The camp was started by the student coalition United Front for Palestinian Liberation, composed of Palestinians and other anti-imperialist protest groups. The students regularly engage with chants, speeches, political education talks, dancing and music, as well as organizing the logistics of food donations and other supplies.

The camp has three demands: Divest from [Zionism], cut ties with Boeing and end all anti-Palestinian oppression.

On May 12, Pursuit NW, a pro-imperialist Zionist group, threatened to stage a march and “cut a buzz-saw” through the Popular University camp. With a day’s notice, the camp was able to stop the Zionist threat. Hundreds of militant camp defenders staged a rally at the entrance and Pursuit NW members were prevented from entering and had to march somewhere else.

Rural post offices are being hit with “Local Transportation Optimization.” This occurs in locations over 50 miles from a processing plant with a population of less than 30,000. Instead of there being two mail trucks a day, the evening truck, which picks up the day’s outgoing mail, is being eliminated. This adds an extra day in delivery time to much of the area’s mail. Nearly half of Oregon’s post offices, and 10,000 across the U.S., are being affected.

The USPS has refused to answer concerns by Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, and Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici, who have called on the postal service to hold a local “Listening Session.”

The Postal Board of Governors has also refused to attend a local community hearing called by the Portland City Council and U.S. Postal Service representatives. The meeting was to give elected officials, including senators and House representatives, a chance to raise concerns about the impact of these recent changes in the USPS on jobs and quality of service.

Rallies to demand improved postal services and to protect good, living-wage union jobs were held during the week of May 6 in more than 85 cities in 36 states.

When the encampment opened on April 29, 21 participants were detained in the morning but released without charge. Since then Kaler has repeatedly attempted to intimidate students and supporters. But emails accusing Palestine backers of illegal activity and posted signs reading “No trespassing, private property” and “No encampments” were ignored or defaced.

Now a number of students are facing academic discipline for participating in the encampment.

When students painted a pro-Palestine mural on the “Spirit Rock” — on which students have painted graffiti for years — on May 7, CWRU hired contractors to paint over it at 5:00 a.m. The contractors spray-painted the campers who defended the mural, which the contractors destroyed. CWRU’s suspension in March of the campus Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was for “gluing” leaflets in unauthorized locations, including the Spirit Rock.

On the last day of the encampment, students moved their protest to the university administration building, where they held a sit-in to demand CWRU divest from companies doing business with [Zionism]. The day before, hundreds of people attended a nearby “All Out for Rafah” demonstration.

Encampment participants spoke during the public comment section at the Cuyahoga County Council meeting on May 14, where local activists pressed the Council to fully divest from […] apartheid.

Overdose deaths have surpassed 100,000 for the third straight year, according to federal data released Wednesday, a reminder that the nation remains mired in an intractable epidemic fueled by the potent drug fentanyl.

According to provisional data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 107,543 people died in 2023, a slight decrease from the previous year. The agency described it as the first annual decrease in deaths since 2018, although experts cautioned that the numbers could rise in ensuing years and that the toll remains unacceptably high.

All of this happens while Amerikkka is bullying the global south with more wars. OH, and this is not all! Check the following cope:

The CDC on Wednesday described the decrease as a sign that federal efforts to help prevent deaths and treat addiction in states are paying off. It could boost President Biden as he seeks reelection and Republicans rip him over border security and the flow of fentanyl synthesized by Mexican criminal groups.

On May 11, in downtown Seattle, 2,000 demonstrators marched and rallied to remember Nakba Day, chanting: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine is almost Free!”

At the rally, Indigenous speakers and performers made statements in solidarity with Palestine. A “No Tech for Apartheid” spokesperson condemned Google, Microsoft and Boeing as all standing next to each other in spying and invading Palestine.

A speaker from Samidoun, the Palestinian prisoners organization, affirmed their dedication to support and gain strength from Palestinian prisoners. She said, “They keep our struggle alive.”

Far exceeding the accumulated endowments are funds directly pumped into universities by the Department of Defense. These research and development grants dominate the budget of entire departments, especially in STEM — science, technology, engineering, mathematics — fields.

The threat to withdraw government funding is all-powerful. The majority of science research projects are dependent on the Pentagon’s earmarked funding.

Solving planetary problems of food, health and climate are not on the Pentagon’s agenda. Its focus is on research and development of deadly, high-tech weapons.

A clear demand has arisen out of a living struggle that is embraced by millions who are in motion, who have learned the bitter truth that it is decades of U.S. political support, infusions of weapons and massive funding that is responsible for the Zionist war machine. This one word “Divest” challenges and exposes the whole corrupt edifice of collaboration with Zionism and with expanding U.S. wars around the globe.

The students, faculty, staff and their supporters are courageously raising a revolutionary demand that challenges the whole underpinning of education in the U.S. today. What is at stake?

The billionaire Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining-tech company tied to U.S. intelligence cartels and to Israel, summed up the debate from the viewpoint of the U.S. ruling class: “We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show. If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.” (Palantir on X, May 8)

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/14/fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-action-to-protect-american-workers-and-businesses-from-chinas-unfair-trade-practices/

Linda Gomaa, with Amazonians United, described Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s ties with the U.S. [neo]imperialist system, the military-industrial complex, and the CIA. Gomaa said: “Jeff Bezos gets rich off all our pain. Amazon workers are barely able to make it through the day without constantly needing to take pain killers and are barely able to pay their rent. One of our co-workers died inside a warehouse on the floor. Management didn’t want to stop production for the day, so they put boxes around his dead body.

Gomma continued: “We are in solidarity with the UPenn encampment and those around the world in solidarity with Palestine. Corporate media is doing everything they possibly can to convince you that the public is against you. It’s corporate media that is against you, the elites are against you, our boss is against you. But working people — and we are constantly having conversations with our co-workers about Palestine and the world, about politics — we are with you.

“The people who make this country and the world run are with you. Workers are the driving economic force in this country, we have the power to stop the funding of this genocide in Palestine when we organize in the belly of the beast.”

The second part took place when the activists and health care workers marched to Fordham Plaza for a rally, where they were joined by Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist Jewish organization, which has been a regular presence at Palestine solidarity protests in this city. A Fordham University student who was arrested at a student encampment also spoke.

The protesters then took the streets on Fordham Road and marched to the Grand Concourse, where they took public transportation to New York University in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to show solidarity to the encampment there in the third part of their day’s actions.

New York Police Department cops followed the protesters onto the train and instructed the train conductor to not move until the protesters got off the train. After shutting the entire D-line down for about 15 minutes, the demonstrators changed cars and kept moving forward. When they reached NYU, the organizers there opened the front of the march to their banners.

Also speaking were representatives of Workers World Party and Party for Socialism and Liberation. Jesus Sanchez, with PSL, said; “[Zionism’s neocolony] caused much destruction in Central America in the 1980’s, especially toward Indigenous tribes such as the Mayan population in Guatemala. Along with the U.S., they trained forces in the genocide of the Mayans under the Ríos Montt régime.”

Speaking for Workers World Party, this writer stated: “Look at the photo of this beautiful 11-year-old girl from Guatemala. We must understand why she and her family were even here in Houston. It is because of U.S. imperialism destroying the economies and overthrowing the leadership of Central American countries that people are forced to leave their homes.

“It is the U.S. that is responsible for little Maria’s death. She and her family should never have been forced to be here.”

https://archive.ph/E0JUs

Across the state, reproductive rights activists have been mobilizing, marching, rallying and petitioning since the ban was first proposed. The “Rally to Stop the Six-Week Abortion Ban” drew 2,000 people to Lake Eola Park in Orlando on April 13 to kick off the “Yes on 4” campaign geared to getting passage of Amendment 4 in November.

At the same time, abortion access organizations are dispensing information about how to obtain abortifacient pills by mail, which can be administered at home – and telling abortion seekers about the nearest states that permit the procedure and their requirements. Abortion funders are scrambling to raise funds to help pregnant people travel out of state for this essential health care.

The main point is that there is organized resistance to this reactionary attack. The slogans “Abortion is health care!” and “Abortion rights are human rights!” could not be more appropriate.