Jesse Roth

This paragraph is incredible. What cruelty it paints. @lithub.com.web.brid.gy lithub.com/letter-from-...

Gratitude to Deepa who continues to offer tools for us to get organized.

A drawing by a 5-year-old child in detention:

I'm the biggest superfan, I can't even tell you! Crossing fingers you get tickets. This piece felt like a return to their roots (after the live video experiments they did recently with Frankenstein and some other shows—which I also liked!). Just black and white and red, with the most amazing score!

Friends, this is Third Way. This is what they exist to do.

A 35 year old letter to the editor, written by a very ballsy 15 year old, about the Rodney King verdict.

Remembering today that having your heart broken is a necessary step on the path to becoming fully human. Whichever heartbreak is your first, it’s probably critical that a state break your heart so that you can develop a political imagination. If this is your first, I’m sorry and also welcome.

Every one of these announcements reads to me as "we don't have enough people and supplies to occupy more than one city at a time"

Star Tribune identifies ICE agent who fatally shot woman in Minneapolis Jonathan Ross was dragged in a separate incident last year by a fleeing driver, according to court records.

his name is Jonathan Ross and he shouldn't get a good night's sleep for the rest of his life www.startribune.com/ice-agent-wh...

ICE just executed someone in cold blood in Minneapolis. The agency is frantically trying to spin it but the videos are already out there. Murderous fascist pigs.

Organizers in Twin Cities making rare plea for folks to share broadly:
ICE ops have changed & escalated this week. They've moved to a 'flood-the-zone' strategy, nabbing anyone they can from bus stops, the sidewalk, cars, or homes. This means indiscriminate abductions and obviously no warrants.

A typed poem titled "REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #96: POEM AT DAWN" reads, "Empire is its own undoing." The author, Diane di Prima, is credited below the poem. The text appears on a plain white background.

“Be kind, be involved, believe in your art,” he said. “At a time when people tell you art is not important, that is always the prelude to fascism. When they tell you it doesn’t matter, when they tell you a fucking app can do art you say, if it’s that important, why the fuck do they want it so bad? The answer is because they think they can debase everything that makes us a little better, a little more human. And that, in my book, and in my life, includes monsters.”

Love this from Guillermo del Toro

Another favorite essay of the year: Daniel Yadin's essay in @thedriftmag.com on romantasy and the desire for escapism in catastrophe. It was so funny while speaking to the very real temptation to abdicate agency. Some favorite passages:

Overall, the essay skillfully connects gentrification, climate catastrophe, and fascism—and shares the artists and community members who make up the "promise of Altadena." The photographs from Gabriella Angotti-Jones are also stunning.

My student was looking up vocab words, so I got to marvel at how Kelley's use of "bulwark" (as opposed to, say, "defense" or "refuge") creates the corollary image of a "wave" of white nationalism. The language and imagery are so vivid.

I re-read it with one of my tutees this week and this sentence stood out: "Altadena was the promise of what America could be, the opposite of oligarchy and fascism, a bulwark against white nationalism and racist terror."

Between Fires in Los Angeles and Fascism in America Altadena’s vision of regeneration is the antidote to the political conflagration that threatens us all.

One of my favorite essays from this year was Robin D.G. Kelley's "Between Fires in Los Angeles and Fascism in America" in @hammerandhope.bsky.social. hammerandhope.org/article/los-...

For today’s newsletter, I shared a “rage tangent” from a longer work in progress about artwashing, genocide profiteers who fund major arts organizations, the false scarcity they create, and how artists in the imperial core can envision liberatory arts spaces.
jesseroth.beehiiv.com/p/screaming

This Sunday, I'm co-leading a workshop on some research I've been working on over the last few years on "artwashing", genocide profiteers who fund major arts organizations, and activists organizing against them. Come check it out at the Seattle Liberation Center from 3pm-5pm!

I used to write a newsletter, and I've now revived it under a new name: I HAVE A RIBCAGE; YOU HAVE A RIBCAGE. Every Friday, I'll be sending out a new piece of writing. Looking forward to sharing with you! jesseroth.beehiiv.com/p/introducin...

⭕️ BREAKING: The latest Nat'l Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) drafted in the US Congress would require a “continual assessment … of international state arms embargoes on Israel” — with language aimed at filling any “defense capability gaps” those embargoes create, Zeteo reports.

This means the...

🇮🇪🇪🇸🇸🇮🇳🇱 BREAKING | Four major broadcasters – Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands – have pulled out of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest after the EBU confirmed Israel will be allowed to compete despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Despite a wave of pressure and boycott threats urging the EBU to bar Israel, the union declined not to hold a vote on Israel’s eligibility. Instead it introduced voting-system reforms, limiting televotes per device and restoring juries in the semi-finals, all meant to curb alleged vote manipulation after evidence that Israel benefited from state-backed promotion and coordinated voting in 2025. The 2026 contest in Vienna now faces its largest boycott in years, raising fresh doubts about Eurovision’s claim to be a unifying cultural event.

Channel 4 News @Channel4News The EBU and participating national broadcasters met in Geneva today to debate whether Israel should be allowed to continue participating in Eurovision, with Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain all threatening to boycott.

🇮🇪🇪🇸🇸🇮🇳🇱 BREAKING | Four major broadcasters – Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands – have pulled out of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest after the EBU confirmed Israel will be allowed to compete despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Despite a wave of pressure and boycott threats urging the...

Sharing your post. Sending you much care.

Shared your post. You're in my prayers.

The vibe shift today is, I think, due to the fact that New Yorkers were on the offensive instead of the defensive.

Usually with protests, demonstrators have to defend the space, defend their right to march, etc. They get beat up and pushed around and antagonized into chaos and trauma.
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