to emulate their oppressors. Racism here functions as a controlling mechanism which maintains colonial relations as ‘natural’ occurrences. Black Skins White Masks is written in an urgent, fluid style. It is both analytical and passionate, part academic text, part polemic. The book has provided a powerful and lasting indictment of racism and imperialism.

 

A Dying Colonialism is a historical document. It is a firsthand account of the Algerian revolution, describing how the Algerian people became a revolutionary force, and ultimately were successful in repelling the French colonial government. It is also, however, a philosophical discussion of the meaning of the conflict and what might come after it. Toward the African Revolution is a collection of articles, essays, and letters which spans the period between Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.

 

The Wretched of the Earth was published just before Fanon’s death, very much with the Algerian independence struggle in mind. Prefaced by Jean Paul Sartre, the book offers a social-psychological analysis of colonialism, continuing his argument that there is a deep connection between colonialism and the mind, and equally between colonial war and mental disease. In The Wretched of the Earth Fanon argued for violent revolution against colonial control, ending in socialism. These struggles must be combined, he argued with (re)building national culture, and in that sense Fanon was a supporter of socialist nationalism. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon not only writes about violence in the international context, colonialism, national consciousness and freedom fighting, but he also includes a psychoanalytic investigation of mental disorders associated with colonial war. The book, then, continues his work of drawing connections between the inner world of subjugated individuals and the workings of international politics. This is something that has been continued by other scholars in the postcolonial tradition including Ashis Nandy and Ngugi wa Thiongo.

 

 

Essential Reading

Fanon, F. (1986 [1952]) Black Skins White Masks, London: Pluto Press

Fanon, F. (1970 [1959]) A Dying Colonialism, London: Penguin

Fanon, F. (2001 [1961]) The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin

Fanon, F. (1964) Toward the African Revolution, New York: Grove Press

 

Further Reading

Alessandrini, A. (1999) Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives, London: Routledge

Abdilahi Bulhan, H. (1985) Frantz Fanon And The Psychology Of Oppression, New York: Plenum Press

Gibson, N.C. (2003) Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination, Oxford: Polity Press

 

Questions:

How does Fanon define decolonization? What does it entail?

What effect does colonization have on the individual and on the community, according to Fanon?

What psychological phenomenon does Fanon refer to in the title ‘Black Skin White Masks’?

How does the process of liberation work? How do peoples become ready for a new battle against colonialism, according to Fanon?

Discuss the complexity of Fanon’s understanding of violence in the context of colonialism.

 

Submitted by Lucy Mayblin

https://globalsocialtheory.org/

From Algiers to Gaza: Frantz Fanon and the unfinished decolonisation

Fanon at 100: As Algeria criminalises French colonialism, his vision of decolonisation speaks powerfully to Gaza's genocide today, writes Rachid Sekkai.

Perspectives
THE NEW ARAB
Rachid Sekkai
29 Dec, 2025
It was inside the Algerian revolution that Fanon’s thoughts were forged, in its ethics of solidarity and sacrifice, writes Rachid Sekkai.

On the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, Algiers hosted an emotionally charged conference on 6 December that gathered scholars, psychiatrists, and activists from Algeria and beyond. The event came just weeks before Algeria adopted a landmark law officially classifying French colonialism as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This historic act seemed to restore Fanon’s spirit at the heart of political life.

When we entered the unexpectedly trendy conference hall in the unassuming district of Mohamed Belouizdad in central Algiers, the room was already overflowing. A portrait of Frantz Fanon hung on the stage, making it feel like the Martinican psychiatrist was staring out at the crowd with his familiar intense gaze.

Fanon’s thoughts and analysis on decolonisation was the subject of the programme, yet the emotional temperature of the room was set by the present: the ongoing colonisation of Palestine, Congo, and Western Sahara. These are territories where the machinery of empire never disappeared but merely changed form.

His sentences, written for another age of torture centres and counter-insurgency, felt as if they had been drafted for Khan Younis or Goma.

This is the very reason that Fanon’s centenary should not be a nostalgic homage. It is a stress test for Algeria’s own unfinished decolonisation - and for the region’s willingness to confront Fanonian questions about violence, complicity, and what kind of “new human” we are prepared to become.

Indeed, Fanon’s name is splashed everywhere in Algeria — on streets, schools, hospitals, and even psychiatric institutions. Yet, as Raouf Farrah - co-founder of Twala and organiser of the centenary - notes, “his intellectual legacy occupies remarkably little space in contemporary debate.”

The conference, he explains, was designed not to sanctify Fanon but to “move him away from being a totem and back into the terrain.”

It was inside the Algerian revolution that Fanon’s thoughts were forged, in its ethics of solidarity and sacrifice. As the leading psychiatrist at the Blida-Joinville Hospital during French colonisation, his proximity to his colonised patients gave him profound insight into how domination invades both body and psyche, how violence becomes internalised, and how the colonised resist not only externally but psychologically.

Gaza and beyond

Throughout the event it was impossible to ignore Gaza - at once a black hole where international law collapses, and a moral compass.

The genocide compelled a return to Fanon’s central intuition: colonialism is neither abstraction nor metaphor, but “an architecture of domination that dehumanises Indigenous peoples and governs their life and death.”

Fanon’s words from The Wretched of the Earth (1961) echoed through the discussions: “Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip; it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”

Speakers connected Gaza to a continuum of imperial violence stretching across the Global South – from Western Sahara’s occupation to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo - where extraction and dispossession remain the engines of power.




Sociologist Professor Fatma Oussedik pushed further Fanon’s desire to unsettle power. His legacy, she explained, is not only political but anthropological, and he forces us to confront the coloniser inside ourselves.

“Leaving the posture of the colonised, is the only way to make the coloniser within us disappear,” she added.

Drawing on Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Oussedik argued that the colonised internalise the voice of domination, carrying its violence into postcolonial societies. The task, she insists, “is to abolish those relations of domination — not only intellectually or culturally, but geopolitically.”


This is why Algeria passing the historic law officially classifying the 132 years of French colonisation as war crimes, has echoed with so many populations around the world who have been impacted by imperialism and colonialism. It has marked a rupture for those nations and leaders who assumed the oppression and abuse waged in the name if their empires has been somehow forgotten.

Beyong its legal symbolism, the measure echoes Fanon’s warnings about the dual nature of colonial violence - both physical and psychological - and the danger that the colonised, through fear or assimilation, might be coerced into internalise the coloniser’s methods.

By naming colonialism itself as a crime against humanity, Algeria has, in effect, turned Fanon’s diagnosis into law, asserting that liberation must confront not only historical atrocities but also their lingering psychic imprints.

Elaine Mokhtefi, author of 'Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers' at Frantz Fanon centenary in Algiers. [RS]

That also means confronting postcolonial order everywhere, in whichever form it takes, and certainly in Africa we must be pointing the finger at multinationals like French nuclear fuel group Orano, that generate huge profits from natural resources while Niger sinks into misery.

And lest we forget that the Sahara remains partitioned by imperial convenience.

The West must learn from Fanon

The centenary also revealed how Fanon’s work is too often misread in Western academia.

Dr. Latefa Abid Guemar, based at the University of East London, lamented the neglect of Fanon’s essay Algeria Unveiled, often reduced in Western academic spheres to a debate about veiling rather than an analysis of colonial power over women’s bodies.

“Fanon explained that Algerian women used the veil strategically, to join the resistance, to carry messages or explosives,” said Abid Guemar, author of Algerian Women and Diasporic Experience. “His essay was not about culture; it was about control.”

Certainly, it was a significant symbolic moment that global thinkers and scholars gathered in Algiers following over two years of the Gaza genocide during which academic freedoms and free speech on colonialism, occupation and solidarity across the West have been under attack. But it was also crucial in clarifying the direction of travel and reminding us about important lessons from past struggles that will serve in the oppression and repression we face today.

By naming colonial violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity, Algeria reclaims its narrative not as perpetual victim but as moral witness. Yet Fanon would remind us that liberation is never legal alone. It must dismantle the hierarchies of humanity that persist within us.

The law gestures toward that renewal, translating memory into sovereignty. For Algerians, Palestinians, and all peoples still trapped in colonial continuities, the task is to build Fanon’s “new human,” capable of healing without reproducing domination.

Rachid Sekkai is a journalist, media coach, and PhD researcher in identity and belonging.

Follow Rachid on X: @RachidSekkai

It’s Not Where the Cookie Crumbles: Memoir as a Process of Enlightenment, Emancipation and Reclaiming Innocence

Former students from my Memoir Writing and "other writing" classes working up the gumption to "tell their stories"

by Paul Haeder / December 22nd, 2025

It truly is a liberating process, and an emotional landmine. Imagine, strangers, adults, grayhairs, all coming from different avocations, life experiences, even abilities to draw words onto “paper,” hanging out for two hours a day, once a week, eight weeks, with ME!

They stuck with me, man, for weeks, and then they came back for more at this community education class through the Oregon Coast Community College. I take my hats off for the lot of them hanging in there with this dude, Man Lost of Tribe: Preface: Terminal Velocity—A Man Lost of Tribe

And I did bring up Palestine and the mass murder and genocide. But, here, your link to the Show on Memoirs and Growing Old.

*****

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story —

Refaat Alareer believed in the power of stories and the vital necessity of mastering language (specifically, English) sufficiently to tell those stories in an honest and compelling manner. He grew up on the stories of his mother and grandmother, and he in turn entertained his children at night with stories. (His TED Talk on the power of storytelling is worth listening to.) But following October 7, he was unable to continue this practice. In several essays collected in the anthology, he wrote poignantly about the ways in which living in the context of genocide charged his interactions with his children, as normal gestures or words of affection could suddenly be understood as final goodbyes and trigger alarm.

Preface: Terminal Velocity—A Man Lost of Tribe

What is a life, revealed? What is this idea of truth, the unadulterated history in one’s narrative? The baggage, the contexts, the points of view, dredged into one’s psychological state, all the trauma of simple moments in a boy’s or man’s life, boy-to-man and man-to-boy sense of things, are these parts of the lens one should focus in a process of a looking backward (writing it) and then forward to draw lessons learned and still to be revealed (as an organized, somehow, autobiography)? Is it important for someone like me to write a “biography” even at all without the pedigree of “someone who’s big, still rising, haven risen and/or now fallen from grace,” or in this case the anti-autobiography of a simple man, Willy Loman sort of teacher, even without a bone of celebrity in my body?

“I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper…. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.” – Linda Loman, Death of a Salesman

Is the crucible of democracy in the wasteland of American white manifest destiny the very essence Arthur Miller was attempting by addressing in the simple cut of a man in his play, a salesman separated from tribe, from any real sense of giving back to community. The lost and plagued American displaced inside his own land, in his mind, empty of an alternative to this denuded existence selling or hawing or moving information around for deceitful misanthropic companies and corporations?

The body of this long-form writing is a 30-part “series” possibly distilled into fictional fusions—captured life moments, galvanized to the heart of seeing creatively in a pretty messed up world.

The body of this long-form writing is a 30-part “series” possibly distilled into fictional fusions—captured life moments, galvanized to the heart of seeing creatively in a pretty messed up world. I believe this to be one of the most gut-flooding truth seeking to some of us, painted characters and landscapes, conflicts, yet the dog of the lamentation, those roses that shed blood, tears from the prickly pear, the ghost inside cenotes.

The Mayan legend is close to me since I lived in the Yucatan for a while and returned several times: women, sisters – Xtabay the sinner and Utz-Colel the good—in Maya land, come to the male traveler, or the drunkard or just one who laments some image of beauty lost. Lured into the sacred well, the flowers sweet and succulent, and this glorious angel (the warts and sag of skin like the witch not revealed yet) entwines him in her long black hair, and, in the morning, if he is lucky enough to make it out with his life, he finds the morning flooded with sadness, cruda, which is the hangover of unbearable light of life to never pass through that crucible of potential and idealized beauty.

So, as this unfolds, in serialized life form, quickly, the reader may be entering a carnival, where hummingbirds make nests in the bleached rib cage of grandpa out back helping hold up the hydrangeas. There will be allusions and pathways marked. There will be the flow of a creative writer. The confusion of age in a time long shriveled into the amnesia of our collective lobotomy.

The one-toothed lady from Hanoi, shriveled in her 70s, but there, $3 massages, on China Beach, holding the man’s manhood, the fragrance of sea and bottled passion fruit singeing the neck hairs of some battle-fatigued old timer wondering if he immolated the woman’s daughters and sons, brothers and grandchildren.

Napalm mornings and nights lifted by fruit bats in the hundreds. The memory of my life is energy, like ball lightning one moment, then like a tree holding orchids a hundred years old. Reflections in the koi pond come at night, in dreams, as coral reefs are mowed down by giant parrot fish and dredges from eco-miners.

Time is compressed and flipped, and images are truths, poems the shouts in the night in the careening howls of wolves released on Nez Perce lands in Idaho, and then the lies that make up the fabricated, truths, twisted deceptions reflected through the parallax to become something of a tribute to one man’s survival, which is in the end the very essence of finding death withheld.

What will be true in these 30 parts is fantastical drawn from the mundane, the nanosecond of death revealed in a lifetime under a sheltering moon.

I like Mark Twain, and boy could this world use another one, now, and Gore Vidal, or Zora Neale Hurston. Here, though, some prescient words about autobiography from Twain:

“An autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell (though I didn’t use that figure)—the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.” —Letter to William D. Howells, 14 March 1904

It’s absolutely truth that the reader has to work at unmasking the masks and then read between the lines of anyone’s autobiography. My goal in this work is to even go a step further and fuse streams of consciousness and great leaps in narrative structure to suture up what can be for me and others a disgorgement of what is revealed inside a nasty system as we pledge allegiance to North America, these United States, in whatever form that allegiance takes. I am not talking about patriotism or nationalism, to be sure. Here, Twain, on autobiography, his, which is relevant to me, to my small life compared to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but most great books are repositories of vivid truth about even the smallest man or woman notched into capitalism:

“This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back — I get glimpses of them in the mirror — and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography. I rejoice when a king or a duke comes my way and makes himself useful to this autobiography, but they are rare customers, with wide intervals between. I can use them with good effect as lighthouses and monuments along my way, but for real business I depend upon the common herd….

An autobiography that leaves out the little things and enumerates only the big ones is no proper picture of the man’s life at all; his life consists of his feelings and his interests, with here and there an incident apparently big or little to hang the feelings on.” – Mark Twain’s Autobiography

This is a time and age when the mainstream publishing world is looking for the next big thing, the expose, some catharsis from some celebrity, or famous person from any walk of life, more so from the mover and shaker in the millionaire or billionaire class, possibly some jock or military general or politico who got caught, or just gets the stage because of all the collateral damage they caused in their service to the paymasters and dispiriting guiders – CEOs, Spooks, Presidents, Despots. Some Bruce-to-Caitlyn aberration, or philandering Patraeus, some mothball-brained Kissinger, Johnny Depp, or that hyper-Breaking Bad-or-Orange is the New Black sort of story-boarding memoir thing?

Life Uninterrupted, a solemn credo tied to anti-authoritarianism, against the tide of cultural devolution, consumerism, from a precariate, one of the truly precarious workers in this trickle-down and buckle-up Consumer Free-to-Exploit Market System that has banked on ignorance, amnesia, fear and loathing, non-participatory “democracy, racism-sexism-otherism to run a majority of the workers into the ground .

In the old days, magazines like Life or Look or Harpers or Any Number of Periodicals That Have Been Scarfed Up by Media Moguls, they serialized long-form, novellas and even novels. Here, thanks to Dick and Sharon and their LA Progressive, I have been offered up a section of the online magazine. Can I live up to the challenge of daily distilling “the things of life” to make all lives relevant, to meet a weekly deadline? From me, a lowly activist and pretty well-read and well-traveled and well-shaped writer with a few low-hanging fruit laurels. Amazing how in the slip-stream of life, six degrees of separation reverberating in my life, others’ lives, that Dick and Sharon are giving me a chance and the challenge to write a “memoiry” kind of new journalism auto-biography as something more than expressive and cathartic, or wholly self-indulgent. But as a clarion call to a certain rarefied group of readers who might learn from the scattershot world I have lived in, thus far, 59, and counting.

I will journey with a reader into psycho-political dynamic seascapes, flowing with a sense of splendor at some things and places I have been lucky to encompass in an undertow that for me is a natural place to be inside a tide pool of ebb and flow, since I am also a seasoned diver who has seen a few riptides and swarming packs of hammerheads.

Travelogue and full of internal dialogue, with a trade-wind of constant magic realism, lots of punctuated stream of consciousness and a real concern for reaching audience and listener, so the form does not overtake the language and the lessons tied to universal rules and goals.

In a nutshell, I am tasked to write my life as it is in some fashion in 30 weeks, an assignment that I have to utilize daily since my life is not written down as such. This is more than journaling, but at times it will feel like a journey into the now, with folded chapters back.

A life doesn’t start Feb. 6, 1957, in San Pedro, California. That birthing moment when I exploded out of womb six weeks premature, blue baby with mama’s cord wrapped around the neck twice, is pressed into a continuum that goes back to tribes long forgotten, to ancestors from Ireland and Germany. Pressed into the DNA of floating through the laws of time, the influences of nature and nurture, all those small traumas, and larger ones.

Maybe this attempt will be a fusion of fantasy and fiction, cemented to some concrete perception of the world I created and continue to create. Here, Lidia Yuknavitch

“I think our identities—the ones we live in the real world—are really made partly from stories that we build up around ourselves—necessary fictions—so that we can bear the weight of our own lives. We like to call these “truths” or “facts” or “selves,” but I maintain that they are fictions. Fictions for instance called “mother” or “wife” or “lover” or “teacher” or “writer.”

I think we understand our own life experiences in narrative terms. If you consider that idea for a moment, we are walking novels. No one has a pure identity. Everyone has an identity made from everyone they’ve ever known and loved or hated, and from every experience they could process and withstand, happy or sad, arranged in memories, otherwise known as stories.”

I am a walking set of novels, and a few have ended up on the trash bin of US publishing houses, and my former agent, Jack Ryan, always pressed upon me that I was ahead of my time, that my novels he tried schlepping were over the heads of the Vassar and Brown university interns looking over “new” novelists’ work with not much eye toward form and subject outside what was tracking that year in publishing circles.

The embedded lie is almost everything in America, and so working here and living and grappling against the vicissitudes of a vulture, parasitic capitalism and invented history that is our way of living and doing business, one has to develop more than just a bipolar way of dealing with so much corruption and anti-egalitarianism.

My call of duty is to get something right, something outside the norm that we see as storytelling and dramatic novel writing. I want to pledge allegiance to the profane and prophetic, and still have the pleasure of enjoying staking out emotional, intellectual and cultural space.

We are the sum total of everyone else’s projections, those parts that jigger the reality based belief system that there are clear boundaries between right and wrong, success and failure, happiness and sadness, sanity and insanity.

This writing is part of the great wind of time, full of limited perspectives, but something holy to the atheist’s regard for humanity starving for communitarianism. From the Heights of Macchu Picchu to the Power and the Glory, we are all living “under a volcano” as the “memory is fire”.

*****

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.
And give me silence, give me water, hope.
Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.
Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.
Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.
Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

—Pablo Neruda

Or, beyond, inside the bottle of Mexico, too, Malcolm Lowry:

“There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful password of courage and pride—the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right. It was as though he were gazing now beyond this expanse of plains and beyond the volcanoes out to the wide rolling blue ocean itself, feeling it in his heart still, the boundless impatience, the immeasurable longing.”—Under the Volcano

Caught inside the subterranean magic of history foretold:

“While we can’t guess what will become of the world, we can imagine what we would like it to become. The right to dream wasn’t in the 30 rights of humans that the United Nations proclaimed at the end of 1948. But without it, without the right to dream and the waters that it gives to drink, the other rights would die of thirst.” —Eduardo Galeano, author of Memory of Fire

Captured by the essence of the puritanism of capitalism and religion intermingled like some unholy alliance of the captured and the corrupted:

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” — Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

This will be a process of regaining a future, remembering the links of the past are part of a continuous chain, pulling and pulling me deeper into my past, which is my future, and I hope the process is well-suited for a reader, many readers.

Paul Haeder, June 24, 2016

*****

Okay, so Brenda and Melodie are on my KYAQ show, coming out on the air, 91.7 FM, Wednesday ,Feb. 18, the start of the new Chinese year, Fire Horse:

What Makes the “Fire Horse Year” (赤馬年) Unique?

The true distinction of 2026 lies in the potent synergy between the Horse’s intrinsic energy and the Fire element. In the profound Chinese Five Element theory, Fire is the embodiment of:

• Passion & Enthusiasm: A fervent drive and zest for life.
• Dynamism & Innovation: The spark that ignites novel ideas and propels decisive action.
• Brightness & Clarity: Illuminating paths forward, fostering optimism and clear vision.
• Assertiveness & Leadership: The courage to lead, inspire, and take initiative.

This “Fire on Horse” combination significantly amplifies the zodiac sign’s natural traits, foretelling a year of heightened activity, rapid progress, and potentially transformative changes. The term “赤馬” (chì mǎ), or “Red Horse,” eloquently captures this. “赤” (chì) signifies red, a color deeply revered in Chinese culture for symbolizing good fortune, joy, and prosperity. Therefore, a Red Horse is more than just a magnificent creature; it is an icon ablaze with vitality and auspicious tidings.

*****

I’ll take these stories, these ancient myths, over ANYTHING western culture has shoved down our throats:

• Folktales & Mythology: Legendary horses, including the loyal White Dragon Horse (白龍馬) from “Journey to the West” and the fabled Thousand-Mile Horse (千里馬), capable of traveling immense distances, further cement the horse’s image as a heroic figure and a symbol of extraordinary ability. And of course, the legendary Red Hare (赤兔馬), the formidable steed of the warrior Guan Yu, renowned for its unparalleled speed and loyalty – a perfect ancient counterpart to our vibrant “Red Horse” theme.

Ahh, the memoir, in Western tradition:

• “I gather together the dreams, fantasies, experiences that preoccupied me as a girl, that stay with me and appear and reappear in different shapes and forms in all my work. Without telling everything that happened, they document all that remains most vivid.” bell hooks, author of Bone Black
• “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
• “Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”Saul Bellow
• “Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.” Henry James
• “It’s amazing how you remember everything so clearly,” a woman said…”All those conversations, details. Were you ever worried that you might get something wrong?” “I didn’t remember it,” Lucy said presently. “I wrote it. I’m a writer.” Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty
• “It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.” Montaigne
• “Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.”
  Clive James, Unreliable Memoirs
• “Isn’t telling about something—using words, English or Japanese—already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”
  Yann Martel, The Life of Pi
• “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
• “The tales you are about to read are the truth, practically the truth, and nothing less than a half-truth…” Nick Trout, Tell Me Where it Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon

*****

Here, one woman’s top Memoirs for 2025:

10. Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, Mary Annette Pember

Mary Annette Pember’s mother never wanted to answer her daughter’s questions about what she had experienced during her eight years at St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Mission School. As a result, Pember, a journalist and national correspondent with ICT News and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, was unable to fully grasp her mother’s trauma and the impact it had on their family. After her mother’s death, Pember felt she needed to know what happened to her in order to better understand her own place in the world, which led her to research the boarding schools where countless Native children, including her mother and grandmother, endured years of hardship and abuse. She situates her family’s story within the broader history of these government-sponsored institutions as she grapples with both the trauma of family separation and her own complex relationship with her mother. Pember’s search supplies her with some needed clarity, while her exploration of her Ojibwe culture—and bearing witness to her people’s ongoing capacity for joy and survival—brings her a measure of healing.

9. Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Ukraine, Olia Hercules

When tending rose bushes, Olia Hercules’ maternal grandmother Liusia instructed her family to “look at the roots”—if they are strong enough, she would say, even petals and stems lost to storms can grow back. In Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Ukraine, Hercules, a chef and author who was born in Kakhova and now lives in London, writes a work of memory, love, and quiet defiance. She names what her family and others have gone through since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine: her parents had to flee their home; her brother joined the defense forces; their hometown flooded after Russia destroyed a nearby dam. But the heart of her book is found in the resilience of her ancestors, whose legacy Hercules holds closer than ever. Amidst a war that hasn’t ended, what she eventually writes her way toward is not peace or resolution, but a ringing assertion of life: “Now I know that we are not victims. And we are not just survivors. We, Ukrainians of many ethnicities, cultures and histories, are united…. And here I am, living and breathing, writing these words for you, dear reader, to feel and understand our story.”

8. Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice, Rachel Kolb

What does it mean to know and claim your voice, to be articulate, as a deaf person in a culture that often prioritizes hearing individuals and the spoken word? In this engrossing debut memoir, writer and scholar Rachel Kolb deftly combines personal storytelling and cultural commentary on deafness and disability, encouraging readers to consider the vast possibilities of language, communication, and dialogue—including the opportunities we might miss if we exclusively focus on verbal and hearing-dominant interactions. “Our ideas about fluency and sameness are…modern-day fictions,” Kolb writes, “extensions of those notions we’ve inherited about the normal and the standard and the typical…. But language, by its very nature, blooms from far more varied ground—which, to me, feels like its greatest miracle.” Curious and contemplative by turns, Articulate will make you think about self-expression, accessibility, and connection in new ways.

7. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, Sarah Wynn-Williams

Sarah Wynn-Williams was a true believer in Facebook and its potential to “make the world more open and connected” when she pitched herself into a job as the company’s Manager of Global Public Policy in 2011. But what she once viewed as a dream role eventually gave way to a nightmare as she realized the extent to which what she describes as “a lethal carelessness” seemed to rule the company’s culture. In her memoir, Wynn-Williams portrays Facebook leadership as irresponsible, misogynistic, and power-obsessed; by the time she writes about founder Mark Zuckerberg being confronted with Facebook’s alleged role in Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, readers probably won’t expect much meaningful reflection or accountability in the company she refers to at one point as an “autocracy of one.” Wynn-Williams, for her part, does seem willing to interrogate her past aspirations: “I was part of it. I failed when I tried to change it, and I carry that with me.” While she is unafraid to name names or call out feckless behavior, it is the openness, warmth, and wit of her narration—all the more evident against the backdrop of a frequently absurd working environment—that makes her memoir a compelling read.

6. Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks

As I read Geraldine Brooks’s memoir, I kept thinking of something a friend said to me while I struggled to complete the many administrative tasks triggered by my mother’s death: “No one warns you that death comes with a checklist.” Brooks begins with the moment when everything in her life changed: an emergency-room physician in Washington, D.C. calls to tell her that her 60-year-old husband, Tony Horwitz, has died suddenly while on a book tour. After this shock, the “first brutality” in “a brutal, broken system,” she cannot give into the need to scream or cry or collapse, because there is so much she must attend to. This cascade of responsibilities, as well as what Brooks describes as the “endless, exhausting performance” of life after a loved one’s death, will ring true to anyone who has suffered an unexpected loss. It is only when she travels to a remote island off the coast of Australia that she is able to mourn her husband. In Memorial Days, Brooks honors the life they shared and reclaims “something that our culture has stopped freely giving: the right to grieve.”

5. Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity, Joseph Lee

In Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity, Aquinnah Wampanoag author and journalist Joseph Lee shares the history of his family and his tribal community on the island of Martha’s Vineyard—known to Wampanoag people as Noepe—and reflects on questions of sovereignty, tradition, and belonging in Native communities from Oklahoma to the Pacific Northwest to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Lee brings his expansive journeys and conversations to life in this consistently thoughtful, accessible narrative that blends cultural history and memoir, research and reportage. Clear-eyed about both the destructive legacy of colonialism and the complications and contradictions often forced upon those working to challenge it, he positions himself as a curious and deeply engaged fellow learner, inviting readers to explore questions of community and identity along with him.

4. The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters, Sasha Bonét

“Each generation of women in my family seeks to transform realities,” Sasha Bonét writes in her exquisite memoir, “but somehow we always find our way back to what we know. And we come from a long line of Louisiana women who traversed these troubled waters of the South.” The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters is both the story of those who raised Bonét—the Black women in her family who fought with everything they had to build lives and legacies for themselves and their children—and the story of our country; as she notes, the waters she and her family have crossed can also “tell you the true history of America.” A lyrical, unflinching exploration of motherhood, love, and survival across generations, The Waterbearers is a meditative and unforgettable read.

3. Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy

After the death of her mother, Mary Roy, in 2022, novelist Arundhati Roy felt “heart-smashed” and “unanchored”—and also somewhat surprised at the depth of her own devastation. At 18, Roy had declared her independence from her mother, the strong-willed founder of a school who was determined to “make space for the whole of herself” in the world. Their relationship was never easy, and for years Roy had to love her formidable, sometimes terrifying parent “from a safe distance.” In Mother Mary Comes to Me, she tries to make sense of who she is after the loss of the woman she calls “my shelter and my storm”—and around whom, she also recognizes, she learned to construct her own life and identity. Writing of how she worked over the years to try to accommodate and understand her mother, Roy recognizes that her writing itself is yet another kind of inheritance: “I turned into a maze, a labyrinth of passages that zigzag underground and surface in strange places, hoping to gain a vantage point for a perspective other than my own. Seeing her through lenses that were not entirely colored by my own experience of her made me value her for the woman she was. It made me a writer.”

2. The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, Martha S. Jones

In the opening pages of this powerful and contemplative memoir, historian and author Martha S. Jones recalls how a college classmate once mistook her for white during a presentation on Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism in their Black sociology class. Though the two later became friends, she never forgot his accusation: “Who do you think you are?” In The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, Jones answers this question on her own terms, painstakingly researching and tracing the story of her family since the days when her oldest known ancestor, Nancy Bell Graves, was enslaved in Kentucky. She shares a photograph of Graves at the age of 80, noting that “her skin was closer in tone to the white bonnet on her head than to the deep, rich dye of her… dress,” and states that “Nancy bequeathed to us not only her portrait but also the trouble of color—somewhere between too little and too much of it.” Yet Jones does far more than find and introduce us to her dynamic, determined forebears, many of whom were also “caught up along the jagged color line”; in pursuing a richer and more nuanced family history—one that she herself can hold onto and share in—she shows us what it means to be in deep, earnest conversation with one’s ancestors, and to seek truths beyond the bare facts of their lives or the circumstances they were born into. Hers is a book that, she explains, “emanates from longing”: to better comprehend those she came from, to learn from them, and to know her place among them.

1. Things in Nature Merely Grow, Yiyun Li

“This is not a book about grieving or mourning,” Yiyun Li writes in Things in Nature Merely Grow, the remarkable book she wrote for James, her son who died from suicide in 2024. Li knew that she would write a book for James, as she had for his older brother Vincent, whom she lost to suicide in 2017. But she also knew that James, unlike Vincent, “would not like a book written from feelings.” In order to find words for her younger son, Li felt she had to try to “live thinkingly,” as he did: holding onto logic, reason, facts. Her book, while starkly, brutally honest, is not overly emotional; nor does it engage in “questions of whys and hows and wherefores or the wishful thinking of what-ifs”—because such questions would seem to argue against the irrefutable fact of James’s death, and would thus be “a violation of [his] essence.” Instead, it is a work of profound and purposeful consideration, written from the abyss in which Li finds herself: “If an abyss is where I shall be for the rest of my life, the abyss is my habitat. One should not waste energy fighting one’s habitat.” Not everyone will feel they have the capacity for the kind of “radical acceptance” Li writes about, but no reader could be unmoved by her tenacious search for understanding; her commitment to the truth of her sons’ lives; her need to find “the most straightforward language” for a loss that seems unfathomable, despite knowing that words so often fall short.

Top Ten from Nicole Chung, author of the memoirs A Living Remedy and All You Can Ever Know

*****

And there are always side trips, footnotes, more clamoring and chaos in the life of  a Man Lost of Tribe. You’ve read about me being cancelled, for a talk I was asked to give based on my perceptions why we have the death of journalism, death of critical thinking, death of basic history and context.

 

We DO have the luxury to write, no, in the cradle of Western UnCivilization?

And, Viet is someone I have pushed for the memoir writing class:

Luxuries, Palestine:

Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri invite writer, editor, and translator Yousef Aljamal for a moving and intimate conversation that honours the life, work, and enduring legacy of the late Refaat Alareer — Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and beloved mentor assassinated by Israel in December 2023. Yousef was Refaat’s student, collaborator, and close friend. Yousef assembled and edited the book If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose by Refaat Alareer which was published early this year.

He speaks with clarity, wit, and tenderness about the man whose imagination helped birth an army of writers out of besieged Gaza, including the powerful collection Gaza Writes Back Together, the hosts and Yousef reflect on Refaat’s literary and political ethos — his belief that storytelling is resistance, that fiction outlives fact, and that freedom begins in the imagination.

They unpack how Refaat fused humour with rage, literature with politics, the classroom with the battlefield. The conversation also considers the role of US universities, the complicity of elite institutions, and the radical hope fuelling a generation of students who refuse silence in the face of genocide.

The title of the episode cites Susan Abulhawa’s introduction to the book If I Must Die where she writes that Refaat’s death reminded her of Berta Cáceres of Honduras, “another indigenous leader who, like Refaat, was murdered because the light of her being shone too brightly…When she died, the rallying cry of the thousands who loved and followed her was, “Berta no murió, se multiplicó!” Likewise she says, “Refaat did not die, he multiplied!”

Israel’s barbarity to murder people in Gaza and to sever the connections between people and people, and between people and land, and between people and memories, will never succeed. I lost my brother physically, but the connection with him will remain forever and ever. — R.A.

Susan Abulhawa Remembers Refaat Alareer: Poet, Teacher, Husband, Father: On December 7, 2013, a Ph.D. student in Malaysia reached out to me by email because he was writing a research paper on a section of Mornings in Jenin. He told me that he had taught my novel at the Islamic University of Gaza, and he hoped to get my thoughts on his thesis. His name was Refaat Alareer. We corresponded on the topic and kept in touch. We became friends and comrades, and I came to love, respect, and value him.

Exactly ten years later, on the morning of December 7, 2023, I awoke to news that Israel had killed Refaat. They targeted the home where he had taken refuge the previous day, and it took a day for news to trickle out of Gaza’s blackout. I sat in front of my screen, red-eyed and in shock, searching for remnants of Refaat in my own life—signed books, notes, photos, messages, and emails.

I quickly discovered that the email in 2013 was not my first encounter with Refaat. I found an earlier message, from 2011, in which I told a friend that I had cried over a beautiful tribute to Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian solidarity activist who was killed in Gaza. The tribute was written by a Refaat Alareer. I had not made the connection until I went searching for him after Israel killed him.

Much of the correspondence between Refaat and me was conducted over Twitter (now rebranded as X). But my account was permanently suspended in early 2023 after Zionists launched a campaign to have me canceled, and all of those messages were stolen from me. Although that account had contained an audit of my thoughts and activism for at least a decade, I never mourned its loss until I needed to re-read my exchanges with Refaat.

Shortly after Israel launched its genocidal assault on Gaza, Refaat urged me to create a new Twitter account. Always trying to make our case to the world, he said, “we need your insight there,” and he suggested a handle for the account. I immediately did as he counseled and sent the link to him. His response: “Got your first 4 follows [wink emoji].”

I believe some part of him knew what was to come. Still, he was planning for things “after the genocide stops.”

He was smart to have multiple accounts, prepared with backups in case of social media assaults. His mind was unbreakable and beautiful and fine. Online trolls and cancellation campaigns were no match for him. But he had no defenses against bombs. The most dangerous thing he had was “an expo marker,” as he told Ali Abunimah in his last interview with the Electronic Intifada. He said he would throw it at soldiers when they broke into his home. But he would not even get the satisfaction of that imagined small moment of self-defense. Israelis, cowards as they are, targeted him from the sky.

Three days before Israel murdered Refaat, he sent me a video of what remained of his home and the lifetime of memories it held. The video records three and a half minutes of him walking through unimaginable destruction in Tel al-Hawa, narrating the life that used to be, pointing to pieces of things once whole, clean, functional. A sofa, where he had perhaps lounged lazily countless times, maybe with a book, his children climbing on him; a broken window frame that brought breeze and sunshine and kept in the warmth of the family he loved and lived for; a piece of cloth, like the one in the poem he wrote for his daughter Shymaa,“If I Must Die.”

The heartbreak he must have felt is difficult to fathom. Refaat was no stranger to injustice and profound loss. Israel murdered his brother and at least thirty members of his wife’s family in 2014, one of many aerial pogroms committed against Palestine, Gaza in particular. But “this [time] is different,” he told me in a text on October 14. He wrote, “it’s going to be even worse. We are bracing for that. We have no way to defend ourselves.”

I believe some part of him knew what was to come. Still, he was planning for things “after the genocide stops.” In particular, we talked about the Gaza Zoo. It pained him that many of the animals died because they had gone without water or food for weeks. Two days later, on October 16, I messaged to check on him after Israel began bombing Shujaiya. Of the people murdered that day, he said, “it’s my relatives. But I don’t know who. Calls can’t reach.”

In the video, Refaat continues walking, narrating what we can all see but cannot truly comprehend. Hearing his voice in that recording now is strangely soothing, as if he’s not really gone; as if he might answer if I call him. He stops where books are scattered on the ground. “Some of these are mine,” he says, sifting through tattered, torn, and dusty covers.

Refaat believed there was great value in speaking and writing to the people of empire to lay bare our humanity before them.

The first thing he chooses to pick up, the thing he tries to salvage, is a book he finds from his destroyed library. It’s an unabridged copy of Gulliver’s Travels. He had read it a few times, I remember him telling me years ago. In vain he tries to knock off the dust and debris, but he carries it with him nonetheless. I think the loss of his library broke his heart in ways other losses had not. His books were the accumulation of his intellectual labor, years of reading, thinking, and journeying the world through the written word. Books were integral to his identity. His place in the world as a thinker, a teacher, a writer, was anchored to his library. To see it dismantled, discarded, and burned, I believe, turned off the lights in an unreachable part of him.

Over the years, Refaat and I had several discussions about his embrace of English literature instead of Arabic. Having been forced to leave my Arabic education at a young age, I would lament to him that it pained me to have never developed a sophisticated grasp of my poetically charged mother tongue. He agreed, mostly. But he found English more practical and pliable. More importantly, he wanted to master the language of the empire that oppressed him. Always thinking of Palestinian liberation, Refaat believed there was great value in speaking and writing to the people of empire to lay bare our humanity before them.

He believed people were essentially good; that if they could only see what was happening to us, they would stop supporting our colonizers; that if they could see the magnificent beauty of our souls, they might love us. He also wanted to ensure our lives would be recorded despite rampant efforts to erase our presence in the world.

Still, he was uncompromising in his convictions, and never withheld the sting of his tongue against injustice. His integrity and dignity, and the dignity and agency of Palestinians on the whole, were above all else.

As tributes now poured in for Refaat, all our grief mixing together, his poem for Shymaa recited over and over by so many people around the world, I was reminded of another indigenous leader who, like Refaat, was murdered because the light of her being shone too brightly.

Berta Cáceres of Honduras spent her life fighting for indigenous rights and for our deteriorating planet against extractive industries dismembering the earth, damming rivers, killing species, and stealing resources. When she died, the rallying cry of the thousands who loved and followed her was, “Berta no murió, se multiplicó!”

Likewise, Refaat no murió, se multiplicó!

Refaat did not die, he multiplied! ….. susan abulhawa, August 13, 2024

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Paul Haeder has been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.