Last week, a 20 year-old man threw a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's mansion; two days later, people fired a gun at it. Earlier that week, someone fired gunshots into an city councilman's house who approved a data center.
Why the AI backlash has turned violent:
Kathi Weeks: "There’s always this pragmatic assumption: 'If we lose, people will go home and be disappointed.' How do we narrate what it means to commit to fights that won’t be won in our generation? We don’t have the vocabulary to explain what that means."
thank youuuu
I talked to the brilliant Kathi Weeks about her new book, Abolition Archives, Feminist Futures, about Angela Davis, Shulamith Firestone, and Donna Haraway, and about abolishing work, the prison, and the family
New online: @sarahljaffe.bsky.social interviews Kathi Weeks about her new book.
dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
Heart Reacts episode 38 is up! we talk about Cesar Chavez, lonely men, and how to have an easier time making plans with your friends. www.patreon.com/posts/154296...
Graphic for an In These Times article titled “Capitalism Without Humans.” A car covered in graffiti burns in the foreground, with huge orange flames and thick black smoke filling most of the image. The subheadline reads, “As new technologies (not immigrants) replace human labor, ‘machine breaking’ as a tactic of rebellion is taking on a renewed vitality.” By Sarah Jaffe.
As new technologies (not immigrants) replace human labor, @sarahljaffe.bsky.social reports, “machine breaking” as a tactic of rebellion, is taking on a renewed vitality.
inthesetimes.com/article/capi...
Black-and-white archival photo of a chaotic street confrontation during the Battle of Cable Street in London on October 4, 1936. A large crowd of anti-Fascists fills the street as police push people back, with officers scattered through the roadway and dense crowds packed along both sides. Riots between anti-Fascists and Blackshirts (British Fascists) broke out as Oswald Mosley’s supporters were gathering in Great Mint Street for a march through the East End of London. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Looking for a history lesson this morning?
We recommend this 2017 conversation @sarahljaffe.bsky.social had with historian @mark-bray.bsky.social about the origins of modern anti-fascist movements.
inthesetimes.com/article/anti...
All new Heart Reacts! This time @sarahljaffe.bsky.social and I respond to a letter-writer who is struggling to move on after their labor union employer fired them while on disability leave (yep). Find us where you pod or at patreon.com/heartreacts
i spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting why the media is obsessed with union voters and Trump, and why they keep getting it absolutely wrong when it comes to labor thehousered.substack.com/p/the-medias...
Calling Cormac McCarthy’s authorial style a “mistake” that AI no longer makes is so funny
Must-read here by @sarahljaffe.bsky.social
Flavor Flav is president now.
It doesn't matter what they ask. Stick to your talking points.
Wanted to share the Workplace Justice Lab's latest piece on the story behind the story of the Minneapolis occupation through the eyes of our close partners in organizing, government and small business.
conta.cc/3O8RFvL
As always, @sarahljaffe.bsky.social has been on top of Minneapolis organizing:
sarahljaffe.substack.com/p/the-war-at...
When we were evaluating them at the hospital I worked at over a decade ago, surgeons tried them and the response was "I guess I could see how this could be useful with a lot of caveats, but it's a lot easier to see how it will be terrible and make us look like assholes and creeps" and that was that.
“General strikes are rare and something like lightning in a bottle: They tend to overspill their boundaries, becoming, in historically specific moments, something more than just the sum of their parts.” - @sarahljaffe.bsky.social
newrepublic.com/article/2053...
The Minnesota general strike demonstrated the leading place the labour movement is playing in opposing ICE. @sarahljaffe.bsky.social's interview @poltheoryother.bsky.social provides a history of the current moment through exploring the central role of migrant workers in American trade unionism.
The proposed changes to immigration rules in the UK will be a real test for unions.
Unison has had a huge increase in membership among migrant health and care workers, but the party it's affiliated to is pushing rules that will destroy the lives of these people. www.unison.org.uk/news/2025/12...
While it has been getting better over the last decade, large part of the UK labour movement suffers from the same problem that @sarahljaffe.bsky.social talks about here.
I recently wrote this on the barriers to organising migrant farm workers:
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025...
This is the best piece I’ve read diving into the community organizing going on in Minnesota - from grassroots activists to labor to neighbors. It’s so empowering to see this level of rising amidst resistance. It prefigures renewal.
"The US labour movement often has been guilty of assuming that immigrant workers are unorganisable... Actually the immigrant worker organisations have been the ones leading the labour movement..." - @sarahljaffe.bsky.social
As Minnesota kicks off its day of freedom from ICE, my piece on how the state's movements built power to be ready for this moment, and the closest thing to a real general strike in maybe a century newrepublic.com/article/2053...
ICYMI - @sarahljaffe.bsky.social on the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE and the recent history of organising and protest in Minnesota (and the centrality of the Somali community to those efforts):
"What happens when U.S. capitalism simply needs fewer humans?"
"The flaming Waymo, then, is [..] a symbol of the way that more and more people are being rendered surplus."
"[E]xpect to see more machine-breaking."
#USA #Labour #Protest #Transportation #Technology #Deportation #EthnicCleansing
You are invited to attend a press conference where the University of Minnesota Graduate Labor Union (GLU-UE Local 1105) and other UMN campus workers and students will call on the president of the UMN to close all campuses on January 23rd for the ICE OUT! Day of Action. WHAT: GLU-UE Local 1105 and other University of Minnesota workers and student groups are calling for the UMN to shut down on January 23rd so that workers and students can participate in the ICE OUT! Day of Action march in Minneapolis on 1/23/26. WHO: Executive board of GLU-UE Local 1105, worker leaders from AFSCME 3800, Teamsters 320, and campus undergraduate organizations. WHEN: Wednesday, 1/21/26, at 11AM. WHERE: Eastern Steps of Johnston Hall. WHY: ICE is terrorizing our communities and killing people in our streets. Over 50 unions and other Twin Cities organizations have called for a general strike on 1/23 to kick ICE out of MN and end the racists attacks on our communities. Workers and students at the UMN want to participate in this Day of Action and if UMN cancelled classes, closed campuses, and provided a paid holiday to workers, it would enable this community to participate in this momentous march to get ICE out of MN.
Breaking: Three unions are calling on the University of Minnesota to shut down for Jan. 23. They include the Graduate Labor Union Electrical Workers Local 1105, AFSCME 3800, & Teamsters Local 320. Campus undergraduate organizations are joining the call. labornotes.org/2026/01/will...
📢 NEW EPISODE 📢 - @sarahljaffe.bsky.social on the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE and the history of organising and protest in Minnesota (and the centrality of the Somali community to those efforts). We also talked about the entwinement of the tech industry with ICE and the surveillance state:
Minnesota’s proposed January 23 statewide shutdown didn’t materialize overnight.
In 2024, @sarahljaffe.bsky.social reported on how unions and community groups spent years building the coordination and trust that now make a total shutdown possible—and powerful.
A competent opposition political party would cut together the footage of what ICE had been doing in the twin cities with Mike Johnson saying "ICE is doing what ICE is designed to do" and have it in ads all across the country
