Fortress Football: Empire, Anti-Blackness and the Capture of the Beautiful Game

June 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Omar Abdulkadir Artan returns home

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will unfold during a period of intensifying U.S. militarism, imperial consolidation and border securitisation. Rather than standing outside these realities, the tournament risks functioning as spectacle for empire — projecting “global unity” while systems of extraction, anti-Blackness and unequal mobility deepen globally. Yet football mega-events have perhaps never been politically neutral. From the 1934 World Cup staged under Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime to the 1978 tournament hosted under Argentina’s military dictatorship, global football has repeatedly been mobilised to legitimise authoritarianism, elite power and geopolitical influence. The question is therefore not whether football is political, but whether the game can resist capture by corporations, militarised borders and increasingly authoritarian forms of governance.

The 2026 tournament arrives amid escalating geopolitical instability and declining U.S. legitimacy globally. Ongoing support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, confrontation with Iran, sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela, and the expansion of military infrastructures all form part of a broader architecture of imperial control. The United States maintains roughly 750 military bases globally and spends close to a trillion dollars annually on military infrastructure and warfare. In this context, the World Cup becomes useful soft power at a moment when U.S. authority is increasingly contested. Football is used to project openness and multiculturalism while borders harden and migration is criminalised. As sports scholar Jules Boykoff has argued, mega-events increasingly function as political spaces where expanded state power is normalised through spectacle.

FIFA meanwhile presents itself as politically neutral while functioning as one of the most powerful corporate institutions in global sport. FIFA generated approximately $7.5 billion during the Qatar World Cup cycle while host states and cities absorbed enormous public costs. Mega-events are routinely sold through the language of jobs, regeneration and economic opportunity, yet the outcomes are often far more uneven. The 2012 London Olympics were promoted as a vehicle for regenerating East London, yet researchers and local activists documented rising property values, displacement pressures and accelerated gentrification across areas such as Hackney Wick and Stratford. Similar dynamics emerged elsewhere. In South Africa 2010, FIFA exclusion zones restricted informal traders and local vendors from accessing lucrative commercial spaces around stadiums and fan parks. In Brazil 2014, stadium expansion and urban redevelopment displaced poor and largely Black communities while billions in public resources flowed into tournament infrastructure. In each case, the language of regeneration concealed a transfer of value: from public to private, from local to global, and from communities to corporations. Ticket pricing and corporate hospitality increasingly exclude ordinary supporters and working-class football culture. The World Cup increasingly resembles a heavily securitised corporate commodity rather than a genuinely public sporting festival.

The 2026 tournament also risks deepening border securitisation under the language of “World Cup security.” Canada, Mexico and the United States have already outlined trilateral security coordination frameworks for the tournament, including cross-border policing and security cooperation. Human rights groups have warned that the U.S. World Cup may create a climate of fear for fans, workers and journalists because of aggressive immigration enforcement and visa uncertainty including for players. Fans from countries outside the U.S. Visa Waiver Program must obtain visitor visas to attend matches in the United States. U.S. visa refusal rates remain extremely high for several African and Global South countries, meaning the tournament’s promise of “global unity” will be filtered through deeply unequal mobility regimes before many supporters even reach the stadium. Sponsors, executives and wealthy tourists move through expedited systems while supporters from Africa, the Caribbean, the Arab world and Latin America confront suspicion, delays and exclusion. The border is not outside the tournament. It is one of the tournament’s hidden infrastructures.

One of the opening matches of the tournament, Haiti versus Scotland, symbolically exposes many of these contradictions. Haiti represents one of the greatest anti-colonial victories in modern history: the only successful slave revolution resulting in the first Black republic in the Western hemisphere. France imposed an “independence debt” that extracted wealth from Haiti for generations after liberation, while the United States continued cycles of occupation and intervention. As Jemima Pierre argues, Haiti remains a powerful illustration of how anti-Blackness operates through intervention, debt, dispossession and containment rather than through overt racism alone.

The anti-Black architecture of the World Cup is similarly visible not only on the pitch but in how mega-events reorganise cities, ownership and economic opportunity. FIFA 2010 in South Africa demonstrated how the benefits of the tournament were often captured by global corporations while indigent and working-class communities were pushed to the margins. Informal traders and local vendors were excluded from lucrative trading zones around stadiums and fan parks while FIFA-controlled commercial spaces prioritised licensed sponsors and approved vendors. Similar dynamics emerged in Brazil 2014, where urban “beautification” and securitisation displaced poor and largely Black communities. Racism within football itself also remains deeply entrenched despite FIFA’s diversity campaigns. Black players continue to face racist abuse across elite football systems, from the treatment of Vinícius Júnior in Spain to repeated incidents across European football. As Amira Rose Davis reminds us, sport is inseparable from broader struggles over race, labour, citizenship and belonging. Ben Carrington similarly argues that modern sport often celebrates Black visibility while resisting deeper transformations in power and inequality.

Yet football became the world’s game because it was a working-class game: built in factories, docks, mines, plantations, townships and marginalised urban communities long before FIFA transformed it into corporate spectacle. The exclusion of ordinary supporters through pricing, securitisation and corporate hospitality is therefore not incidental — it is the displacement of the very communities that built the game itself. Football has historically carried anti-colonial and democratic possibilities, from Algerian liberation organising to township football under apartheid and Palestinian football under occupation.

The next World Cups, including those linked to Morocco and Saudi Arabia, will raise many of these same questions again: who controls global football, who profits from mega-events, whose labour and land are mobilised, and whether football can remain public culture rather than elite spectacle. Reclaiming football therefore means resisting its capture — by authoritarianism, by corporations, by militarised borders and by elite governance structures that increasingly displace the very communities that made the game global in the first place.

As Eduardo Galeano once wrote, football’s history is a struggle between the joy of the game and the demands of the market. The question is no longer whether football is political. The question is whether football can survive the militarised and unequal order increasingly governing the world itself.

(By Lebohang Liepollo Pheko and Anna Marie Collins)

(Photo Credit: Feisal Omar/Reuters)

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From 1976 to 2026, neither peace nor ceasefire have ever been keywords. So what?

June 6, 2026 by Leave a Comment

“The blues remembers everything the country forgot”
Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, “Bicentennial Blues”

What does it mean to forget the meaning of peace? Of ceasefire? Or, what does it mean to never have known?

In 1976, the year of the United States Bicentennial, the Welsh activist scholar Raymond Williams published Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Williams was careful to state, and repeat often, that his work was a vocabulary, not a dictionary, that it was imbedded in and woven through the social and political usages and tendencies of both his time and the times that produced his times, and the people that made and were made by, in and through those times. In 1976, Williams’ vocabulary included neither peace nor ceasefire. Nineteen words comprised the total of C-words. From capitalism to culture, C was the largest collection of words in his vocabulary. Peace did not figure in among the nine words beginning with P, from peasant to psychological. In 1976, no one gave peace a chance … and why would they? Has anything changed since then?

In 1976, the year of the United States Bicentennial, Gil-Scott Heron and Brian Jackson wrote and recorded Bicentennial Blues. The song investigates reasons the United States is the “home of the blues”. A few stanzas in, after the initial explanation, the song explains:

“The point is
That the blues has grown
The blues is grown now, full grown
And you can trace the evolution of the blues
On a parallel line with the evolution of this country
From Plymouth Rock to acid-rock
From 13 states to Watergate
The blues is grown
But not the home
The blues is grown
But the country has not
The blues remembers everything the country forgot

It’s a bicentennial year and the blues is celebrating a birthday
And it’s a bicentennial blues

America has got the blues and it’s a bicentennial edition
The blues view might amuse you
But make no mistake, it’s a bicentennial year
A year of hysterical importance
A year of historical importance”

And here we are, 2026, a year of hysterical importance, a year of historical importance, a year, five decades later, in which the blues remembers everything the country forgot.

In 1982, June Jordan published “Apologies to all the people in Lebanon”. The poem opens:

“I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said you shot the London Ambassador
and when that wasn’t true
they said so
what
They said you shelled their northern villages
and when U.N. forces reported that was not true
because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
They said they wanted simply to carve
a 25 mile buffer zone and then
they ravaged your
water supplies your electricity your
hospitals your schools your highways and byways all
the way north to Beirut because they said this
was their quest for peace
of mankind isn’t that obvious?”

Here we are, decades later, and the “quest for peace” remains invasion, destruction, devastation, and death, and we continue to say, “I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway?” Where is the vocabulary, where are the culture and society, in which peace and ceasefire are keywords, words of critical significance, rather than invitations to say, “So what?”

The illustration below appeared in yesterday’s issue of The Guardian. How many more times will we see such illustrations? So what?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Illustration: Fiona Katauskas / The Guardian)

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With “seclusion rooms” in schools, the war on children with disabilities continues

May 17, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Salmon River schools seclusion room

 

This week, NPR reported rampant abuse of Native American children in schools in a district in upstate New York: “Native kids with disabilities were held in wooden boxes. Sweeping reforms are coming”. The story is deeply disturbing. Schools built wooden boxes, “timeout” spaces”, and confined children with disabilities, children in majority Mohawk districts, into those boxes. Now the state says it’s going to do something, something `sweeping’, about those atrocities, about “seclusion rooms”. If history is any judge, they’ll need a big broom, one to cover the whole of the United States.

The story concerning upstate New York first broke last year. December 18: “Salmon River educators placed on leave over allegations that students were locked in box”: “Educators in the Salmon River Central School District have been placed on administrative leave, and the superintendent has been reassigned amid allegations that special needs students were restrained in wooden boxes at school. In addition, the district has shifted to remote learning for Friday.” At first, the Superintendent said the pictured box that was circulating on social media was not used to discipline children. Within two days, not only did he have to recant that, he had to admit there additional boxes. December 18: “Salmon River school admits to using wooden boxes as `timeouts’”: “Organizers said the box was designed for a specific 8-year-old student who is on the spectrum and non-verbal.” Faced with a child with serious needs, they bought a box to hold that eight-year—old. December 20: “A ‘Timeout Box’ in an Elementary School Draws Outrage: ‘This Is Not OK’”: “In a district in which more than 60 percent of students are Native American — and where schools sit alongside the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation — community members said that the episode recalled the well-documented harm and trauma that generations of Native American children faced in boarding schools.” In March, an “independent” study found “no abuse … but … many compliance violations”. The more recent study, by the state, has found that those breaches of “compliance” constituted abuse. Meanwhile, in New York State, seclusion rooms were already prohibited. But now that prohibition will have “sweeping” energies applied to it.

The story is disturbing in itself. It’s equally disturbing because it’s so unsurprising. Here’s some news from the past few months. March 11: “50 Minnesota school districts still using ‘seclusion’ rooms”: “More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms …. The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state.” Two weeks ago, in Amherst, Massachusetts, parents of children with disabilities urged their local school board to remove seclusion rooms, also known as “`reflection rooms’ or `blue rooms’ — padded isolation rooms”. At the end of February, the Virginia Beach School Board unanimously voted to limit the use of seclusion rooms. The change follows two years of discussion and “scrutiny” after the isolation of an 11-year-old student with autism led to his death: “Virginia Beach reported the highest number of seclusions among school divisions in Virginia in the 2024-25 school year.” There’s much sweeping needed.

Charles Bell, author of the recently published No Restraint: Disabled Children and Institutionalized Violence in America’s Schools, noted, “44 states have laws that limit the use of restraint and seclusion to emergency situations or ban it altogether. Minnesota, for example, bans the use of seclusion for children who are in third grade or younger. And 41 of these same states have laws that schools must notify parents each time their child is restrained or secluded. Various news organizations, such as ChalkBeat, have found that schools in North Carolina, Michigan and Illinois have violated restraint and seclusion laws. In some cases, schools use terms such as `quiet room’ and `timeout’ to circumvent laws that mandate reporting restraint and seclusion to parents and government agencies.”

What are these seclusion rooms teaching children, not only the children thrown into the boxes but also those who watch? We have asked this question since 2010. We asked in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023. It is too late to “discover” the atrocity and torture of seclusion rooms. The time for discovery is long over. Across the country, children with disabilities and children sitting with them are being traumatized and tortured, all in the name of education. What is the lesson here? What exactly are children meant to learn, the ones thrown into solitary, the ones watching their friends go into solitary? Why are we so invested in seclusion and restraint of children, generally, and of children living with disabilities, particularly?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo credit: Chrissy Onientatahse Jacobs / NPR)

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Empty words that empty us: ceasefire

May 13, 2026 by Leave a Comment

because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
June Jordan, “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”

Today, The New York Times (finally) thankfully revealed the truth we already know and have known: “Russia-Ukraine War Shows Cease-Fires Have Lost Meaning Under Trump”. For the past few years, we have watched Israel establish “ceasefires” with one entity and another, only to continue the devastation. The same goes for Russia in Ukraine. The same goes for Israel and the United States in Iran. The only problem with this “discovery”, with this truth is that it ignores a history of devastation masquerading as ceasefire and of the devastating ceasefire masquerading as peace.

In 1982, June Jordan wrote “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”, first published in the Village Voice, July 20, 1982. This is the poem as it appeared in 1982 in its entirety:

“Apologies to All the People in Lebanon

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said you shot the London Ambassador
and when that wasn’t true
they said so
what
They said you shelled their northern villages
and when U.N. forces reported that was not true
because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
They said they wanted simply to carve
a 25 mile buffer zone and then
they ravaged your
water supplies your electricity your
hospitals your schools your highways and byways all
the way north to Beirut because they said this
was their quest for peace
They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery
stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors
to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys
whose bodies
swelled purple and black into twice the original size
and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby
and then
they said this was brilliant
military accomplishment and this was done
they said in the name of self-defense they said
that is the noblest concept
of mankind isn’t that obvious?
They said something about never again and then
they made close to one million human beings homeless
in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed
40,000 of your men and your women and your children

But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said they were victims. They said you were
Arabs.
They called      your apartments and gardens      guerrilla
strongholds.
They called      the screaming devastation
that they created       the rubble.
Then they told you to leave, didn’t they?

Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped
from their hotshot fighter jets?
They told you to go.
One hundred and thirty-five thousand
Palestinians in Beirut and why
didn’t you take the hint?
Go!
There was the Mediterranean: You
could walk into the water and stay
there.
What was the problem?

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that
paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks
that they used to massacre your family

But I am not an evil person
The people of my country aren’t so bad

You can expect but so much
from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch
American TV

You see my point;

I’m sorry.
I really am sorry.”

Later, an epigram was added: “Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983.”

In 2024, Faisal Mohyuddin wrote “Ceasefire Haiku”. At the center of this sequence of haiku, these four verses:

“Shame: a legacy
Your descendants will decry,
Bemoan, be cursed by.
____

To remain silent
Is consent, is wrong, is more
Deadly than more bombs.
___

You can’t really see
Me, except as your conscience-
Cleanser, your blindfold.
___

When I condemn crimes,
You call me culprit, settle
My heart to scrub yours.”

Forty-two years separate those two poems. Easily half of Lebanon’s population have lived all of their lives in a “ceasefire” in which the guns never ceased firing and the bombs never stopped falling. In fact, easily three quarters of the world have lived their lives in the ceasefire, a ceasefire in which guns never ceased firing and the bombs never stopped falling. While Trump’s actions are egregious and worse and Netanyahu’s programme of genocide is a legacy our descendants will decry … they are not a new invention. They are merely the latest phases in this, the Age of Ceasefire. May peace be with you. I’m sorry. I really am sorry.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Aliaksei Lepik / Unsplash / LAist)

 

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On which seashore of endless worlds do children meet?

May 7, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Mother and child, Portland, Oregon

 

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous.
On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they
weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the
seashore of worlds.
Rabindranath Tagore, “On the Seashore”

On the imagined seashore of endless worlds children meet, shout, dance, build, smile, play. In the real world … children suffer direct assaults, from the skies and other forces, children suffer environmental assaults, children suffer. This is the world of the past week, the world we adults have built, are building.

May started with two articles concerning the state, or statelessness, of children in the United Kingdom. “How Britain’s housing crisis contributes to its declining healthy life expectancy”: “The number of people living in temporary accommodation has risen dramatically, reaching over 130,000 households at the beginning of 2025. This is a 156% increase compared with 2010, largely driven by the poor affordability and insecurity of the private rented sector and lack of social housing. Temporary accommodation is inadequate housing, particularly for children. Living in temporary accommodation was a contributing factor in the deaths of at least 104 children in England between 2019 and 2025, 76 of whom were under one year of age.” “UK’s sky-high rents are endangering children. Why won’t government act?”: “Adam’s untimely death wasn’t just caused by illness – it was the result of conditions that made illness inevitable; the daily violence shaping the lives of millions of children and young people entangled in an unforgiving private rented sector across the UK. While the effects of damp and mould on growing lungs have rightly gained salience, policymakers still turn a blind eye to how record-high rents threaten the life chances of our youngest and future generations … By the end of last year, 176,130 children were living in temporary accommodation in England, the twelfth consecutive record high and a 6% increase on the previous year.” Thanks to the “unforgiving” economic environment, in the United Kingdom children in low- and moderate-income households will live shorter, harder lives … if they live that long. It’s public knowledge, wrapped in public and private shrouds of silence.

Today, May 7, The Guardian reports “The Trump administration is deleting government data. From infant deaths to hunger, here are 5 ways it’s hurting Americans”. Of the five ways the Trump administration’s elimination of data, and of shared knowledge, is hurting “Americans”, three of them constitute a direct assault on children and youth: “Babies born in the US have a higher chance of dying than almost all other high-income countries. We’ve stopped tracking why …. Hunger is rampant in the US. But the government is no longer asking people about it …. More than half of trans youth have considered suicide. But any mention of trans people has been deleted from a critical survey.” The elected government of the United States does not care if babies born in the US die; does not care if “children skipped meals or didn’t eat for a whole day because their families did not have enough money”; does not care if children and youth consider or commit suicide. The State has declared war on its children, and asks them a simple question, “How do you like your death (so far), quick and painful, or slow and painful?”

Today, again, ProPublica reports, “Trump’s Deportation Campaign Has Harmed Scores of Kids With Tear Gas, Pepper Spray”: “Kids were in cars, at home and walking to school when tear gas or pepper spray left them wheezing, coughing and struggling to breathe. The weapons are especially toxic to kids.” ProPublica found that at least 79 children, some infants, were harmed by tear gas or pepper spray. One video “shows them hurling tear gas canisters at protesters without apparent provocation; then, with the streets already flooded with white smoke, a Customs and Border Protection agent wearing a body camera shoots pepper balls before muttering, “Fuck yeah,” and shouting, “Woo!””.

Children sitting in their homes are choking, crying, “I can’t breathe”. There, on the seashore of endless worlds where children meet, they can’t breathe. Woo!

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Leah Nash/ ProPublica)

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On record-breaking: When you care enough to send the very best …

May 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

“Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so”
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Day in Autumn”

Today, it is reported that homelessness in Western New York state hit “a record high”. The current level is “the highest recorded since data collection began in 2005, and 24% up from just last year.” Today it’s also reported that “England is facing its twelfth consecutive record high in the number of children living in temporary accommodation.” Elsewhere, it was reported, “The number of children who are now homeless and living in temporary accommodation in England is at the highest level since records began as the country’s spiralling housing crisis has left more people than ever without a home.” Finally, last week it was reported, “A quarter of the way through 2026, eviction filings in Minnesota are outpacing 2025, the highest year for filings on record …. In Minneapolis, where much of Operation Metro Surge was focused, filings climbed sharply between January and March, surpassing last year’s rate of eviction filings in the city. And statewide through mid-April, eviction filings are still above 2025’s record pace.”

What is a record? a record high? a record pace? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, from its first appearance to today, a record is “the documentation or recording of facts, events, etc.” At its root, it meant “piece of evidence about past events, memory, account, story, discussion, negotiation, agreement, judgement.” Additionally, a record is “the best performance or most remarkable event of its kind; spec. the best officially recorded achievement of a particular kind in a competitive sport.” “To break (also beat) the record” means “to surpass the previous best performance in a particular activity”.

Month in, month out, somewhere “it is reported” that evictions or homelessness are breaking the record, are surpassing “the best performance or most remarkable event of its kind, the best officially recorded achievement of a particular kind.” On one hand, we have the situation in which evictions are not recorded. There is no national data base that records evictions or eviction filings. We have the great work of the Princeton University Eviction Lab as well as innumerable other local and regional dashboards. None of them records “informal evictions” and “self-evictions”, but they do great work, nevertheless.

On the other hand, what is the point of keeping a record if little to no substantive action emerges from the recording. We have records and no records, memory without a trace of memory, calls and cries without reception or echo. Every day, we surpass the previous best performance in the particular activity that is merely ourselves.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image credit: Guerrilla Girls, “What’s the Difference between a POW and a Homeless Person?” / Tate)

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The racist `normal’ of deed theft: near death, near-death, or nearly dead

April 28, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Sustaining today’s waves of spectacular violence is a web of everyday violence, the violence of the normal. This week’s example of that is deed theft. In Brooklyn last Wednesday four people were arrested at a protest against deed theft “after gathering outside a brownstone in support of a woman who is fighting attempts to evict her from the home.” The woman in question is Carmella Charrington, and her family has owned their home, that building, for decades. But like so many other families of color, and in New York especially Black families, ownership does not convey dignity, security or intergenerational wealth. For too many Black families, home ownership means living with a target on their backs.

One of the four arrested demonstrators was New York City Council member Chi Ossé. The protest occurred Wednesday, April 22. On Friday, April 24, New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani created the Office of Deed Theft Prevention. Mayor Mamdani began his remarks with a reminder that none of this is new: “In 1644, a man named Paulo d’Angola was deeded land on the corner of Bleecker and Thompson, in what would later become Greenwich Village. He and 10 others were the first enslaved people brought to New York. And after 20 years of bondage, they had won their liberation. Property held a promise of dignity, stability and opportunity. Property was the physical proof of freedom. After the English took over New York City in 1664, they seized the land that belonged to him and his fellow freedmen. Centuries have passed, but still, d’Angola’s story is no relic of history. It is one deeply familiar to too many in this city. I am talking about deed theft. Deed theft not only disproportionately robs Black and Brown New Yorkers of their homes, it also robs them of the stability that a home provides.”

This story of theft is no relic of history. It is the normal. Last year, the Furman Center noted, “In 2024, the New York City Sheriff’s office reported at least 3,500 deed theft complaints alone over the previous decade. That number is likely an undercount because not all victims of deed theft report the issue to the police.” The New York Times has reported repeatedly on the plague of deed theft. 2015: Real Estate Shell Companies Scheme to Defraud Owners Out of Their Homes. 2019: Why Black Homeowners in Brooklyn Are Being Victimized by Fraud. 2022: He Runs a New York Real Estate Empire. Did He Steal It? Yes, he did steal it, from Black communities, households, families.

While the Office of Deed Theft Prevention is welcome, the question of the accepted prevalence of this form of violence against Black communities remains. The problem was documented for years and often, and yet “somehow” continued to grow.

As Marissa Jackson Sow noted, in her 2022 article “Whiteness as Contract”, “Black people’s possession of property—as owners or occupiers—is consistently and persistently threatened, whether by deed theft or discriminatory property tax assessments, by unfair utility pricing structures, immigration policy, or modern-day lynch mobs. Black people are tenants at best and trespassers at worst; they are natural-born persons, but not part of the American body politic; they are not contractors, but often the objects of the contract or the consideration therefore. Because Black people are present but not persons within the United States, they are not legally or politically alive; moreover, even physically speaking, while alive, Black people are often near death, near-death, or nearly dead.”

In early February, Chi Ossé and other housing advocates called on New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to impose a temporary eviction moratorium on deed theft cases. It’s a matter of life and death, of beginning to address the normal in which Black people are near death, near-death, or nearly dead.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Graham Dickie, The New York Times)

 

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I do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again: is this the end of childhood?

April 22, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Five years ago, the United Kingdom public was “shocked” to learn the story of child Q, a 15-year-old Black girl in Hackney. Child Q was at school. She was “suspected” of having cannabis. The police were called. The police strip-searched the child. The child was menstruating. Of course, the police found no contraband: “A council report found that racism had been a likely factor in her treatment.” Child Q said, “Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe, took me away from the people who were supposed to protect me and stripped me naked, while on my period. I can’t go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up. I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again. But I do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again.” Today, Dame Rachel De Souza, the UK’s Children’s Commissioner, released a report, “Police powers and children – strip searching and use of force.” In the intervening five years, many children have been strip-searched. A disproportionate number of those children are Black.

On one hand, the number of reported strip-searches has dropped. That’s it for “good news”. On the other hand, “Children of Black ethnicity are more likely to be strip searched than children of other ethnicities …. Between July 2023 and June 2024, Black children were almost 8 times more likely to be strip searched than White children and around 5 times more likely than Asian children, meaning there has been no improvement to disproportionate strip searching of Black children since the last data collection period. Over a quarter (27%) of strip searches between July 2023 and June 2024 were of a child aged 15 years old or younger …. There are ethnic disparities in both the use of force and the contextual factors surrounding the use of force. Black children are over-represented in use of force incidents and higher proportions of Black children have their size, gender, or build listed as a contextual factor in the use of force report than their Asian, White and Mixed ethnicity counterparts.”

The report finds this State violence committed on the bodies, souls, minds and lives of Black children results from “adultification bias”: “The disproportionate use of force against Black children can be attributed to adultification bias where racialised children, particularly Black children, are perceived as older, more dangerous, and more guilty than their White peers. This bias shifts the police’s focus away from a child’s actual vulnerability and children are more likely to be treated with suspicion than raising safeguarding concerns.”

The police “saw” adults where there were children. Why? Because they were trained to. Trained as police officers, trained as adults, trained as people living in a racist society.

The report concludes, “The racial disproportionality in strip searching Black children has seen no signs of improvement.” Finally, the report notes that “the vast majority of children are still being searched for drugs, rather than weapons, where the risk of immediate harm is less clear.”

We live in an age in which children are disposed of like so much worthless garbage, largely because of the color of their skin. Remember the slaughter of 168 schoolgirls caused by the U.S. bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Iran? That was February 28,2026, less than eight weeks ago. Outside of the schoolgirls’ families and communities, who’s talking about that today? Where is the horror? What was “the risk of immediate harm”? How has it become so easy for adults to forget our responsibility to protect children from harm?

In June 2025, an Egyptian mother and her five children were arrested and thrown into Dilley detention center, in Texas. Her 18-year-old daughter, Habiba El-Gamal, wrote a letter which concluded, “This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.” That letter was read to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. As of yesterday, the El-Gamal family were still held at Dilley.

Something has been broken, something in us, something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix. We have become the risk of immediate harm. Can we still say we do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: London World)

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In New South Wales, where are the First Nations women? In prison, still discarded and ignored

March 19, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Last week, the New South Wales Auditor General released a report, “Support for First Nations peoples in custody and post-release to reduce reoffending.” To absolutely no one’s surprise, the report shows that the state has failed to address the needs of incarcerated (or any) Indigenous people, or, better put, the state has successfully tortured Indigenous adults and children. As today’s Guardian notes, the “damning” report found “the number of Aboriginal adults in the state’s prisons reached record levels in December, exceeding the previous high that was set six months earlier. Last year also marked a record number of Indigenous deaths in custody, after 12 people died. In the decade to 2021, the number of young people in custody was steadily declining. But data shows trend has now reversed. The number of youths in prison overall increased by 34% in the two years from June 2023. Meanwhile, more than 60% of First Nations adults released from prison in 2023 reoffended within 12 months, according to the latest data.” What the Guardian report missed is the centrality of gender. First Nation women and girls live and die and suffer at the heart of these horrifying, and again altogether unsurprising, numbers. Where are the women?

Consider the numbers: “As at December 2025, 33.9% of adults in NSW custody (4,452 people) were First Nations, the highest number and proportion on record. First Nations women made up 44.8% of all women in custody and First Nations men made up 33.1% of all men in custody…. As at December 2025, 2,196 (36.1%) adults on remand were First Nations (pending further court action, usually after being refused bail), the highest number and proportion on record. 48.7% of all women on remand were First Nations, and 35% of all men on remand were First Nations.”

The report found that First Nation incarcerated adults often have greater difficulties accessing programs and supports because they are “overclassified”. Overclassified means they are disproportionately punished for minor offenses. The study found that between 2023 and 2024, the average rate of First Nations women charged with offenses while in custody was 101; the average rate for non-First Nations women as 51. Again, that means that out of 100 First Nations women, 101 were charged with offenses.

3.4% of the New South Wales population are First Nation adults and young people. In December 2025, 33.9% of New South Wales prison population were First Nations. That is the highest proportion on record.

Again, none of this is surprising. In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a report, which noted, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population, and 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous peers.” A version of that statement, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population”, had appeared in major reports in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,2016, and 2017. Now it’s 2026, and where are the women? In cages that pass for justice, in systems that ignore their needs, desires, lives, humanity, in a world that discards their past, present and future.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Kelly Flannagan, “Trying To Do My Time” / The Torch)

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“This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix”

March 15, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”
Robert Frost, Mending Wall

When do we start to care? What is the threshold of our concern? Gordon Brown was once Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a country with its own blood splattered history of abusing asylum seekers, especially children. Last week, in response to the U.S. bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh school, the slaughter of 168 schoolgirls, Gordon Brown wrote, “The killing of a reported 168 people, primarily schoolgirls, in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab in Iran has shaken to its very core the conscience of the world ….No child should ever become collateral damage in a conflict.” Brown then goes on to call for “the creation of a dedicated international criminal court for crimes against children”. As Gordon notes, this event is not isolated. Children are killed, assaulted, destroyed, broken from Gaza and the West Bank to Lebanon to Iran … and beyond. Gordon notes, “We cannot afford to stand by as yet another established international law governing the conduct of war is broken, apparently with impunity.” Something is broken … something in us. And it’s not only in “foreign lands”. It’s down the street, around the corner. Ask the five children of the El Gamal family, who have been detained in Dilley since June 2025. They wrote letters which were presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Wednesday.

The children are Habiba El-Gamal, 18; a sixteen-year old son; a nine-year-old daughter; and five-year-old twins, one boy one girl.

This is the beginning of Habiba El Gamal’s letter: “My name is Habiba Soliman. I’m eighteen years old and I have been detained in Dilley, Texas since June 2025 with my family. Every morning we wake up wondering how much more of this we can take because nine months has felt like an eternity.” Habiba graduated high school in May. She “was chosen as one of the `best and brightest’ students in the state and was recognized by a picture with the mayor with a scholarship from the Colorado Springs Gazette. She wants to be a doctor and dreams of Harvard medical school.” She stills dream of Harvard … and she dreams of freedom: ““We forgot what it feels like to be free. We miss what it feels like to wake up in our own beds with our phones next to us. We dream about how we want our first meal together as a family to be pizza and then cake. We dream of a time when each one of us will be in school and will be able to work on his future. We dream of a normal life where we still are able to make a difference in the world.” We dream we dream we dream … But, Habiba adds, “this place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.”

No child should ever become collateral damage. This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: 9-year-old child / Texas Tribune)

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