On Sunday, July 28, 2024, Burning Books bookstore hosted their third annual community block party at 420 Connecticut Street on the West Side of Buffalo, NY, raising awareness for local social justice campaigns and providing family recreation for West Side residents. Over 100 Buffalo residents braved the scorching 90-degree late July heat to enjoy the various attractions, including a giant bouncy house obstacle course, dunk tank, and community tables and booths hosted by progressive community organizations like PUSH-Buffalo, Democratic Socialists of America, and Urban Roots.

My family’s journey through war-ravaged Gaza started last October, the very day after our Gaza City home was bombed — with us inside — killing my oldest cousin, Mohammed. We knew we had to move. Leaflets fell from the sky, urging us to flee southwest. So began a journey that took us through the Jabaliya refugee camp, Deir Al-Balah, Khan Younis, Al-Nusirat, Al-Qarara, and Rafah. Each stop marked a milestone in a trip punctuated by evacuation orders and displacements. I’ve lost count of the number of times we were told to move, but it’s at least a dozen.

One of the great joys of being an academic is watching people go from beginner to trailblazer in a field of study. As a writer for Weave News, not only do I get to watch emerging rock stars like Ms. Song Lee ‘do their thing’, but I get to share their voices with the world. In this Interweaving conversation, I am pleased to introduce you to Ms. Song Lee, High Road Fellow and Child Care Community Advocate.

Journalists are credited with writing the first draft of history. As a professionally trained historian and budding journalist, I take pride in documenting people, places, things, events and ideas. Just as honorable, to me, is highlighting the primary sources that will help students of the moment and students of the past understand the complexities of right now. Primary sources are data for historians – they are artifacts produced in the time period one is studying that bear direct relation to the topic under investigation.

The province of North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is home to a vibrant tapestry of mountain rain forests and savannas, woven together by the rivers that feed Lake Edwards and Lake Kivu. It is also a region that is torn apart by war. The interests of neighboring countries and international economic forces have fueled the violence that has displaced more than 2.8 million people and is devastating the local ecosystems. Amidst the ongoing chaos, however, water and earth guardians continue to work to create a better future for their communities and their more-than-human neighbors. One of these brave humans is Justin Lumoo Paluku, who works with the Initiative pour le Progrès et la Protection de l'Environnement (IPPE), or the Initiative for Environmental Progress and Protection.

At 6pm on July 18, 2024, Western New York Child Care Action Team (WNYCCAT) hosted a community celebration for the child care industry’s rank and file. WYNCCAT is an activist organization whose mission is “to educate, investigate, plan, strategize, advocate and provide swift actions that lead to productive, long term, results and solutions that positively impact the child care community across all modalities.”

Suffocated by the accumulated heat of the day, the night became long. The smell of smoke woke us up. At that moment we thought that some neighbor was burning garbage. We soon realized that the smell was different. It smelled more like burnt wood.

In his latest analysis of the European political and economic scene, Fernando Luengo argues that the ascent of the far right in the run-up to the 2024 European parliamentary elections cannot be separated from the ongoing problem of rising inequality and the fundamental influence of private capital in the public sector.

John Collins and Derek Sherrange report from Madrid, Spain, where students are turning up the heat on universities that remain complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

To learn more about the first encampment in Valencia, I reached out to Dr. Jorge Ramos Tolosa, who teaches contemporary history at UV. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, he is a longtime activist with BDS Valencia and the Red Solidaria contra la Ocupación de Palestina (RESCOP), a network of Spanish organizations working in solidarity with Palestine.

My name is Fousani Hamidou, and I am a senior at St Lawrence University (Canton, NY, USA), majoring in Global Studies with a minor in African Studies. Last semester, I studied abroad in Kenya and had the opportunity to travel to Arusha, Tanzania, as a part of my program. We lived for a week alongside the Hadzabe tribe, one of the last surviving hunter-gathering tribes in the country. Throughout the week, we hunted hyraxes and made arrows with the Hadzabe men, and we gathered tubas (a tree root) and made beads with the Hadza women. On the last night, we all gathered with members of the tribe on a large rock by the camp to discuss their lifestyle, the Tanzanian government, education, and forced assimilation.

In his latest column, economist Fernando Luengo writes ot the warlike climate that is growing in Europe and how it directly shapes a range of problems facing people across the continent and beyond.

From June 6-9, elections for the European Parliament, the only genuinely democratic institution in the community’s institutional framework - its members are directly chosen by the citizenry, whereas the rest are intergovernmental in nature - will be held. It is a good moment to think about the challenges facing the European Union (EU) and, I would say, the entire planet.

'We have two options now: dying or dying.'

This was a text message that Salahaldin (Salah) Eleyan received from his brother from Northern Gaza, Palestine.

On an ordinary Wednesday morning in the calm, well-to-do Chamberi district of Madrid, a group of about 150 Spaniards stood on the street corner opposite a large cultural center, with riot police watching on intently, and chanted:

“Murderers! Murderers! Shame! Shame!”

On March 3, more than 100 people showed up in Madrid, Spain, to hear a first-hand report from Manal Tamimi, a Palestinian activist whose family has been at the center of resistance efforts in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. In a talk that was both moving and sobering, Tamimi spoke passionately about the ongoing struggle of West Bank Palestinians at a time when the Israeli state’s machinery of violence appears to be more emboldened than ever thanks to the active and passive support of governments the world over.

It’s very necessary to focus on the terms that are habitually used in economics - and the so-called social sciences in general - and that are often taken for granted. Because these terms almost always have a purpose, which can be difficult or even annoying to uncover. In other words, language, seemingly innocuous, defines a playing field and also, in a way, the rules of the game as well as the possible explanations and alternatives. And this is no small thing.

Lake Superior — or Gichigami, as the Anishinaabe call her — is a mighty spirit. She has cast a forcefield around the Upper Midwest, protecting it from development by bestowing us with atrocious farming soil, and indeed I have dented my shovel trying to dig a four-inch hole. But this is where the plot thickens. Because Lake Superior’s protection is not absolute, and rich geology doesn’t just attract agate hunters…

It also brings mines.

On December 29, 2023, South Africa brought a case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, arguing that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. On January 11-12, 2024, the ICJ held public hearings on South Africa’s request for provisional measures of protection for the people of Gaza and eventually ruled that Israel was responsible for taking all necessary measures to prevent “acts of genocide” in Gaza. The ongoing ICJ case has been the subject of significant debate. To explore the issue further, I reached out to Dr. Somdeep Sen, a frequent Weave News contributor and a professor at Roskilde University.