Category: Subverting Empire

The Trenches of Civil Society

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By Rev. Dr. Edgar Rivera Colon (above), re-posted from social media

I will not be preparing to teach for the next academic year. I’m now an independent scholar. In fact, I’ve not taught at USC’s Keck School of Medicine since the spring semester of 2024. Apparently, while I taught my capstone class in the Narrative Medicine course (during which Palestine was never mentioned), someone was monitoring my social media and decided I was a militant anti-Zionist. They were correct.

Suddenly, two very smart and wonderful Jewish students were removed from my class without even a real explanation. I wish those students all the best. Also, all the part-time faculty who were teaching the required three-semester health justice class were fired (I was one of those faculty) because “the full-time” instructors were interested in teaching the course. This was complete nonsense.

The real problem was that a a Mexican and indigenous community member wore a “Free Palestine!” t-shirt and talked about the connection between land and good health here in East LA and Palestine. These comments upset a couple of white liberal Zionists and the administration went nuts.

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A Renewed Prayer

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By Jennifer Maidrand, a professor of Bible, Culture, and Interpretation at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. This is re-posted with permission from her social media page (07.29.25).

After spending the last month and a half in Palestine-Israel for research, I feel a clear affirmation in the work that is ahead and found a renewed prayer of sorts for the journey. And now that I’ve returned to the U.S., communicating what I witnessed during my time in occupied Palestine feels nearly impossible to yet urgent. Research aside, what did I see?

A situation more dire than I’ve seen in the last 11 years of spending time in the region

Countless new checkpoints and gates separating Palestinian society (from Israeli society and from itself) and restricting Palestinian freedom of movement—apartheid at work

The manifestation of the U.S. and Israel’s greenlighting of illegal settlements—outposts being built in hours, rampant settler violence and pogroms (protected by the Israeli military), more cars with Israeli than Palestinian plates in the West Bank

Palestinian homes being seized, demolished, and coercively sold left and right

More than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed since October 2023

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Daily Bread? Or Three Loaves at Midnight?

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By Jim Perkinson (above), a sermon for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit (July 27, 2025)

The disciples want to know how to pray.  About time, huh?  Actually, there is more going on here than we usually register.  This is a typical disciple-request of chosen rabbis in 1st century Palestine.  They are really asking for the Teacher to distill the heart of his teaching in a pray-able formula.  They want the essence, the unadulterated core of what is being admonished.  But here the ante is upped. 

Jesus has just set his face to take his show to Jerusalem for the high-noon show-down with the Powers-that-be at the end of chapter 9.  They are going for broke—like going up into White House today to shut down operations in protest of Palestinian genocide while carrying a green card from some place called “Galilee.”  Jesus has just predicted his death in the process in a huddle with his inner circle.  The disciples are beginning to entertain the thought that he might not be around much longer.  So, indeed, what is it he is saying to do?

The so-called “Lord’s Prayer”—that the Black Church in this country more accurately calls the “Disciples Prayer”—is a stripped-down version of the more lyrical rendition we meet with in Matthew.  And its heart is food and debt.  “Give us this day our daily bread” is an invocation of the prime lesson of the Exodus walkout from Egypt when escaped slaves were directed to “gather”—as in hunt-and-gather—”manna,” which literally, in Hebrew, means “what the F is it?”

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Cruelty as National Policy

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By Will O’Brien (above, right, in DC earlier this month)

The outrages of the Trump Administration are legion, but in recent days I have been especially distressed by one aspect: the brazen cruelty coming out the of the White House.  I am not talking about the policies, which are arguably cruel in themselves, but the intentional and insistent PR campaign of using social media and other public outlets to gleefully mock and degrade immigrants. 

Not that it’s new: In March, the White House X account featured an image of a handcuffed and weeping Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, who had been violently seized on the streets by ICE agents – cartoonized in the style of Japanese Studio Ghibili animation.  In April, the White House posted a video showing men in shackles preparing to board a deportation flight – to the music accompaniment of the old pop song  “Na na hey hey (kiss him goodbye).”  The Department of Homeland Security infamously circulated the photo of “ICE Barbie” Kristi Noem at the El Salvador prison, the detainees shaved and in nothing but underwear while she flaunted her flowing hair, a tight-fitting white shirt, bounteous make-up, and a $50,000 Rolex.

This campaign of orchestrated public cruelty has reached a new level – starting with the offensive name – with Alligator Alcatraz.

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The Holy Spirit Roars

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An excerpt from the Substack newsletter of Dr. Farah El-Sharif (above), a professor of Islamic history at Stanford University. Radical disciples have so much to learn from Muslims fearlessly resisting empire. Read her entire love letter to Jerusalem here.

The Holy spirit—ruh al-quddus—isn’t “moderate” in the face of tyranny. It doesn’t act “nice” with tyrants. It does not “obey” religious rulers who are more afraid of creation than they are of the Creator. Holiness does not bend to the sinister will of powerful “peacemakers” who only sow mischief in the land (Baqarah: 11). The Holy Spirit roars. The Holy Spirit fights back darkness with light. It is so imbibed in Divine love, it becomes a fearless tsunami with a tide so powerful, that it drowns both idols and demons in its wake.

Jerusalem carries herself like a “sitti”, like a wrinkly, beautiful Palestinian grandmother who was has witnessed the ongoing nakba of her people for far too long. Her eyes are lined with the kohl of sadness from witnessing far too many children gunned down and the torching down of her childhood grove’s favorite millennia-old olive tree.

The Efficacy of Protest

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By Jonny Rashid (above), re-posted from his Substack newsletter

I was one of the organizers for the Interfaith Action for Palestine protest of the CUFI convention. CUFI is a Christian Zionist lobbying group that believes that Israel needs to be restored in order for Christ to return, and God judges the Jewish people they are supposedly advocating for. It is deeply harmful eschatology and also deeply antisemitic. We were organizing for Palestine, against Christian Nationalism and Zionism, and against antisemitism.

We had many meetings, exchanged thousands of Signal messages, and held trainings in person to make sure that our protests went as seamlessly as possible. Our goal was to be organized, effective, and kept everyone as safe as possible. This weekend, hundreds of us gathered with power, enthusiasm, and confidence that we would make our voice heard.

On the evening before our protest, our team left DC proper and went to the National Harbor to do some reconnaissance. Our plan was the enter the hotel hosting the CUFI convention, sing songs, lead chants, blow horns, and drop and display banners that reminded the attendants of the conference that CUFI kills, that God doesn’t bomb children, that Christian Zionism is antisemitic, and that God loves Gaza. But when we got to the hotel, we learned that in order to enter, one needed a room key or a lanyard. We felt defeated at that prospect; it felt like months of organizing just went down the drain.

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Behind the Scenes

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By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter. Audio version available here.

Two weeks before Donald Trump bombed Iran under false pretenses to protect an apartheid state’s right to commit genocide on Palestinians and then (true to form) tweeted “now is the time for peace,” the Waymos were burning up in Los Angeles.

Watching that scene from 2,000 miles away brought me back to a Saturday in early Spring, when my friend Sheldon and I drove to downtown LA to march with staff and faculty from UCLA demanding the protection of their international students who have publicly demanded that the university divest from occupation and genocide.

We parked and walked a dozen blocks to the corner of Broadway and Temple. On our way, we were stunned to see our first Waymo, the uber that runs on a Silicon Valley algorithm, now operating in a handful of cities. We struggled to come up with adjectives as we watched this moving car, in the middle of downtown, with no one at the wheel. 

After we drove back to Orange County and had dinner, I was cleaning the kitchen when I heard a horrible crash in front of my mom’s house. Sheldon and I ran outside to find a car up in the bushes of the front yard right across the street.

There was a human driving this car. While we were trying to figure out how he got up there in the bushes, he was revving the engine to the limit, trying to get out. We could see that he hit a parked car next door and then demolished the electric box.

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no kings, all bricks

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By Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre, a poet and activist cultivating a deeper engagement with social justice issues, one based in both empathy and agency. Re-posted from his website here

I don’t have time/energy right now to share very much commentary; hopefully people are aware of the news here in Minnesota. Our No Kings rally went forward, and even with authorities telling people not to gather, thousands of people showed up. I shared a poem.

Actually wrote and memorized it last week, but because it ended up being about grief, how we carry it, and what we might do with it, it felt appropriate to share today too. Full text below, for the folks who have been asking for it.

ALSO: please check out the latest post in my FREE email newsletter: What’s next? Things to do after a big march

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The ancestor on my shoulder doesn’t tell me to put the brick down, or that the weight isn’t worth it. I’m sure many of you are familiar with that… heaviness, whether guilt, or grief, or just the daily shipwreck of the news, all this information we already know:

How things are bad. How they’ve always been bad for some of us, and how shining a light on the bad thing doesn’t change it… but can be a first step. How a big march like this can be a first step, but is never a destination. How going “back to normal” is going backwards. And how desperately the cowards in power want you going backwards, want you to put that brick down, want you to focus on your job, make money—focus on your family.

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