Month: November 2026

By Spilt Coffee & Bad Hairday
	In the northwoods of so-called Wisconsin, they are building a new oil pipeline route around the sovereign Bad River reservation, leaving scars on the earth in their wake. We are watching them tear into the earth, and resisting as best as we can. In the summer of 2026, amidst the massive earth moving machines barreling down the highways, out-of-town pickup trucks following and harassing locals, and the non-stop sound of construction in the woods, there was heated chatter in the newspapers and cafes, people feeding each other and meeting in libraries and dance halls, and gatherings of prayer and protest alike. 
	Line 5 is an oil pipeline built in 1953 through the Great Lakes region without the consent of local Tribal Nations. It has leaked more than 1.1 million gallons of oil in its lifetime, and just this summer tragically spilled over a million gallons of liquid natural gas, inflicting major health hazards on residents and workers and contaminating an immense area just east of Ashland, WI.
	Enbridge owns Line 5. They're the multi-national corporation responsible for building and operating the expanded Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, which faced over a decade of resistance. Enbridge operates pipelines crossing many midwestern and eastern states, trafficking crude oil and natural gas products in and out of Canada. Instead of cleaning up the old & leaking pipelines, Enbridge is now building new sections of pipe along the Line 5 route: under the lake bed in the Straits of Mackinac, and a re-route around Mashkiiziibii (the Bad River Reservation). This re-route is a direct attack on Indigenous sovereignty: when Bad River said no more pipelines on their land, Enbridge retorted by putting the pipe just outside of the reservation border.
	Enbridge is clawing through sensitive wetlands with heavy machinery. They use the city of Ashland's municipal water, contaminating it with a secret industry mix of toxic chemicals that enable them to drill. This drilling has failed several times: as of late October 2026, 10 known frac-outs have occurred, where the clay-and-chemicals drilling slurry burst from the drill path and flooded the surrounding areas, choking rivers, streams and wetlands. They've unintentionally 'released' oil 11 times, and breached an aquifer that provides drinking water to local people's homes. Michel's, the subcontractor managing most construction activities for Enbridge, has been so problematic that the DNR has had to come out and issue them... a paper slap on the wrist.
	The resistance to Line 5 during active construction has been reminiscent of the many land, water, and community defense campaigns that have come before it. Inspired by the week of action against the ICE occupation in Minneapolis, a network of neighbors, water protectors, eco punks, community organizers, and agitated locals came together to make a public showing of resistance in Ashland WI. It wasn't hosted by a coalition of nonprofits or established organizations, it was just folks who decided that they couldn't let construction continue on unaddressed. 
	From there, we saw a slow ramp-up in the informational meetings, rallies, and talks, in the prayer and memorial walks, and civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action. Water protectors have put themselves in the way of construction work in order to stop it: walking into construction zones, camping out in threatened waterways, setting a tree sit, holding prayer lodges and ceremonies. News reports from Superior and Ashland this fall show us that Enbridge's work in Wisconsin is no exception to the rule that they are also fought with fire: evidenced by two incinerated worksites and one burned office, in concert with many other incidents of vandalism and property damage. 
	There is legitimate — if not widespread — public support for a wide diversity of tactics in our home, including property destruction. We've overheard cafe chatter exclaiming: "that's how it's done!" and applause from longtime water protectors asking for more of all of it. 
	Some of these actions have faced state repression; the Ashland and Iron County police departments are functionally on a paid retainer with Enbridge to respond to pipeline resistance. There's a law on Wisconsin's books that makes it a felony to trespass on 'critical infrastructure', which includes pipeline corridors. So far, the open cases include charges of disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice, resisting arrest, trespassing and ordinance violations, ranging from misdemeanors to felonies.
	There's an ongoing window of opportunity for solidarity. Resist from every corner! Enbridge has operations across the territories currently held by the US and Canada. They've poisoned our woods and streams, and many of yours too. Some of our indigenous relatives have expressed exhaustion and disappointment in allies who refuse to plan resistance for themselves, instead waiting for instructions or permission from tribal members. Settlers on turtle island have an obligation to address the problems of settler society. You can join us in fighting this WI reroute here where the dragon's soft belly is exposed, or fight them where they snake through MN, MI, or TX. Or better still, Alberta, Canada, where their long entrenchment makes them think they're untouchable. 
	Because Enbridge is in many places, you don't need to be *here* to fight alongside us. Because Enbridge has many weak points, you don't need to commit to one tactic to find success. Timing is one factor we encourage everyone to be stricter about: the longer Enbridge is allowed to harm the land, the more our scope of possibilities shrinks. Destroyed wetland peat ecosystems like ours can never be fully remediated, and what we all lose will take many lifetimes to heal.
	Many of us are not convinced that we will win. We're resisting anyways. We show up to the fight without the belief that we'll be victorious. We look at the odds, know our own capacities, see who all is turning out, and notice that the crowd is thin. We try to be honest about the probability of this pipe being built. We reckon with the serious and lasting ecological harm being perpetrated, and we acknowledge that campaigns with more resources and better conditions lost. And still we resist, because it has its own dignity, because in fighting we find each other. Resistance is a value not conditional on an outcome. 

By Soren Dawson

The Saharawi are the indigenous people of Western Sahara, a territory in northwest Africa bordered by the Atlantic ocean to the West, Morocco to the North, and Mauritania to the South. Before colonization, Saharawi people lived here in nomadic or semi-nomadic communities, herding their livestock in the Sahara Desert when the rains turned it green. The same landscapes that fed them inspired a rich tradition of poetry and music that centers the beauty of this land and the peoples’ relationship with it. 

In the late 1800s, Western Sahara was colonized by Spain. The Spanish government repressed Saharawi culture and imposed education that enforced colonial rule, teaching the Spanish language and history instead of Saharawi. After nearly a century of occupation, in the early 1970s decolonization was on the horizon. Saharawis organized for an independent Western Sahara forming the Polisario Front in 1973, a liberation movement utilizing political advocacy and armed resistance to advance Saharawi self-determination. International consensus and law agreed that the Saharawi people had the only legitimate claim to sovereignty in Western Sahara, despite the claims of Morocco and Mauritania that they should have control of the land and the rich natural resources there. A decade earlier abundant deposits of phosphate had been discovered, and the coast is home to large populations of ecologically and economically valuable fish and other sea life. Instead of complying with international law and basic decency, Spain signed agreements with Morocco and Mauritania, and with the Spanish withdrawal came a US and France backed Moroccan invasion from the North and Mauritanian invasion from the South. 

Saharawis fought back. In 1979 the Polisario Front successfully forced Mauritania to give up its colonial ambitions in Western Sahara, but the war continued with Morocco until a 1991 ceasefire, which promised a referendum on self determination. That referendum has not happened, prevented by Morocco. The ceasefire still held until November of 2020, when Morocco attempted to occupy a buffer zone supposedly restricted to UN personnel. Active combat resumed, and continues as of this writing. 

Amid decades of violence and ethnic cleansing by Morocco, most Saharawis have been forced to flee Western Sahara, and now live in refugee camps in Algeria. They are prevented from returning home by the Moroccan government, and rely primarily on international aid for survival. Those who remain in Western Sahara are subjected to intense cultural and political repression including disappearance, torture, and retaliation against the families of activists. 

In addition to artillery and torture, Morocco uses cultural production and tourism as weapons for the ethnic cleansing of Western Sahara. “The Odyssey,” partially filmed in violation of international law in Dakhla, Western Sahara, is one example of how mainstream media is weaponized by the Moroccan state. This movie was filmed without any consultation with or even acknowledgment of the existence of Saharawi people. Instead, the production collaborated with the Moroccan Ministry of Culture, acting as if Dakhla was part of Morocco. The director and others involved in the production have never responded to calls to recognize Saharawi sovereignty and to not use the scenes filmed on occupied land without their permission, calls made a year before the movie came out. This is the playbook for laundering ethnic cleansing with mainstream entertainment, and we can expect to see it reproduced everywhere colonial regimes attempt to cement their power, from Western Sahara to Palestine and across the globe. 

We can make these attempts to use western pop culture to erase the Saharawi people backfire, and hold accountable those complicit in this colonial project. This is an opportunity for more people to learn about Western Sahara and hear from Saharawi people. Many people, even people very passionate and informed about other struggles for indigenous sovereignty, have never heard of Western Sahara. Few people know that the US recognized Morocco’s occupation in 2020 under the Abraham Accords in exchange for Morocco recognizing Israel, or that there has been strong solidarity between Palestine and Western Sahara for many decades. It’s past time to recognize the liberation of Western Sahara as inseparable from any true movement for liberation, and take action for a free Western Sahara! 

1. Take action now

Learn more about the history, present, and future of Western Sahara from Saharawi journalists, activists, and storytellers in the refugee camps and occupied Western Sahara: www.saharawivoice.org/

Boycott and Divest – Boycott corporations that operate in occupied Western Sahara, and boycott “The Odyssey.” Learn more about resource extraction in Western Sahara from Western Sahara Resource Watch and the call to boycott “The Odyssey” from coverage on Democracy Now on July 17, 2026. 

Pressure politicians to recognize the right to independence and self-determination of Western Sahara, end aid and weapons sales to Morocco, and revoke US endorsement of Morocco’s claim to the territory. More info: solidarityrising.com and festivalsahara.org

By Snakey

Amidst the October 2026 surge in ICE abductions in Northern California, two Oaklanders were beaten and abducted on October 16th, one in Emeryville, one in Oakland. Both were injured badly enough to require hospitalization. One was taken to San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH), and the other to Oakland’s Wilma Chan Highland Hospital (AHS). The person taken to SFGH was able to leave the hospital to freedom in three days. The unfortunate person hospitalized at the AHS hospital did not fare so well, and was disappeared into ICE custody after six days. 

Why the difference?

In short, past organizing fought and changed SFGH policies and procedures to prepare for this situation – policies and procedures that Alameda Health System still lacks.

After intense organizing in 2024-2025 by SFGH hospital staff, SFGH hospital had established policies and procedures that enabled the patient immediate access to lawyers and community support – a writ of habeas corpus was immediately filed, was approved and the patient walked away from ICE and back home after three days. 

Across the bay, Alameda Health System (AHS) hospital administrators ignored repeated staff and union demands for appropriate policies and procedures for ICE-detained patients. AHS hospital administrators collaborated with ICE agents, allowing agents to occupy a floor of the hospital and guard the handcuffed patient through 30 ICE agent shift changes. Hospital lawyers prohibited communication with or about the patient among staff and community, imposing a bubble of secrecy. Outside, community rapid responders carried out a constant six-day monitoring presence, identifying and logging 23 ICE vehicles and dozens of agents. AHS in cooperation with Alameda County sheriffs enabled ICE agents to assemble their vehicles in a secure, gated location. On October 23 evening, the patient was led on a walker by sheriff and ICE agents and bundled into an ICE vehicle convoy which brutally sped away past community monitors unable to stop the patients’ disappearance into the ICE gulag system.

Disturbingly, during the six days the patient was held incommunicado at AHS, no one, hospital administrators nor sheriffs, asked agents to show a signed warrant. ICE never had a warrant. The patient was unlawfully held – kidnapped – and both AHS and county sheriffs had openly violated Alameda County ICE Free Zone law and the sheriff’s own Zero-Contact Policy with immigration officials.

Community responders are fighting to hold AHS, the County and the sheriffs accountable. Hospital staff and union are demanding key changes to hospital protocols. It is critical that we all work to connect hospital and health care staff to community responders in our collective fight against ICE and for our communities. We stand in solidarity with Chloe Renae Freeman, the Ann Arbor, Michigan nurse charged by the federal government in October of helping an illegally detained ICE patient exit the hospital to freedom. POWER TO THE HEALERS.

By Two Organizers of Bay Area Buyers’ Clubs

Facing a potential ICE crackdown in the Bay in August 2025, organizers in Oakland started the ICE Out of the Bay Neighborhood Defense Assemblies, to establish robust networks of solidarity that can protect our communities. More recently, we have built a new initiative from these Assemblies, partnering with rural food producers in a politicized project of organizing produce “buyers clubs” that support migrant farmers while reducing our reliance on corporate food systems. This article explains a little about our motivation and our model for organizing.

Initially, six Oakland neighborhoods began meeting and training around ICE defense. Those that remain continue to build relationships, plan, train together, and patrol our neighborhoods. In late 2026, ICE seems to be increasing its presence after a year of relative quiet, reinvigorating the Assemblies. Lessons from the Zapatistas, Rojava, and the networks that were able to respond quickly to ICE’s Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, teach us that long term autonomous local organizing and relationships are the robust structures needed for ongoing support and solidarity in both acute crises and the everyday struggle against encroachment by the state and capitalism into our lives. They are also the structures in which we can imagine building something else — we can do much more than fight, we can also build together! To live well, we must create alternative ways to take care of ourselves that confront the exploitative, extractive, and individualist ways that capitalism forces us to survive. As we have learned from our political predecessors (specifically the legacy of the Black Panthers and the Food Conspiracies of the Bay Area), communities that feed each other can defend each other. Now more than ever, food is a vital point of mutual support and connection.

To that end, our anti-ICE formations have become a platform to move from urban defense to urban-rural organizing that strengthens our material autonomy. Our Neighborhood Assemblies are now organizing direct bulk purchasing of produce from campesinás in nearby areas who have organized themselves into the Coalición de Pequeños Agricultores de California (Coalition of Small Farmers). We receive food directly from the farmers and distribute it amongst ourselves, on a weekly basis. 

The Coalition’s farmworkers-turned-tenant-farmers utilize agroecological practices on 17 farms across about 200 acres. They face a market that favors Big Ag mega-corporations which exploit workers, pollute the water, the soil and the food itself, and then extract value across the distribution chain. On some Coalition farms, 1-2 people work up to 10 acres of land with limited access to equipment like tractors. In return for their hard work, standard aggregate distributors pay these farmers as little as 100 time less per unit than what we pay in the grocery store — literally pennies on the dollar. Just as we’ve seen gas prices soar in 2026 due to the US and Israel’s imperialist war in Iran, food prices are also projected to climb as much as 6 pecent this year. When inflation is high, grocery chains often raise their prices even higher. The cost of living in the Bay Area is already out of control, and instead of forking over so much money to distributors and grocery stores, we are organizing with our neighbors to provision ourselves.

By aggregating our demand across the neighborhood, we lower our costs while still maximizing direct support for farmers. Our self-organized ‘buyers clubs’ give us the chance to resist the ways that mega corporations alienate people in urban centers from their food production, and begin to break dependence on the production systems that isolate us, profit off of us, and diminish our capacity to live healthy and free lives. 

We were initially inspired by the Los Angeles Tenants Union, who also began purchasing and building relationships with the Coalición this year based on organizing efforts of the Plurinational Land Reform in California Working Group. Over the last 6 months we built a similar model in the Bay, with 7 neighborhood formations and 2 student co-ops. 

Farmers are organizing in their context, as we are organizing in ours — this project links our political struggle across territories. While we recognize there are many small farmers who grow food in and near the Bay, and many avenues to obtain free surplus produce (largely siphoned off the typical supply chain), we are choosing to work directly with a coalition that holds a shared political vision of the future: one that directly challenges mega-capitalist markets and extractive forms of agriculture, while building the collective power of tenant farmers and campesinás. 

A buyer’s club is only possible when robust autonomous organizing in both urban and rural contexts join together. When this happens, we also extend each other’s political horizons and new worlds become possible! But this requires intentional relationship building. As of late 2026, Bay Area buyers’ clubs have begun solidarity brigades to visit the farmers, support materially (although in a very limited way) the farmwork, and get to know each other socially and politically. 

A significant portion of California farmworkers are migrants at increased risk of targeting by ICE. By building material and relational connections with these farmers through a buyers’ club, our localized community defense and support efforts can ripple out to the communities we depend upon for food. This relationship may extend to supporting farmworkers during potential ICE surges in rural areas, supporting other farmworker struggles against corporate land and delivery monopolies, and fundraising for crucial equipment like tractors, harvest support etc. As we grow our movement, the possibilities of bidirectional solidarity are revealing themselves. Our struggle to protect our neighbors, feed each other, take care of the land and protect our neighborhoods from corporate consolidation — whether in Watsonville or in Oakland — are linked. We protect us – all of us!

Unlike a CSA:

1. We are not just buying locally, we are buying politically! This project directly connects community organizing in urban spaces to farmers organizing in a rural context, linking our struggles and our vision for the future. 
2. This is not a centralized or individual delivery service. We all have to organize to make it happen. The farmers organize in their context, aggregating produce, sharing resources etc. while we organize in our area, making orders, coordinating delivery and pickup, making distro boxes, etc. We are building trust in a shared system in which everyone participates and pays what they can, to ensure that anyone can receive food and that the farmers stay well resourced!
3. This is an opportunity to connect and organize with our neighbors, share food, provision ourselves and bring new folks into anti-ICE assemblies. Starting to organize around our food needs can be a great way for people to get involved in neighborhood organizing.
4. Organizing around material reproduction is a long game strategy to render our dependence on capitalism and the state obsolete and to resource ourselves to fight back better. This project is carried out in that spirit!

Radical Spaces #145

Compiled by Jesse D. Palmer

Boy do we need radical and DIY third spaces right now for face-to-face community — unmediated by corporations, hierarchical structures and their computer networks. At best, they’re repositories of home-spun practices and values that prioritize human beings, pleasure, beauty, creativity, freedom, love and the earth over mindless competition, conformity and greed. They can also provide a framework for decentralized mobilization and mutual aid in times of crisis. Here’s a few new spaces Slingshot has learned of since we published the 2027 Slingshot organizer contact list. Wouldn’t your life be fuller if you plugged into a space near you? We post updates online at slingshotcollective.org.

Mind Virus Counter Culture Books & Media – Fargo, ND

Book and zine store highlighting the “weird and obscure” that hosts events. 124 8th St N, Fargo, ND 58102 701-515-9688

Wheelhouse – Salt Lake City, UT

An infoshop with a lending library, radical bookstore, arts gallery and community space that hosts mutual aid organizing, talks, films and events. 451 E. Broadway, 2nd Level, Salt Lake City, UT 84111 385-549-3298 wheelhousesaltlake.org

Confluence Paducah – Paducah, KY

A book and record store that aims to be a “sober third place … inspired by the capacity of music and literature to bring people together.” They host community events and live music and genre-specific evenings (Tues: Metal!, Wed: Punk, Hardcore, Thurs: Indie, Folk, Alt-Rock, Fri: Electronic, Sat: Hip-Hop, R&B, Sun: Classic Rock, 60s, 70s, 80s). 311 Broadway St.  First Floor Paducah, KY 42001 270-594-0312 confluencepaducah.com

Iron Rail Infoshop & Aboveground Zine Library – New Orleans, LA

Radical bookshop with a book and zine library that hosts events. They’ve reopened (again) at a new space! 4210 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117

Cimarrón Cooperative – Austin, TX

An arts and education cooperative that hosts music, screenings, skillshares, talks, mutual aid and social events. 5703 Manor Rd, Austin, TX 78723

Earthbound Books – Brooklyn, NY

A bookshop that hosts music and events. “Humans are not going to Mars. We are Earthbound Forever. Yet most of us have no idea how to live here sustainably, let alone in harmony with nature.” They try to have “all the knowledge critical to the long-term survival of humans and all other species.” 148 Flushing Ave Brooklyn, NY 11205 212-965-9334

Lynchburg Punk Rock Flea Market (PRFMLYH) – Richmond, VA

DIY market featuring books, zines, food and crafts that hosts community events. “A safe space in a conservative city.” 1300 Court Street #2, Lynchburg, VA 24504

Village Green Foundation/Mobo Bicycle Co-op – Cincinnati OH

A bike kitchen with tools, parts and mechanics to help you fix your own bike and promote cycling. They also have a community room that hosts events and a People’s Garden community garden. “We believe passionately in shared community resources, increased self-sufficiency and advocating for a healthier and greener world.” 1415 Knowlton Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45223

Boxelder Community Room – Cincinnati, OH

A community room / artist studios that hosts events. 4573 Hamilton Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45223 cinboxelder@proton.me

LoLoBee’s Lounge – Bay City, MI

Coffee and tea lounge that hosts event “fostering arts, passion, and community!” 106 S. Linn St., Unit A, Bay City, MI 48706, 989-316-1339 lolobees.com

Black Oak – Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

An anarchist social space with a book and zine library that hosts weekly drop-in hours, reading groups and discussions. 492 James Street North, Hamilton, Ontario L8L 1J1 Canada north-shore.info/black-oak-anarchist-social-space/

Crossroads Women’s Centre – London, UK

A women’s center that is the home of 15 different groups supporting women, including single mothers, sex workers, refugees, migrants, and women with disabilities. They host meetings, social events, workshops, films and exhibitions. They also provide training and resources for self-help groups to grow. 25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX crossroadswomen.net

May Day Rooms – London, UK

Radical historical archive and resource space that hosts film screenings, poetry readings, historical talks, discussion and reading groups, and social nights for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. 88 Fleet Street London, EC4Y 1DH. maydayrooms.org

Pelican House – London, UK 

A meeting and event space and social center for “worker organizing, movement building, experimental arts & culture” operated by a 22 resident organizations such as the London Renters Union and Coal Action Network. They host countercultural events, fundraisers, socials, talks, workshops, film screenings, community meals and coffee mornings. 144 Cambridge Heath Road, London E1 5QJ pelicanhouse.org

Casino for Social Medicine – Berlin, Germany

Anti-capitalist café and bar collective that hosts events, meetups, and mutual aid clinics. Sonnenallee 100, 12045 Berlin, Germany casinoooo.org

Luna16 – Vilnius, Lithuania

Radical community center with a library, print-workshop, kitchen, projector and meeting space that hosts events. Šeimyniškių g. 16, Vilnius, 09312 Lithuania 

Maiznica60 – Rīga, Latvia

Autonomous community center that hosts events Valērijas Seiles iela 12, Rīga, Latvia, LV-1003 IG: maiznica60

Bonus: places queers or POC might feel comfortable in Wyoming

• Night Heron Books in Laramie, WY

• Lander Bar and Grill in Lander, WY

Changes to the 2027 Slingshot Organizer

• The Punk Truck Shop has moved and is now located at 509 W. Spring St. Ste. 225 Fayetteville, AR 72701 479-935-3048.

• The mailing address of the Las Vegas Zine Library has changed to PO box 60151 Las Vegas, NV 89160.

• The Queery at 46 George St, Brighton BN2 1RJ England 07539 379069 is defunct. 

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988. 

This issue was created by about 20 rotating people at The Long Haul in Berkeley — listening to proto-disco and the occasional meows of the Long Haul’s new cat, Ocean, as a soundtrack. We contemplated what it meant to be creating the paper during these long nights of autumn? Over candlelit Thai food, we foresee getting a little freaky with it in the new year. Do you?

Winter can offer the unique coziness of togetherness found through sitting around a fire or radical gathering with family / comrades / community. The world can feel so often full of brutality but it is through one another that it does not consume us. Together we can be angry, experience joy, and make plans for the future. How many ways can you act outside of the system? What thoughts can we ponder over the winter that will come to life in the spring? Many of us aspire to create more, be with people more and try new things. 

You hold in your hands our collection of analysis, dreams, stories, and calls to action, illustrated and assembled by all of our hands. This is the magic of creating something together that we believe in — our collective energy and determination sends us home with more energy than when we walked in the door. 

There is a sense of rejuvenation that can come out of these processes. This isn’t unique to Slingshot. We invite you to seek it out in your own communities or create it in your own lives. Go to events, host events, meet new people, attend an action, discover the shared discontent, and find ways to address it together. 

These articles are written, edited, and published by a loose open collective — which really means whoever shows up to meetings and work parties. You can be one of us. We met each other through Slingshot. No two Slingshots are published by the same group. Many of us disagree with aspects of articles we publish. 

Slingshot is always looking for volunteer distributors. If you can hand out papers to your friends or put a few copies into your local cafe, library, truck stop, laundromat, school or whatever, we can send you copies for free. We’re trying to reach people who’ve never stumbled across the underground press before, rather than just preaching to the choir. We’re also always seeking new writers, artists, and editors. If you send an article, please be open to its editing. 

Thanks to the people who made this: Aileen, Antonio, Aws, egg, Emily, Fern, Gi, Hazel, Hank, Ishkadi, Jake, James, Jesse, Jody, Lucie, Maddy, Matteo, Nadia, Nicola, Niko, Ocean, Paula, Robin, Rosie, Seandunne, Sivan, Sirkka, Stuart, Temba, Yonce, Xóchjitl, Zoey & all the authors and artists! 

Slingshot Article Submission Info

We’re not going to set a deadline for the next issue. We encourage you to submit articles for the next Slingshot anytime you want. We’ll make another issue when we feel like it. Check the Slingshot website, IndyBay, instagram and facebook for deadline info. We also have an internal email list that announces the next deadline so email if you want to be added to the list. 

Volume 1, Number 144, Circulation 48,000

Printed November 13, 2026

Slingshot Newspaper

Office: 3124 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 slingshotcollective@protonmail.com 

slingshotcollective.org

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Slingshot free stuff

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage. Send $8 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. slingshotcollective.org

Circulation information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income folks, or anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or are $1 per issue donation. International $4 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Say how many copies and how long you’ll be at your address. In the Bay Area pick up copies at Long Haul & Bound Together books in SF.

By Apani	
	When I envision the government, not its representatives or its soldiers, but the government itself, I don't see much of anything. A big white building, rows and rows of seats for representatives, perhaps a courthouse, or a border wall. The government itself, however, is just lists of laws and rights and trade deals and receipts and convictions — nothing I can touch a hand to or even form in my mind's eye. The so-called Unites States of America, as we know it, is an abstraction. It does not exist in a tangible reality. We are almost all taking part in a collective imagination that we allow to define our lives. Every member of Congress, every president, every voter, every corporate employee, every child reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, all of us have made an unspoken agreement to imagine this country into existence. At any point we can withdraw our consent. In fact, many people do every single day. But many more people will imagine you a criminal or a terrorist if you do so;  many more people are not ready to re-imagine the world.
	When the politicians with imagined authority were met with laws that protect natural land and its inhabitants, they simply imagined new laws and exceptions to secure their project: the infamous border wall. In turn, those of us at the camp and tree-sit in Lochiel, Arizona simply imagined that this wall and its benefactors had no right to murder Cottonwood trees, Saguaro cacti, and all of the human and non-human creatures who dare to get in the way. We see the Los Ajos and Huachuca Mountains, who bow to each other on either side of the valley, as sisters, and we imagine there is no border to divide them. We see the jaguars, who've returned to the valley as a tribe of six, as rightful inhabitants of the land, and we imagine there is no border to divide them. We see our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and we imagine there is no border to divide us. With this alone, our love and creativity, we delayed construction of the wall in this region.
	We protected Grandmother Cottonwood, the only survivor of a family of four and in direct path of the double wall, with an omnipresent sitter in her canopy. The neighbors in this community still held hands with one another over the fence. All of us, from humans to grasshoppers to boars to lizards, watched the sun rise over one land. We imagined we were land defenders. We imagined we were warriors.
	As land defenders, who do we hold responsible for this slaughter? The government? Fisher Industries? What does it really look like to hold a government or a corporation accountable? An imagined institution cannot make reparations or amends, it cannot be prosecuted or imprisoned, injured or killed. There are real people behind these decisions, and they rely on you erasing their identity behind an idea. That idea is so easy to accept because it is so simple: the government and capitalism are at fault for the state of the world, not the overwhelming majority of people who enforce it, including you and I. 
   We are the only ones who can refuse to take part in fascism, made a reality only because someone imagined it. We are the only ones who can confront the individuals committing a genocide. We are the only ones who can stop showing up to work, start growing our own food, and bring consciousness to our communities. The construction of the wall did not stop because we created an organization or a leader or a legal defense; it stopped because we imagined ourselves as the ones who would stand in the way. This camp and tree-sit survived only because of people who cared to dream and put it into action. 

By Alexandria Scott 

I know you are supposed to remember your first time or whatever, but so honestly, I cannot recall when I first jumped into the bin.

I do remember setting catfish lines with my dad on a lake in rural Alabama. There was no service in Wedowee, and I was usually grumpy on the drive, forced into a weekend of not getting to text Amanda, or Madeline, or whoever. Dad and I would push the canoe away from the rocky shore, slowly dragging the thin plastic line behind us, stopping every five or six feet to tie on a hook accompanied by the most putrid-smelling bait the tackle shop had in stock. Catfish are bottom feeders, sucking up decaying matter along the lakebed. They say you are what you eat. I guess I really took this to heart. “I’m going to tell you something, there’s country poor, and there’s city poor…. No desperate men [this city] ever knew went out and shot venison if they were hungry. They shot liquor store cashiers. Living in the big woods made of steel and cement, without cash, is a hungrier life than I knew how to think about,” writes Barbara Kingsolver in Demon Copperhead.

Not everyone likes the tactful ingenuity rural folks apply to their diets. Particularly not the officials collecting the taxes. Our ability to scrounge up food is threatening: God-fearing citizens finding loopholes in the typical money exchange, cultivating creative communities centered around participating in non-monetary economies.

In the sticks, when folks are hungry and waiting on their next paycheck, they head to the forest or the lake. In the city, I learned, you head to the dumpster.

***

Globally, around 16% of food is wasted on farms due to labor shortages, consumer preferences, and overplanting. In the United States, we waste an estimated 120 billion pounds of food throughout the supply chain each year, an amount that could feed about 1/3 of our total population. Approximately 30% of food in American grocery stores is thrown away, with overstocking for aesthetic “abundance” resulting in a 10% increase in produce waste.

As this food decays in fields, compost piles, and landfills, it resentfully releases a variety of greenhouse gases.

Often, I find statistics like these rather unintelligible, like a disobliging teenage boy who is only sitting in the pew because he got a stern talking-to from his father. Presented for show to the congregation and then quickly forgotten on the car ride home.

However, hulking statistics can provide an obscure snapshot and an unnerving introduction.

***

I recall dumpster diving seamlessly slipping into my life, an inevitable future given where I would spend my most impressionable years: a small left leaning state school in North Carolina chock-full of broke hippies looking for any excuse to tell the cops to fuck off.

On weekends we would fly down the main drag, heads out the windows, howling and cackling. As we approach our objective, our headlights flicker off, and we grow quiet.

As I pull a dozen ripe cantaloupes out of the compost bin, I feel like I made them, like I helped conceptualize and grow the things. I allow myself to feel both repulsed and grateful.

Later, we make our way around town, leaving deliveries on our friends’ doorsteps of Mountain Dew, over-stocked apples, and celery trimmings.

***

I have heard folks express concern that there isn’t enough discarded food to go around. In my experience the issue is overabundance, rarely shortage. Veteran dumpster divers have shown me that garbage gleaning can be both a form of modern self-reliance and a conduit for community care, feeding ourselves and our neighbors.

In the 1990, Lars Eighner wrote his pivotal piece On Dumpster Diving. He describes the early stages a green diver often experiences. “At first the new scavenger is filled with disgust and self-loathing. He is ashamed of being seen and may lurk around, trying to duck behind things…. Every grain of rice seems to be a maggot. Everything seems to stink. He can wipe the egg yolk off the found can, but he cannot erase the stigma of eating garbage out of his mind,” Eighner explains.

This shame generally fades over time if divers stick it out. They slowly realize their disgust stems from perceived aesthetic, not the quality of food, which minutes before occupied the shelves of a grocery store.

***

Farmers and retailers share that food waste can be mitigated by feeding scraps to animals. When I hear this, my mouth waters. I look at myself sternly in the mirror, trying to metamorphose – twisting and changing, donning big black spots and udders. Soon I’m on all fours, gobbling up the soon-to-be-rotten food. I suddenly wonder if I’m being greedy, not leaving any for the humans. But I quickly remember that as soon as my teats run dry, I’ll be sent to slaughter and likely end up on the grill or back in a dumpster.

***

One of the best first dates I have ever had involved the dumpster. I scooped up Will Riedlienger in my two-wheel-drive 4Runner and asked if we could make a surprise stop. His excited agreement affirmed my decision to ask him out. We scrounged for food, cooked a meal, and feasted.

Maybe it was my favorite date because of the dumpster. Or because after we ate, he laid his head in my lap and let me stick and poke a spiral on his skull. Or because I was 20 and my heart was still made of rubber. Whatever it was, the dumpster certainly helped.

Over the years I have found that there is a level of poignant intimacy that arises from driving behind the store late at night, hoisting your friend or lover over the brim, and scuttling home to wash and cook your score. 

Today, I wouldn’t say that I’m only open to dating people who have a heart for trash food. However, at a minimum, they have to sit there and watch me eat it without a trace of disgust in their eyes. Though a glint of curiosity certainly doesn’t hurt.

***

As it turns out, scavenging is not something you have to grow out of as you mature. Now, at the ripe age of 30, I am really hitting my stride, pushing the limits on incorporating new-to-me dumpster foods into my diet. 

As I reach back into the compost bin pulling out a ripe tomato, I reflect back on my time fishing, feeling a kinship with my pre-teen self. Knowing that despite the distance and perceived political divides, there is a level of ethic-based resourcefulness involved in our food procurement that crosses the rural-urban divide. 

Talk delivered by Osha Neumann on October 29, 2026, at an event sponsored by the Bay Anarchist Free School on the occasion of the publication of Osha’s latest book, “Is Hope Necessary?: Thinking about Language, Justice, and Melting Glaciers in a Time of Fear and Foreboding,” published by Street Spirit, and available from vendors of Street Spirit newspaper (“Justice News & Homeless Blues”) as well as the more usual outlets.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the midst of crisis that may mark the beginning of a new phase in the ancient struggle for justice and for a life worth living. That struggle has gone on for millennia. I believe, however, that this moment is unprecedented. Why? 

(Deep breath)

Because never before has the extent of the devastation that could result from the crisis we are in been so extensive. Never before has the biological basis of life on this planet been threatened by the actions of one of its sentient species.

Many times prophets have claimed,“The end is nigh!” and sometimes the end has been nigh for a people or a civilization — Ishi was, in fact, the last of the Yahi people — but always there have been other people and other civilizations to walk in their footsteps and build temples from the rubble of the past.

And always nature has survived. I believe this moment is different, because now the survival of the entire human species, or at least the survival of life as we have known it and have come to expect, is at stake. The consequences of the crisis we are in may well be apocalyptic, and in some places on the planet are already apocalyptic. The apocalypse is just not evenly distributed.

I find it difficult to wrap my head around apocalypse. I vacillate; I believe and then I disbelieve. Dylan told us, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” When it comes to justice that’s true. 

When Derek Chauvin placed his knee on the neck of George Floyd and choked the life out of him, the crowd that gathered on the sidewalk in front of Cup Foods didn’t need an expert to tell them what they were witnessing was cold-blooded murder. We who watched the footage filmed on their cell phones didn’t wait for experts to tell us what we were seeing before rushing out into the streets.

But to know what we are doing to nature with our collective knee on her neck, we do need a weather person. So I started reading what scientists are saying and came to the conclusion that the worst case scenario for the environment is a very real possibility as we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere and blowing past tipping points.

Every once in a while I mention my concern about the climate crisis and I overhear conversations other people are having, and it’s clear to me I’m not alone in wondering whether we’ve really fucked things up good this time. There’s a drone of fear and foreboding beneath the drumbeat of our lives. It can be heard from the street corner where Jimbow the Hobow sells Street Spirit, to the corporate boardrooms where billionaire tech bros hawk their IPOs. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor in a new book describe what they call End Times Fascism. Maybe what we need is an end time anti-fascism, an end time Antifa.

I was writing about all this — the sense of doom, the climate crisis — and then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters broke out of the open-air prison that is Gaza and killed 1,200 Israelis, men, women, children, giving Israel the excuse for what followed, a genocide that continues to this day. 

The genocide was an event I could not ignore. At first, I thought that by turning my attention to Gaza I was abandoning my concerns about the approach of climate catastrophe. I thought of Gaza as an interruption. I’d been asking, “How did it come to this?,” meaning the climate catastrophe. But then, as the days went by and the genocide continued, that question merged with the question: “How did it come to this, that we are witnessing a genocide and can’t stop it?” What is the connection between genocide and ecocide? When those questions merged, Gaza no longer seemed like an interruption, but an important piece of the larger question I was trying to wrap my head around. 

How did it come to this?

I imagine it’s a question people ask who find themselves facing a terrible end — a firing squad, a jail cell that will never be unlocked in a lifetime, the torturer with his pliers and electrodes. “How did it come to this?” that I am here, blindfolded, tied to a stake; here, locked behind bars I cannot bend; here, facing a torturer without mercy? How far back do I go searching for an answer? Before my birth? To my childhood? To choices I’ve made? To choices I didn’t make? To circumstances beyond my control? 

What is the answer to the question, How did the human race come to this — to ecocide and genocide? How far back should we go to look for answers? 

And here is a question that in my mind is linked to that question:

What is it that distinguishes human beings from all other sentient beings on the planet so that we alone have amassed such power that we overwhelm all other species and can bring the whole shebang down around our heads — all at once with nuclear weapons, or as a culmination of a gradual process of changing the composition of the atmosphere by failing to halt the burning of fossil fuels and the increase in greenhouse gases?

How is it that we have become so separate from nature that we can dominate and destroy her? How are we different? 

Why am I thinking about language?

As physical specimens, we are not particularly impressive. All sorts of animals are stronger, swifter, more agile. What is impressively swift and agile is our minds and what is unique about our minds is that they are full of words. With words we conceive, we think, we grasp the world. With words we can shake nature till it quivers and quakes and maybe dies. I know, whales, chimps, ravens and other animals communicate perhaps quite complex intentions and observations, but I do not believe that they have concepts and ideas. They can announce to their peers, “Dog! Here! Now!” but they lack the concept of “dog,” a concept that is embedded in a chain of increasingly abstract concepts — mammal – animal – sentient being – being — which leads away from the immediate and connects the disparate.

We humans, with all the words in our heads, are separated by those words from the world we think about, from nature. That separation involves loss, but our comparative lack of entanglement with nature enables us to control, to manage, to dominate her. It’s the source of a power we have exercised in ways that have been beneficial for us, perhaps not so much for nature, and now perhaps not so much for humanity. Our history is the record of ever-increasing domination over nature, ever increasing separation from her, ever increasing exploitation of her.

The acquisition of language may have started us on a journey that sets us apart, but the beginning of a journey does not determine its end. Language gave us power, but it did not determine what we did with that power. 

We use language to make love to each other and to nature and to coo sweet nothings to the universe. “Oh the stars, the beautiful stars! Oh the magnificent ocean! Oh little butterfly, you are so gorgeous!” We don’t do that enough. Nations do not coo sweet nothings to each other; they compete for domination, as do corporations. If you catch a corporation spouting sweet nothings you can be sure it’s lying. Capitalism is not a lovefest.

Language can be used for tender holding and for pummeling. Language gave us the capacity to grasp the world and shake it until it hurts, but it did not require us to misuse that capacity. It did not require us to create institutional arrangements that are unjust and hurtful.

So why the path that leads to ecocide and genocide and not some other path?

Is there a moment in time we took a wrong turn?

Various candidates have been proposed.

The agricultural revolution of the Neolithic approximately 12,000 years ago is one of them. Anthropologists seem to agree that before then our ancestors lived in small egalitarian bands; they were hunters and gatherers; they were predators but also prey, and if they were like present-day hunters and gatherers, they viewed the trees, the rocks, the mountains, the grottoes, the streams, the rivers and meadows and the flowers, the fish and fowl, and all beings they encountered as sentient, conscious like themselves. As the story goes, with the coming of agriculture that all changed. Equality was replaced by hierarchy; nature was no longer inhabited by spirit; spirit rose up into the sky and took the form of gods overseeing and commanding all of creation. Back on earth we got kings and nobles and servants, peasants and slaves, and growing inequality in the distribution of resources. 

And ever since, the many have suffered so the few can reap the benefits of their labor.

Hierarchy, exploitation, inequalities have been passed down from generation to generation for millennia, changing their form with each “advance” in civilization but not their content. In Europe we got feudalism. And then in the 18^th century, we get the Industrial Revolution — more exploitation of nature, new forms of servitude, a new class that owned the new means of production, the bourgeoisie, and a new underclass, the proletariat. We got capitalism.

In the book I quote Alice Walker, “Only justice will stop a curse.” She was speaking at an antinuclear rally where she had just recited a terrible curse, collected by Zora Neale Hurston and attributed to the famous voodoo priestess Marie Laveau.

The long history of the human race is not a history in which we find justice prevailing. It is more a history of competition, domination, repression, and exploitation, with caring and justice surviving on the margins. But I believe Alice is right — only a just society will be capable of freeing nature from the curse we have placed upon her and that means only a society that does not commit genocide will save nature, and a society which perpetuates genocide will perpetuate the destruction of nature. 

So, What are the chances of justice prevailing, given our long history in which justice has been an aspiration realized only most fleetingly? 

That question brings us to where the book begins and ends and to where we are now today — to Trump and Netanyahu and Israel and the war with Iran.

And to Gaza. 

The cage match between the Mullahs on the one hand and the Orange Monster and Bibi his blue-and-white draped co-conspirator on the other, is a cage match between the perpetrators of genocide, and those who oppose it. Palestine is at the center. The Jews are at the center. The Zionists are at the center. The fate of the world, the human world and the natural world, may depend on the outcome of events in which Gaza is the center. 

We are meeting here today, at a strange in-between time. Can we end the war in West Asia? Can we undo the damage the Orange Monster has already caused and restrain him from causing more? Can we end the genocide in Gaza? Is that possible? We have many questions and few answers.

“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” So said Otto von Bismarck hundred years or so ago, and his aphorism has been repeated many times since. But how can we know what is possible?

And what if what is possible is not enough?

What if what is possible will not prevent catastrophe? What if what is possible will not relieve the suffering of the most vulnerable people of the planet, who are already suffering beyond what’s bearable? What if it will not bring justice? For Palestine? For the wretched of the earth? What if it will not be enough to save nature from damage that threatens the biological basis of all life on the planet? 

In that case, the politics of the possible is not enough and we must at the same time as we practice the politics of the possible, practice the politics of the impossible. Recall the slogan of the 1968 workers/students uprising in Paris: “Be realistic, demand the impossible.”

And let’s face it. The politics of the impossible is more fun — and dangerous — than the politics of the possible. It involves running in the streets, shouting “Whose streets? Our streets!” when we know in fact the streets are not ours, or will only be briefly . before fighting with the cops and getting our heads bashed in; and it involves the flagrant skewering of sacred cows, issuing manifestoes calling for the whole shebang to come tumbling down, and living as best we can lives that pre-figure the freedom possible only in a utopia, living as much as possible free from “surplus repression,” free from the demand to conform to binaries that only restrict us, sexually free and respectful of each other’s boundaries, free of the curse of white supremacy, living in a great commingling, woke as woke can be, in a manner that scandalizes many in the 99% who should be our allies, a manner that threatens the psychosocial foundations of their view of themselves.

And there’s the rub, there’s where the politics of the impossible, which is necessary to push the boundaries of the possible, nevertheless comes into contradiction with it.

And that is a contradiction we cannot theorize ourselves out of, nor do we have a practice that reconciles the poles of our politics.

So without theory, as best we can, without a clear path from here to there, we resist. We continue to resist. And the book is dedicated to those who with or without hope resist. 

There is a large question mark on the cover of the book, and the title is a question:

“Is Hope Necessary?

Is there hope for the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank?

I honestly don’t know.

Is there hope for stopping global warming in time to prevent environmental collapse?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that hopeful or without hope we must continue to resist. And we will.

We have no choice.

We resist.

Naked, we resist

Armored to the teeth, we resist

Backs to the wall, we resist

Hanging by our fingernails, we resist 

Quietly, we resist

Loudly we resist.

With tears in our eyes, we resist

Laughing uncontrollably, we resist

Hand in hand, we resist

All alone, we resist

In the light of day, we resist

In the dark of night, we resist

With hope, we resist

Without hope, we resist

Loving and merciful 

Angry and unforgiving 

With no end in sight

Until death or until we really live 

WE RESIST

For only if we resist — and even if we lose— do we have a chance of salvaging, for as long as possible, as much as we can, all that is threatened and all that we cherish. 

And this I believe: 

The Left, the big, dark, beautiful, life-affirming, freedom-loving, erotic Left will never be defeated. 

We may not win, but our struggle will not end. 

La luta continua. Always and forever.