Copper Canyon Anthology Spotlights Poets in Palestine
from Publishers Weekly
"In December 2024, OR Books posthumously published If I Must Die, a collection of work by Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian writer and professor who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023. The opening line from the now-famous titular poem reads: “If I must die / you must live / to tell my story.”
"Now, a new anthology from Copper Canyon Press aims to answer Alareer’s call. You Must Live, out today, assembles poetry by Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank who are enduring an Israeli military campaign that has killed nearly 65,000 Palestinians since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The anthology is translated by Tayseer Abu Odeh and Sherah Bloor, who also compiled it alongside guest editor Jorie Graham.
Undaunted in Defense of Free Speech
Nothing funny about standing up to a bully
from The Contrarian (Jen Rubin)
"Resistance to Donald Trump ultimately comes down to the American people. The courts, especially with this corrupt Supreme Court atop the federal judiciary, can only do so much. House and Senate Democrats in the minority can only do so much (although they’ve deftly flipped the script on Trump, making clear he is responsible for the likely shutdown). However, the power of the American people, despite significant democratic backsliding, remains an awesome force. Ordinary people along with prominent cultural figures can garner attention and affect elections in ways politicians cannot.
"While the boycotts and protests gained steam, fellow comedians swiftly responded to Kimmel’s suspension with brilliant satire, public education, and encouraging messages. Although they risked getting yanked from their platforms, they did not flinch—unlike so many craven law firms, universities and tech companies that have grovelled before Trump.
"The energy and righteous indignation from outspoken cultural figures plus popular action can inspire others. Sure enough, on Monday, the ACLU released a letter signed by 400 big stars decrying the outrageous violation of the First Amendment. 'Teachers, government employees, law firms, researchers, universities, students and so many more are also facing direct attacks on their freedom of expression,' the signers stated. Regardless of their politics, they declared that 'our voices should never be silenced by those in power—because if it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.' They closed with a call to action: 'This is the moment to defend free speech across our nation. We encourage all Americans to join us, along with the ACLU, in the fight to defend and preserve our constitutionally protected rights.'
"Thanks to backlash, Kimmel returned to a record audience of over 6.2 million viewers on Tuesday."
PEN International’s Resolutions to Defend Free Expression, Gender Diversity, Human Rights, and Climate Justice
Resolutions 2025 — 91st PEN International Congress
from PEN International
"At this 91st Congress we affirmed that freedom of expression cannot be atomized —whether in defending peace against authoritarianism, protecting our planet, standing with trans and gender-diverse people, or confronting censorship in the United States and beyond. With these resolutions, PEN International and its writers commit to continue using words as acts of conscience, to inspire and take action, and to safeguard the dignity of all living things.' Burhan Sonmez, PEN International President
"11 September 2025: At its 91st Congress, held in partnership with Polish PEN from 2 to 5 September 2025 in Kraków, Poland, the Assembly of Delegates of PEN International adopted four urgent resolutions: calling on writers to defend human rights and free expression amid rampant authoritarianism and global conflict; writers and governments to address the climate crisis as the human rights issue of our time; the protection of trans and gender-diverse people’s right to free expression and inclusion; and the protection of free expression in the United States."
Stories of Resistance
Narrative Strategies for Democratic Movements
from the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook (Scot Nakagawa)
"Authoritarian systems thrive by controlling narrative, determining which stories are told, whose voices matter, and what futures can be imagined. Countering these systems requires not just political organization but narrative reclamation."
This essay provides beautiful examples of strategic storytelling approaches for democratic movements.
"Storytelling that reconnects people to [their] histories builds resilience and provides strategic guidance.
"Authoritarianism requires mythology: stories that justify power concentration, demonize out-groups, and portray complexity as threatening or, often even more powerfully, humiliating. Effective resistance requires constructing compelling counter-narratives.
"Countering authoritarianism requires not just opposing existing systems but making alternative futures tangible through what can be called "prefigurative storytelling." Prefigurative storytelling makes democratic possibilities feel real and attainable.
"Authoritarianism thrives on social division, particularly fears that democracy threatens the interests of specific groups. Effective counter-authoritarian storytelling creates bridges across these divides."
Nakagawa concludes with a point by point action plan for creating impactful, strategic narrative campaigns.
Storytelling Matters Blog
from The Alliance for Media & Culture
Storytelling examples & tutorials.
As [Larry] Ellison Buys Out TikTok, US Moves Toward One-Party Media
from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
"Ellison is a big Trumper, joining in the reactionary denial of the 2020 presidential elections (Washington Post, 5/20/22). Like some of the others in the deal, he is part of the inner circle of Trump’s favorite corporate ideologues. This TikTok deal is not just about money. It’s about control of the political narrative.
"The New York Post (9/11/25) reports that Ellison father and son are now looking to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which carries with it CNN, creating an unprecedented level of media consolidation.
"Former CBS Evening News star Dan Rather (Hollywood Reporter, 9/15/25) said Americans 'have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.' Rather added, 'It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the possibilities of the Ellisons buying CNN.'
"Rather and others are right that the Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy. And given their closeness to the Trump regime, that seems to be the point."
Duluth Rallies for Libraries at 'Read-In'
'It’s a joyful show of solidarity — reminding our city that Duluth loves its library and depends on it,' said Erin Kreeger, executive director of the Duluth Library Foundation, in the news release
from Duluth News-Tribune
"Dozens ventured to the Duluth Public Library between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to participate in the first Great North Star Read Together, which was part of a statewide 'read-in' rally inviting people of all ages to show support for their libraries by doing something simple and powerful — reading. More than 50 libraries statewide participated in the inaugural event. Organizers around the state plan to meet to set a permanent annual date, according to a news release from the Duluth Library Foundation."
Protest Art
from Hyperallergic
An evolving list of examples ...
Haunting Shadow of Scrubbed Banksy Mural Goes Viral
The erasure of the mural outside London’s Court of Justice has become a metaphor for widespread government crackdowns on protesters around the world.
from Hyperallergic
"It took courthouse administrators less than two days to remove Banksy’s latest stencil mural of a judge attacking a protester, which appeared in central London early this week. But what remains of the artwork is a shadowy stain, eerily reminiscent of a hooded Grim Reaper wielding a scythe, that has captured widespread attention in its own right.
"The saga began on Monday morning, September 8, when the mural was seen on the exterior of the Royal Courts of Justice just days after police arrested nearly 900 people at a protest in support of Palestinian activists. The striking image — a judge in a wig and robes raising a gavel high above his head, looming over a cowering protester holding a blood-spattered placard — was claimed by the famously elusive British artist in his signature style of sharing photos on Instagram."
Algorithmic Justice League
Technology should serve all of us. Not just the privileged few.
"We now live in a world where AI governs access to information, opportunity and freedom. However, AI systems can perpetuate racism, sexism, ableism, and other harmful forms of discrimination, therefore, presenting significant threats to our society - from healthcare, to economic opportunity, to our criminal justice system.
"The Algorithmic Justice League is an organization that combines art and research to illuminate the social implications and harms of artificial intelligence."
Breaking the Social Media Prism
How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
book by Chris Bail from Princeton Unversity Press
"In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves.
"Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off—detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit 'reset' and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research."
A Facebook Insider’s Exposé
from NY Times
"For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book’s author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy. Now she has written an insider account of a company that she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders, who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and became ever more feckless, even as Facebook became a vector for disinformation campaigns and cozied up to authoritarian regimes.
"In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Facebook employees embedded with the Trump campaign helped it micro-target potential voters, feeding them bespoke ads filled with 'misinformation, inflammatory posts and fund-raising messages.' (The Clinton campaign declined Facebook’s offer to embed employees.) The following year, in Myanmar, a country heavily reliant on Facebook, hateful lies propagated on the platform incited a genocide against the minority Rohingya ethnic group."
5 Points for Anger 1 Point for Like
Facebook’s Formula Prioritized Anger and Ended up Spreading Misinformation
from The Hill
"Internal documents reveal Facebook’s algorithm prioritized angry reactions, which were disproportionately likely to push out misinformation to users."
'Enshitification' of the Web
Conversations with Cory Doctorow
from WNYC On the Media
"On this show, we’ve spent many hours dissecting the digital anatomy of the internet. We’ve chronicled concerns about privacy, the appeal of connection, the rapture of echo chambers, and the ever-bumbling attempts to regulate it all. But now we turn to the increasingly potent feeling that, when it comes to the world wide web, everything kinda seems to be getting worse.
"In this three part series, Brooke sat down with Cory Doctorow, journalist, activist, author of the new novel Red Team Blues, and special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to discuss his theory on why going online might feel less and more repellent, how that happened, and what we can do about it."
How the US Rightwing is Taking Over News Media and Choking Press Freedom
from the Guardian
"The US right has appeared to increase its influence on mainstream media in America in recent weeks, especially in television news which has been a major target of the Donald Trump administration.
"CBS News – once home to legends of US journalism like Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow – installed a Trump ally as its ombudsman, weeks after the family of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, and a friend of the US president, sealed control over Paramount, the owner of CBS.
"Now Paramount is reportedly looking to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the media behemoth behind CNN, which would potentially bring the influential news network under the roof of an increasingly Trump-friendly conglomerate.
"At the same time a long-running family feud among Rupert Murdoch and his children was settled with a deal that will assure Fox News – and other powerful media outlets run by the family – will retain their conservative bent."
Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media
from The New Yorker
"In late 2022, the writer Cory Doctorow coined the term 'enshittification' to describe how social-media companies make changes that benefit them but gradually, inevitably degrade user experience. In recent years, Facebook and X have buried news by deprioritizing links to articles. Instagram and Pinterest have flooded feeds with surreally inane A.I.-generated content, making it harder to find posts of interest. Social-media users who voice dismay at such changes are accustomed to feeling as if they are petitioning uncaring gods. Bluesky staff members, by contrast, like to describe users of decentralized technology as 'agentic,' a jargony way of saying that they get to choose what they see.
"All the giant social networks are what’s known as centralized platforms: most aspects of user experience, from content moderation to algorithmic recommendations, are dictated by the corporation that runs the platform. Bluesky, by contrast, originated as a radical side project within Twitter under its co-founder and former C.E.O., Jack Dorsey, to create a decentralized social-media model. Where X or Facebook runs primarily on proprietary technology, Bluesky is powered by an open-source protocol, a sort of instruction manual and set of data standards that allows anyone to build compatible software on top of it. As a result, users can customize the algorithms and content-moderation rules that govern what appears in their feeds—and, if they don’t like Bluesky, they can take their followers and their archive of posts and build or join another site running on the same protocol. The power that typically lies with corporations is thus redistributed to the users themselves.
"Bluesky has become by far the largest decentralized social network and Graber (who, citing privacy concerns, gives her age as 'around thirty-three') the most high-profile female head of a social network in an industry known for eccentrically megalomaniacal men. With Trump and Musk in power, Silicon Valley leaders have taken a rightward turn. At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has cut back on fact checking, abandoned D.E.I. efforts, and said that the corporate world needs more 'masculine energy.' Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has ordered that the paper’s opinion pages publish only pieces that support 'personal liberties and free markets.' Graber, who defines her politics as 'anti-authoritarian,' sees Bluesky as a corrective to prevailing social media that subjects users to the whims of billionaires. 'Elon, if he wanted to, could just delete the whole X time line—just do these totally arbitrary things,' she said, adding, 'I think this self-styled tech-monarch thing is worth questioning. Do we want to live in that world?'
Global Press Freedom Suffers Sharpest Fall in 50 Years
from the Guardian
"According to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), democracy has declined in 94 countries over the last five years and only a third have made progress.
"'Democracy faces a perfect storm of autocratic resurgence and acute uncertainty, due to massive social and economic changes,' Kevin Casas-Zamora, the secretary-general of the thinktank, said.
"'To fight back, democracies need to protect key elements of democracy, like elections and the rule of law, but also profoundly reform government so that it delivers fairness, inclusion and shared prosperity.'
"The International IDEA’s survey – the Global State of Democracy Report 2025 – is published annually and considered the most comprehensive of its kind, covering 174 countries and measuring democratic performance from 1975.
"The survey found that the freedom of the press had worsened in a quarter of the countries, marking the broadest deterioration since the beginning of the dataset."
