No one seems to be talking about how criminally underpaid child care professionals are in New York State. A coalition of child care providers, advocates, and parents, the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, has announced that child care workforce compensation and development are the top policy priority for the industry. There is consensus about this priority among providers, advocates, and parents outside of the statewide coalition as well. Child care professionals rank among the lowest paid professions in New York State. As the workforce behind the workforce, child care professionals facilitate the working lives of millions. If they remain underpaid and abandon the industry, which they have been over the last few years, the collapse of the child care industry would create unimaginable social ruptures. The child care community wants better pay and government support to achieve it. Will Governor Hochul say anything about child care? Will she invest in workforce compensation for child care professionals?

On Wednesday, December 13, child care advocates from across New York State gathered in front of the midtown Manhattan building where the Governor stays on New York City trips, 633 Third Avenue. There were close to 30 activists huddled together holding signs, speaking into mics, and demanding that Governor Hochul sign the Decoupling Bill. The Empire State Campaign for Child Care, led by Dede Hill, Executive Director of the Schuyler Center, hosted the rally. I was there, too.

On Thursday, November 16, I attended a “huelga estudantil” (student strike) held in Madrid, Spain, in support of Palestine. I was amazed to look out at the crowd and see such a diversity of young faces ranging from middle school students to university-age young adults. It was a truly diverse coalition of young people who were all there for the same reason: to condemn the current Israeli assault on Gaza and call for an end to the Israeli occupation. The fact that such a large group of students left their classrooms vacant to take to the streets in support of Palestine gave a strong sense that Gen Z is fiercely challenging the normalization of Israeli oppression.

s part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by Ione Belarra, leader of the leftist Podemos party and Minister of Social Rights in the Spanish government between 2021 and 2023. Belarra spoke at a Podemos-organized event at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid marking 76 years since the beginning of the Palestinian Nakba.

When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with international media on October 30, he ostensibly sought to clarify Israel's objectives in its ongoing military assault in Gaza. In doing so, he revealed yet again how language grounded in colonial denial serves to clear the way for the most extreme, even genocidal forms of violence. He also revealed, however, that Israel's brutal bombardment of Gaza may be providing an opening for us to revive a different, more liberating kind of language, one that survives the propagandistic weapons of colonial discourse as embers in the rubble of generational trauma.

This year, the children of two families outside Buenos Aires celebrated a simple yet essential pleasure for the first time in their lives: the warmth of a shower inside their own home. This sea change resulted from the work of a group of volunteers who undertook bathroom construction in 48 hours under the auspices of Módulo Sanitario, an Argentinian non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides bathrooms for those without access to them.

It’s been more than a month since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. In that month, I carried on with my day-to-day activities albeit with a heavy heart for the victims of the war. The officials and military combatants are not at the center of my thoughts and worries – the civilians are. Before the attacks, they bore the brunt of the war and terror in the region, and for decades after they will, too.

As recently as a few years ago, it would have been very unusual to see an article in a major US publication openly trying to refute what much of the world knows: that Israel’s project in Palestine is a settler colonial project. The standard practice was simply to ignore the colonization issue. Yet in recent months, we are seeing more and more pieces seeking to debunk the “decolonization narrative,” all the more so since Israel began its genocidal assault on Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. This is a welcome sign that the colonizers are losing control of the narrative.

As part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by Spanish activist and Eurodeputy Miguel Urbán at an October 20, 2023 public event in Madrid held in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by journalist Olga Rodriguez at an October 20, 2023 public event held in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As Israel continues its brutal assault on Gaza, I continue to be struck by the difference between some of the news coverage here in Spain (as imperfect as it is) and the coverage I am used to seeing back home in the U.S. In my previous article, I wrote about the Spanish public television program La Noche en 24H and the interview they aired with former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo. Today I focus on a subsequent interview from the same program aired last night (October 19, 2023).

As I noted in my recent report on Madrid’s October 15, 2023 Palestine solidarity march, protesters here in Spain have been seeking to focus attention on the genocidal aspects of Israel’s actions in Gaza. “No es una guerra, es un genocidio!” (“It’s not a war, it’s a genocide”) is one of the most common slogans heard at these solidarity events. For this reason, I was very interested in an interview featured in Spanish public broadcaster RTVE’s nightly news program La Noche en 24H last evening (October 18). Program host Xabier Fortes sought to shed light on the genocide issue by speaking with one of the most important international voices on war crimes prosecution. It was a refreshingly direct conversation.

As the Israeli military continues to subject Palestinians in Gaza to a brutal siege accompanied by heavy aerial bombardment, citizens around the world are rising up to express their solidarity with Palestinians and to demand that Israel and its international supporters be held accountable. At a march held in the Spanish capital, Madrid, protesters sought to focus attention on the role of the European Union (EU) in enabling Israel’s war crimes.

In the first article in this series, I explored some of the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous communities in Thailand as well as their efforts to build networks of solidarity. To provide additional insight into the subject, I had the opportunity to speak with Pi Phnom, an Indigenous journalist based in Northern Thailand. He is known for founding the Indigenous Media Network (Thailand) and has collaborated with other Indigenous organizations such as the Inter Mountain People Education and Culture in Thailand Association (IMPECT) on many pertinent Indigenous issues in the country.

In my first Weaving the Streets installment, I described how my interest in street art was born as a child in Mexico, and I focused on the artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and her installation “We are More” in New York City. I am very excited about this second article because I was lucky enough to interview a street artist myself and learn about street art in NYC and the community of street artists first-hand. For this article, I will be featuring Savior El Mundo, a street artist, but also a dancer, curator, and more, who shared with me his own journey as an artist born and raised in New York City.

“De norte al sur, de este al oeste, la lucha sigue, cueste lo que cueste! (From north to south, from east to west, the struggle continues, whatever it takes!)” With this and other slogans ringing in the air, hundreds of activists of all ages filled the streets of downtown Madrid, Spain, on September 15 to demand rapid decarbonization and climate justice. At a time when news reports here are filled with stories of floods, fires, and killer storms throughout the wider Mediterranean region, Madrid’s 15S Climate March provided a much-needed dose of what is usually missing from those reports: a clear-eyed look at the policy steps that must be taken in order to face down our climate crisis.

Indigenous rights are human rights. This article, in combination with a forthcoming interview, discusses how Indigenous communities are continuously disenfranchised by systemic injustices in Thailand and how individuals and networks work toward a more equitable world through creativity and solidarity.

“I am not optimistic. I think it will get harder and harder.” This was St. Lawrence County (NY) farmer Dan Kent’s response when asked how climate change will impact local farmers in the years to come. Localized farming practices have both economic and environmental advantages for the North Country. But with warming temperatures and varying weather patterns, local farmers in the region will need to find ways to adapt in order to maintain their livelihoods and retain the benefits of local food systems.

On Thursday, July 20, 2023, Abra Lee, ornamental horticulturalist and Black historian, presented research from her forthcoming monograph, “Conquer the Soil.” This public lecture inaugurated the 2023 Garden Walk series of events, coordinated by Gardens Buffalo Niagara, which includes the East Side Garden Walk, on July 22-23, 2023, and the Buffalo Garden Walk, on July 29-30, 2023. In other words, Buffalo has a two-week flower festival – and Abra Lee got us started.

The East Side Garden Walk brochure strikes me as a rich primary source on cultural politics, nonprofit orientation, and community power in Buffalo. I’m a historian, so I imagine this brochure being useful to a young scholar in 2050, when she’s trying to understand how the Buffalo Renaissance of the early 2000s transitioned into the re-urbanization of the city.