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Repression

UC San Francisco Fired Me For Speaking Out Against Genocide

In May 2025, after 23 years of service, I was fired from my position as a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). As healthcare workers were being targeted, tortured, and killed in Gaza by Israel’s US-backed genocide, I could not remain quiet. I spoke out as Gaza’s hospitals were bombed. I brought everything I had as a physician dedicated to building a world of health for all, as a scholar of colonialism and health, as an activist who has stood with Indigenous grandmothers at Standing Rock and survivors of racist police violence in San Francisco, and as a mother who cares for my own children and as a corollary, all children.

Solidarity Against ICE And The Entire State Apparatus

The devolution of Black politics has never been so evident and could not happen at a worse moment. While the crisis of legitimacy accelerates, and provides opportunities for movement politics, many Black people have declared themselves to be uninterested in political engagement or even worse, to be in solidarity with state oppression. Social media is replete with examples of Black people declaring that they don’t care about genocide in Gaza, or that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has nothing to do with them or even that they are glad other people are targeted for deportation.

Condemning Repression Of Sumoud Convoy, Global March To Gaza

La Via Campesina, representing millions of peasants, landless workers, rural women, and grassroots movements in over 80 countries, declares a state of political and moral alert in response to the catastrophic regional escalation triggered by Israel’s war on Gaza and the broader Palestinian people. In the early hours of today, the Israeli occupation launched large-scale airstrikes on Iran — a dangerous development that transforms what was already a genocidal campaign in Palestine into a regional war with unforeseeable consequences. This marks a new phase in a long-standing colonial project, now fueled by imperialist impunity, aimed not only at crushing Palestinian resistance but also at destabilizing the entire region through military aggression, collective punishment, and political domination.

US Empire’s Tactics Come Home; Trump Sends Military To Repress Protests

US President Donald Trump deployed the military to repress demonstrations in Los Angeles, California, as protesters flooded the streets to denounce the abuse of immigrants by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump sent at least 700 Marines and 2,000 members of the National Guard. This is the first time in 60 years that a US president has deployed troops to a state without the approval of its governor. The office of California’s Governor Gavin Newsom condemned Trump’s move as an “illegal militarization of Los Angeles”, and filed a lawsuit seeking to block the president and Department of Defense from taking control of a California National Guard unit.

ICE Now Expanding Into Local Law Enforcement

Trump’s violent ICE agency is about to escalate its war against any or all “illegals” in a dramatic fashion while engaging local law enforcement in its repression. And this should come as no surprise to us. Every authoritarian regime in recent history has formed its own elite corps of feared special police and/or military units to suppress dissent and act as the spearhead of state repression. The Revolutionary Guard and the Morality Police in Iran. The GRU and the Spetsnaz in Russia. Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. The GOPE in Mexico. DINA in Chile. The AAA and the Federal Police during the Argentine dictatorship were inseparable from the horrific death squads. And, of course, the SS in Nazi Germany.

Graduating CUNY Law Students Walk Out Of Ceremony

Dozens of City University of New York (CUNY) law graduates walked out of their graduation ceremony on Thursday, May 22, in solidarity with Palestine and in protest of their administration’s repression of pro-Palestine protest activity. Students donning keffiyehs and sporting Palestinian flags walked out of the ceremony which took place in the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and rallied together a few blocks away at the monument to Adam Clayton Powell. “We’re walking out of our own commencement ceremony today in protest of CUNY law’s suppression of free speech, and the CUNY system’s investments in Israeli settler colonialism and genocide,” said CUNY law graduate Parima Kadikar at the Adam Clayton Powell monument.

EU Sanctions Red. Media For Covering Crackdown On Palestine Protests

The EU Council’s latest sanctions, intended to deter Russia’s war with Ukraine, include red. media founder Hüseyin Doğru, and AFA Medya (which operates red.), citing their coverage of Germany’s pro-Palestine protests which the council claims “supports” Russia. Since the EU began rolling out one sanctions package after another in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the targeting of Doğru marks the first time the EU has used this weapon in the service of Germany’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity, a crackdown which has been condemned by UN officials and human rights groups.

CAIR Designates Johns Hopkins University As A Hostile Campus

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, designated Johns Hopkins University (JHU) as a Hostile Campus due to the threat to the safety of students who stand against occupation, apartheid, and genocide. While claiming to be committed to free expression and inclusive dialogue, the university has instead responded to peaceful demonstrations with violent repression, administrative retaliation, and collaboration with state and federal authorities that disproportionately target Muslim and Arab students. JHU received a failing score of 48.3 out of 100 in the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, revealing widespread concerns about its suppression of dissent and disregard for academic freedom.

I Was Fired From Emerson College For Speaking Out About Palestine

After 17 years at Emerson College, I was fired for my activism in support of Palestinian liberation. My last day was October 11, 2024, just over one year into the genocide in Gaza and ongoing ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine. Over my time at Emerson, I established my professional home, weathering the financial crash and the pandemic. During my time, I helped organize the professional staff with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and served my peers as a steward. I started a free, public film series with a strong focus on social justice cinema that I successfully ran for over twelve years.

Committee Passes Charity Killer Provision In Tax Bill

This morning, the House Ways and Means Committee passed their tax bill granting the Secretary of Treasury the ability to accuse any nonprofit of being a “terrorist supporting organization” without basic due process. Defending Rights & Dissent joined over 200 organizations on the following statement condemning the provision: “Charities that feed the hungry, churches and faith communities that comfort the grieving, veterans’ groups that care for our heroes, and countless other service providing organizations are at risk today because of this legislation. “Nonprofits are on the front lines of meeting every community need. Instead of supporting those who serve our neighbors, this bill would hand any president’s administration the power to cast them as potential enemies of the state if they happen to disagree with their political agenda.

Drop The Charges And Full Amnesty For Brooklyn College Protesters

Fourteen pro-Paelstinian student protestors were arrested at Brooklyn College following a brutal police raid where students were beaten up, dragged, and tased. Those students, who were entirely peaceful , were viciously attacked by police at the command of the CUNY administration and now seven face charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing and risk punishment from Brooklyn College. The Brooklyn College administration recklessly endangered all of their students, staff, and faculty, protesters and non-protesters alike, by bringing cops on campus to protect a genocide and attack the right to protest. The cops, in the name of genocide and as enemies of democratic rights, punched, kicked, and tased students for practicing their right to speak out.

Zionist Militants Responsible For ICE Arrest Of Pro-Palestine Student

A Massachusetts court ruled that the detention of a former student who expressed pro-Palestine views was unconstitutional and that it was a punitive measure triggered almost solely by a complaint from the Zionist militant group Betar. Late last week, a judge ruled that a former student at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), detained unlawfully by ICE, be released, providing the first court admission that Zionist extremist groups are working with U.S. authorities to violate free speech rights. The former student in question is Efe Ercelik, a Turkish national who entered the U.S. on an F-1 student visa. After a physical altercation with a Jewish student during a protest in late 2023, the American corporate media and pro-Israel groups pointed to his case as evidence of rampant attacks against Jewish students on campus.

The Best Protection For Students Is A Mass Movement

On March 20, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) hosted a conversation with Cornell University student and pro-Palestinian activist Momodou Taal. Less than a week prior, Taal had filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging the new executive orders that sought to target international noncitizen students for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. The day after this conversation, Taal was told to surrender into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. On March 31, he self-deported. In this conversation, in which Taal is interviewed by Nidaa Lafi, an organizer with PYM’s Dallas chapter, Taal shares his first-hand experience with being targeted for peacefully protesting, discusses the true function of universities today and offers wisdom on why the increasing repression against students is a sign of empire’s weakness, not its strength.

Jordan Arrests BDS Movement Coordinator Hamza Khader

Last week, Jordanian authorities arrested Hamza Khader, the coordinator of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Jordan, and took him to an undisclosed location for investigation. According to BDS, Khader was arrested on Tuesday, May 6, over social media posts. BDS Jordan issued a statement on Wednesday, May 7, denouncing the arrest of Khader, saying that “it constitutes a clear violation of the fundamental rights of Jordanians to freedom of opinion, freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, which are guaranteed by the Jordanian constitution and the international conventions.” The movement criticized the Jordanian authorities’ use of broadly-worded provisions of the Cybercrime Laws to crackdown on individuals, who express their solidarity with the Palestinian cause, which “represents the conscience of the vast majority of Jordanian nationals.”

Repression Of Panama’s National Strike Draws More Workers

After 11 days of strike, Panamanian workers from across sectors are not giving up their struggle against the economic plans of the government of President José Raúl Mulino, its security agreements with the US government, and its plans to reopen a huge copper mine that closed in 2023. Not only have workers continued to mobilize, but they have been joined in their struggle by more sectors of society. Workers claim that Law 462, passed on March 18, 2025, opens the door for the privatization of Social Security, increases the retirement age, and halves the amount of money for future pensions, among other things.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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