Photo: Trump during his tour of the so-called Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in Ochopee, Florida ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

'Aligator Alcaltraz:" The Grand Opening

of an American Concentration Camp

By Melissa Gira Grant

The New Republic

Jul 02, 2025 - What were you doing the day the president attended the opening of an American concentration camp in the Everglades? Dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Republican officials because of the predators living in the surrounding swampland, it has been built to cage thousands of people rounded up by ICE and allied law enforcement agencies as part of President Trump’s mass deportations. “‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is a concentration camp,” Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night, a history of concentration camps, said on Tuesday.

That morning, Trump attended the camp’s opening in Ochopee, Florida, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “We’d like to see them in many states,” Trump said at a press conference there. “And at some point, they might morph into a system where you’re going to keep it for a long time.” He complained about the cost of building jails and prisons, then complimented his team, who “did this in less than a week.”

For the event, Trump wore one of his signature red ball caps, this one reading “Gulf of America,” his jingoistic name for the nearby Gulf of Mexico; Noem wore a white “Make America Great Again” ball cap with gold stitching. The flimsy camp offered them some shelter from the punishing humidity, which would later give way to a downpour. A C-Span camera followed them into one of the massive tents, where rows of chain-link cages contained numerous bunk beds—for the moment, empty. Photographers raced ahead of Trump and Noem to get shots of them entering, taking in the cells, pausing to ask inaudible questions. DeSantis stood as if he did not know where to put his hands. “They’re going to sweep this six times to make sure there’s nothing that could be used as contraband, as weapons,” DeSantis told Trump a bit too brightly, “before the detainees come in.” He smiled as he told reporters about how soon their prisoners would “check in.”

The American concentration camp on view Tuesday was erected within the Big Cypress National Preserve, traditional Miccosukee land. The tribe was not consulted, said Betty Osceola, a member and activist who lives a few miles from the camp’s entrance. She was one of hundreds of people protesting on the road outside the camp over the last several days as massive trucks streamed into the site. “People should be concerned about the secrecy of this,” Osceola told the Fort Myers News-Press. “It’s a big deal. Our ancestors were laid to rest in this area, and they talk about it like it’s a vast wasteland. It’s not.”

The site of the camp is also public-owned land, most recently occupied by the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, “a remote facility for promising pilots to practice their touch-and-goes amid disinterested herons and alligators,” according to The Palm Beach Post. An executive order issued by DeSantis cited a nonexistent “emergency” to get around the legal process for building on the site.

Two environmental groups working in the area, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit Friday “to halt the unlawful construction of a mass federal detention facility for up to 5,000 noncitizen detainees.” Friends of the Everglades noted that their group was founded in part to stop construction of a major jetport on the same site. Members of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes fought against the jetport too—generations ago. The state of Florida contended in court on Monday that the “risks” of not locking up immigrants on the site (on this expedited pseudo-emergency basis) “overwhelm any incidental environmental harm.” They also claimed the site was “temporary.”

There is no reason to believe any of the claims from the Florida and federal governments. The same day the concentration camp opened, ABC News reported that despite Trump’s campaign refrain that his mass deportations would target “criminals,” “new data shows a recent shift toward also arresting those who have not been accused of crimes.” This was foretold by Tom Homan, Trump’s “immigration czar,” who was the face of the mass deportation plan long before Trump returned to the White House. “No one’s off the table,” Homan said at the Republican National Convention last summer. “The bottom line is: Every illegal alien is a criminal. They enter the country in violation of federal law. It’s a crime to enter this country illegally.” Every immigrant—every person the Trump administration said was an immigrant—was a target from the beginning.

On Monday, a reporter asked Homan about an ailing 75-year-old Cuban man who died in ICE custody recently. His response: “People die in ICE custody.” He complained, “The questions should be, how many lives has ICE saved?” He challenged reporters to look into ICE’s detention standards. Last week, Wired reported on a chilling pattern of apparent neglect inside immigrant detention centers, based on nearly 400 calls made to 911 from the 10 largest ICE facilities. Incidents included seizures, self-harm, and sexual abuse. Some calls were made by the people caged inside, desperate for help.

At his press conference at the concentration camp, Trump learned that his massive budget bill had passed the Senate. The funding in the bill will make ICE the largest jailer in the world, with $200 billion at its disposal. As Felipe De La Hoz wrote last month for TNR, the bill “would take everything we’ve seen so far”—the targeting of activists for their speech, masked agents grabbing people off the street, sudden flights to Guantánamo or out of the country, ramping up detentions—and crank it to 11.”... ...Read More

Kirsten Gillibrand Apologizes To Zohran Mamdani Over ‘Jihad’ Claim

New York senator had claimed that Democratic nominee for mayor had made ‘references to global jihad’

By Edward Helmore in New York

The Guardian

July 2, 2025 - The New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand has apologized to Zohran Mamdani, the party nominee for New York City mayor, for comments she made claiming that Mamdani had made “references to global jihad”.

“Gillibrand apologized for mischaracterizing Mamdani’s record and for her tone on the call,” according to a readout of a phone call between Gillibrand and Mamdani that was obtained by Politico.

The apology comes after an interview the Democratic senator gave to the Brian Lehrer radio show last week in which Gillibrand was asked if she would hold Mamdani accountable for “glorifying” Hamas.

Zohran Mamdani won by being himself – and his victory has revealed the Islamophobic ugliness of others

That was prompted by an ongoing controversy over Mamdani – who would become New York City’s first Muslim mayor if he wins the election – declining to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” while also emphasizing that he plans, if elected, to be a mayor “that protects Jewish New Yorkers”.

Gillibrand said in the interview that Jewish New Yorkers were alarmed by Mamdani’s statements. While there is no evidence that Mamdani supports the Palestinian militant group, the city has been host to scores of pro-Palestinian protests. Some critics have called them antisemitic.

Reacting to a listener’s call-in question, Gillibrand said she would like to talk through the issues with Mamdani and that he should denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada”.

Gillibrand said that her constituents in upstate New York were “alarmed” by Mamdani’s past public statements, “particularly references to global jihad. This is a very serious issue because people that glorify the slaughter of Jews create fear in our communities.”

Mamdani argues that the phrase “globalize the intifada” has been deliberately misinterpreted to smear him and others who stand up for Palestinian rights.

He also said in an MSNBC interview that comments like Gillibrand’s represented “a language of darkness and a language of exclusion”.

Mamdani supporters have protested outside Gillibrand’s office and called for her resignation.

“I find it disgusting that someone who is one of the most powerful people in this country would repeat rightwing talking points to diminish” Mamdani, said the New York state representative Emily Gallagher.

A protest in front of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s office on Friday evening about her remarks made on WNYC radio’s Brian Lehrer Show. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Gillibrand’s comments also appeared to be rebuked by New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, who said, “no one should be subjected to any comments that slur their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, and we condemn that anywhere it rears its head in the state of New York.”

Gillibrand had earlier backed away from her comment, releasing a statement on Friday saying she “misspoke”.

In Gillibrand’s call with Mamdani, they “discussed the need to bring down the temperature around the issue” of the war between Israel and Hamas, and that she “regretted not separating her own views from the radio show caller’s more clearly”.

“Gillibrand said she believes Mr Mamdani is sincere when he says he wants to protect all New Yorkers and combat antisemitism,” the readout continued. “She said the GOP attacks on him are outrageous and unacceptable.”

Those attacks continued on Tuesday when Donald Trump reasserted an earlier statement branding Mamdani as a communist, which Mamdani denies, and threatened to cut off federal funds to New York City if Mamdani becomes mayor and “doesn’t behave himself”.

“We don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money, we send him all the things that he needs to run a government,” Trump said.

Trump also made a baseless allegation that Mamdani, 33, who was born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents and became a US citizen in 2018, obtained his citizenship “illegally”.

The Trump administration is engaged in an aggressive effort to deport foreign-born citizens convicted of certain offenses, and Mamdani has pledged to maintain New York City as a “sanctuary” city that resists federal deportation efforts.

New York senator had claimed that Democratic nominee for mayor had made ‘references to global jihad’

The New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand has apologized to Zohran Mamdani, the party nominee for New York City mayor, for comments she made claiming that Mamdani had made “references to global jihad”.

“Gillibrand apologized for mischaracterizing Mamdani’s record and for her tone on the call,” according to a readout of a phone call between Gillibrand and Mamdani that was obtained by Politico.

The apology comes after an interview the Democratic senator gave to the Brian Lehrer radio show last week in which Gillibrand was asked if she would hold Mamdani accountable for “glorifying” Hamas.

That was prompted by an ongoing controversy over Mamdani – who would become New York City’s first Muslim mayor if he wins the election – declining to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” while also emphasizing that he plans, if elected, to be a mayor “that protects Jewish New Yorkers”.

Gillibrand said in the interview that Jewish New Yorkers were alarmed by Mamdani’s statements. While there is no evidence that Mamdani supports the Palestinian militant group, the city has been host to scores of pro-Palestinian protests. Some critics have called them antisemitic.

Reacting to a listener’s call-in question, Gillibrand said she would like to talk through the issues with Mamdani and that he should denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada”.

Gillibrand said that her constituents in upstate New York were “alarmed” by Mamdani’s past public statements, “particularly references to global jihad. This is a very serious issue because people that glorify the slaughter of Jews create fear in our communities.”

Mamdani argues that the phrase “globalize the intifada” has been deliberately misinterpreted to smear him and others who stand up for Palestinian rights.

He also said in an MSNBC interview that comments like Gillibrand’s represented “a language of darkness and a language of exclusion”.

Mamdani supporters have protested outside Gillibrand’s office and called for her resignation.

“I find it disgusting that someone who is one of the most powerful people in this country would repeat rightwing talking points to diminish” Mamdani, said the New York state representative Emily Gallagher.

A protest in front of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s office on Friday evening about her remarks made on WNYC radio’s Brian Lehrer Show. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Gillibrand’s comments also appeared to be rebuked by New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, who said, “no one should be subjected to any comments that slur their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, and we condemn that anywhere it rears its head in the state of New York.”

Gillibrand had earlier backed away from her comment, releasing a statement on Friday saying she “misspoke”.

In Gillibrand’s call with Mamdani, they “discussed the need to bring down the temperature around the issue” of the war between Israel and Hamas, and that she “regretted not separating her own views from the radio show caller’s more clearly”.

“Gillibrand said she believes Mr Mamdani is sincere when he says he wants to protect all New Yorkers and combat antisemitism,” the readout continued. “She said the GOP attacks on him are outrageous and unacceptable.”

Those attacks continued on Tuesday when Donald Trump reasserted an earlier statement branding Mamdani as a communist, which Mamdani denies, and threatened to cut off federal funds to New York City if Mamdani becomes mayor and “doesn’t behave himself”.

“We don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money, we send him all the things that he needs to run a government,” Trump said.

Trump also made a baseless allegation that Mamdani, 33, who was born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents and became a US citizen in 2018, obtained his citizenship “illegally”.

The Trump administration is engaged in an aggressive effort to deport foreign-born citizens convicted of certain offenses, and Mamdani has pledged to maintain New York City as a “sanctuary” city that resists federal deportation efforts.

New York senator had claimed that Democratic nominee for mayor had made ‘references to global jihad’ ...Read More

Sanders Says Every Republican Who Backed Trump-GOP Budget 'Must Pay a Price at the Ballot Box'

"They do not deserve to be re-elected and they must be defeated," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

July's 04, 2025 - As communities across the United States braced for impact after congressional Republicans approved the biggest Medicaid and nutrition assistance cuts in the nation's history, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday that every lawmaker who supported the budget legislation "must pay a price at the ballot box" in the 2026 midterms and beyond.

"This bill includes the largest cut ever to Medicaid in order to pay for the largest tax break for billionaires that we have ever seen," Sanders (I-Vt.), who is working to recruit progressive candidates for office, said after the House passed the legislation, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk.

"Make no mistake about it: This bill is a death sentence for working-class and low-income Americans," said Sanders.

While some GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate voiced concerns about the bill's massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs as the measure moved through Congress, the legislation ultimately garnered near-unanimous support from the Republican caucus when it came time for the final votes. Just three out of 53 Republican senators and two out of 220 GOP representatives voted against the completed bill.

Analysts and advocates expect the legislation to inflict major damage across the country, shuttering rural hospitals, stripping health coverage and food aid from millions, raising costs for Medicare recipients, and devastating local economies.

Some of the pain will be concentrated in swing districts currently represented by Republican supporters of the budget package. For example, 64% of Rep. David Valadao's (R-Calif.) constituents in California's 22nd Congressional District rely on Medicaid.

Valadao is one of 10 Republicans targeted by an ad push that the advocacy group Protect Our Care launched following Thursday's vote in the House. The other targeted lawmakers are Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.). ...Read More

Photo: Trained Volunteers Patrol L.A. Streets as ICE Raids Intensify All photos by Marco Amador

Los Angeles: Neighborhood Groups Monitor Immigration Enforcement Amid Rising Fear And Federal Scrutiny.

By Myriam-Fernanda Alcala Delgado

The American Prospect

July 3, 2025 - Francisco Romero of Unión del Barrio patrols the streets of South Los Angeles for signs of ICE activity.

This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. It is co-published here with permission.

The day after families across the country gathered to celebrate Father’s Day, Francisco Romero huddled at dawn with 10 volunteers in a South Los Angeles parking lot. The group was preparing to patrol the neighborhood for signs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

There was a heaviness in the atmosphere, despite the comradery and smiles. During the group huddle, some reflected on the difficulty celebrating Father’s Day while families across the city were being separated by ICE. Another volunteer mentioned viral videos from the prior weekend showing apparent ICE presence in the nearby city of Bell, including “snatch and grabs,” in which unmarked vehicles surrounded pedestrians suspected of being undocumented and ICE officers pulled them inside.

“It’s psychological,” Romero said, speculating about the timing of the raids, which coincided with a holiday meant to celebrate family.

While L.A. residents—and much of the country—were transfixed for days by images of masked officers rounding up immigrants and protesters flooding downtown streets, this quieter, grassroots effort to protect vulnerable communities from these raids has continued to unfold. Volunteers like Romero patrol the streets across Los Angeles weekly, keeping watch with the aim of alerting the community to any ICE operations. 

Such patrols are nothing new. Since the civil unrest that erupted after the beating of Rodney King in 1992, Unión del Barrio has operated community patrol networks to monitor for law enforcement activity and other potential dangers to residents in neighborhoods across California. But the environment has become more treacherous in recent weeks. There has been an increase in ICE operations across the city, including masked officers detaining suspected undocumented immigrants from local stores, street shops and neighborhoods. Their enforcement actions have led to protests in Los Angeles and pushback from residents and organizers alike.

In addition, Unión del Barrio—along with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles and the Party for Socialism and Liberation—has drawn the attention of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who alleged in a letter sent to the groups in mid-June that they are providing “logistical and financial resources” in support of civil unrest and “aiding and abetting criminal conduct.” The letter calls on the groups to “cease and desist” their operations.

In response, Unión del Barrio said in a June 15 statement, “The objective of Mr. Hawley’s letter was to intimidate us and compel Unión del Barrio to stop organizing the self-defense of our communities.”

Francisco Romero meets with Unión del Barrio volunteers in a South Los Angeles parking lot before heading out on patrol. Faces of volunteers who asked not to be identified have been obscured.

Many volunteers, including Aimee and Ruth, never interact directly with ICE, while those who do, like Romero, follow a strict protocol meant to protect them from arrest while they carry out their work. When Romero spots what he believes might be an ICE vehicle, he first calls for backup from fellow organizers before deciding whether to approach. In the past, he would tap on the car window and ask the officer to identify themselves.

“That was back when they would still roll down their windows. Now, they don’t,” he said.

The atmosphere of heightened fear has caused the members of the group to use extra caution when describing their work and when approaching ICE agents. When speaking among themselves or with the broader community, they avoid language that suggests they are “chasing out” or “following” ICE operations. Instead, they describe their efforts as “safely monitoring” ICE activity from a distance. When agents leave a neighborhood, organizers say the agents are “electing to do so,” often because they have lost the element of surprise, according to Romero.

The group has also gone to extra lengths to make sure community members are comfortable with their presence when they are on patrol. Each member of Unión del Barrio’s patrol wears a green shirt emblazoned with the group’s logo, so they are clearly recognizable. The volunteers are given magnets with the organization’s name to affix to the side of their cars. They travel in small groups. On this Monday in June, Francisco, Ruth and Aimee were assigned to patrol the residential neighborhoods north of Martin Luther King Boulevard. Aimee, who lives in the community, said she preferred to use only her first name for the safety of her friends and family; Ruth, a teacher, likewise asked that only her first name be used. 

Aimee, who has volunteered with Unión del Barrio for the past six months, was looking through the back seat window when she noticed a car with blacked out plates. Romero decided the car was suspicious enough to merit an investigation to see whether it belonged to ICE officers. 

The spotting of any car that is unmarked, has tinted windows or is deemed in any way out of the ordinary is enough to prompt the patrol team to turn back and retrace their steps. 

That particular car turned out not to be a threat. But just two hours after Romero, Aimee and Ruth’s patrol had finished for the morning, Unión del Barrio posted a warning on social media about ICE presence less than a mile away. 

Romero pulls over during an early morning ICE patrol to coordinate with other volunteer units.

Unión del Barrio conducts two types of patrols: morning rides that monitor neighborhoods with large numbers of Latino residents or workers who may be targeted for immigration enforcement and patrols triggered by community tips about real-time ICE activity. The latter have become more frequent in recent weeks, as ICE operations have intensified. In both cases, the organization either verifies the activity directly or coordinates with trusted community members or other civil rights organizations before issuing public alerts on social media.

Despite heightened scrutiny of immigrant rights organizations in recent weeks by federal officials, a growing number of community groups and individuals are seeking them out for guidance. Unión del Barrio has received calls from across the state and country from individuals and groups requesting resources on preparing communities for incursion by ICE. The organization is planning a trip across California to provide training to allied community groups over the course of the summer. Romero estimates interest in those trainings has tripled in the last few weeks. Instead of taking Sen. Hawley’s allegations as a deterrent, “We see it as a new front of struggle,” said Romero, who has been with Unión del Barrio for 30 years and got his start as an activist against police violence. ...Read More

How East Bay DSA, Community Members, and Workers Won Alameda County Divestment from Israeli Apartheid

By Andrew Basta, Vish Soroushian and Zach Weinstein

Democratic Left

In December of last year, the treasurer of Alameda County announced he was going to divest the $32 million in bonds issued by Caterpillar, a construction equipment manufacturer responsible for the violent displacement of Palestinians.

The county Board of Supervisors also voted to task him to prepare an ethical investment policy that could lead to a prohibition on investing public funds in companies that profit from serious human rights violations, including Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and land. East Bay DSA organizers played a major role in pushing for this transformation, one of the largest wins for the BDS Movement and the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States to date. East Bay DSA’s work with union members was of particular importance to this campaign’s victory. 

Andrew Basta, a member of DSA’s International Committee’s steering committee interviews two East Bay DSA organizers, Zach Weinstein, one of the co-chairs of East Bay DSA, and Vish Soroushian, a campaign co-lead for East Bay DSA’s Divest from Apartheid campaign. This interview discusses how the chapter identified this target, the political terrain the chapter battled on, how they built a strong campaign, and what’s next for East Bay DSA. We hope that this interview can serve as a resource to chapters and activists interested in replicating municipal and county divestment across the country. East Bay DSA’s “Divest From Apartheid” campaign organizers can be reached at divest@eastbaydsa.org.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Andrew: How did the campaign to pressure Alameda County to divest begin in both the Bay Area and within East Bay DSA? Was it connected to previous successful divestment efforts in the cities of Hayward and Richmond? 

Zach: Alameda County has long been a hotbed of pro-Palestine organizing. For example, there are local Arab-led organizations like AROC (Arab Resource and Organizing Center) that have spent many years building relationships with the Longshoremen’s Union, ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union), at the port of Oakland, and that has effectively meant that Israeli ships have been unable to dock in Oakland for many years. Famous left organizations that have emerged out of the Bay Area have also had a strong internationalist bent to them, like the Black Panthers. The Bay Area also has a large Palestinian American population. With all these factors in mind, when organizing around Palestine took on a new urgency after Oct. 7, it was inevitable that there would be a strong and renewed demand locally around divesting from Israel. The question for us was how can the chapter contribute to that. 

For those who don’t know, Alameda County includes Oakland, which is its largest city, as well as several other large cities such as Berkeley, Fremont, and Hayward. East Bay DSA’s chapter jurisdiction includes all of Alameda County and also all of Contra Costa County, which is next door, and includes a lot of working-class cities like Richmond. Richmond has a socialist majority on their City Council, and they were the second city to divest in the country [after Hayward]. That effort was largely led by elected officials from the Richmond Progressive Alliance, most of whom are also members of East Bay DSA. In Richmond and Hayward [which had already divested], we had members who were highly involved including some electeds, but organizationally we hadn’t quite put the infrastructure in place where we, as a chapter, could drive major turnout or organize public support. We, of course, took a lot of inspiration from [both Hayward and Richmond’s] success. 

By the time Richmond had voted to divest in May 2024, conversations had started in the chapter about making a local municipal divestment from Israel our chapter’s top priority campaign for the upcoming year. My recollection is that Vish came to me maybe in March or April of 2024, and asked what I thought about East Bay DSA starting a formal divestment campaign. I was really excited about it and encouraged him to talk to other chapter leaders. By our chapter convention in June of last year, we launched our Divest from Apartheid campaign and named it our top priority campaign for the next 12 months.

Vish: The city of Alameda (within Alameda County) also adopted a divestment resolution which divested them from weapons manufacturers and other things. Also, just to add to the richness and the history of the Bay Area in terms of supporting social justice and whatnot, back in the 70’s and the 80’s, there was a robust divestment movement in opposition to apartheid in South Africa, and there was also support throughout the Bay Area from divestment for Burma in the nineties. This is part of the local relevance Zach described. 

I also want to give a big shout out to East Bay DSA’s Anti-imperialism Committee. We have a great committee here that has been focused on supporting the cause of Palestinian liberation locally since before Oct. 7, and the campaign plan was really born out of that committee.

Andrew: How did you land on Alameda County specifically?

Vish: Back in March on the 21st anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie by Caterpillar bulldozers while she was in Gaza, we had several SEIU members in our chapter who were honoring her legacy and commemorating her death. It was around that time when, with Alameda County’s investment portfolio available online for public view, I noticed that we had $32 million invested in Caterpillar bonds, amongst other problematic investments. That was really the catalyst for doing this work. 

There were a couple of other factors that were on our radar: there was a [county] supervisor who was retiring. We figured that with his impending retirement he wouldn’t have the political pressures laying down on him that somebody seeking further office would. This individual was involved with divestment from South Africa and Burma as well, so they seemed like a natural ally. We also worked closely with a council member in Hayward, who made divestment happen over there. This council member had a relationship with Treasurer Henry Levy, so that gave the local divestment movement access to him. Those are all factors that we took into account and helped us shape the plan for East Bay’s Divest from Apartheid campaign. 

Andrew: The campaign targeted both the county treasurer, Henry Levy, and the five members of the Board of Supervisors. Targeting the treasurer is a new model for the BDS Movement. How did you land on these targets, and what were your demands?

Vish: What we learned through our research is that the Board of Supervisors ultimately delegates its investment authority to the county treasurer. This means that it’s not really up to the Board of Supervisors to dump Caterpillar; it’s up to the treasurer. [We could, however,] target the Board of Supervisors with the goal of passing and adopting an ethical investment policy with a human rights screen, which essentially would mean that the county’s investment policy would include a prohibition on investing in companies that profit off of human rights violations such as apartheid and fossil fuel companies. So we targeted both the Board of Supervisors and the county treasurer. With the Board of Supervisors, we said, “We don’t want any of our public funds going towards this thing.” But, in the moment, we are invested in Caterpillar, we need to do something about that, and the county treasurer has the ability to make that decision. 

Now, there were some challenges with [targeting the treasurer]. We were a little bit surprised that we got him to divest, and it’s really a testament to the amount of organizing that we did as East Bay DSA with our labor partners as well as other organizations and individuals’ work that came to convince him to take this action. 

Zach: There are two things I would add that informed the campaign targeting and the structure. First, the county treasurer is elected. That meant he was more susceptible to the same sorts of pressures that any other elected official might be.

The other reason for the focus on the ethical investment angle, rather than specifically talking about BDS and Israel, is that there’s a soft anti-BDS law on the books in California that makes it so that you can’t target specific countries effectively. Doing something with a wider scope decreases the risk of a BDS action being overturned.

Vish: For Hayward, the divestment that they pursued was just dropping investments in certain companies. In Richmond, they passed an ethical investment policy. What we accomplished [in Alameda County] was the combination of the two, which is really the ideal.

Andrew: A large coalition of community faith, labor, and activist organizations came together to support this effort. How did you build this coalition and end up collaborating together? 

Zach: In some ways, the coalition was already coming together because there are so many different organizations that have a history of working on this issue, and there are also a lot of Arab and Palestinian-led organizations in the Bay Area. Another group called Bay Area Divest! (BAD!) also formed not long before we launched the Divest from Apartheid campaign. 

Part of what Vish and other leaders on the divestment campaign did in the early phases was meetings with different community groups to get them on board, as well as other groups that were already working on this in order to coordinate and collaborate. One of the mechanisms for getting folks on our side was a big letter that grew to over 80 organizations signing on. It was one of the main mechanisms for building the coalition. 

Vish: I wrote that letter in conjunction with our labor allies at SEIU 1021 [pronounced “ten-two-one”], and we chose to highlight the intersecting harms that these companies produce and create broad-based support for divestment. We also tried to meet with environmental justice organizations, immigration justice organizations, and anti-police terror organizations because everybody understands that a company that is responsible for creating displacement and death in Palestine also causes harm in all these different areas as well.

Andrew: Inside the coalition, how did you work through different points of view from different organizations? Were there any strategies that were successful in building unity across these different groups?

Zach: One thing that we tried to do was respect that people were coming to this from a lot of different political backgrounds and organizational approaches. 

Most of the organizations involved in this campaign weren’t socialist organizations. Very few of them have the kind of internal, robust member democracy that DSA has. Inherently, as a volunteer run organization, [DSA is] going to be less experienced and less focused on the internal game including staying on top of lobbying visits and setting the lobbying strategy. Vish and other leaders on the campaign did a really good job on that front, but there are other organizations that literally have people who do [inside work] for their full-time jobs. 

When there were differences of opinion on tactics and strategy, we tried to model some flexibility: if you’re gonna try it that way, you can go ahead and try that. We’re gonna try this thing. When there were groups that were more focused on the inside strategy, we would try to do the outside strategy in a way that wouldn’t undermine or counter their work. 

Andrew: In the treasurer’s long op-ed in Jewish News of North California, he cites some work of JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) in convincing him to divest. Do you want to speak to the Jewish angle in organizing for divestment? 

Zach: We sent a contingent of Jewish members from both East Bay DSA and Bay Area Labor for Palestine to advocate to Treasurer Levy ahead of the Board of Supervisors vote around the same time that JVP did. I think it’s understandable that he would emphasize his meeting with JVP more in a Jewish Weekly article than his meeting with East Bay DSA and lefty labor unionists, but I think that does highlight that it’s good for organizations with a variety of different constituencies and reputations to be involved in a campaign like this. Our meeting with him was overall really positive. I’d like to think that we shored up his support ahead of the meeting, and I’m sure JVP’s meeting was also very helpful for that as well.

Vish: I was part of the meetings with Treasurer Levy and the feedback that we got on his evolution, his comfort with this over time, really tracked with the engagement from the Jewish community. Like Zach said, the DSA Jewish contingent met with him, then people from JVP did, and during this whole process many Jewish constituents were contacting him. He brought that up time and time again. 

I want to add that we were able to engage with the faith community in general, from all denominations, quite significantly in this campaign. That’s always an asset when you have faith leaders standing up for human rights. It’s really hard for politicians purporting to be legislating from a position of morality to refute demands directly coming from people in the faith community.

Andrew: Labor played an important role in this campaign. How did East Bay DSA work to bring labor unions specifically and workers generally into this campaign? 

Zach: Yeah, I’m really excited to talk about this specifically because it is really essential to understanding why this campaign was successful. 

Our chapter has a long tradition of prioritizing labor organizing, and our emphasis within that has always been on building relationships with the rank-and-file members of unions. Obviously, relationships with union staff and union leadership can be lovely, but, if you really want to understand what’s going on in a union, you need an abundance of relationships with rank-and-file members (and hopefully, those members are also comrades and are already in DSA or join DSA). Then you’re less reliant on your relationship with a given leader or staffer, but have your own relationship with the people who make the union work – the membership. That takes consistent time and focus. 

On this campaign, we were building on years of work. We had a chapter jobs program that included Oakland Unified School District as a target to try to recruit our members to become teachers in Oakland. There was that DSA pamphlet on “Why Socialists Should become Teachers?” that was very influential in our chapter, and we have several dozen East Bay DSA members who are now public school teachers in Oakland, and Oakland Education Association (OEA), the teachers union for Oakland, is one of the most consistently pro-Palestine unions in the country.

To trace back the history a little bit on Palestine specifically, in late October or early November of 2023 our chapter decided to organize what at the time we were calling a ‘labor against the war’ rally. Even at that stage, we knew it was essential that the public demands went further than just a ceasefire. We were a little worried that going farther would cost some labor support, but it didn’t. We got over a dozen unions to sign on in support of a rally in December of 2023 that called for an end to US aid to Israel and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and thousands of people turned out to that. ...Read More

Jeffrey Sachs: This is Why China Has Become Unstoppable

Very knowledgeable, very conscientious and dares to express himself, Professor Jeffrey Sachs deserves the highest respects and admirations. It gives one a sense of hope for the world whenever listening to him speak. Hope Professor Jeffrey Sachs and other people like him can take charge of affairs relating the whole world.

Hip-hop Can Document Life In America

More Reliably Than History Books

By A.D. Carson, University of Virginia

The Conversation

April 8, 2025 - Describing my 2017 appointment as a faculty member, the University of Virginia dubbed me the school’s “first” hip-hop professor. Even if the job title and the historic nature of the appointment might have merited it, the word was misleading.

Kyra Gaunt, a Black woman who is a foundational figure in the study of hip-hop, worked as a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Virginia from 1996 to 2002. Her book “The Games Black Girls Play,” which focuses on Black music practices, was published in 2006. I cited her in my work and in the interview I gave before accepting the job.

Also cited in my doctoral work, presented in my interview with the University of Virginia, was scholar Joe Schloss, who worked at the school from 2000-2001. In 2009, he wrote “Foundation: B-boys, B-girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York.” And in 2014 he wrote “Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop.”

After pushback from readers online, UVA Today amended its original headline documenting my appointment and added Gaunt’s contributions to the article.

As a rapper and scholar, I have experienced and seen misleading hip-hop stories that highlight an impulse to inaccurately document the genre’s history and present. I raised this issue recently in a TikTok “office hours” video – part of a series in which I respond to audience questions from the vantage of hip-hop art and research.

Misleading hip-hop stories

After Johns Hopkins University announced that Lupe Fiasco had been hired to teach rap there in fall 2025, some online platforms, including The Root, incorrectly reported on his assignment.

They described his upcoming job as the first instance of a rapper ever hired as a professor at a university.

This is obviously incorrect. I’m a rapper who since 2017 has worked as a professor of hip-hop while releasing music, which was part of the basis for my earning tenure in 2023. Besides this, I’m certain there were rappers with university teaching jobs before me.

The trend of misrepresenting hip-hop history isn’t unique to communications from places such as Johns Hopkins University or the University of Virginia.

In 2024, the publisher of musician Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s “Hip-Hop is History” described it as “the book only Questlove could write: a singular, definitive history” of hip-hop.

Questlove’s book is not, as the publisher claims, a definitive history. It might more accurately be described as Questlove’s take on hip-hop history, or a memoir. Without this necessary distinction, unknowing readers might misinterpret the publisher’s claims.

Questlove writes about finally coming to appreciate Southern rap in the 2000s. But Southern rap history predates Questlove’s appreciation by decades. It doesn’t begin when someone like him finally recognizes its importance.

Similarly, hip-hop doesn’t begin when it’s finally recognized by an exclusive institution or when someone gets a degree for it.

Making hip-hop history

I published these concerns as academic questions in 2017 in an album called “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.” The project served as my doctoral dissertation.

“Owning My Masters (Mastered)” is the next phase of the dissertation album project. Published in 2024, it contains new audio, video, images and historical context. It’s published with University of Michigan Press through the same process of an academic book.

“Owning My Masters (Mastered)” demonstrates how hip-hop resists the ways American history often excludes Black resistance, Black achievement, Black storytelling and, ultimately, Black people.

But the exclusion that my work highlights is muted when the seeming novelty of my job appointment or my dissertation album are the focus. When I’m asked if I’m the first person to earn a Ph.D. for making a rap album, I try to answer more expansively to avoid misleading anyone, or ignoring what might be more informative.

It’s also important to understand the barriers that might have made a project like mine impossible before 2017. These include technological barriers that made recording and releasing music prohibitively expensive. And, more specific to hip-hop, it involves a mistrust based on racist history that prevented students from even proposing such a project.

No such “first” happens without the unsung work of others creating the conditions to make it possible.

Learning from hip-hop

Hip-hop’s documentation should not repeat the same flaws of the recording of American history, which can omit important people and events, and which can misrepresent the legacies of racism and systemic violence.

Undeniably, I believe important hip-hop texts, albums and moments should be studied and documented with academic rigor. But this should not solely focus on “firsts,” record sales or prestigious awards.

Such stories fail to accurately illustrate that hip-hop is as much about how people live day to day as it is about how institutions use it to bolster credibility or how companies make money off it.

Important aspects of hip-hop’s diverse culture are excluded when the ordinary is overlooked. ... ...Read More

Photo: Protesters attend a "Hands Off" rally to demonstrate against President Donald Trump on the National Mall on April 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

We Have a Moral Imperative To Reclaim

America From the Extremists in Power

By William J. Barber II and Tope Folarin

Newsweek

The United States is the wealthiest, most powerful country the world has ever seen. And we've always had a moral tug-of-war between those who want to hoard wealth and power and those who honor the dignity of every person.

What's happening now is that the wealthy and powerful are working to divide the people—and keep the wealth and power for themselves.

President Donald Trump and his loyal followers in Congress have begun the process of pulling back help and basic services for all Americans, especially poor and low-income people, and engaging in ongoing war and oppression. And they're doing it all to consolidate wealth and power for themselves and their friends.

We know this not because of what the president and his allies say, but because of what they do. As faith leaders and scholars, we recently released a report that lays bare the realities of the president and Congress' actions, especially with regard to the upcoming reconciliation process through which Congress will decide budget priorities for the next 10 years.

We found that members of Congress, with President Trump's encouragement, have taken the first steps toward a budget that would take Medicaid coverage away from as many as 36 million people and force closures of rural medical facilities. Their plan would literally take food from the mouths of children, cutting food stamps for as many as 40 million people at a time of unprecedented food prices.

All told, their plan cuts $2 trillion in services for ordinary people.

Meanwhile, the president—with help from Elon Musk, the world's richest man—is firing thousands of government workers, often illegally. They tell the workers to go find work in the private sector. But at their own companies, Elon Musk and his fellow business titans are more interested in cutting jobs than creating them. And private business will never replicate the good but profitless work of keeping our air and water clean, providing free health care to veterans, or finding cures for rare diseases.

The real tell is where they're putting the money from all those cuts.

The president's plan, as passed by his supporters in Congress, would cut $4.5 trillion in taxes, mostly for the wealthy and corporations. For the bottom half of families, savings from the president's tax cuts would amount to less than $1 per day, while the richest 0.1 percent would enjoy windfalls of $314,266 per year. And administration officials have sided with corporations against workers by refusing to support raising the minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009.

Meanwhile, for a war-weary and dangerously divided nation, the president and his allies in Congress want to invest at least $300 billion more in the war machine and indiscriminate mass deportations. Continuing decades of war, the president has already bombed Somalia and Yemen, and has suggested the possibility of military takeovers in the Gaza Strip, Greenland, and Panama.

And we are once again seeing the devastating and cruel effects of family separation for immigrants. The Trump administration has begun deporting parents of the 4.4 million U.S. citizen children with an undocumented parent—even stripping legal status in order to justify the deportation.

All of this serves to divide us—the wealthy against the poor, immigrants against the U.S.-born, job-seeker against fellow job-seeker, Black against brown against white, straight against gay, cisgender against transgender. Nothing makes this clearer than the administration's anti-DEI obsession, which denies that diversity is a strength and a blessing.

Those divisions clear the way for them to take the spoils.

We say this not as Democrats or Republicans, but as faith leaders and scholars who know from our communities and our studies that our common life depends on shared moral commitments.

We call on all people of conscience—faith leaders, religious, and nonreligious folk alike—to join us in a season of nonviolent moral dissent. With millions of Americans turning out for the recent "Hands Off" rallies across the country, it may already be beginning.

Our national hymn says, "America! America! God mend thine every flaw." We began our own season of dissent by calling hundreds of faith leaders to rally at the U.S. Capitol this March to stand together in prayer and moral resistance and tell Congress to stop the extremism, bullying, and corruption. We will gather there the first Wednesday of every month.

We oppose the immoral budget priorities of this president and his allies in Congress. We invite other faith leaders and all people to study our report on the true state of our nation, and to assemble on the town square, at city hall, or on the state house lawn in communities across this land. It's time for a new season of moral action to mend this country and reclaim the dignity of every person.

Bishop William J. Barber is the founder of Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign.

Tope Folarin is the executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies. Repairers and IPS, along with the Economic Policy Institute, recently released the report, The High Moral Stakes of the Policy Battles Raging in Washington. ...Read More

Rachel Maddow: Breaking News, Trump Facing Protestd...15.0 min

From Upton

Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University

Essays on the Ongoing Transformation of Higher Education

By Daniel Morris

and Harry Targ

Paperback USD 17.00

This is a unique collection of 15 essays by two Purdue University professors who use their institution as a case-in-point study of the changing nature of the American 'multiversity.' They take a book from an earlier time, Upton Sinclair's 'The Goose-Step A Study of American Education' from 1923, which exposed the capitalist corruption of the ivory tower back then and brought it up to date with more far-reaching changes today. time. They also include, as an appendix, a 1967 essay by SDS leader Carl Davidson, who broke some of the original ground on the subject.

Click HERE to Purchase

New Studies on the Left, May 2025

Paperback $14.95

...is a journal of socialist theory and practice. It is the successor to ‘Dialogue and Initiative, published as an annual journal of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism in book form from 2012 to 2022. It will continue the CCDS policy of left unity, including articles with a variety of left perspectives, including debates.

This issue contains a dozen articles grouped under the headings of Analysis and Global Reach, Electoral campaigns, and Book Reviews. Some are reprinted from other sources, but many appear here for the first time.

Among the authors are C.J. Atkins, Carl Davidson, Steve Early, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Suzanne Gordon, Jerry Harris, Jay Jurie, Paul Krehbiel, Matthew Scott, Rod Such, Harry Targ, and Janet Tucker and Steve Willett.

Table of Contents



Click HERE to purchase



HOLIDAY SALE ON EVERY TITLE BEGINS TODAY!

Hard Ball & Little Heroes Press is sharing the holiday spirit by offering a 25% discount on ALL TITLES from November 15-December 25. Enter SOLIDARITY in the discount box when you order a book, 25% will be automatically taken off your cost.

Happy holidays! Tim Sheard, editor

For the children...



Good Guy Jake...An inspiring Children’s Christmas story for Labor!

Imagine young children reading a book about a union that wins back the job of a sanitation worker unfairly fired for taking toys out of the trash. That’s what they will discover in Good Guy Jake. 

For years Jake has repaired and painted broken toys he pulled from the trash on his rounds and given them to the children in the local shelter at Christmas. But when an angry motorist reports Jake to the sanitation company, Jake is fired for breaking city regulations. 

His union takes the case to arbitration. There, the union brings in a crowd of children, who show the judge the toys Jake gave them and tell her that he taught them the true meaning of Christmas.

Photo: A German soldier sleeps in a railway wagon on his way to the Eastern Front, by Franz Grasser, 1943. Deutsche Fotothek. Public Domain.

History Lesson of the Week: ‘Hitler’s Deserters’

Hitler’s Deserters: Breaking Ranks with the Wehrmacht by Douglas Carl Peifer surfaces the stories of those who sought to sit out the Second World War.

by Douglas Carl Peifer

In 1989, as the Berlin Wall was about to fall, Turkish sculptor Mehmet Aksoy was completing his ‘Memorial for the Unknown Deserter’. Originally designed for Freedom Square in the West German capital Bonn it was placed, instead, at Unity Square in Potsdam, formerly in East Germany, in 2001. The sculpture, carved from Carrara marble, depicts an absence: in the centre of a large, rock-like formation is a human-figure-shaped hole outlining the space where a soldier might have stood. Douglas Carl Peifer’s work, Hitler’s Deserters, tells the story of men who similarly absented themselves from active duty in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Since the precise number of those who committed this ‘crime’ cannot be known, Peifer’s focus is on those who were prosecuted for it. Military courts and tribunals sentenced an estimated 18-20,000 German soldiers, sailors, and airmen to death for desertion, ‘subversion of the military spirit’, and treason. Peifer recounts their possible motivations for evading military service and the paths taken to do so. It is a well-told tale, one that manages to humanise the victims of Nazi military justice and embed their individual narratives in a thorough examination of the world at war. ...Read More

Adelante #4 is out! A special on immigration for the closing days of the election. Use it everywhere!

Get it here: http://ouleft.org/Adelante-4.pdf

By Bill Gallegos, excerpted from our new fall issue of “¡Adelante!”

U.S. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump demonized Mexicans and immigrants as a central part of his 2016 presidential campaign. In 2024, he has doubled down. If elected, he promises to unleash an ethnic cleansing campaign to deport the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. This is horrible enough as a complete violation of human rights. But this pogrom is only one piece of the larger anti-democratic ‘Project 2025’ of the Heritage Foundation. They are coming for all of us. While singling out Mexican immigrants, Trump aims at all immigrant communities, including growing communities in the South, Midwest, and East.

Thankfully the political energy has shifted since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Vice-President Kamala Harris is now the Democratic Party candidate, and the polls show a significant shift in her direction. More than a million new volunteers have signed up for Harris, and hundreds of millions of new dollars have been contributed to her campaign.

The Biden-Harris Administration has been mixed on immigration: on one hand, it continues to support the legalization of Dreamers (DACA) and pushes for a path to legalization for the spouses of immigrants with legal residency. On the other hand, it has denied asylum protections for refugees crossing the southern border and supported legislation for increased militarization as well as new administrative hurdles. While our most important fight is against the MAGA right, the fight for full rights and protections for immigrants is a long-term struggle beyond the November elections.

The Biden dropout also creates significant opportunities for the left and progressives to advance the fight against the fascist threat, to advance a progressive platform, and to put new pressure on both Biden and the Harris campaign to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. It enables us to push back strongly against Trump’s racist threats against immigrants while advancing a positive program for immigrant rights.

This week's topic:

THE DANGER OF WAR WITH IRAN TODAY: WE MUST SAY 'NO'

Click the picture to access the blog.

Tune of the Week: Rising Appalachia - Cumberland Gap 3.21 min

Book Review: A New History of the Western Hemisphere

A recent book suggests that Latin American democracy may hold lessons for the current U.S. political moment

By Carolina A. Miranda

The Atlantic

Two overlapping world maps of the Western Hemisphere with five stars, four of them green and one red.

Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Source: Smith Collection / Gado / Getty.

June 30, 2025 - Imagine a couple of bros recording a video podcast in which they get together to swap compliments while casually chatting about vaporizing due process. This is roughly what it felt like to tune in to President Donald Trump’s joint press conference with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office in April. First came the mutual praise. “I want to just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say they have one hell of a president,” Trump started. Bukele expressed delight at meeting “the leader of the free world.” Later in the conversation, Trump told Bukele, “You sort of look like a teenager,” playfully slapping his arm.

The pair then turned their attention to the extrajudicial transfer of dozens of Venezuelan migrants held in the United States to the notorious Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo), as well as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who had been mistakenly deported to El Salvador by U.S. authorities. Asked by a reporter if he would facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, as mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bukele asked coyly, “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Trump bobbed his head approvingly. (Abrego Garcia was ultimately returned to the U.S. earlier this month.)

This confab was the latest brutish two-step in a decades-long political dance between the U.S. and El Salvador. In the 1980s, the U.S. gave billions of dollars to murderous right-wing factions during the Central American nation’s civil war, fueling the conflict and destabilizing the country. In the ’90s, the Clinton administration began deporting Salvadoran immigrants convicted of crimes in the U.S. back to their homeland, a move that helped propel the rise of powerful gangs in a country that was institutionally weak after years of war. ...Read More

TV Review: 'Smoke'

Taron Egerton and Denis Lehane Re-Team for Another Satisfying True Crime Series With Arson

By Alison Herman

Variety

SPOILER ALERT: The following piece contains plot details from the first two episodes of “Smoke,” now streaming on Apple TV+. 

Three years ago, crime writer Dennis Lehane and actor Taron Egerton teamed up for “Black Bird,” an Apple TV+ series that adapted the true story of undercover informant James Keene into a disturbing-yet-tender take on masculinity. “Black Bird” was well-received, earning critical praise and a trio of Emmy acting nominations, including a posthumous nod for Ray Liotta as Keene’s father. But while Egerton was excellent as a career criminal brought face-to-face with the ugly extreme of his own unquestioned machismo, the showier role went to Paul Walter Hauser, who played a serial killer slowly goaded into a confession and ultimately took home the trophy for outstanding supporting actor.

Egerton and Lehane have now reunited for “Smoke,” another true crime show that explores criminal psychology with an eerie atmosphere and a star-studded cast. As the title suggests, “Smoke” shifts Lehane’s focus to the world of arson, spinning a nine-episode yarn about an arson investigator (Egerton) and a police detective (Jurnee Smollett) who pair up to catch a couple of firebugs in the Pacific Northwest. The fictional city of Umberland, a kind of Seattle surrogate with cutesy neighborhood names like “Trolleytown,” is played by the real city of Vancouver, a frequent filming hub whose lush forests are recast here as dangerous fuel.

“Smoke” is intriguing enough throughout the first couple episodes. Egerton’s Dave Gudsen is a former firefighter and aspiring novelist, allowing Lehane to gently poke fun at tropes (thin female characters, clunky prose) rife in his chosen field. Smollett’s Michelle Calderon is a steely, focused presence, if predictably saddled with both a fire-related trauma and an ill-advised affair with her boss, police captain Steven Burke (Rafe Spall). But it’s a twist at the end of the second episode that kicks “Smoke” into high gear and reveals what the show is really up to.

I’ve included a spoiler alert at the top of this review, and I’ll reiterate the same sentiment here. The reveal in question is more of a delayed premise than a late-breaking rug pull, and with the first two parts of the nine-episode season freely available to stream, it’s technically fair game to discuss. (A cursory Google of the “Firebug” podcast already reveals the concept that clearly drew Lehane to the material.) The twist is also a delightful surprise to experience in the moment, so I’ll allow readers to decide for themselves just how much they’d like to know going in. Ready? Proceed! ...Read More

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