The Biden administration is blocking transfers from the roughly $9.5 billion in Afghanistan Central Bank accounts in the U.S. This is to punish and put pressure on the Taliban. But many independent analysts are doubtful that withholding aid and funds can significantly change the Taliban's calculations. The Taliban is a brutal and oppressive movement but destroying the entire nation's economy is not the best way to address that. Meanwhile, there is growing and vivid evidence of the human pain this policy is causing in the hospitals of Kandahar and around the country. At the very least, the U.S. must follow the recommendations of many aid and human rights groups and disseminate Afghan assets parked in the U.S.

Thursday, December 2, 7-8:30pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

This fall, the Tilted Scales Legal Collective (a group of dedicated anarchist legal support workers who have spent years supporting and fighting for political prisoners, prisoner of war, and politicized prisoners), published Representing Radicals with the goal of demystifying common political defense strategies and equipping criminal defense attorneys with the tools to better understand and support their radical clients’ legal, personal, and political goals.

Join members of the Tilted Scales Legal Collective as they share their work in conversation with two movement defense attorneys: Lauren Regan (founder, executive director, and senior staff attorney at the Civil Liberties Defense Center); and Joshua Raisler Cohn (public defender at the Committee for Public Counsel Services and Mass Defense Co-Chair at National Lawyers Guild Massachusetts).

This event is sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild’s National Office, the National Lawyers Guild Harvard Law School Chapter, and the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

“Protecting the border” is essentially the same thing as protecting your own property, right? You’ve got to protect it from invaders, thieves — lawless jerks who want what you have.

If you’re rich and paranoid, then you have no doubt that’s what refugees are, especially down there at the southern U.S. border, or if you’re the European Union, the northern edge of Africa. The EU’s “Mexico” is the failed state of Libya, which, thanks to its former colonial conquerors, can now make a little scratch stopping the desperate hordes of people fleeing poverty, violence and the vicious effects of climate change from crossing the Mediterranean and finding a more secure life in Europe.

How do we move beyond a world that is shredded by invisible (imaginary) borders into endless enclaves of us and them? How do we embrace Planet Earth as a single, organic whole, of which we are just a part? How do we govern with a reverence for this whole?

Five members of the World BEYOND War Youth Network (WBWYN) from five continents have contributed, together with WBW’s Education Director, to a chapter in a new book (available free in full as PDF) called Problems, Threats and Challenges for Peace and Conflict Resolution, edited by Joanna Marszałek-Kawa Maria Ochwat.

The book provides a highly informative survey of how people in numerous parts of the world view working for peace, primarily meaning the ending of violent conflict within, rather than between, nations.

The first chapter was put together by Phill Gittins, World BEYOND War’s Education Director, together with young peace activists Sayako Aizeki-Nevins, Christine Odera, Alejandra Rodriguez, Daria Pakhomova, and Laiba Khan.

Sayako Aizeki-Nevins is a high school student from New York who has found her way from climate and racial-justice activism to activism for peace. “Today,” she writes, “my main interests revolve around the intersections between climate change, militarism, and war. I pursue these interests through my work with the WBWYN.”

Wednesday, December 1, 11:30am-8pm, this event will be live-streamed on “Facebook Live”

This World AIDS Day, join us as we bring together LGBTQ+ communities around the world to rewrite the narrative to end the HIV epidemic. We’re tacking the fight to end stigma, embrace our sexuality and our identities.

We’re hosting events all day, so feel free to pick and choose what works for you or attend them all.

• Session 1: Transgender Justice, 11:30am

• Session 2: Global perspectives on HIV/AIDS, 1:30pm

• Session 3: Rewriting the Narrative: Our Stories Are Our Future, 4pm

• Session 4: Being Balenciaga: A Journey As House in The Fight to End HIV, 7pm

This event will be live-streamed on “Facebook Live.”

Hosted by Human Rights Campaign.