We need as many people there as possible to carry our message - no more of our tax dollars for endless wars. Can we count you in? Sign up here:
https://www.codepink.org/novdc26
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 ‘Freedom Zone’ launches important human rights event October 30 Global Festival in Support of Russian Political Prisoners _________________________________________________________ THE LOCATIONS: Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, New York, Minnesota, Budva, Melbourne, Helsinki, Haifa, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vilnius, São Paulo, Florianópolis, Batumi, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Riga, Paris, Yerevan, Milan, Vienna, London, Madrid THE AUDIENCE: Anyone concerned about political prisoners in Russia
Lectures, auctions, letter evenings, film screenings and other events will take place in more than 20 countries, including the US, Brazil and Australia, demonstrating worldwide solidarity with the prisoners of the Russian regime. Speakers in different cities will include such well-known opponents of the Putin regime as Daria Serenko, Mikhail Lobanov, Sasha and Nadezhda Skochilenko, Ivan Philippov, Alexey Ponomaryov and other prominent Russian exiles. Funds raised will go towards supporting political prisoners, covering the costs of legal representation, visits from loved ones and other needs. It is also possible to join the international campaign by making an online donation. This global festival will be a tangible expression of opposition to lawlessness in Russia and support for its victims. Let’s show that we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who have been unjustly convicted! ______________________________________________ ‘Freedom Zone’ was founded by Kseniia Kagarlitskaia, daughter of political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky. Since 2024, the organisation has been holding charity events (festivals) abroad to raise funds for political prisoners in Russia, raising awareness of the unlawful persecution and inhumane prison conditions faced by people in the Russian Federation, as well as campaigning for the release of political prisoners. Website: https://freedom-zone.com/festival Contact: Kseniia Kagarlitskaiazona.svobody@gmail.com +38268347993 Telegram @pruesha ___________________________________________________________________ Donation link: https://buymeacoffee.com/zonasvobodk Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Fed Up With Politics and Struggle, Young Voters Rose Up
Young people powered Democratic candidates, joining global demands for generational change from a cohort weary of older people sitting on jobs and devouring resources.
By Sabrina Tavernise and Ruth Igielnik, Nov. 6, 2026
Alienated by an older generation of politicians who felt out of touch and irrelevant to their lives, young voters revolted on Tuesday, powering the rout of President Trump’s Republican Party.
In swings of monumental proportion, young men aged 18 to 29 veered toward Democratic candidates by nearly 40 percentage points since 2024, according to preliminary results from Times Voter Trends. Young women, who were already inclined to support Democrats, swung by 27 points. In the Texas Senate race, men aged 18 to 44 swung nearly 50 points toward the Democrat, James Talarico.
“He is my age,” said Tristan Waumsley, 35, of Richmond, Texas, who voted straight Democratic at the state level for the first time in his life. “He sounded like I could have talked to him myself. He’s somebody normal, like me.”
Republicans have run Texas for years and not produced any real change in his life. With Mr. Talarico, he said, “maybe we can bring society forward, instead of regressing.”
The youth movement swept in or bolstered politicians who looked more like them: Abdul El-Sayed, the senator-elect of Michigan; Rob Sand, the governor-elect of Iowa; Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia; Nithya Raman, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles; and Sam Forstag, an incoming congressman from Montana. The next clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ariz., the Democrat Sebastian Matta, is a 19-year-old Arizona State University sophomore. Another 19-year-old, Daniel Darris-O’Connor, unseated an eight-term Republican incumbent in the Massachusetts House.
The voters swept out the stodgy and rejected wealthy middle-aged men like Rick Jackson, who ran for governor of Georgia, and Ken Paxton, who lost to Mr. Talarico in Texas.
And while the Democratic winners seem to be speaking their language, many voters under 45 — younger millennials and Gen Z-ers — were quick to say their support was not an ideological conversion, but granted temporarily to jump-start real change on the issues such as the cost of living, U.S. relations with Israel and the war in Iran.
Though it felt unfamiliar to vote for Democrats, Mr. Waumsley said he was happy about his choice. But he emphasized that he was voting for the people, not the party, and that he would be watching them closely to make sure they followed through.
“I really want to move on from what we currently have,” he said, “because what we have isn’t doing it.”
The discontent is global, fostering youth movements from Bangladesh and India to Serbia and France. Government resources have gone to Baby Boom retirees with free health care and subsidized retirements, while education has been stretched, health insurance costs have soared and job security has been hampered by older generations that will not get out of the way. Artificial intelligence and climate change have injected real dread into those coming of voting age.
That is scrambling the political lines that have given shape to American politics since the end of World War II.
“The traditional left-right paradigm has been broken,” said Brandon Kenig, 41, a Kansan who came of age in the College Republicans and worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
For young people, that paradigm “applied to their parents and grandparents during a time of relative economic stability,” he said. But normal politics no longer apply, and young people are “seeking out candidates who acknowledge what is happening and do not try to sugar coat.”
Mr. Kenig organized 20 former Republican congressional aides from Kansas to publicly support Adam Hamilton, the Kansas Democrat who beat a Republican senator on Tuesday.
Voters under 30, more so than any other age group, are not tethered to a political party. More than half of Gen Z voters identify as independents, according to Gallup, far greater than the one-third of baby boomers who do not identify with a political party.
Jacob Brillhart, 27, and his wife have not voted in the last several elections.
“You get the same thing, no matter who you vote for, two wings of the same bird,” said Mr. Brillhart, who lives in Akron, Ohio, and works in heating and air conditioning.
But, he said, after this deeply ugly campaign for governor in Ohio, they want to start voting regularly. He said, “We’ll never vote Republican after seeing what the party has done.”
Karrar Al-Sadkhan, 19, a student at Wayne State University in Detroit, said he and his friends had never identified as Democrats. But he was inspired by Mr. El-Sayed, whose message was that “it’s really more of a class war, not blue or red.”
On Tuesday, he cast a ballot for him in the first vote of his life.
The top issue for young voters was the economy, which informed a feeling that they could not launch themselves into the world as fully fledged adults, with houses and families. Chase Sardeson, 23, an electrician’s apprentice in Raleigh, N.C., grew up in a conservative household. But he said he became interested in liberal politics while he was working at a car dealership and learned that one of his colleagues, a Hispanic immigrant, was working three jobs to support his family.
Today, Mr. Sardeson and his girlfriend together pay $1,800 a month in rent for a two-bedroom townhouse. When he did the math for the day he could no longer be on his parents’ health insurance, he said his heart sank.
He said he was helping construct a dental office building that, once it opens, will provide services “that I will not be able to afford.”
“I look at boomers and older Gen X, and I see people who had the chance to benefit from a great America at the top of the world,” Mr. Sardeson said. “I look at myself, and I see a shadow.”
He voted for one of those baby boomers, Roy Cooper, a Democrat, in the U.S. Senate race, but he would have preferred a candidate with a more forceful economic message, such as Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.
“I feel seen and heard by Mamdani and El-Sayed — even Talarico,” he said.
Izzi Eames, 24, an assistant manager of a coffee shop in Portsmouth, N.H., grew up in a religious and conservative household, influences she has moved away from since high school. Liberal politics is now part of her identity; she said she was “an emotional wreck” after the 2024 election. On Tuesday, she voted straight Democratic and said she wanted the winners “to focus more on small issues.”
“Mamdani does that well,” she said.
Israel, perhaps more than any other subject, is bringing the generational divide into relief. In interviews, young people said they felt the issue was another reason they looked at the political class as one giant blob.
“Older people on both sides say, ‘We’re going to visit Israel first when we are elected, it’s alliance with Israel no matter what,’” said Zaid Sibaai, 23, a recent college graduate working as a property manager in his hometown, Wichita, Kan. “It’s weird.”
Mr. Sibaai, whose father immigrated from Syria, said he and his friends voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 because he bucked the political establishment and called Middle Eastern wars a mistake. Nine months into a war in Iran, Mr. Sibaai said he was done with Mr. Trump and his party. He voted for Mr. Hamilton.
The issue is dividing American Jews too. That pains Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel, 74, who retired last year from Temple Micah, a progressive congregation in Washington. He said many younger Jews, including his own children, have a different kind of connection to Israel than their parents do and are blunt about their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.
“There’s a distancing,” he said, and “the American Jewish establishment is too removed to get that.”
At half Rabbi Zemel’s age, Benjamin Altshuler, 36, a Reform rabbi living in West Bloomfield, Mich., said he struggled with the Senate race in his state, particularly around the issue of Israel.
“There were some aspects of El-Sayed’s candidacy that were not in line with my views, but I found many more favorable aspects compared with Mike Rogers,” he said, referring to Mr. El-Sayed’s Republican opponent.
Rabbi Altshuler said he watched old videos of Mr. El-Sayed to dig deeper on his views on Israel and decided to support him.
“I had to discuss it with my family and debate it with my community,” he said. “Ultimately the decision was mine. My desire for democratic values had to win out over this particular moment of geopolitics.”
The demographic breakdown of younger voters sets them apart. Half of voters under 30 are not white, a much bigger share than that of any other age group. In the past, Democrats have assumed that more diversity would help them, particularly with Hispanic voters, and it hasn’t.
This year, Obed Alvidrez, 26, who grew up in a Republican-leaning household in Texas, said he was inspired by the Democratic candidates who did not take his vote for granted.
“Talarico and El-Sayed are clear that they’re not going into the office to represent their party. They’re doing it for the people living in their state,” said Mr. Alvidrez, who is studying marketing and working full time. “That really helped them get support from Republicans and independents.”
“People are just tired,” added Mr. Alvidrez. But, he said, “we did our part.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. Jeff Adelson contributed reporting.
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2) The Most Dangerous Way to Misread the Midterm Results
By M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist, Nov. 6, 2026
Photo Illustration by Philotheus Nisch for The New York Times
The air in this country has been easier to breathe since Tuesday’s election results started coming in. With majorities in both chambers of Congress, Democrats can now place limits on the Trump administration’s destructive powers. It would be foolhardy, however, to conclude that the Trump era is therefore necessarily coming to an end.
In midterm elections, voters express their dissatisfaction with the present. In presidential elections, on the other hand, people vote their hopes and fears for the future. The experience of other countries shows that autocratic leaders are peculiarly difficult to unseat, and not just because they have a tendency to undermine the voting process itself. The more instability voters live with — the higher the gas prices, the more tenuous their access to health care, the more palpable the threat of war — the stronger the autocrats’ appeal, even when it was their policies that caused the instability.
I have just returned from Israel, where an unpopular autocrat’s party won the largest number of votes even though the worst security failure in the nation’s history took place on his watch, even though he has dragged his country into one forever war and started several others, even though he is under investigation for corruption. How did this happen?
Fact is, it happens all the time. Viktor Orban, who led Hungary for a total of 20 years, enriched his family and his cronies while his country grew poorer than its European neighbors and many of its citizens lost access to decent health care and education. As successive elections approached, his party’s popularity seemed to falter. And yet, he kept winning — in 2014, 2018, 2022.
Even Vladimir Putin fits this pattern. These days criticizing him can be deadly, but back when Russians could still express their opinions, they consistently gave Putin poor marks for several aspects of his job performance. They said he had not improved their economic well-being or done a good job ending the very long war in Chechnya, and they held him responsible for the self-dealing and corruption among the Kremlin elite. And yet, even when they had a semblance of choice, most Russians voted for him.
This is a pattern, not a coincidence. Many people — generally speaking, majorities — vote for ineffective, corrupt, warmongering autocrats not in spite of the hardships and dangers that their governments impose but because of them.
Autocrats rise to power in times of fear and dislocation. They get elected on promises of stability and security. Most of the time, they also promise a return to a glorious imaginary past, when the world felt safe and you didn’t feel poor. They never deliver. Instead of stability, they bring chaos, confusion and often war.
Rather than expose the autocrat as a liar, however, the instability affirms the worldview that brought him to power in the first place. The world, it seems, really is terrifying. Life really is hard and getting harder. We really are on the verge of catastrophe. Just weeks before the Israeli election, an apparent terrorist came within seconds of crashing an airplane full of Israelis — another catastrophic security failure on Netanyahu’s watch. Two days ahead of the vote, he shared an artificial-intelligence-generated image of a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv, warning that “the State of Israel is in real and tangible existential danger.” You’d think the airplane incident and the danger warning would work against the sitting prime minister, one who has instigated two wars with Iran, but Netanyahu’s message is I alone stand between you and annihilation. A critical number of people appear to believe this.
I don’t know if every language in the world has this expression, but English, Russian and Hungarian have an identical idiom: “Don’t change horses midstream.” The Hebrew equivalent is “Don’t change horses while climbing a hill.” The harder life gets, the more this message resonates. And the autocrat continues feeding the people the same old promise: We just need to cross the waters and climb the hill, and then we will reach stability. Hunker down and vote for me again.
The classic mistake the opposition to such leaders makes is to affirm the terrifying worldview but argue for a more measured, reasonable solution. This is what much of the anti-Netanyahu opposition did, what the Hungarian opposition used to do. Democratic politicians in the United States do it too, when they agree with Trump that immigration is a gigantic security problem — and merely offer less extreme solutions. Or when they agree with Republicans that “wokeness,” of all things, is an urgent problem America needs to address. But if the autocrat is essentially right in his analysis, what is the argument for voting for someone else?
By now, we know what does work. We saw it in Hungary. We saw it in New York when Zohran Mamdani came out of nowhere to wipe the floor with the sitting mayor and the former governor. We saw it in midterm campaigns across the country, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than in Texas, in James Talarico’s winning campaign for the Senate and Gina Hinojosa’s for the governorship. What works is opposing the autocratic worldview itself. It’s asserting that while life really is hard and the world really can be scary, we need not live in fear and isolation. Rather than conjuring an imaginary past, it’s promising an achievable future. Rather than setting people against one another, it’s helping them to find common ground. Rather than asking voters to hunker down and trust the leader to guide us toward stability that will never arrive, it’s inviting them to create a better world right now, together.
Thank you for tying together political philosophy, history, and the current situation throughout the world with such clarity. Hannah Arendt laid out how authoritarians pave the path to totalitarian rule decades ago, and yet the masses still fall prey to the same machinations. It is that hard for humans to overcome their innate responses to stressful events or circumstances. We all need to collaborate to swing the narrative toward hope and vision.
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3) Not Even Tech’s Safest Jobs Look So Safe Anymore
As Microsoft pours billions into artificial intelligence, the company has offered buyouts to about 60,000 employees. The work force was already on edge.
By Emmy Martin, Reporting from San Francisco, Nov. 6, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/06/technology/microsoft-buyouts.html
Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Wash. For years, the company countered big pay packages from Silicon Valley rivals with strong benefits and a reputation for stability. David Ryder/Reuters
As Microsoft pours billions into artificial intelligence, the company has offered buyouts to about 60,000 employees. The work force was already on edge.
Within an hour of Microsoft’s announcement of buyouts last week, employees rushed to an internal site to see whether they had been offered one. So many people were checking at once that employees speculated on the company’s internal social network that the site had buckled under the traffic.
The offer, extended to about 60,000 employees, or more than a quarter of Microsoft’s work force, was the largest in the company’s history. It was also the company’s second buyout this year, and another shock to a work force grappling with big changes brought on by artificial intelligence.
For years, Microsoft occupied a distinct position among the tech industry’s biggest companies. While its pay packages often lagged behind Silicon Valley rivals like Google and Meta, employees said, the company countered with strong benefits and a reputation for stability. As recently as September, Forbes ranked Microsoft the world’s best employer for the third straight year.
But the tech industry’s A.I. race is upending many workplaces, Microsoft included. The buyout offer, said six Microsoft employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity, landed on workers strained by mounting expectations to use A.I., stagnant pay and a growing sense that their jobs were no longer secure.
Though Microsoft is doing better financially than most of its peers, it is clearly shifting its spending priorities. Two days after the buyouts were announced, the Redmond, Wash., company reported a 32 percent jump in quarterly profit, to $36.6 billion, on revenue of $92.3 billion. Its capital spending, largely on data centers, rose 30 percent to $45.2 billion, and the company said it expected to spend roughly $170 billion this year.
The fear among many workers now is what comes next, and some have begun organizing. Before the buyout offer, a group of current and former employees circulated an open letter among colleagues accusing the company of pursuing A.I. with a “speed-at-all-costs” ethos. It called on Microsoft to involve employees in decisions about how A.I. is built and used, and to stop tying A.I. use to rewards or reprimands.
Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief people officer, said the buyouts were meant to give employees who might be ready for something new “choice and agency.” She said the buyouts were not related to how A.I. was changing work. (A Microsoft spokeswoman said “maintenance timing,” rather than a traffic surge, had briefly delayed the release of some buyout offers on the internal site.)
Ms. Coleman also did not rule out future layoffs.
Employees offered a buyout have until Dec. 9 to decide, and those who accept will leave on Dec. 31. They will receive a minimum of eight weeks of base pay, and the size of the payment varies by job level and tenure.
The offer followed a string of cuts that had already shaken employees. Microsoft laid off 10,000 workers in 2023, and more than 15,000 in 2025. This spring, about 8,600 U.S. employees were offered a retirement-age buyout, and about 30 percent accepted it. This summer, the company cut about 4,800 more jobs. Microsoft’s head count in June was 223,000, down 5,000 from a year earlier.
This time, Microsoft said it expected less than 5 percent of the 60,000 employees offered a buyout to take it.
Some employees have already signed the offer, including one who has been at Microsoft for nearly a decade. She was her family’s main earner and worried about the job market, she said. But years of pressure to use unreliable A.I. tools, the constant threat of layoffs and what she saw as a widening gap between the company’s stated values and its actions made staying feel worse. Colleagues urged her to stay, she said, because they would have to absorb her work.
Others are staying, at least for now, some by choice and some because they feel they have none. A senior software engineer who has worked at Microsoft for more than five years said he wanted to stay to try to improve the company. He said a recent squeeze on pay, the push to use A.I. and now the buyouts had left far more of his colleagues feeling expendable.
Several employees said that merit raises this year had been unusually small, in some cases less than 1 percent, and that managers had described rewards budgets as tight. At a company town hall last month, a question about how executives balanced spending more than $100 billion a year on A.I. against flat rewards for the workers carrying out that strategy drew more than 80 reactions, roughly twice as many as most other questions seen by The New York Times.
Ms. Coleman said Microsoft was trying to stay competitive on pay while it remained “a company that has to think about our operating expense and our capital expense.”
The tension had begun to show up in pay in other ways, too, employees said. Gretchen Thomas, 57, a design leader, left Microsoft in September after five years because the pressure grew steadily heavier, she said, including shifting priorities and faster deadlines.
“I just can’t believe how grim it’s gotten just in the last three years,” she said.
This year, Ms. Thomas’s raise and bonus were in line with those of her colleagues. But her manager had reduced her stock award, typically the most valuable part of a Microsoft employee’s pay, because, according to a memo seen by The Times, she did “not consistently” show speed, urgency and willingness to experiment, including with A.I.
Ms. Coleman declined to discuss individual pay decisions, but said the company encouraged employees to experiment and use its tools. “Of course some of that includes A.I.,” she said.
For those who stay, employees said, the bigger worry is the work left behind. All of the employees said that they did not expect departing colleagues to be replaced, and that the remaining staff would absorb their work. Ms. Coleman said Microsoft had thousands of jobs open but acknowledged the company needed to make “some shifts in the work force.”
(The Times has sued Microsoft and OpenAI, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
The day after the buyout announcement, a group of teams in one of Microsoft’s software organizations gathered at a Dave & Buster’s for an event to raise morale that had been planned for a month.
Before the food came out, a five-year engineer who was at the event recalled, a manager stood on a chair, acknowledged that all the attendees were refreshing their email and weighing the buyout offer, and urged them to set it aside and celebrate the work they had done.
At his table, the engineer said, no one talked about anything else.
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4) Tech Stocks Had a Terrible Day. What’s Coming Could Be Worse.
By Jared Bernstein and Ryan Cummings, Nov. 6, 2026
Mr. Bernstein was the chair of President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2023 to 2025. Mr. Cummings served the council as an economist from 2021 to 2023.
Illustration by The New York Times; source photographs by xiaokebetter and Jun Zhang via Getty Images
We’ve been here before. As with so many other transformational inventions — railroads, electricity, the internet — outsize enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is supporting a level of spending that’s gotten ahead of plausible profit expectations, a defining characteristic of a financial bubble. Now that the stocks of some A.I. builders and suppliers are wavering, we think it’s important to ask the next critical question. What happens to the American economy if this bubble bursts?
The damage could run deep.
It was just over a year ago when we argued that the enormous sums being poured into A.I. hearkens to the go-go internet era of the 1990s and the housing boom of the 2000s, both of which turned out to be financial bubbles whose bursting spilled over into the broader economy, leading to job and income losses that affected most Americans. Now, we’re already starting to see signs that this latest boom may be fading: The tech-heavy Nasdaq index fell by more than 5 percent Thursday and is down nearly 10 percent since Oct. 1. Growing investor nervousness led the prominent A.I. lab OpenAI to dial back its latest funding-round target by $10 billion.
What happens if the A.I. boom goes bust? There’s a consensus building among investors, academics and market analysts that any downturn would be relatively mild, similar to what happened in the early 2000s, after the dot-com bubble burst. The inflation-adjusted value of the overall economy, or real gross domestic product, shrank less than half a percent. And while unemployment rose, it was considerably lower than it was at the peak of the financial crisis.
Unfortunately, this consensus looks too optimistic. First, the A.I. bubble is by all measures substantially larger than the dot-com bubble; the stock market has increased by more than it did between 1996 and 2000 and is currently worth 240 percent of G.D.P., versus 160 percent at the peak of the dot-com bubble.
This difference in magnitude means that if the stock market fell as much as it did over the course of the dot-com bust, the amount of lost wealth could translate into a reduction in real consumer spending that would be twice as large. That reduction would show up as a lower demand for goods and services, which could in turn reduce business investment, hiring and overall growth.
Our current economy is also more fragile than it was back in 2000. Hiring has been sluggish and real wages are falling, the latter due to elevated war-induced inflation. The Federal Reserve has been gradually raising interest rates, leading to higher borrowing costs and potentially dialing back economic activity.
Additionally, today’s fiscal conditions and outlook are much worse. In 2001, the federal government ran a budget surplus of 1.2 percent of G.D.P.; today it is running an historically large deficit of 6.2 percent of G.D.P. That could limit Congress’s willingness to inject even more borrowed money into the economy to offset any downturn.
To get a rough read on the magnitude of the damage triggered by what the A.I. bubble burst might do to the economy, we ran the same economic model that the Federal Reserve uses to simulate the workings of the macroeconomy. The results confirmed our concerns. Mapping a dot-com style sell-off onto today’s markets would lead real G.D.P. to fall by more than three times as much as it did during the 2001 recession: 1.4 percent versus 0.4 percent. The unemployment rate would steadily climb from its current rate of 4.2 percent to above 7 percent.
Back when we first expressed our concerns about the stability of the A.I. investment boom, we noted that the companies building the A.I. models and the infrastructure to support them were mostly spending their own cash, meaning a bust would hurt them, but not their lenders. That’s no longer the case: $445 billion worth of A.I.-related debt, or 1.4 percent of G.D.P., was issued in the first eight months of 2026. If we throw in the opaque off-balance-sheet debt deals companies are relying on to pay for this build-out, we estimate that total A.I.-infrastructure debt is roughly 7 percent of G.D.P., approaching levels of subprime mortgage lending that helped trigger the financial crisis.
Households and the banking system are both less exposed and less leveraged now than they were before the financial crisis. That said, debt-triggered recessions can be particularly intractable, as the credit system can take considerable time to recover, as borrowers regain solvency and lenders regain confidence. Should such debt financing continue to inflate the bubble, this risk factor will grow.
One of our biggest concerns this time is whether our leadership can effectively respond to a crisis. The consistently weak economic stewardship of the current administration is evident in persistently elevated inflation, interest rates and uncertainty. The extent to which officials are bogged down in their war of choice in Iran does not inspire confidence regarding their willingness and ability to respond effectively to a bubble-induced downturn, should it occur. We hope that the newly elected Congress will have a mitigating effect.
We’ve been careful to approach these thorny questions with humility. Trying to identify a bubble is hard enough. Predicting what happens if it pops requires even more speculation. But if current investment jitters deepen, what happens next could hit the economy harder than the last time we were here.
It's good to pump the brakes now before AI borrowing and speculation causes a crash. AI regulation is 99% more likely under a democratic congress.The big tech co.s will survive, the AI froth will burn off. Then we'll see what the actual value of AI is, in reality not fantasy. Any jobs created by building data centres are minuscule compared to the jobs lost to AI - so a pause in the AI mania is a good thing for workers, for the economy, for everyone but the rampant speculators.
Regulation of the development of that technology's capability is certainly more likely by a Democratically-controlled Congress but I don't see how that Congress can regulate the grossly over-leveraged financing of that technology without taking unprecedented steps to intervene (interfere?) using statist measures to exert a degree of control over what are essentially private business enterprises (albeit with public shareholders) both on the borrowing and the lending sides. What exactly are you referring to "pumping the brakes" on and how would that actually be done?
What happens if the bubble bursts? We move to "too big to fail/national security", the "titans" of tech and business slink off with their billions, politicians babble, regular citizens lose jobs, pensions, etc, nobody goes to jail/is held accountable, and the financial sector starts planning the next stock market rise/bubble.
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5) After Governor Abbott’s Defeat, Houston’s Mayor Changes Course on ICE
Mayor John Whitmire has instructed Houston police to stop notifying immigration agents when they encounter someone without legal status during routine street stops.
By J. David Goodman, Reporting from Houston, Nov. 6, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/06/us/houston-mayor-john-whitmire-immigration-ice-cooperation.html
James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa at a campaign rally in Austin, Texas, a day before the midterm election. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
The stunning wave of Republican defeats is already having an effect in Texas.
Mayor John Whitmire of Houston said he was directing city police officers on Friday to limit their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during traffic stops, bucking a policy imposed on Texas’s largest city by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Under an executive order from the mayor, Houston police officers will no longer alert ICE agents when they encounter an unauthorized migrant during routine traffic stops or in connection with other low level infractions.
Instead, officers will only alert ICE in cases where a person has been arrested and is being brought to, or has already arrived at, a county jail.
“If they’re charged with a new crime, we’ll let ICE know as we get them to the jailhouse,” Mr. Whitmire said in an interview with The New York Times. “We just are not going to deal with the nonviolent contacts.”
The change in how Houston officers interact with immigration agents was a direct result of Tuesday’s election, Mr. Whitmire said. Mr. Abbott lost his bid for re-election to what would have been a record fourth term as governor.
“The governor was requiring us to contact ICE,” Mr. Whitmire said. “It created a lot of anxiety” among Houston residents.
He added that the shift was “certainly consistent with the new leadership in Austin,” referring to the slate of Democrats elected to every major statewide position in Texas on Tuesday.
“We won’t have new leadership until January,” Mr. Whitmire said. “But I’m willing to make a responsible decision that in the next two months we’re going to go to a more effective policy.”
A spokesman for Mr. Abbott’s office declined to comment.
The change comes as prosecutors in Harris County are pursuing a criminal case against an ICE agent who struck a Mexican construction worker in October with a vehicle in Houston, injuring him. A grand jury indicted the agent, Mario Alberto Morales, late last month.
The county’s prosecutors were also investigating the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo who was killed during an encounter in July with ICE agents in Houston.
The Houston police chief, J. Noe Diaz, said he supported the mayor’s order. For his officers, he said, “it’s about treating the people that they come in contact with with dignity and not diminishing their vulnerability because they’re immigrants in our community.”
The mayor’s order described its intent, declaring that “law enforcement resources are finite” and are best used by “investigating and deterring violent crime.” The decision was made to maintain “the trust and cooperation of all residents” of the city, the order said.
“The fact that a person is, or is suspected to be, subject to immigration enforcement shall not, by itself, be a basis to contact ICE,” according to the order, reviewed by The Times. “If a person is not otherwise going to jail on new charges or other warrants, Department personnel shall not contact ICE regarding that person.”
In April, Mr. Abbott’s office threatened to pull $110 million in public-safety funding to Houston, including money for its police department, unless the mayor promised to stop enforcing a city ordinance and took steps to repeal it.
The ordinance directed city officers to hold people wanted by ICE no longer than necessary to complete a traffic stop or other brief street encounter.
City Council members who spearheaded the passage of the ordinance said at the time that the directive from Mr. Abbott’s office violated the Constitution by requiring officers to detain people beyond the time necessary for a police stop.
Though the ordinance had not been Mr. Whitmire’s idea, he voted for it. But after Mr. Abbott threatened the funding, he urged the council to adopt new language to comply with the governor’s demands, saying the city needed the state funding for its police and fire departments. The council ultimately complied with the governor.
Mr. Abbott lost his race to Gina Hinojosa, a state representative who will be the first Latina governor. Mr. Whitmire said that he had not discussed his decision directly with Ms. Hinojosa but had spoken with other newly elected Democratic leaders.
As mayor, Mr. Whitmire, a moderate Democrat and former longtime member of the state senate, has argued in the past that confrontations with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement were “counterproductive.” He has also pointed to his relationships with top Republicans in the State Capitol as an asset for the city.
“I had a good relationship with Abbott and the lieutenant governor,” he said in the interview, referring to Dan Patrick, a conservative Republican who also lost on Tuesday. “But I have even better relationships with the Democrats.”
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6) Macklemore Says U.S. Arenas Won’t Book His ‘Free Palestine’ Tour
The singer was kicked off Ed Sheeran’s tour in September over his vocal support for Palestinians.
By Ben Sisario, Nov. 6, 2026
Macklemore at a concert in Dublin on Oct. 26, 2026. Zoe Rain/Handout, via Via Reuters
Macklemore, the indie rapper who was kicked off Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour in September over his public support of Palestinians, said on Friday that nine arenas in the United States refused to book him for a “Free Palestine” benefit tour he had planned.
In a social media post, Macklemore wrote that in mid-September, after being removed from Sheeran’s tour, his team contacted arenas in the United States and “received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year.”
“But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine,” his statement continued, “those dates were suddenly off the table.”
Macklemore named nine venues: Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center in New York, and UBS Arena on Long Island; Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.; Intuit Dome, Kia Forum and Crypto.com Arena in and around Los Angeles; Chase Center Arena in San Francisco; and Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Macklemore’s hometown.
In a statement, a spokeswoman from Madison Square Garden said, “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he’s not an arena-level act.”
A spokesman for Kia Forum said the venue had no comment. None of the other venues responded to requests for comment.
Macklemore, who had breakout success in the early 2010s with songs like “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us,” was removed from Sheeran’s tour after he appeared at two shows at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., in early September.
There, he proclaimed “Free Palestine” and performed “Hind’s Hall,” his protest song against Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, which came in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In that song, Macklemore accuses Israel of genocide.
Macklemore said that owners of the venues where the Sheeran tour had been scheduled demanded he be removed. Robert Kraft, whose company owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium outside Boston, said that his venues do not allow “hate speech,” and that Macklemore’s statements at MetLife had crossed that line.
Macklemore’s removal renewed debate about the power of billionaires to control free speech, and the power of artists to resist it.
After Sheeran said he had played no part in the decision, every other musician associated with his tour, including opening acts and his backing band, dropped out in solidarity with Macklemore. Sheeran continued the tour, at first alone and then picking up other musicians.
In his statement on Friday, Macklemore added, “We live in a country that prides itself on freedom of speech. Yet we’ve reached a point where a handful of billionaires can decide which causes are acceptable, which voices are welcome and which human lives are worth defending.”
In late October, Macklemore played arena shows in London, Paris and Dublin as part of a benefit tour. When that tour was announced, representatives of Macklemore said they expected additional dates to be booked in the United States, but none were.
Though Macklemore has never been a stadium-level touring attraction, he has maintained a steady fan base for years. In October, he played a solo concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater, near Morrison, Colo.
In 2023, he went on a tour of arenas and theaters, including Climate Pledge Arena.
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7) Watching ‘NAZA’ Amid the Gazan Rubble
By Mohammed Sawwaf, Nov. 7, 2026
Mr. Sawwaf is a Palestinian documentary filmmaker in Gaza.
Tarini Sharma
I watched the film — a documentary by the Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor that has become the subject of international controversy and attention — on my laptop, sitting inside a building that is somehow still standing in southwest Gaza. To the left of the building is a bombed-out apartment block. In front, a camp for displaced people. Nearby there’s what’s left of a destroyed university, which is now being used as a shelter. Throughout the area, we can hear the sound of the “zannana,” the Israeli surveillance drone that never stops flying above us here in Gaza. We call it “zannana” in Arabic because of the constant sound it makes: zzzzzzz. It watches us. Sometimes it bombs us.
“NAZA” was filmed almost entirely on rooftops in Tel Aviv. Under the cover of night, anonymous Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers sit atop high rises and apartment buildings with Mr. Abraham. They describe how they systematically targeted us, how they dropped bombs on us from offices far from Gaza. The vantage point shook me. Throughout the film, there’s a feeling that they can see everything, while no one can see them.
In Gaza, this is our relationship with the Israeli aircraft that circle our skies. The missiles come from above, but the decision to launch them seems to come from a place we cannot reach. The rooftops where the directors shot these interviews go beyond a simple visual choice. It’s an image of power: The one above watches, while the one below is exposed.
I wanted to see “NAZA” both because of the international acclaim the film has received and also because of the space it gives people who have taken part in the machinery of killing. I’m also a journalist and a filmmaker. When I read about the film’s critical reception, I asked myself, Why are they being given this platform? Was our story so incomplete that we needed the perpetrators to tell us how we were killed?
I watched “NAZA” twice. The Guardian, which co-produced the film, was able to send me a link to watch it here in Gaza. By the time I finished it, I was no longer asking myself whether this film should have been made. For me, the answer is yes. It offered a window into a world I could not reach myself: I can reach the rubble, but the filmmakers who made “NAZA” can reach the person who determines which house can become rubble. I can film an injured child after a bombing. They can question the person who took part in the decision that led to it. The two accounts don’t cancel each other out; one completes the other.
Many of the film’s revelations we already know. We know that Israel is watching us. We know about the use of artificial intelligence in the war; we have read about Lavender, the A.I. system used to target us, and have gathered testimonies from people who were detained or targeted after passing in front of Israeli military cameras believed to use facial recognition.
Yet even knowing what I know, hearing members of elite intelligence units speak about how they surveilled us made me feel like I was suffocating. By their own admission, they track our every movement. Our phones. Our calls. Our messages. Where a person is. When he returns home. In one scene, one of the subjects recounts hacking into a girl’s phone to find out when her father would be home. This intimate information helped determine the moment of a strike. The girl, her family, became numbers in another calculation.
It’s why, as the film went on, I no longer watched “NAZA” as a journalist but as a person trying to survive. Interviewees told Mr. Abraham how the decision to make someone a target is based on probabilities and algorithms — that they’ve knowingly killed people who they knew weren’t taking part in the war solely from inconclusive information taken from their phones. During my work, I have wondered more than once: Should I leave my phone behind? Should I talk about a film idea on WhatsApp? Is it better not to discuss certain ideas with colleagues near our phones? Could an ordinary conversation be interpreted in another way? Then I second-guess myself. Maybe it is better not to hide anything, to keep my phone with me, and for everything I do, to make it clear that I am simply a journalist and a filmmaker.
It is a strange way to live: trying to imagine how you are seen by a person watching you, so that he or she does not decide that you are something else.
As the interviewees told the filmmakers about different strikes they had conducted, my mind returned to what I have survived in these long years. I thought about Nov. 17, 2023, when I was trapped under a building that had been bombed, unable to move. In the rubble alongside me lay the bodies of entire families. “NAZA” is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage.” Was I NAZA that day, or was I a target? Just nine days earlier, I had suffered a skull fracture while standing under a different building that had been bombed. Two of my children were injured. Were we NAZA that day, too?
The officers and soldiers describe there being rules to the game that only they knew, while we in Gaza guessed where death could find us. It made it feel as if Gaza is a video game. On the screen, the subjects told the filmmakers, they see targets and icons. When the mission is over, the player can get up from his chair. But the person inside the game cannot leave.
During the height of the war, we started to figure out the rules. Once, I was seeking shelter near Salah al-Din Road, a main highway that spans the length of the strip, when shells started falling and quadcopters started shooting near us. Amid the chaos, I saw a man trying to cross the highway crumple over and stop moving. People said he died there. We understood, watching him, that we couldn’t cross that road anymore.
From down below, we could infer many things from what we could see and hear. We could tell if an area had become a no-go zone from the number of quadcopters we saw in the sky, or from the sounds of shelling. We could see when an entire building was destroyed seemingly to kill one person, or an entire area bombed with a single target in mind. We could tell when a bombing was being used to force us to flee.
“NAZA” confirmed what we — the victims who have told the stories from inside the machinery of killing — had long suspected. In one of the most striking scenes in the movie, an interviewee spoke about the authorization for a strike to kill a huge number of civilians: up to 500 people, though he said he didn’t know how many the attack actually killed. (The Israel Defense Forces have denied approving a strike with that number of casualties.)
As I listened, I began to think: Do I know this place? I’ve witnessed so many strikes over the course of the past three years that I’ve lost count — sometimes dozens in a single day. But sometimes memories of a single moment of destruction remain vivid. I immediately thought of one of them.
Early in the war, there was a neighborhood in Shuja’iyya in eastern Gaza where some were saying hundreds of people — others said more than 500 — had been killed. I stumbled there soon after the attacks took place and saw an entire block in one neighborhood flattened, with dust and concrete mangled over bodies. I cannot say for certain that the incident the interviewee referred to took place there. But even the possibility that what I had seen might have been the result of what the man was speaking about on the screen was terrifying.
The Israeli officers in the film describe how the decisions to drop bombs were made; I remember what these places looked like afterward. The truth of the war in Gaza lives between these two realities. “NAZA” does not complete that story. It begins another: Now we must go to the other side of the algorithm that decides our deaths, to every NAZA, and give them back their names, their faces. Their lives. Every NAZA is a story. It’s our responsibility to tell that story, too.
Mohammed Sawwaf is a documentary filmmaker and producer. He is the founder of Alef Multimedia, an independent media company based in Gaza. Most recently, he was a producer of “American Doctor,” a film that follows three American physicians volunteering in Gaza during the height of the humanitarian crisis.
Source photographs by Interim Archives, FPG/Archive Photos and Abid Katib via Getty Images.
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