Charleston, SC – On June 14, 2025, at a spontaneous march immediately following a No Kings Day rally in downtown Charleston, I was unjustly arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for chanting with a megaphone. I have pleaded not guilty and, over a year later, I have yet to receive my day in court.

At the rally before the march, I heard reports from others present that officers with the Charleston Police Department (CPD) were threatening protesters with arrest by CPD for wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) masks, citing the First Amendment Demonstration Ordinance Act, or 1A, ban on masks at protests. Yet, PPE is specifically exempt in the ordinance. It was clear many of the CPD officers didn't approve of the action, which was an anti-Trump protest.

After the rally, I joined a group of community members who wanted to continue to protest with a march down the sidewalk in response to the Trump administration's immigration crackdowns. Before we began our own march, we witnessed two horse-mounted CPD officers attempt to intimidate two individuals for holding their banners up and chanting as they left the park. The officers approached them aggressively on their horses, telling them they couldn't protest. A blatant lie in an attempt to silence dissent.

Undeterred, they joined the group I was with. We all knew we were within our rights, and not even in violation of the repressive 1A ordinance, so we asserted these rights and began our march. We chanted as we marched in solidarity with our undocumented community members and against the Trump administration's racist immigration policies. We had a megaphone, so I offered to lead chants on it as we marched out of the park.

We didn’t make it very far before we were pursued by police officers telling me to stop chanting on the megaphone. They insisted we could march and protest but not with a megaphone. Given this was an unlawful command, not even supported by the 1A ordinance, I refused to acknowledge them and kept leading chants. A few minutes later I was violently arrested by CPD and the so-called “anti-riot” deputies of the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO).

The protesters in my group were understandably enraged by the arrest. One person attempted to shield me as officers moved in to detain me. A mounted officer responded by trying to use his horse to attack the group, but lost control of the animal, nearly trampling them as it smacked into a wall on the sidewalk and went running sideways into the road. All of this was captured on video, but CPD continues to deny this happened. It should be noted, despite my arrest and the continued police stalking of the other protesters, the march continued and was a success.

I was charged with disorderly conduct, my megaphone seized as evidence, and I spent a few hours in the notorious Al Cannon Detention Center where over 20 people have died in the past ten years; at least three of the deaths have been declared homicides. Thankfully, my community supported me and bailed me out the same day.

I retained counsel, pleaded not guilty to the charges, and have been prepared for trial for over a year. Yet, the city of Charleston refuses to grant me my day in court. The first prosecutor wanted to dismiss my case, but the police wouldn't drop the charges. The second prosecutor, Kevin Hales, has offered me guilty pleas for time served on more than one occasion. We have refused every time. We are not interested in anything other than a full dismissal or our day in court. Twice we have made public calls to pack the courtroom and each time Hales has since filed for a continuation. Most recently this happened related to my August 3, 2026 court date.

Additionally, it has come to light that the city of Charleston has allegedly reached out to the presiding judge and prosecutor to push my case because they are not interested in it going to court. In my opinion, city officials know they can't defend the 1A law, and they're feeling the pressure against the ordinance, and the multiple cases brought up using the ordinance as a pretext.

I am not the only person arrested under the law. In October 2024, I, and a fellow organizer, were charged with violating the 1A ordinance in the aftermath of a pro-Palestine demonstration. The charges were dismissed a year later. In January 2025, seven, mostly Latino, community members were arrested for “disobeying a lawful order” when police ordered a spontaneous protest to disperse, again citing the 1A ordinance as grounds for the dispersal. Lastly, in February 2026, a woman was charged for wearing a keffiyeh at a protest in response to the killing of an ICE observer. Again, in this instance, CPD cited the 1a ordinance.

Local organizers have continually spoken out against this law, including a Fight for the First march and rally which was attended by hundreds on July 25, 2026. Our demands remain the same. We want a full dismissal of these bogus charges and the full repeal of this repressive unconstitutional ordinance, because protesting is not a crime!

We are calling on all people of conscience to call the Charleston Prosecutor’s Office at 843-965-4148 and ask to speak to Kevin Hales to demand the disorderly conduct charge against me be dropped immediately.

And stay tuned for a day of action to call for the full repeal of the First Amendment Demonstration Ordinance.

#CharlestonSC #SC #FreeSpeech #PeoplesStruggles #Opinion

The prompt was specifically to ask about a change from the current five-day, eight-hours-per-day work week to a four-day, ten-hours-per-day model. The texts did not specify who had sent out the mass communication – the United States Postal Service (USPS), the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), or perhaps some combination of the two? Some letter carriers said they were not sure if the communication was legitimate, fearing that it might be a scam message.

Then, at the beginning of June, the NALC held a special collective bargaining conference for Branch presidents in Washington, DC. The conference was meant to be a hush-hush affair, whereby sitting NALC President Brian Renfroe could discuss his approach to this round of negotiations coming off of one of the worst-bargained contracts in recent memory for city letter carriers, in 2025. It was during this year’s conference that Renfroe disclosed that the survey was his creation, and that the proposal had come directly from him.

Now, on the surface, such a change may seem harmless enough. One less day of work per week, while still accumulating the same number of hours, ultimately means more uninterrupted free time. Sounds excellent! But, when considering some of the further ramifications this change would entail, it becomes clear just how disastrous of a proposal this would be for most city carriers, and how it only further serves to highlight the disastrous management-oriented tenure of President Renfroe.

30,000 lost routes, unsustainable workloads and dangerous conditions

Let’s start with perhaps the most glaring issue: the loss of city letter carrier jobs (and, as a consequence, NALC members). Currently, city carrier routes are intended to be completable within a regular eight-hour workday. This means that each route that exists should be designed to incorporate an area of addresses and a volume of mail that approximately adds up to eight hours of work. For anyone who actually carries mail, they'll know this often isn't the case, especially after the most recent round of route adjustments nationally, but that is supposed to be the standard.

What the change from an eight-hour day to a ten-hour one would mean, then, is a total recalibration of all routes in every station across the country to bring them in line with the new standard. But mail and addresses can’t be pulled out of a hat; they instead would likely come from slashing existing routes and redistributing the work. This would mean a loss of assignments and, consequently, a loss of jobs and members. Some estimates from opponents of this concept predict that more than 30,000 routes across the country would be eliminated. As is the case across most jobs and industries, it would be the lowest seniority carriers whose jobs would be cut first, an ironic reality given that the pool of carriers surveyed about the change overwhelmingly fit into this category.

Further, those carriers who work at stations gutted by the national route adjustments in the last year know that management’s system is not based in reality. They often add much more work to the remaining routes than can actually be achieved in eight hours, with some already taking ten or more hours. Any rational person should be able to conclude, then, that a change to a ten-hour standard would mean many routes with actual workloads reaching or exceeding 12 hours.

USPS management repeatedly demonstrates a lack of care for the safety and wellbeing of its letter carriers, and this situation would be further exacerbated by a ten-hour workday.

Letter carriers are constantly harassed by management, both on the workroom floor and out on delivery, about make-believe office leave times and so-called “stationary events” (i.e. when the USPS-provided scanner with GPS tracking capabilities indicates a carrier has been immobile for an extended period of time). When working in extreme weather such as blistering heat or sub-zero temperatures, management’s pestering and threats lead to carriers putting themselves in danger. Several carriers have died recently as a result of heat-related issues, including Dallas-area carrier Jacob Taylor in June 2025. This occurs now, with routes and workdays as they exist. Adding more work and more hours on the street will increase the frequency of these occurrences.

Fewer carriers means further delays in service

The mainstream media loves to report on postal customer complaints regarding delayed mail or other associated issues with the Postal Service. What they almost never include in their coverage is the real reason why those delays and issues exist. The simple answer is mismanagement, which in turn has led to route eliminations, fewer carriers, longer routes, and, finally, undelivered and/or delayed mail.

As mentioned, the predicted elimination of tens of thousands of routes would, out of necessity, result in the laying off or termination of a roughly equivalent number of city carriers. Far from improving service, this move to a new workweek structure would undoubtedly create yet more issues which management would expand through their misleadership, creating yet more frustration from the customers. President Renfroe will do anything to save the Post Office, including selling out his members and the customers that they serve!

Loss of pay and reduction in benefits

Some other impacts of this change would be the ability to earn overtime pay and paid time off (PTO), two things which are currently highlights of working as a letter carrier. The contract for city letter carriers ensures that all work in a day over eight hours, but not exceeding ten ,is to be paid out at 1.5 times the standard rate, and all daily working hours exceeding ten paid out at double time. With the change to a ten-hour workday standard, this could change the overtime payouts, resulting in a circumstance where carriers are effectively taking home less pay for the same amount of work.

Earned PTO – whether annual leave or sick leave – would run out more quickly than it does at the moment with the longer workday. This in practice devalues the accrued leave.

Benefits such as overtime pay and leave accrual are vital to the city letter carrier craft. These changes, however, are clearly a benefit to USPS and a detriment to NALC members, an unfortunate hallmark of Renfroe’s tenure as union president.

Complications for carriers with families or medical restrictions

Many city letter carriers have families – spouses, children, other dependents – that rely on their fixed eight-hour workdays. Daycares often have restrictions on the number of hours children can spend at their facilities, or they charge fees after a certain number of hours in a day are passed. Single parents or households where both parents are working will be unduly impacted by this change. Similarly, there are many city carriers who have medical conditions that necessitate firm eight-hour work restrictions. The change in the workday standard raises questions about how these carriers would be affected.

Some speculation suggests that carriers who need to maintain the eight-hour workday, either due to family needs or medical restrictions, would be forced to utilize their PTO benefits to compensate for the hours they don’t work, or otherwise accumulate what's known as Leave Without Pay (LWOP) for the hours that they now can’t work. The problem with LWOP is two-fold: 1) the loss in pay, and 2) excessive LWOP accrual has ramifications for retirement. Neither of these potential resolutions for the scheduling problems created by the workday change serve any benefit to the city carrier. Instead, they are actively negative outcomes.

New leadership is the path forward

While the above list is an incomplete accounting of the many pitfalls of the proposed change to the workday and week of the city letter carrier, the examples laid out her demonstrate the severe step backward that it would represent. As mentioned already, this is nothing new for the NALC under President Renfroe and his leadership clique. City letter carriers are being devalued with every passing year that Renfroe maintains his hold on power, with paltry wage increases that fall way behind even keeping up with the cost of living, the continued maintenance of a two-tiered pay structure, a workforce which continues to be divided between career and non-career workers, and serious concessions at the bargaining table.

However, all is not lost for the rank-and-file city letter carrier. In August, the NALC is hosting its national convention in Los Angeles. At this convention, nominations for national offices will be made official ahead of the national elections this fall. In preparation for this election cycle, fighters and leaders came together two years ago to create a reform slate known as the Concerned Letter Carriers (CLC). This slate of leaders stands in total opposition to this Renfroe-led initiative to further degrade the city letter carrier.

The CLC slate is headed by the indomitable James Henry, a staunch advocate for the city letter carrier, with an arbitration record without equal, and Corey Walton, a bulldog of a man who has a proven record of a no-nonsense approach to dealing with management on the shop floor. The slate represents the best and only chance for a total overhaul of the NALC national leadership. The CLC calls for an end to the two-tiered pay structure, and major reforms in the functioning of the union at the national level to encourage democracy and transparency, re-instill a membership-first approach (particularly in contract negotiations), and re-establish the fighting spirit of the union through extensive trainings and commitment to fighting management’s abuses in the workplace.

This fall, city carriers have a choice between two futures: one where letter carriers continue to be devalued and defanged by a leadership that is, at best, disinterested and, at worst, in the pocket of management; and another where the rank and file reasserts control of their union and their workplace through a leadership that has their backs. The CLC is the path forward for the city carrier that seeks the latter.

#MilwaukeeWI #WI #Opinion #Commentary #Labor #USPS #NALC

Headlines are flooded with images of property destruction and chaotic crowds, and the moral of most news stories on the topic is “we need more police” and “parents should be held accountable.” We know from experience that these are not real solutions, and when we treat Black teens like people and speak to them about their needs and wants, they can offer solutions to problems the racist ruling class wants us to think are insurmountable.

Black people have faced relentless attacks from white supremacy during our entire history in the U.S. The youth are reacting to generations of exploitation and repression, which is today seen in decades of defunding housing, education, healthcare and other public services while funding for racist policing and mass incarceration always increases.

Alderpersons like Brian Hopkins have used the “takeovers” as an excuse to push legislation effectively denying Black youth the right to gather in public. Calls for “accountability” suggest punishments from fines to jail time for parents of the teens. Some are kind enough to say parents need mentorship in how to raise their kids. Very few talk about the material difficulties of supporting a family while under constant attack by the white supremacist ruling class.

175,000 families in Illinois had their SNAP benefits taken by the Trump administration in May. My school saw a dramatic downward turn in student behavior the following week. One morning, a sixth grader told me he had been outside partying at 2a.m. because his mother works night shifts and, like many children, he will choose the more fun and risky option if adults aren't present to make him choose the safe, boring one.

Long work hours are only one reason parents struggle to spend quality time with their children. Many are incarcerated by the racist legal system. Some are afflicted by unemployment, addiction, mental illness, or other problems made inevitable by capitalism.

So, if it's clear that the “teen takeovers” are rooted in the same systemic cause as poverty and violence in Black communities, why are we talking about parenting?

In the 1960s, the Johnson administration was giving concessions to the Black liberation movement in the form of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. They were also planning ways to keep Black people ignorant of the imperialist system which oppresses them as a nation and exploits the vast majority of them as members of the multinational working class.

In 1965, Lyndon B Johnson's Secretary of Labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published a report claiming that the main cause of problems in the Black community was not centuries of brutal exploitation and oppression, but a dysfunctional family structure. The report blamed Black women in particular as the heads of single parent households.

People who ignore the economic and political roots of discontent in Black communities and blame children or their parents are playing into the strategy of the ruling class. Instead, we should use the strategy outlined in the words and work of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, Fred Hampton and Malcolm X who fought for working and oppressed people.

These strategists condemned the system, not the people struggling to survive within it. If we are concerned about violence at “teen takeovers” or any other time and place in Black communities, we need to support the movements fighting to improve conditions for Black people.

We should join the movement for community control of the police and an end to mass incarceration. We should fight for quality, fully funded public goods like housing, healthcare and education. We should fight for worker’s rights and empowerment in unions. We should resist the imperialist wars and interventions of the U.S. government, so tax dollars are used to help children here instead of murdering families overseas. We should defend the historical gains of the Black liberation movement such as voting and civil rights.

Black people did not choose to be exploited and oppressed for 400 years on this land, but we have advanced historically when we chose to fight back. The choice today is to dwell on the individual decisions of children and parents impacted by the racist and greedy ruling class, or to join the movements uniting with families to oppose the ruling class.

#Opinion #Commentary #AfricanAmerican #OppressedNationalities #Youth

Soccer is a reflection of greater contradictions of the world playing out on a football pitch. Most importantly, the primary contradiction that has grasped the world tightly; the contradiction between the countries that dominate by imperialism and those that are subjected to this domination. Yet fans, being fans, have historically risked it all for a brief moment of exuberance. In 2014, Brazilian fans bicycled through the Amazon region to watch the games in the Manaus. In 2022, Argentinian fans sold their houses to go watch Messi play his last tournament in Qatar.

A perfect example is the 1986 quarterfinal match between Argentina and England. Diego Maradona, arguably the greatest player to have ever played the game, scored one goal with his hand, which was later dubbed the “Hand of God,” and then scored a second goal, splitting apart the entire England team; this goal was dubbed the “The Goal of the Century.” The quarterfinal was held four years after the English war on Argentina over the Malvinas, an Island territory of Argentina. The Argentine team leading up to the quarterfinal faced racist attacks from the English, and after their humiliating defeat, Maradona said, “Although we had said before the game that football had nothing to do with the Malvinas war, we knew they had killed a lot of Argentine boys there, killed them like little birds. And this was revenge.”

“The history of football is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots. In this ‘fin-de-siècle’ world, professional football condemns all that is useless and useless means non-profitable,” said Eduardo Galeano, author of Soccer in Sun and Shadow.

Soccer in the developing world

Growing up in India, football (or soccer, as dubbed by the Americans) was essential. Children piled up on the streets in narrow alleyways with torn flip flops with no goal posts and played soccer for hours and hours, with scraped knees and bloodied elbows from falling on concrete. Local club rivalry between the East Bengal and Mohun Bagan was the dominant topic of conversation amongst the people.

In the early 2000s, the English Premier League was broadcast on Indian television, bringing the English game to an Indian audience and resulting in the broadening of the interest in international league soccer. But no other form of sport commanded as much devotion as the FIFA World Cup.

At the time of the World Cup, flags of Brazil, Argentina and several other countries could be seen everywhere. Latin American, European and African soccer idols found themselves on murals across the streets of Kolkata. Despite India never qualifying for the World Cup, soccer fans have for generations lived vicariously by supporting international teams in the World Cup.

Diego Maradona was banned from participating in the tournament in 1994 for taking stimulants and protests erupted across the world. Galeano notes this and says, “In places far away as Bangladesh, where a sizable demonstration repudiating FIFA and demanding Maradona’s return shook the streets.”

Soccer in the current political climate

In December of 2025, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, was awarded a “peace prize” by the governing body of the soccer World Cup, FIFA, to appease him after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the right-wing U.S.-backed candidate Maria Corina Machado. He was awarded the “peace prize” while threatening a war against Venezuela. Then in January, the U.S. attacked Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and kidnapped Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores i.e. the president and first lady of Venezuela.

Also in January and late December, ICE murdered Alex Pretti, Renee Good and Keith Porter. In March, ICE agents were deployed at several major airports to cover the work of TSA agents who were unpaid and couldn’t afford to come to work. The partial government shutdown and the increased border militarization pose additional challenges for World Cup games being scheduled later on in the summer.

In the summer of 2026, the Soccer World Cup is scheduled to happen in the United States, Mexico and Canada. 11 major cities in the United States are scheduled to have games.

Among several countries who participated in the qualification stage, Israel, the Zionist entity, was allowed to participate despite a global call to ban the country from entering the tournament due to the entity’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. FIFA and UEFA (the governing body of European league football) in 2022 unilaterally banned Russia from participating in the World Cup due to the intervention in Ukraine. Israel has not been barred from participating, nor has the United States been barred from hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The Department of Homeland Security, via FEMA, has been granted $625 million to deploy ICE agents across the 11 major venues in the US.

According to the U.S. government, “The FIFA World Cup Grant Program (FWCGP), administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Grant Programs Directorate (GPD), provides $625 million in federal funding to enhance security and preparedness for the 2026 FIFA World Cup events in the United States.”

The United States alongside Israel is currently waging a war against Iran. The U.S. have murdered at least 160 young girls by bombing a high school and have destroyed civilian infrastructure, killing thousands of innocents.

Donald Trump proudly claimed that a “whole civilization would die” indicating a significant attack against Iran, but Tuesday rolled around and he chickened out and agreed to a ten point deal that uplifted sanctions on Iran.

Israel continues to perpetuate a genocide against the Palestinians, while simultaneously bombing Southern Lebanon killing hundreds and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Israel however did not qualify for the World Cup. They faced humiliating losses against every country they played. Israel is also facing humiliating losses by the axis of resistance across West Asia.

The U.S.-Israel war against Iran has sparked an energy crisis across the world, and working people are suffering. In the U.S., cost of living was already on the rise, but with the addition of increasing gas prices, the $625 million allotment to ICE at various World Cup stadiums seems even more ridiculous. Price gouging has also been a major complaint from U.S. soccer fans; Kansas City residents apparently saw a 87% increase in prices for the Algeria v Argentina game ($765 at minimum).

The sport has become a playground for rich investors from the U.S., Europe and the Gulf monarchies to snatch a pretty dime from the hands of working people. The same investors who are invested in wars and keeping people poor. The sport of soccer is ever increasingly being robbed out of the hands of working people.

Average ticket prices for the World Cup range upwards of multiple thousand dollars. The U.S. is set to make upwards of $13 billion in revenue from the World Cup. How much of this will benefit working people or bring the game closer to fans is gravely in doubt.

A World Cup year with such tremendous global upheaval, i.e. genocide in Gaza conducted by Israel, the energy blockade on Cuba, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and first lady, and the war on Iran perpetuated by the United States, has sidelined any joy for the game of soccer.

Galeano writes about the 2010 World Cup and reflects on the political climate in Soccer in Sun and Shadow, “Iran was fast becoming the gravest threat to humankind, thanks to an international campaign declaring it might have or maybe even does have nuclear weapons, as if it had been the Iranians who dropped the bomb on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ships in international waters carrying food, medicine, and toys to Palestine were being machine-gunned in one of the habitual criminal acts by which Israel punishes the Palestinians, as if they, who are Semites, were to blame for anti-Semitism and its horrors”

Much of the climate 16 years ago is reflected in the conditions in Palestine and Iran today.

The joy of sport is diminished by the decline of empire.

Localities unsuitable for games

The immense infrastructural pressure a tournament of the size of the World Cup puts on cities with limited public transportation is another big concern for working people. One example is the city of Arlington, Texas, which houses the AT&T Stadium (home of the Dallas Cowboys). The stadium is reportedly going to see upwards of $300 million in refurbishments to accommodate soccer-style seating for nine of the games it is scheduled to host.

The stadium is ill-equipped to handle tens of thousands of people flooding the streets. Local Arlingtonians have no ability to access the stadium without having to drive there. There is no public bus in the city. Arlington is in fact the largest city in the United States without public transportation. It is a city in the Dallas-Fort Worth area without a rail connection. The decision to host the cup in Arlington seems to have been pushed by the mayor and city council members, local bureaucrats of the Dallas sports commission, local team owners (Jerry Jones owner of Dallas Cowboys and Dan Hunt owner of FC Dallas). Arlington itself is set to spend upwards of $400 million to accommodate the games. The ones pushing the expenses expect a high return ($2 billion). It's pretty obvious that these expenses would have been better spent in uplifting the local community (for example, by building local tra