Sam Wood

We’ve been robbed of our freedom.
Who will stand with us?

I am wicked grateful right from the (hard)core of my busted punk rock heart. Thank you @dropkickmurphys.com for this well-timed album. Thank you for holding on to the ethics and the fight.

Buy it, humans, and listen.

Bill Moyers leaves us a legacy well worth trying to do justice.

Our Kids Poetry Studio in Odesa is in second year and kids, many of whom are refugees of war, are writing poems. If you read Ukrainian, here is the article: vo.od.ua/rubrics/kult... If you read English, here is a link: poemsnotbombs.org. Please consider support this work.

Headline from The New York Times in 2020. "US deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss."

Headline from The New York Times in 2020. "US deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss." #covid

As of today, that "incalculable loss" is 1.2 million Americans.

And RFK Jr is taking away our vaccines.

UMass faculty calls on land grant universities to join in fight against Trump administration; McGovern, AG also weigh in AMHERST — Faculty at the University of Massachusetts are calling on Chancellor Javier Reyes and President Martin Meehan to form a compact with the 250 land grant and public universities across the cou...

This is how you do it.

The "Mutual Academic Defense Compact".

The moral imperative may be to fight...

but the strategic imperative is to not fight alone:

www.gazettenet.com/UMass-Amhers...

Since Trump came to power cowardice has become contagious From the tech bros to the leaders of Ivy League universities, the great grovel to Donald Trump is well underway. What America needs now more than ever...

What if tech bros had held their nerve? What if ABC had told Trump they’d see him in court? What if Ivy League Universities had defended Columbia? What if big law firms had sued Trump? Cowardice is contagious. Welcome to the Great Grovel www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united...

Monochrome photograph of an older white woman, head and shoulders, facing left with right hand held in front of her face with open palm, the subject has eyes closed and long dark hair and wears a ruffled shirt, all against a plain background

Portrait of Louise Bourgeois, 1997 by photographer Annie Leibovitz #womensart

Take heart.
There is no shortage of courage.

Shock Doctrine.
I paced in my living room reading the book by @naomiaklein.bsky.social
And not long after I quit the newspaper where I worked because they installed a political operative on the editorial board and flipped out when asked about it. Now that guy is one of the authors of Project 2025.

Great point listening to a talk by @timothysnyder.bsky.social: U.S. is making itself and its allies less powerful, which increases Russia’s relative power and influence, and brings about the multipolar world that it wants

Www.hidinginplainsightbook.com

Www.hidinginplainsightbook.com

There is new interest in Missouri as a bellwether of American decline -- a model of what the regime wants. I wrote and warned on this extensively in my 2020 book HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT. Some excerpts:

scoop: Eugene Robinson is leaving The Washington Post, per an email he sent to the staff this morning

Damn, that's a fantastic video for a campaign launch.

YouTube video by CR's Video Vaults The Foggy Dew - Sinéad O’Connor & The Chieftains, 1995

The Angelus bells
O’er the Liffey swells

youtu.be/keWnPZOd2cw?...

YouTube video by Douglas Rushkoff Molly Crabapple | Team Human Podcast w/ Douglas Rushkoff ep. #312

Absolutely fantastic conversation between my friend @rushkoff.com and writer/artist @mollycrabapple.bsky.social. We have reasons to be frustrated and angry, but must remember to find fun, happiness, and purpose in some aspect in our life.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Md...

In Hungary.
In Tel Aviv.
In Gaza.
In Georgia.
In Turkey.
In Serbia.
And growing around the US.

Mass movements are happening around the world as people are demanding their freedoms back.

As people begin to reclaim what these authoritarians have taken from us.

Something’s growing worldwide.

Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared. ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban.

Dozens more pregnant and postpartum women have died in Texas hospitals since the state banned abortion, our analysis shows.

As the maternal mortality rate dropped nationally, it rose in Texas by 33%.

From HCR’s letter this morning:

“As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls,” Crawford said in her victory speech, “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won.”

Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking, says professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University

"Denmark has given four times as much aid per capita to Ukraine as the US....In Greenland, what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain." Must read by @timothysnyder.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Cory Booker's anti-Trump speech on the Senate floor has lasted 15 hours and counting The New Jersey Democrat has been criticizing the Trump administration's policies on immigration, education, the economy and more since 7 p.m. Monday. Here's what to know about his marathon speech.

I'm watching the Cory Booker speech on the Senate Floor right now. #BigMessyAmerica www.npr.org/2025/04/01/n...

Right now, Booker is still at it. And you can watch: www.c-span.org/event/us-sen...

It’s as if Rome had elected the Vandals

We Are Higher Ed

Hello, Bluesky!! We are a collective of academics who are standing up for higher education. Join us: www.wearehighered.org

The CDC Buried a Measles Forecast That Stressed the Need for Vaccinations The move — along with the CDC’s explanation — is a sign that the nation’s top public health agency may be falling in line under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines.

Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.

The Montague Reporter published in Montague, Mass. An excellent small local newspaper.

Headline: Hundreds turn out to protest planned closure of social security office

A tiny, easy thing you can do: wherever you’re traveling, buy the local paper and boost the news of how fascism is trickling down and how everyday people are pushing back. From today’s Caledonian-Record of St. Johnsbury, VT.

Yes, protest Musk.
But what about kidnapping people off our streets for simply saying and writing things critical of Trump, the GOP, and the illegal unethical actions of this government?
Stand up for the First Amendment.