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Dispatches From the Culture Wars – August 26, 2025

A busy summer

Artist Viril the Mouse’s mural depicting Superman punching an ICE agent first appeared on a Pilsen viaduct in June. In July, vandals painted over Superman. In the latest update, Krypto the Superdog takes Superman’s place. Credit, Chicago Sun-Times
  1. Free DC
  2. Beating ICE in LA
  3. Street Socialism in NYC
  4. Fighting the Fugitive Slave Act One City at a Time
  5. Abortion Access in Missouri
  6. Miccosukee Tribe Closes Alligator Alcatraz
  7. Roberts Overrules Law
  8. The Movement Behind Mamdani
  9. Tide Turns for Israel and the US Right
  10. How South Asians Fought Fascism

 

Free DC

By Abby Vesoulis
Mother Jones

The DC locals who are wrestling with the increased presence of law enforcement say megaphones and mass demonstrations are unlikely to mollify the hazards of a heightened police state—and may bring bigger dispatches of law enforcement, which could target more immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

Beating ICE in LA

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 • Survival is a Strategy and Freedom is a Coin Toss   By Erick Galindo, L.A. Taco

 • Angelenos Get Prepared   By Sonali Kolhatkar, Truthout
 

Street Socialism in NYC

By Nicholas Powers
The Indypendent

What could New York be? More importantly, who could we be? Every day is like a drum beat, the Republicans attack: they do ICE raids, they rob the poor to give to the rich, they arrest protesters. New Yorkers are forced to choose. Either turn on each other like snitches, or unite and fight.

Fighting the Fugitive Slave Act One City at a Time

By Waleed Shahid
Waleed’s Substack

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a cornerstone of the Compromise of 1850, required Northern states to assist in capturing escaped enslaved people and returning them to bondage. The act’s enforcement became a running series of confrontations between federal marshals and abolitionist civil society.

Abortion Access in Missouri

By Robin Fries
Abortion, Every Day

In November of 2024, Missourians voted to overturn the total abortion ban in our state, making abortion legal for some. This was a hard fought win for abortion advocates, who believed Amendment 3 would return abortion access to the state. Missouri politicians didn’t waste a minute before working to undo the will of the voters. 

Miccosukee Tribe Closes Alligator Alcatraz

By Amy Green
Inside Climate News

A federal judge has ordered a winding down of operations at Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz, the hastily assembled Everglades detention site for incarcerating thousands of supposed migrants before deporting them. Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe successfully sued to stop the facility.

Roberts Overrules Law

By Ed Pilkington
The Guardian

The chief justice of the US has emboldened Trump’s drive toward authoritarianism. Roberts is anything but the modest judge he claims to be. Rather, he has used his power as chief justice to promote a rightwing agenda from the moment George W Bush placed him in the court’s central seat in 2005.

The Movement Behind Mamdani

By Charlie Heller, Brandon Tizol, Lawrence Wang and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Hammer and Hope

Scrappy leftist organizers are learning their political campaigns “can succeed by being creative and speaking the truth in interesting ways.”

Tide Turns for Israel and the US Right

By Ben Lorber
+972

Support for the seemingly ironclad relationship between the U.S. and Israeli right has steadily eroded among the MAGA base and vanguard. And since the Israel-Iran war in June, the cracks on the surface have widened into a chasm — pointing to a seismic shift that stands to remake the American right.

How South Asians Fought Fascism

By Maya Bhardwaj
The Forge

South Asians in both the subcontinent and the diaspora share lessons for fighting fascism on two fronts. South Asian resistance movements offer vital strategies for combating rising fascism globally through transnational solidarity, grassroots organizing, and cultural defiance.