Malika Zouhali-Worrall

Federal agents are staging a massive operation downtown near Canal street. Show of force with reportedly dozens of agents from agencies including ICE, FBI, IRS, DEA, etx

Indie director Barbara Marques has been kidnapped by ICE. She is legally married to a U.S. citizen & was at a green card mtg when she was abducted and prevented from seeing her lawyer. Her husband Tucker May does not know where she is. Please spread the word so he can find her /1

In my experience, courage is usually the product of love and/or solidarity. When we are deeply invested in each other, we are more likely to take risks that we wouldn't take out of mere principle, or for the sake of people we feel disconnected from. Our alienation mass produces cowardice.

Palm Springs (the movie) is everything I wanted Edge of Tomorrow to be. It’s very good

[CLICK here if you would like your name added to this letter] النسخة العربية من هذه الرسالة متاحة أدناه. Open Letter to the Bluesky Team About Their Treatment of Palestinians in Gaza The signatories of this letter are all members of the Bluesky community, many of us have actively participated on the platform since its inception. We came to Bluesky because it was a breath of fresh air, a place that felt different from many of the other social media platforms. The lack of a central algorithm, the ability to build and use custom feeds, and the lack of penalty for link promotion contributed to an environment that allowed diverse and interesting voices to find their footing and community on Bluesky. While some of the signatories of this letter have had no issues with speaking their mind publicly on Bluesky, unfortunately that is not true for all the signatories because many are Palestinians currently living in Gaza. These Palestinians are journalists, artists, engineers, teachers, grandmas, entrepreneurs, a man who owned an ice cream shop, a pediatrician who has been featured on CBS Morning News, aid workers, architects, waiters, pharmacists, students–and perhaps most essential to the backbone of Bluesky, posters. All of these people provide unique and interesting voices to the Bluesky community. However, unlike the other signatories of this letter, these Bluesky community members have struggled to keep their accounts on the platform. Most of them have lost multiple accounts and/or have had their accounts labeled as spam. Some cannot even make an account without it immediately being removed from the platform. Gazans undertake immense efforts to simply be on Bluesky. Sometimes, they walk for miles just to have access to the internet. They scale rooftops where they are exposed to potential military attacks just for the opportunity to get better cell signals–one signatory of this letter tragically lost her brother this way. They use what little money they have to pay …

Gazans have also been aggressively targeted and unfairly reported by bad actors. Many accounts openly encourage the reporting and targeting of any Palestinian. Several groups exist for the express purpose of looking for Palestinian accounts to report. We believe Bluesky owes Gazans, and the entire community who benefits from their voices, a greater duty of care especially in the context of the horrors they are enduring. We ask Bluesky to implement the following changes: Provide information on all Bluesky-affiliated websites in Arabic that explains the rules and expectations of the site in clear language. Investigate the accounts that are mass-reporting Palestinians on Bluesky. The mass reporting of Palestinians on Bluesky is a group effort to render the platform a hostile place for a community based on their ethnicity. As such, it is racism, and should be understood as such. Reports against Palestinians who have broken no community guidelines must be understood as racism, and the accounts that submit those reports should be disregarded in the future. Many Bluesky users encourage Gazans to tag or reply to them, and this is not always understood as unwelcome behavior. If an account is reported as Spam for tagging or replying to others, treat only reports from the tagged/mentioned account as legitimate, seeing as they were the only ones who received a notification. Send emails regarding disciplinary action every time it is taken. Gazans do not always get an email explaining what they did wrong, and those that do are required to parse a language they do not speak in order to understand their violation. Have these emails contain an easily visible link to information about their violations in Arabic. Respond to appeals in a timely fashion, many Gazans simply never hear back from Bluesky after they appeal a decision. In addition to removing Gazans for alleged spam behavior, Bluesky has also sometimes indicated that they are deleting an account for being a scam or …

End IP bans on any account from Gaza and allow them to make new accounts where they can comply with Bluesky rules and continue to be valued members of the community. We understand that even if all these changes are made, many Gazans may still violate Bluesky rules in the future, but we hope that Bluesky will abandon their punitive approach to these violations and instead embrace an attitude of education, cooperation and community care– one that works to ensure people in Gaza can participate in a way that keeps their voices heard. We also call on the Bluesky community to help and support these accounts however they can. We want to continue to build a healthy community with better community members and this cannot be done if Gazans continue to be shunned. We can use this as an opportunity to show how to protect all vulnerable groups in the future. We hope that Bluesky does not follow the path of other social media platforms and instead forges ahead with a different philosophy. After all, that is the reason so many of its users are there. Bluesky's ethos of "No Caesars” should apply to all members of its community. [To add your name to the list of signatories, click here.]

We were hoping that this letter to @bsky.app could first be shared by a Gazan, but we were too worried that doing so would get their account deleted so we are sharing first.

You can sign on to the letter about the unfair treatment of Gazans on Bluesky here:

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

NEA GRANT TERMINATION TRACKER

*please repost or forward* Here’s a sheet where arts orgs can record information about their NEA grant termination. Annie Dorsen is collecting this info as a first step towards coordinating a response docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Really important to look at what other protests are happening simultaneously to these hands off protests, because those other protests tend to be well attended by young people

Additional reasons: young people are instead attending other protests & actions that more closely reflect their values & concerns. Many young people have been in the streets protesting for the past 18 months (if not longer) and therefore are rightly selective about which protests they join right now

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we log off?
ESTRAGON: Yes, let's log off.

They do not log off.

YouTube video by Vanity Fair Mike Leigh On Every Film He's Directed Over 50+ Years | Vanity Fair

Terrific video with Mike Leigh going over all of his features. The man is plainly a bad motherfucker.
youtu.be/UxEqqRa_Tn4?...

JG Ballard-ass century…

Furious and devastated condolences to the brilliant artist Ali Cherri (Silver Lion Venice Biennale 2022).

Israel killed his parents, bombing their apartment building in Beirut on 26 Nov.

Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Stream This Gripping New Documentary. This Weekend, You Can. Union won raves and an award at Sundance, but executives have been afraid to make it available. Now it is.

I wrote about UNION, the gripping and much-needed documentary about the Amazon Labor Union, and why it hasn't gotten a distribution deal (spoiler: Bezos has too much money/power). You can stream it on Gathr this weekend and you should! slate.com/culture/2024...

oh man, don’t miss this incredible Black Friday deal gathr.com/vod/15c99c8b...

Screenshot of a New York Magazine / Vulture article with the headline: “Union is a reminder that documentaries can be artful as well as political”

Screenshot of a New Yorker article with the headline: “Documentaries of Dissent: ‘No Other Land’ and ‘Union’ are films that Hollywood and corporate America don’t want you to see.”

Screenshot of two Instagram comments. The first comment is by unionthefilm, and says “Want to watch Union online? Here’s a video how to! Pre-order available now for Black Friday!” The next comment is by naomiaklein, and reads: “beautiful story telling. A portrait of the kind of organizing we need. Don’t miss it!”

For five days only over the Black Friday weekend, Union, a documentary I co-edited about the Amazon Labor Union is available to watch online: gathr.com/vod/15c99c8b... If you haven’t heard much about the film yet, which came out in theaters last month, here are some of my favorite reviews so far:

This is a great article, I’m glad someone investigated it! @currentaffairs.bsky.social should also look at who MGP’s donors are - I’d bet that private equity looking to get into the daycare industry (and wanting it to be deregulated) have a hand in this because it’s such a weird thing to fixate on

I continue to update!

go.bsky.app/SNvMPk3