A REVOLUTION OF COMPASSION
June 30, 2026
Celebrating the 250th anniversary amid the ashes of the U.S. Constitution with more genocide, mass surveillance and long prison sentences for the crime of caring.
The eighteen-year-old James McHenry wobbled down the damp wooden gangplank, tightening his tri-cornered hat against the brisk Philadelphia breeze. He would be the first of my family to set foot on the shores of America. The bitter smell of rotting fish heads and the angry squawks of seagulls battling over an unguarded bucket of oysters greeted the young man from Ballymena, County Antrim, west of Belfast, Ireland. He secured a wagon and headed off to Newark, Delaware, for two years of college before returning to Philadelphia to study medicine with Dr. Benjamin Rush.
McHenry joined Rush and the Sons of Liberty at a local tavern, lifting pints and smoking long-stemmed clay pipes of Virginia tobacco as they discussed resistance to King George’s occupation.
On April 19, 1775, the King’s army came under fire from colonists on the greens of Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts. Down in Philadelphia, the Sons of Liberty agreed to help with the plan to fortify Bunker Hill in Charlestown in an attempt to block a second effort by the British to confiscate the armories west of Boston. Dr. Rush recruited the 22-year-old McHenry, asking him to prepare a Flying Hospital for the battle. On June 17, 1775, the colonists and British clashed on the south sides of Breeds and Bunker Hill.
Colonists carried the injured to McHenry’s field hospital, where his team treated 305 wounded combatants. The British killed 138 colonists that day. When George Washington joined McHenry to survey the injured and praised them for their sacrifice, they hit it off, starting a lifelong relationship.
By coincidence, I would help start Food Not Bombs two centuries later, when I was also 22 years old, at a house about a 15-minute walk from where James McHenry set up his Flying Hospital on the flats of Cambridge. He was designated as a terrorist. I would share that title two centuries later.
On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress at the stately brick Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. When the Liberty Bell rang out the news that hot, muggy day, McHenry was there to cheer his approval with the defiant crowd. The Declaration of Independence includes “He [ King George] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” The Palestinians of their time.
McHenry became the surgeon of the 5th Pennsylvania Battalion and was captured at Fort Washington, NY, later in 1776. McHenry was incarcerated on a British ship docked on the Hudson, providing medical attention to his fellow prisoners. Dr. McHenry was paroled in January 1777.
He officially joined Washington’s staff in May 1778 as a volunteer “without any emolument.” Dr. McHenry served as a well-liked and loyal member of Washington’s “military family” until August 1780, when he was assigned to Lafayette’s staff. McHenry attended the surrender of British General Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, after which he resigned from the army to return to private life.
During the harsh winter of desperation at Mount Vernon, Washington wrote:
“McHenry’s easy and cheerful temper was able to bear the strain which we suppose must sometimes occur between two persons thrown so closely and so constantly together in a position of social equality and military inequality.”
After the defeat of Britain, McHenry was elected to the Maryland Senate, served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and was a Maryland representative to the Constitutional Convention. He introduced the clause in Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed,” and inked his signature on the document with the other 38 on September 17, 1787.
My ancestor was a political ally of Washington and served in his cabinet as the Secretary of War from 1796-1800. He was tasked with Indian removal as desired in the Declaration of Independence and directed business to his associates with the construction of a huge brick fort to protect the harbor of Baltimore starting 250 years of defense contractor fraud. Fort McHenry was named for him while he was alive. Genocide and weapons procurement corruption are a feature of the Empire.
On the morning of September 14, 1814, after a night witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry, attorney Francis Scott Key penned the poem that would become the country’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” James McHenry’s first son was stationed at the fort during the battle. The doctor was able to watch the “bombs bursting in air” from his 95-acre farm, Fayetteville, named after his French companion Lafayette. He would die at the Baltimore estate in 1816.
As the United States of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the country is in the process of losing two wars. and the liberties championed in the Declaration of Independence. Flakes of constitutional ash from what was the First Amendment right to protest blew in the winds with the effective life sentences of the passionate anarchists connected to the 2025 Independence Day noise protest outside a North Texas prison. Compassionate young people who wanted to show love and solidarity with the families were interned at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution McHenry signed no longer protects “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”
It couldn’t be more obvious that the right to freedom of the press and the right to protest are under threat with the arrest of Prairieland defendant Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada for the “crime” of moving anarchist zines from his home to a friend’s house, which federal prosecutors claimed was an effort to conceal evidence of a conspiracy.
A thirty-year sentence for moving literature of someone who wasn’t even at the protest and decades more for those who did attend was meant to send a message. Chief District Judge Reed O’Connor said he was ordering the maximum allowed in each case because “the state wants to send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”
President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and “anti-capitalism” beliefs. Earlier this month, Trump’s counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, released a public counterterrorism strategy claiming that left-wing extremists are one of the three top counterterrorism priorities facing the United States. With the increase in protests against AI data centers and Flock cameras, the new category of Anti-Tech Violent Extremists has been added. The Prairieland case is the first to be prosecuted under Trump’s September 25, 2025, NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” presidential order. You could be next.
Those opposed to this massive violation of our privacy are now under threat of long prison sentences. Over 4,000 massive AI data centers have been constructed across the United States, aiding in mass surveillance. Miles of Flock cameras and Kill-Switch cars are reporting our every move. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” Oracle’s Larry Ellison promised his investors on September 24, 2024.
Thankfully, a revolution of compassion is sweeping the globe. People care for one another. From helping change a stranger’s flat tire, to sharing a sandwich with a homeless fellow, to protests against the cruelty of ICE and the genocide, most Americans want the best for one another.
An uncrushable human spirit is defying the attempt by billionaire Zionists to imprison us in their dystopian digital panopticon. Community opposition blocked or delayed $98 billion in U.S. data center projects between March and June 2025, and the pushback is increasing. Politicians who support the genocide are confronted in cafes and on the streets. California Senator Scott Wiener was chased out of a Trans rights rally for legislation he pushed to silence those of us who support an end to slaughter of Palestinian families.
One indication that compassion is growing is the number of times people contact me to announce the formation of a new or expanded Food Not Bombs chapter.
The arrests, torture, and designation of Food Not Bombs as “one of America’s most hardcore terrorist groups” in the late ’80s and early ’90s have not deterred the volunteers. Instead, the repression has only served to inspire a movement that is active in over 1,000 cities in at least 70 countries.
My inbox fills with requests to have their group added to the www.foodnotbombs.net locations map. In just one day, people in Phoenix, AZ; Fayetteville, NC; Gaza; Okaloosa, FL; Warsaw, Poland; and Houston, TX, requested updates.
That same day, I got news from Europe: “Hi! I wanted to let you know that there are two more collectives that volunteer in Warsaw. There’s one at ADA Puławska (Puławska 37, Warsaw). They’ve been around for a few years. They share food every Friday at 5 PM at said address. They’re called “Obiady u Ady”. Not sure if they have an email or a phone number.”
“And another one is one I helped set up about a year ago. It’s called “Jedzenie zamiast eksmisji – Osiedle Przyjaźń,” which translates to “Food Not Evictions – Przyjaźń neighborhood.” It started as an FNB collective, and the name changed a bit later, I think? They share food every Tuesday at 6 PM at “Bemowo” metro station in Warsaw (52.2388257, 20.9127512). No email address or phone number, unfortunately.”
“So there are three FNB collectives in Warsaw, and they’re doing pretty well, I’d say.”
Food Not Bombs volunteers participate in actions in solidarity with Palestine, in resistance to police sweeps of their homeless neighbors, against the discrimination of members of the trans and queer communities, and against ICE violence.
As the brutality of ICE spread across the country friends of the Fort Worth Food Not Bombs chapter wanted to show their compassion for the prisoners scooped off our streets who were interned at the Prairieland Detention Center on Independence Day 2025. What could be more American than shooting off fireworks on the holiday representing our freedom, in solidarity with the undocumented locked inside, to show that the public had not forgotten them?
In a July 22, 2025, story on the Dallas-Fort Worth NPR station KERA, “Shooting at Alvarado ICE facility, other attacks: The new normal?” reporter Caroline Love says, “Era Yousuf describes herself as being close friends with many of the defendants — including Benjamin Song, who she said prefers to be called Suzuka. Song, who was recently arrested, is accused of purchasing four guns found in connection with the shooting, according to court records.” Bringing guns to protests is not wise even if legal. There is a possibility that an FBI asset still not identified was responsible for shooting the private security guard that 4th of July night.
“Yousuf met them through protests and local activism, including the group Food Not Bombs, a nonprofit organization that distributes food that would otherwise be discarded to people experiencing homelessness.”
“Yousuf, who moved to another state recently, said she wasn’t involved with the demonstration at the detention center or any of the planning. She said her friends are not violent.”
“‘These aren’t dangerous people,’ Yousuf said. ‘They want to help innocent folks that are being kept prisoner.’”
The brutality of ICE grabbing suspected undocumented workers off the streets, at times yanking parents from the arms of crying children, is enough to inspire any compassionate person to stand in solidarity with those locked in U.S. concentration camps like the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.
The jovial cartoonist Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada didn’t attend the protest. He moved their collection of anarchist zines from his home upon learning that the FBI might be coming to arrest his wife, Maricela Rueda.
Even though he did not attend the July 4th noise protest, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The U.S. Justice Department charged him with “concealing a document or record (18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1))” — by moving a box of Antifa zines/pamphlets to hide them from investigators. His wife was sentenced to 70 years in federal prison.
“They’re persecuting people for beliefs that they don’t like,” Sanchez Estrada emphasized. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
Benjamin “Champagne” Song, who was sentenced to 100 years in prison, said, “I don’t hate. I don’t hate anyone. I don’t hate cops. I don’t hate Trump. I don’t hate Nazis. My beliefs are composed thus: First, that we should help each other. And second, that we should protect one another.”
The eight Prairieland defendants were sentenced to consecutive prison terms as follows:
- Savanna Batten: 50 years
- Zachary Evetts: 50 years
- Autumn Hill: 50 years
- Meagan Morris: 50 years
- Maricela Rueda: 70 years
- Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada: 30 years
- Benjamin Hanil Song: 100 years
- Elizabeth Soto: 50 years
The matrix of crises, from genocide, war, and poverty to censorship, mass surveillance, and police repression, is causing many Americans, from former Trump supporters to liberals to people who have no political identification, to believe that something must be done to stop the madness.
As the number of Food Not Bombs groups increases, there is also increased debate in our community about what actions, along with our mutual aid work, we can take to build a world where soup lines are not a necessity and wars are no more.
So far, the Democratic Party’s ‘Indivisible’ has succeeded in killing any attempt at building a mass movement against the political and economic system. Their ‘ActBlue’ and ‘Our Revolution’ email lists have been able to fill the protest space with unthreatening, demand-free parades.But at the same time it seems that the ‘No Kings’ people are starting to lose control of their Vote Blue No Matter Who message. Their events are being diluted with signs by people desperate to end policies of war and genocide that Indivisible supports.
We have to build another strategy that is more effective at forming an alternative to the current cruel system. Take actions that disrupt the ability of the corporate state to crush us. We can’t hope for reform from people willing to deploy weapons that melt the skulls of Palestinian children and rejoice in killing 118 men seeking food aid with machine-gun mounted drones during the February 29, 2024 north Gaza “Flour Massacre”. Their genocide is a message to all of us. They will stop at nothing to defend their power.
The first step might be realizing that we all have more in common than the billionaires manipulating us with their media. Most Americans are much more compassionate than is portrayed on our screens or in election campaigns designed to divide and control us.
Second, we could organize around demands Americans share that could challenge power, and figure out what actions would be threatening enough to collapse the Epstein class, making room for a healthy, caring society. Consider general strikes, blockades, boycotts, sabotage, hacking, and occupations. The more difficult task is agreeing on what type of system to replace the current one with.
When I was a National Park Ranger at Boston Historic Park, I was stationed at historic Faneuil Hall. The colonial market, nicknamed the “Cradle of Liberty,” was topped with a huge golden grasshopper weather vane, with rows of shops on the first floor and the giant hall ringed with a balcony on the second floor. Five days a week, I would stand at the head of the lecture hall dressed in my gray and green uniform with the brown National Park Service arrowhead logo stitched to each shoulder with the intention of exciting tourists with the history of the famous orators who had graced the colonial building.
Since the United States was celebrating its 200th anniversary, I started out my speech about speeches with great orators of the American Revolution, patriots James Otis, Samuel Adams, and others who spoke in protest against the British.
I continued with stories about the abolitionists and suffragists like Lucy Stone, who spoke before a crowd of 3,000 at Faneuil Hall in 1873. Her words would energize the women’s rights movement not only in Boston, but throughout the United States.
I spoke of John F. Kennedy who stood before his supporters on July 4, 1946, to announce in his Independence Day speech, “Some Elements of the American Character,” that he would be running for Congress in the 11th Congressional District.
My co-worker and I took turns sharing the history of these famous speeches seven times a day. We competed to see who could inspire the largest and loudest standing ovation. A sure way to get our audience of tourists to jump to their feet was to end with the words, “And the conditions are such today that we need a Second American Revolution!”
Fifty years later, we still need a second American Revolution. The draconian sentences of the Prairieland protesters were meant to silence us with fear, but the human spirit won’t let them succeed. We won’t be intimidated.
We need a revolution of compassion, because that is really who we are.
FREE THE PRAIRIELAND DEFENDANTS
CONTROLLED OPPOSITION
April 18, 2025
Let’s build a movement against fascism outside the control of the genocidal pro-war Democratic Party
While progressive Senator Cory Booker was giving his 25 hour Democratic Party infomercial on the Senate floor a Palestinian father could be seen on social media emerging from clouds of concrete dust in Gaza holding his headless child to the heavens. Two days later in another theatrical stunt designed to secure progressive loyalty to the Democratic Party Bernie introduces a bill to block $8.8 billion in arms sales to Israel which Booker voted against. Where was Bernie when he was voting to silence anti genocide protesters and backing Biden’s arms sales?
Capitalizing on the understandable anxiety of a Trump victory the Democrats are once again deploying their astroturf movement Indivisible. Since the mythology of the Democrats is that they are the party of the left they need to attract support from those who desire a progressive agenda. The party was trounced out of power for refusing to end the genocide or provide for the needs of the American people. The Republicans employed a similar strategy and used the fear of an Obama administration to launch the Tea Party to counter the perception that their party had moved away from their conservative roots. This is one method the billionaire class uses to tamp down any threat to their power.
After spending 18 brutal days in the Orange County Jail for the crime of sharing meals with the hungry I was released into the arms of Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez and handed a Tupperware of the best vegan Mac and Cheese I have ever tasted. News helicopters whirled above but they were not there for me. Socialite Casey Anthony, whose daughter was found dead as she partied was also being released from the Orlando jail at the same time as myself.
I was one of nearly 30 food servers arrested in the summer of 2011 after an appellate court ruled Florida’s most liberal city had the constitutional right to ban the sharing of meals with the homeless when Food Not Bombs appealed the Orlando groups first arrest.
On April 4, 2007, at the conclusion of an Orlando police undercover investigation that, according to the Orlando Weekly, cost taxpayers $65,000, Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez was arrested. When Food Not Bombs lost its appeal of the city ordinance volunteers defied the order and continued to provide the meals at Lake Eola Park picnic grounds.
When I finally was able to access my email one message included a call from Ad Busters to “Occupy Wall Street” on October 17th in a campaign to protest Obama’s bailout of the banks instead of coming to the aid of the 5.5 million families who lost their homes to foreclosure.
I supported the strategy of occupation and delivered hundreds of pounds of rice to New York and Washington DC and cooking equipment ready to help feed the protests. By Thanksgiving I had participated in over two dozen camps when the Obama administration aggressively started to crush the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A year after Occupy Wall Street was smashed Naomi Wolf wrote in the Guardian that, “FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF)… reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”
Many of us started organizing to ReOccupy the camps on May Day. As we were building our campaign a group calling itself 99% Spring asked San Francisco Bay activists to join them at a meeting in the Mission District. Nearly a hundred people sat around a conference room listening to the facilitators and watched their 20 minute inspirational film.
After the video people started to ask questions about why was there no mention of Obama’s bail out of the banks or his wars. The organizers dodged our questions and moved on to their plan. When it was suggested that many of us had already been planning to start the occupation on International Workers’ Day they claimed they had already picked their day in April. The presenters were clearly uncomfortable and deflected our questions. Nearly half of those attending walked out at lunch and never returned realizing that 99% Spring was just another Democratic Party front group designed to co-opt our movement.
The resulting confusion from their heavily promoted 99% Spring made organizing an independent return to the streets difficult. Masked people trashed areas of Seattle on May Day posing as a Black Block and news broke of a May first plot to bomb a bridge. The FBI had entrapped five of the 2011 Occupy Cleveland cooks including three young Food Not Bombs activists in a plot to use plastic explosives to topple the Route 82 bridge spanning Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park on 30 April 2012. Media reports of these events made sure that we didn’t continue the occupations.
The controlled opposition of the 99% Spring was only one of such subversions used to suppress threats against the Democratic Party from the left. MoveOn.org and Common Cause are among the well financed “grassroots” groups like Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution designed to “sheepdog” people they fear might dedicate their energy to organize against corporate power and war redirecting them back into the dominate political system.
I signed up with Our Revolution in 2016 when Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton. Since he supported military contracts like the F-35 I was skeptical that he would bring the change he was campaigning on but I gave him a chance. It seems that contact list is still being used for the purpose of corralling those who might be a threat to their agenda from the left into their orbit. Bernie asked us to vote for the cackling about Libyan Open Air Slave Markets Hillary Clinton. He would go on to ask us to back genocide Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That list was an important factor in drawing so many people to the Hands Off and Anti-Oligarchy Democratic Party rallies.
Those lists were also used to send out a Cory Booker fundraising text shortly after the Senator voted to stop Bernie’s theatrical attempt to cut arms shipments to Israel. Messaging intended to mobilize people still gullible enough to believe that the Democrats could be a progressive challenge to the madness of the Trump administration. The Pussy Hat distraction of the first Trump administration has become the Hands Off of Trump’s second term.
In their all out effort to protect their system of exploitation and empire they also launched the AOC/Bernie Anti Oligarch tour, started another group, 5051 to attract those who had become wise to the Indivisible scam, and made much of the Cory Booker 25 hour content free yapathon. We are sure to see even more seemingly progressive groups emerge but none will be opposed to the genocide, war or corporate power.
In 2016 when it became clear that Trump would win the election two Congressional staff members, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, initiated Indivisible “publishing a twenty-three-page document drafted by a handful of former Democratic Congressional staffers in the days after Trump was elected. The subtitle: “A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” with the intention of harnessing the fear many rightly had of what might happen during his first administration. It is no surprise that when the Democrats returned to power they made no effort to reverse some of the most damaging of Trump’s policies like the tax cuts for the wealthy, the mass deportations of migrants or even move the US Embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv.
The August 18, 2017, issue of the Progressive Magazine writes, “Indivisible has, in a very short time, emerged as the public face of citizen resistance to Trump. Like the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution, the official outgrowth of Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign, Indivisible has received a surge of interest post election. Unlike those groups, it didn’t exist beforehand.” The Tides Foundation provided $350,000 to help them start.
The article goes on to say, “The former staffers, including Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, now the group’s executive director and chief strategy officer respectively, had seen the Tea Party kneecap their bosses” attempts to pass progressive policies during Obama’s first term.”
One core member, Peter Dreier, claimed, “the goal of Indivisible was to “save American democracy&” and “resume the project of creating a humane America that is more like social democracy than corporate plutocracy.”
Anyone following the Democratic Party knows the last thing they support is democracy, otherwise for example, Bernie Sanders would have been their nominee, they wouldn’t have sued to keep the Green Party off the ballot in state after state and they would have held a primary in 2024. To claim the political party that refused to increase the minimum wage, presided over an economy that caused a 30% increase in the number of Americans who became homeless during their four years in power and armed the genocide of Gaza as “humane” seems a stretch.
Indivisible’s website states, “We’re a grassroots movement of thousands of local Indivisible groups with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.”
It is rare to see a grassroots movement receive millions in donations from wealthy foundations like Open Society Foundation that gave $3 million to one arm of Indivisible in 2023; $1,135,000 in 2022; $500,000 to one account in 2021 and $375,000 to another account also in 2021; $1,750,000 in 2019; $500,000 in 2018 and $350,000 in 2017. The Open Society Foundation has not posted how much it donated in 2024 and it is not clear how many millions more was provided by other foundations to the other Indivisible units like Indivisible Project, Indivisible Civics, and Indivisible Action. Open Secrets reported that one of the sections of Indivisible raised $9,922,930 in 2024. Hardly grassroots.
Indivisible isn’t the only Democratic Party project that was funded by Soros. In the second quarter of 2020, his organizations gave at least $500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, becoming one of the campaign’s largest donors. Soros was the country’s largest donor to political campaigns in 2022 donating $128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in that election cycle. While Soros’ Open Society Foundation was financing the Hands Off rallies Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury happens to be Soros Fund Management partner Scott Bessent.
The Democrats are employing the same Color Revolution strategy they used to topple the elected governments of Ukraine and Georgia. Build a system of controlled opposition in defense of US centric corporate power. The Soros funding of regime change programs in Georgia was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution coup. Alexander Lomaia, secretary of the Georgian Security Council, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2.5 million. The Biden administration was still seeking to subvert the democratically elected government of Georgia with a second color revolution as he left office. Like most of Biden’s policies Trump is continuing the effort to replace that government with a US compliant puppet.
I echo CodePink’s Medea Benjamin in strongly agreeing with most of the demands listed on publicity for the Hands Off rallies, Hands Off Medicare, Hands off Social Security, Hands Off Education, Hands Off Public Lands, Hands Off Immigrants and Hands Off LGBTQIA+.
But what suggested to me that these Hands Off rallies have another goal other than to stand against the terror of the CIA linked vultures hovering around the Trump administration was what was absent in their messaging. Their publicity didn’t include Hands Off Gaza or Hands Off Yemen even while US bombs were tearing children to shreds as people gathered for the rallies. Horrors that were beyond anything we have ever witnessed raging at the exact time these rallies were taking place.
Even more telling was that one of the institutions they want to protect is the organization directing the regime change war against Russia. The “Hands Off!” rally’s website even offers a pdf of a “Hands Off NATO” sign for activists to print and bring to their rallies. The website also quotes MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting saying, “This peaceful movement is powered by everyday people.” Does that include the dozens of “everyday people” who have been calling me nearly everyday for the past two years desperate for food often remarking that it makes them angry that we can fund a war in Ukraine but we can’t provide for our own people here in the US.
While most of those who join these rallies have the best intentions, some even came holding handmade signs against the genocide in Gaza or waved a Palestinian flag, it is unlikely that Indivisible intends to unite with the massive protests against the murder of Palestinian families. Their message of peace was drowned out by all the Ukrainian flags supporting the deadly war against Russia and their support of the political party that just spent 15 months slaughtering Palestinian babies.
It is understandable that people would join the Hands Off rallies. The stunning cascade dismantling our rights and social supports is frightening. Legal residents being snatched off the streets and deported, the privatizing of social services and threats to donate our National Parks to Trump’s billionaire friends for mining and oil extraction couldn’t be more terrifying. Americans are leading busy lives, struggling to pay their bills and base their political perspectives from limited information served by the same corporate media that supports the agenda of the war state and naturally joined the rallies in desperation. Had I not been following Indivisible since their founding and realized their organization was designed to kill any opposition to the system I would have also participated. I just can’t join rallies where it’s ok with the organizers for people to wave the Ukrainian flag. I don’t want to be seen as supporting war let alone one led by supporters of Stepan Bandera.
When rallies get such positive national news you know they have the support of those in power. You won’t see dozens of Democratic Party officials participating in protests that threaten the economic and political system. Insider trading success Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi spoke to her fawning supporters in the swing state Pennsylvania. Former vice presidential running mate Tim Waltz screamed to his supporters that the Democrats were back. The ghoulish anti-homeless YIMBY California State Senator Scott Wiener gloated over a video of himself he shared on Facebook that opened with a fluttering Ukrainian flag outside San Francisco City Hall. Wiener came to Santa Cruz on April 5, 2019 helping launch the luxury high rise condominium craze that is turning our community into a 15 Minute Smart City hell-scape.
Santa Cruz Indivisible is dominated by our city’s worst West-siders and pro development politicians. Their Facebook site includes supporters like anti-homeless Take Back Santa Cruz activist and former city councilperson Richelle Noroyan. One of the first members is the founder of the Predictive Policing Software Ryan Coonerty now used by CIA contractor Palantir to target Palestinians. Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Casey Coonerty-Protti’s husband Michel Protti helped finance this program when he was Vice President of Yahoo.
Those who waved their Ukrainian flags most likely believed that Russia’s military actions were unprovoked and feared Trump’s claims of making peace with Putin were real. Nothing says provoked like the torrent of western leaders spending the last 20 years threatening to topple the Russian government. On March 26, 2022, Biden continued those regime change threats during a speech in Warsaw saying of President Putin that,”For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
The Hands Off events share the same Zionist sponsors as the current regime so it’s no wonder there was silence about the bombings of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Trumps threats to attack Iran. In a January 2024, article, “I don’t belong”: A Jewish student leaves Occidental College over wartime protests” the Forward writes, “Dreier, who identified himself as a “committed Jew” and has taught at the school for 30 years, acknowledged that “there are Jewish and Arab students feeling traumatized by what is happening in the Middle East.”
The Bernie AOC billionaire funded Anti-Oligarch tour is a second major front after Indivisible in the campaign to absorb those who might otherwise participate in an authentic movement against fascism into their dead end project. Police arrested Pro-Palestine protestors that had unfurled a banner saying “Free Palestine” at the Nampa, Idaho, rally as Sanders repeated his “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism&” Zionist mantra followed by “I am doing my best to demand not another nickel for Netanyahu’s war.” Bernie is careful to accuse Netanyahu and avoids placing blame on Israel or his own record of voting for the genocide. Many in the crowd chanted Free Palestine as they removed the protesters. Non-Binary Artist in Recovery Blakeley posted a video of the tour saying “Bernie continues to claim “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism” 18 months into a fucking genocide is actually fucking grotesque and you can’t call yourself pro-Palestine if you think this is okay or excusable.” Even though the Idaho crowned chanted Free Palestine Bernie ignored them and continued with his speech.
Of course he turned his back on his supporters.In 2023, as the genocide was reaching its most murderous levels, Bernie Sanders voted for a Senate Resolution condemning anti-genocide student protesters and organizations as “antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible”. AOC and Bernie are not likely to travel to the Louisiana Detention Center where Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil is now being held.
This could spell disaster for our future as the US threatens to start a global war while the economy collapses. Two aircraft carrier armadas, six to ten B 2 stealth bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons, and dozens of heavy transport planes, air defense systems are set to attack Iran if they fail to bend to Trump’s demands. At the same time Ukraine is increasing its attacks on Russia while it is reported that Moscow strikes a meeting with NATO officers in Kyiv and the global economic system crashes, threatening to force millions of Americans into financial ruin. Yet none of this was even a blip on the agenda of the Hands Off or Anti-Oligarch rallies.
Indivisible helped smother any possibility of using the terror of Trump’s first term to build a massive movement. Their solution was more war, austerity and a genocide.
If we have any hope of the change required to defend ourselves from the onslaught of the End Times Techno-fascists implementing their Stargate AI digital future we had better stop falling for the two party illusion. We urgently need to build a movement independent of the Democratic Party. A movement that threatens power.
Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA – https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
https://open.substack.com/pub/keithmchenry/p/controlled-opposition
ELECT TO END HUNGER AND WAR
May 13, 2024
On April 24, 2024, Joe Biden signed authorization to spend $95 billion on the wars in Ukraine and Palestine saying that it was “a good day for world peace.”
The Food Not Bombs march for Nuclear Disarmament August 6, 1981 in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Food Not Bombs will honor its 44 years on the front lines of the peace and social justice movement on Saturday, May 25, 2024.
The first group in Cambridge, Massachusetts spent two years helping build the June 12, 1982, March for Nuclear Disarmament that attracted over a million people to the Great Meadow in Manhattan. They held their first “Free Concert for Nuclear Disarmament”, later to be called Soupstock, on May 3, 1981 at Sennott Park in Cambridge. Food Not Bombs volunteers also participated in the protests against the wars in El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. Today we are facing the real possibility of a world war if we don’t rise up to stop it. This will be one of the messages expressed at the Soupstock 2024 free concert on Saturday, May 25, 2024 at the Duck Pond Stage at San Lorenzo Park in Santa Cruz.
Food Not Bombs volunteers in hundreds of cities around the world are sharing meals with the hungry and taking actions to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, Palestine and the increasing threat of a global war between nuclear armed nations. The Jerusalem and Tel Aviv chapters of Food Not Bombs have been holding protests against the Gaza genocide outside the US Embassy. Polish chapters are providing meals to war refugees fleeing Ukraine and an increasing number of local homeless. The lines of those seeking food are growing longer at Food Not Bombs meals in cities all across the United States as the government sends billions of dollars worth of bombs to wage those wars. Hungry children stand together waiting for a warm bowl of stew from Food Not Bombs in Manila and Bangkok, We really do need food, and not bombs.
While the war of hunger is ravaging families across the exploited lands of Africa, Asia and the Americas there is one famine that stands out as the most horrific today.
Western nations are forcing the starvation of hundreds of thousands children in Gaza. Mothers struggle to choose which of their children will get that next crumb of bread. The first of several Flour Massacres was unleashed on February 29, 2024 when at least 118 Palestinians were killed and 760 injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks on the coastal Al-Rashid Street in Gaza City. United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk denounced the rampant hunger and looming famine in Gaza and the using of starvation as a “weapon of war”, which he decried as a “war crime”. On March 18, 2024 Reuters reported that Gaza’s health ministry said 27 children and three adults had died by that time from malnutrition. They added that over 210,000 people were on the brink of starvation in northern Gaza. Conditions only became more dire and many more have died.
The attacks on the starving were not enough. On April 1, 2024, the Israeli military who may have been using AI targeting assistance from the CIA contractor Palantir sent missiles through the World Central Kitchen logo on their relief van in Gaza. Seven aid workers were killed in the attack. The World Central Kitchen made a hasty retreat from Gaza ending any possibility of even the most inadequate relief effort. The CIA data-mining company Palantir co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley vulture capitalists started with money from CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. The current CEO is billionaire co-founder Alex Karp.
If the insanity in Palestine is not dangerous enough there is Biden’s decade long regime change war against Russia in Ukraine, another tragic legacy of the faltering American empire. While laying waste to Gaza, Biden’s administration also continues with its carnage in eastern Ukraine in some illusionary regime change war against Russia that the West can never win. The Pentagon claimed in leaks to the New York Times that Ukraine has lost 500,000 soldiers, killed or seriously wounded, since the beginning of the Russian special military operation. The once productive soils of wheat depicted on the blue and yellow flag of that war torn nation are littered with bombs and the graves of Ukraine’s men and women.
There is money enough for war even if the desperation of poverty is crushing millions of Americans. Hour after hour, call after call from the desperate seniors of rural America flood the Food Not Bombs Hunger Hotline, each with tales of their last few cans of tuna or an empty gas tank. Many are frustrated that they have been given the run around by one agency after another and are angry that the government is pouring billions into foreign wars of choice while Americans struggle to survive.
A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org found that 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. According to Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness in America increased by 11% from 2022 to 2023. HUD also claims they can end homelessness for $20 billion and yet the federal government just sent $61 billion to Ukraine and $26 billion to Israel.
Along with the threat of a global conflict between nuclear armed nations and a genocide, a war on America’s homeless is also raging. While Joe Lonsdale’s Palantir is aiding in the bombing of Palestinians turning their homes into rubble he is also coordinating a nationwide program to “solve” the homeless problem here in the United States. The Cicero Institute that he founded posts, “The United States has a growing homelessness problem – and bad policies at the local, state, and federal level exacerbate that problem.”
The Cicero Institute provides a “Model Bill” they call “Reducing Street Homelessness Act” to state and city legislators which their website notes is legislation based on the 2022 Missouri HB 1606.
So far the Cicero Institute, has placed bills in at least nine states including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Texas became the first state to pass such a law in 2021, and Tennessee and Missouri followed in 2022.
Cynthia Griffith wrote about Wisconsin’s Assembly Bill 689 and Senate Bill 669 on the Invisible People website, “Concentration camps and secret committees, out-of-state lobbyists, and flat-out lies – as unbelievable and terrifying as it sounds, this is a glimpse into what’s happening behind closed doors in 2024 Wisconsin.”
The Cicero Institute website reported a recent success,”This morning (March 20, 2024 ) in Miami Beach, Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1365/ SB 1530, which will make Florida a leading state in the fight against the failed homelessness policies that have wreaked havoc on so many American cities. HB 1365 will ban street camping and upend how Florida provides treatment and help to the homeless – and holds providers and cities accountable for failure.” This is the same Ron DeSantis that provided legal advice to those torturing prisoners at Guantanamo.
In early April 2024 this movement against America”s poorest people had another victory in their nationwide campaign to make it a crime to be homeless. Kentucky bill HB 5, the “Safer Kentucky Act” was signed into law. The 78-page bill criminalizes “homelessness” and decriminalizes the use of deadly force against individuals engaging in unlawful camping. Under this law, “if a property owner believes an unhoused trespasser is attempting to commit a felony or attempting to dispossess them, they can shoot the homeless person.”
The war includes police raids on camps and the destruction of survival gear at a cost of millions to the already strapped taxpayers. The Washington DC chapter of Food Not Bombs started a fundraising campaign to buy pup tents and sleeping bags for the homeless who are being forced out from their camp. The group posted on May 8th, “today we purchased about $500 worth of tents in preparation for the Foggy Bottom encampment sweep scheduled for May 15th.”
According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel two million dollars was provided to the City of Santa Cruz to clear the homeless camps that Food Not Bombs had been delivering food to at Harvey West Park and along Coral Street. To be fair there are claims that some of the two million would be used to build 55 tiny homes with a shared restroom. We will see.
Americans can’t depend on their government to address the crisis of poverty so it has been left up to groups like Food Not Bombs to provide food and shelter. The COVID lockdowns shuttered indoor food programs for the poor. This was the case in Santa Cruz where the local Food Not Bombs group provided the only daily hot meal for three years without missing a single day. When the CZU Lightning Complex fires forced people out of their homes they came to eat and find clothing at the Lot 27 meal. Floods sent more to our meals. The group served through the atmospheric rivers even sustaining an arrest in Garage Ten at the height of one blasting storm. If it wasn’t for Food Not Bombs daily feast downtown Santa Cruz may have experienced a huge increase in shoplifting bordering on looting. A hungry man is an angry man as the saying goes.
Tent cities grow larger while politicians crow on about their military campaigns. The live streamed carnage of Gaza is shocking, sparking mass protests around the globe. A student movement demanding universities divest from Israel and the military contractors that profit from the genocide have sprung up on at least 150 campuses. Local Food Not Bombs chapters are helping.
At San Francisco State the students formed committees to address things they saw happening on other campuses that led to violence or to media narratives that the encampments were only about university/campus issues.
“We wanted to center Palestinians in Gaza instead of us. It’s not about us. So there was a lot of outreach. Reaching out to a lot of organizations like Food Not Bombs to provide food and water. We also were very fortunate to have had widespread faculty [academic staff] support.”
Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs is also supporting our campus divestment camp providing food and opening one of their kitchens to the students.
These protest camps are starting to send a panic through some members of the ruling class.
During the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security in Washington DC on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, former U.S. general Mark Milley and Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp chatted with some dismay about the student protest movement. The general reminded the audience that the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan and that civilian deaths in war are really nothing new so why are students even protesting about Gaza?
Palantir’s Alex Karp told the assembled national security members that the Palestine solidarity campus protest movement is an existential threat to American empire, “We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show.” he adds, “If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.”
In a CNBC interview aired on May 13, 2024, “Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale on college chaos: It’s showing ‘rot’ at a lot of these places.” The website’s subhead adds, “Joe Lonsdale, 8VC founding partner and Palantir co-founder, joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss the rise in college campus protests, the state of college campus wars, the advancement of defense technology on the battlefield, his trip to India, and more.”
If these CIA contractors are correct the movement against the genocide may be a turning point. This could be a time of transformation as the cruelty of the corporate dystopia is being live streamed for all to see.
The revulsion at such horrors while most of us are struggling to pay our bills could remove any doubt that we need to reject the current economic and political system. It is time for a change, a revolution, a world that expects everyone to thrive and live as equals.
A vision of such a world can be found in the many mutual aid projects like the Food Not Bombs meals. One such project started in San Antonio, Texas. A Food Not Bombs activist who once volunteered with the Santa Cruz group joined the San Antonio Cares Collective. Like Food Not Bombs they spent their time helping provide food and survival gear with the homeless.
His friend and fellow collective member was Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman. Aaron set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC on February 25, 2024 telling the camera as he walked to the front gate “I will no longer be complicit in genocide” and then he called out; “Free Palestine, Free Palestine” as flames engulfed his uniformed body.
Before his protest he posted, “Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?” The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
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