The Wild Reed

Friday, October 17, 2025

Thoughts on the Eve of “No Kings Day” 2.0

I wholehearted agree with the following by Richard Moser.

In choosing “No Kings” as the frame for protest, the Democratic Party leadership, as represented by Indivisible or 50501, is committing an act of mass distraction. We do not face a monarchy. we face contemporary capitalism. The corporation has merged with the state and rules us with a heavy hand.

It’s the dictatorship of big money at home and global military supremacy abroad. These are precisely the conditions that have encouraged fascism. In fact, the “leaders” of No Kings are doing Trump a big fat favor by hiding the SYSTEM that created him. They cannot help doing so because the Democrats are a foundational part of that system.

We are duty-bound not to follow but to lead. Engage people as your courage and capacity permits.

I’ll be attending with friends the Minneapolis “No Kings” march tomorrow, and one way that I’ll be engaging with my fellow attendees is via the sign that I’ll be carrying.

It’s actually a two-sided sign and its message speaks to Moser’s observations above. I made this sign for the June 14 “No Kings” event in St. Paul, and at the time noted the following.

My message seeks to acknowledge and convey a deeper awareness of what’s being protested. Yes, Donald Trump has clear authoritarian tendencies and is taking actions that are undermining and dismantling the democratic and humanitarian institutions of the U.S. This needs to be highlighted, resisted, and stopped. For the vast majority of people, this will be their message tomorrow. I support this message. Yet at the same time, many of us don’t see Trump himself as the sole or even primary problem; we see him as a symptom – an undeniably extreme and terrible one – of a deeper reality which for decades has undermined and made a mockery of democracy in this country.

I’m referring to the corrupting influence of corporate money, of special profit-obsessed interests. I’m talking about the corporate capture of our political system; the rise and devastating influence of a corporate aristocracy, an oligarchy to which both major parties bow.

Although such subservience benefits these parties’ coffers, it has proven profoundly detrimental to the well-being of their constituents, the environment, and democracy.

In choosing to appease their corporate donors at the expense of the needs of the people, both parties can be said to be oligarchic; both parties comprise a corporatist/oligarchic duopoly, the policies of which created the economic conditions of profound inequality that make the authoritarian populism of Trump so appealing to so many.

The oligarchy we’re up against is every bit as anti-democratic and thus un-American as any king. Indeed, it’s sadly accurate to say that in the U.S. “money rules,” that “money is king.”

“King” Trump could keel over tomorrow, but the kingship of the oligarchy would remain. It’s this “money is king” reality that I’ll be highlighting and protesting at the “No Kings” rally.

Over the last few days, much has been said and written about tomorrow's nationwide "No Kings" event. Following are some examples.

On the eve of our march, let’s speak plainly: this will not sway their hearts. Trump does not hear the cries of our cities. Troops already line our streets, and he vows to send more. They do not dread our voices – they have armored themselves against them.

So why rise?

Because some moments demand presence over triumph. The Germans convinced themselves resistance was useless, and their silence became complicity. Russians now kneel to Putin, persuaded that rebellion is a fool’s errand. We dare not drift into that same abyss.

We do not march for victory.

We march to keep our spirits unbroken.

We rise for love of country and of our true flag – not the idol they’ve drenched in venom, but the one we refuse to surrender: the banner of liberty, dissent, and the fierce right to refuse. That flag remains ours.

Win or perish, stand or shatter – silence is no option.

Let history etch this: we stood, unbowed.

– Bruce Fanger
via social media
October 17, 2023

You know Trump Republicans are worried when they slam a planned protest – more than a week before it occurs.

Last Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson described this coming Saturday’s No Kings rally as the “hate-America” rally that would draw “the pro-Hamas wing” and “the antifa people.”

I’m sure these phrases have been distributed to senior Republicans by the White House. They’re all delivering the same lines.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) claims Democrats are refusing to vote to fund the government “to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold ... a hate-America rally” on Saturday.

So what is the White House worried about? Why are they trying to discredit the rally before it’s even occurred?

Because it’s likely to be even larger than the first No Kings rally – which was the largest demonstration against Trump since his return to the Oval Office.

And it will happen all over America, so it’s likely to generate a huge number of news clips on local television.

Trump’s power depends on maintaining the illusion that he’s all-powerful, and that most Americans (apart from those he and his lapdogs label “pro-Hamas,” “terrorists,” and “antifa”) adore him.

But that illusion is harder to maintain if a significant part of the population of every town and city is on the streets decrying him. The Emperor has no clothes.

Rather than it being a “hate-America” rally, Saturday’s rally is an opportunity for all of us who love America to express our determination that our nation’s ideals not be crushed by the Trump regime.

It’s a chance for us to publicly rededicate ourselves to democracy, the rule of law, equal protection under the law, and our rights to believe what we want, say what we want, and choose our leaders without fear of recrimination.

I urge you to participate.

– Robert Reich
via social media
October 15, 2023

The more MAGA tries to demonize this protest, the more people RSVP. That alone says everything about what’s at stake. If you’re attending a No Kings rally tomorrow, stay aware, stay peaceful, and look out for each other. Document everything, travel in pairs, and keep your phones charged. Movements built on truth and courage don’t need violence . . . they just need people who refuse to be silenced. Be careful out there tomorrow.

– Brent Molnar
via social media
October 17, 2023

There are those who are saying protest is somehow disloyal. That’s backwards. The shallow version of patriotism waves a flag without asking questions. The mature version changes the oil, checks the brakes, and makes sure the bus is safe for everybody – especially those who’ve been told to give up their seats for the “more deserving,” and head to the back (or get off entirely). "No Kings" is scheduled maintenance, not malice.

So, we bring our pride, our joy, our grief. We bring our voices and our ears. We bring our commitment to a democracy that protects the vulnerable first ... not last. Please understand, “No Kings” isn't a rejection of the nation’s promise but a recommitment to it. No idols in high office. No thrones in the living room. Just ordinary people choosing one another again.

That’s not hating America. That’s how you love it like a grown-up.

– Derek Penwell
via social media
October 17, 2023

And finally, here’s author and former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson’s thoughts on “No Kings Day” 2.0 tomorrow.

Related Off-site Links:
Pro-Democracy Americans Gear Up for “No Kings” Day Nationwide – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, October 17, 2025).
Organizers of “No Kings” Protests Expect Millions of People to Join at Least 2,500 Rallies Nationwide – Democracy Now! (October 17, 2025).
Thousands Expected at Anti-Trump “No Kings” Rally in Downtown Minneapolis – Regina Medina (MPR News, October 17, 2025).
“No Kings” Rally Organizer: It’s “Quite Clear” Why Mike Johnson Is Attacking Our Protests – Jennifer Bendery and Arthur Delaney (The Huffington Post, October 17, 2025).
No to Kings, Yes to Democracy – Rob Okun (Common Dreams, October 16, 2025).
“No Kings” Protest Organizers Aren’t Afraid of Trump’s Court Jesters – Nikki McCann Ramirez (Rolling Stone, October 16, 2025).
Karoline Leavitt’s “Incredibly Dangerous” Rant About Democrats Draws Instant Backlash – Lee Moran (The Huffington Post, October 16, 2025).
Americans Are Fed Up with the Corrupt and Feckless Trump Administration – Edwin Eisendrath (Lincoln Square, October 15, 2025).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Bruce Fanger on Jesus’s Theology of No Kings
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• Norman Solomon: Quote of the Day – June 16, 2025
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• Ted Rall on What It Means to Be a Leftist in 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• Eric Fernández: Quote of the Day – May 14, 2025
• Progressive Perspectives on Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• Building Solidarity on the Left
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Democrat Talk on the Eve of Trump’s Return
• Breaking the Mold: Why Progressives Should Push for Marianne Williamson to Lead the DNC
• Inauguration Day Thoughts
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Election
• “A New Chapter of the Democratic Party Needs to Begin”
• What the Republican Party Now Stands For
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden Administration
• Jill Stein: “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”
• Peter Bloom on the Unmasking of the “Democratic Charade”
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• When Democrats Undermine Democracy
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• AOC Falls in Line
• The Cassandra of U.S. Politics on the “True State of the Union”
• Will Democrats Never Learn?
• “The Next Step Is a Green Step”: Cornel West Endorses Jill Stein (2016)
• Hope Over Fear: Voting Green

Photo of the Day

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Groove and Grace: Remembering D’Angelo

I was saddened to hear earlier this week of the passing of soul music legend D’Angelo. The musician died Tuesday, October 14 from pancreatic cancer. He was 51. (For my previous Wild Reed post about D’Angelo, click here.)

Following is how ABC News reported D’Angelo’s passing.

In remembering and celebrating this evening the life and music of D’Angelo, I share (with added images and links) a number of excerpts from various online tributes.

This week, the R&B singer D’Angelo died at age 51, of cancer. He was best known for deftly combining the heft and tenderness of soul music with the ingenuity and nerve of hip-hop, and while he was acclaimed in all the usual ways – four Grammy Awards, two platinum-selling albums, a music video so sexually charged that it still feels dangerous to watch in mixed company – he was also reclusive, enigmatic, unknowable.

“D’Angelo was a generational talent – an unusually artful singer, and an experimental and idiosyncratic songwriter,” Amanda Petrusich writes. But he largely eschewed the accoutrements of stardom, releasing just three albums in 19 years.

D’Angelo signed a songwriting deal when he was 17; a record contract followed, two years later. He released his first album, Brown Sugar, in 1995, when he was only 21. “Brown Sugar is an excellent R&B record – moody, luxurious, softly lit – but it wasn’t until the release of Voodoo, five years later, that the depth and richness of D’Angelo’s vision became fully evident,” Petrusich writes. “Voodoo is, by nearly all accounts, a masterpiece. By three minutes into “Playa Playa,” the album’s opening track, the air has changed in the room. Or maybe the air has changed in the whole neighborhood. The music’s gravitational pull is that potent and that steady.”

Then, in 2014, after 14 years of relative dormancy, and without much warning, D’Angelo released Black Messiah – probably his most divisive album, crackling with the frantic, sprawling energy of political upheaval. The message of the album felt like a suggestion of kinship: racism was everyone’s problem.

“These days, a lot of D’Angelo’s defining qualities as a musician – humility, subtlety, imperfection, prescience, sensuality, inventiveness – feel as though they’re in alarmingly short supply,” Petrusich notes. “D’Angelo understood his role as an artist as significant, and the responsibility as grave.”

– The New Yorker
Describing Amanda Petrusich’s article,
“D’Angelo’s Genius Was Pure, and Rare”
October 15, 2025

D’Angelo was one of the most widely revered artists of the past 30 years. A childhood musical prodigy, he quickly asserted himself as a star with his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, released when he was 21. A key part of the Soulquarians, a loose collective of musicians, singers, and producers that included Questlove, Erykah Badu, J Dilla, Q-Tip, among others – he was at the forefront of a movement that charted new paths in soul, R&B, and hip-hop while maintaining a deep admiration for the past.

D’Angelo, and this movement, were often pegged as “neo-soul,” but in a 2014 Red Bull Academy lecture, the singer-songwriter chafed at the description: “I think the main thing about the whole neo-soul thing, not to put it down or it was a bad thing or anything, but . . . you want to be in a position where you can grow as an artist.” He added: “I never claimed that. I never claimed I do neo-soul, you know. I used to say, when I first came out, I used to always say, ‘I do black music. I make black music.'”

D’Angelo’s three solo albums – Brown Sugar, 2000’s Voodoo, and 2014’s Black Messiah – all earned critical acclaim and cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart, with Voodoo reaching Number One. His biggest Hot 100 charter was “Lady,” but it was “Untitled (How Does it Feel),” with its memorable one-shot video of a naked D’Angelo belting the track, that arguably became his signature song.

Nominated for 14 Grammys over the course of his career, D’Angelo won four awards, including Best R&B Album twice for Voodoo and Black Messiah. He also won Best R&B Vocal Performance for “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” [below] and Best R&B Song for Black Messiah’s “Really Love.”

– Jon Blistein
Excerpted from “D’Angelo, Soul’s
Modern Visionary, Dead at 51”
Rolling Stone
October 14, 2023

The world lost a giant.

D’Angelo was more than a musician, he was a vessel of soul, a conjurer of feeling, a truth-teller in melody and rhythm. He bared his soul with every note and we felt it.

And though he may be gone, his spirit remains in every harmony, in every bassline, in every heart he touched. Artists like D’Angelo don’t just make music; they make memories.

We will miss him.

– Nina Turner
via social media
October 14, 2023

D’Angelo, who was born Michael Eugene Archer, in Richmond, Virginia, is often compared to Prince, and rightly so, I think – each wielded a carnal, otherworldly falsetto. But, perhaps more crucially, they shared an exquisite sense of pacing, as if they were attuned to some elegant internal rhythm. Neither could be hurried. That feeling – stately, easy, deliberate – is inherently sensual. You’ll register it, sometimes, in the slowest but most provocative gestures – a curl of smoke, a brush of hands, the right sort of glance from across a room. D’Angelo understood the ways in which restraint can be infinitely more haunting – and more alluring – than aggression.

– Amanda Petrusich
Excerpted from “D’Angelo’s Genius Was Pure, and Rare”
The New Yorker
October 15, 2023

D’Angelo’s 1995 debut Brown Sugar was the blueprint of the Nineties Neo Soul revival, a genre that brought some erotic energy, dirty groove, glorious musicianship and raw, human spirit back into the soul genre after years of over-produced smoothness and the synthetic plasticity of New Jack Swing.

Just 21 when it came out, the artist born Michael Eugene Archer played almost all the instruments (guitar, keyboards, bass and drums), composed and arranged all the songs and sang lead and backing vocals. His hero was Prince, and he aspired to a similar degree of musical control.

You can certainly hear some of Prince’s vocal intonations in D’Angelo’s singing as he shifts from tender murmurings to falsetto screams, but he wrapped in a whole range of other influences too, citing “gospel, blues, a lot of old soul, old James Brown, early, early Sly and the Family Stone and a lot of Jimi Hendrix.” Toss a bit of Fela Kuti, George Clinton and Al Green into that mix. There was hip-hop too, in the modern rhythmic flow, but crucially D’Angelo dialled back past the artificiality that had come to dominate American black urban sounds, forgoing the perfectionism of most contemporary Nineties soul music to bring actual singing and playing back to the fore. . . . The D’Angelo sound was elastic and tight yet slightly shambling funk, the huge bass often slightly behind the drums, with nothing played in strict time (perhaps a result of D’Angelo overdubbing himself).

The result could be shuffling, jerky and weird, slowing down and speeding up through the song, yet all hypnotically strung together by his floating, ethereal, tender vocals. His work is moody and atmospheric rather than tautly constructed songcraft, but it has an almost supernatural energy that feels like D’Angelo is transmitting aural electricity.

– Neil McCormick
Excerpted from “He Only Made Three Albums,
But D’Angelo Changed Soul Music for Ever”
The Telegraph
October 15, 2025

I don’t want to get too sentimental about D’Angelo. But, honestly, how could I not? His music has been the background radiation of my life, the quiet pulse underneath everything since those formative years when we were still figuring out who we were.

So . . . thank you, D.

This one hits different. He was the first artist who really mattered to me. The first whose music felt like it understood me before I understood myself. The first one I saw in full bloom: in his element, in his prime, showing what it means to live inside the song. (and I know that y’all feel me.)

There was a time before Dilla and D’Angelo . . . Then the axis tilted. Music changed. The air changed. Even the way people walked changed. That’s what genius does: it slips into the bloodstream and suddenly everything else feels a little out of tune.

It’s hard to reinvent the wheel in a postmodern world. They did it anyway.

So I’m grateful. For what D’Angelo gave to me, to my friends, to all of us who believe that groove and grace can still save a day. Our hero is gone now. But the rhythm keeps going.

Fly on, D. The world’s still dancing.

– Sinkane
via social media
October 16, 2023

D’Angelo grew up playing in a pentecostalist church in Virginia and went to New York City in search of a record deal as a teenager as part of a trio. The label said, we only want him. His debut album, Brown Sugar, put everyone on notice: there was a new soul giant in town. His single of the same name, a cheeky back-and-forth about his love of marijuana, was among the top songs of that summer in 1995. But some felt it was a project left unfinished, as if the songs were more like sketches. Five years later, D erased all of that with his second album, Voodoo. It was a towering achievement that made it clear that he was not only a disciple of soul legends, he was their peer as well.

But Voodoo led to a problem.

The song “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” was D’Angelo’s masterwork: a swirling groove of erotic funk so hot you could get pregnant just by hearing it. His manager, Dominick Trenier, envisioned a video where D was alone on a stage with the camera giving us closeups of his incredible body — from his cornrows to just below his belly button. It would be simple, and sexual, and powerful. This would be the culmination of years of work on his body. When D dropped Brown Sugar he was overweight. In the five years after, as he worked on Voodoo, he changed his diet and trained obsessively. When it was time to shoot the “Untitled” video, D looked as fit as a human could possibly be. But he didn’t want to do the video. His limo pulled up outside the shoot, and he refused to get out. He was nervous. Trenier came out and sat with him until finally he felt ready.

They went in and created one of the most iconic videos of all time. The video hit the culture like a neutron bomb and titillated everyone. Was this the best-looking man alive? Maybe. The visual alone gave D’Angelo an even bigger profile. But here comes the rub: after “Untitled,” people began to see the singer differently. At his shows, fans screamed for him to take his shirt off. That was acceptable, but he wanted to be seen as a musician.

D had studied music like a graduate student and then spent five years working on Voodoo. He wanted it all to be about songs — to convey that he was a great musician — but they were screaming so loud for his abs that you couldn’t hear the music. He felt like he’d been demoted from genius to sex symbol. He rebelled by disappearing. We spent years missing him. His third and final album, Black Messiah, came out in 2014, more than a decade later.

– Touré
Excerpted from “The Rise, Retreat, and Resurrection of D’Angelo”
Rolling Stone
October 15, 2025

In the long gap between his second and third albums, 2000’s Voodoo, and 2014’s Black Messiah, D'Angelo nearly came undone, with concerning aughts news reports of narcotics arrests and a car accident. But the 2006 loss of legendary beat-maker J Dilla set D’Angelo on a path to recovery.

His return to the stage in the early 2010s was every bit as remarkable as his early classics because it saw him contending openly with a place in a pantheon of all-timers while renegotiating a relationship with his audience. D’Angelo was always grappling with the past. But in his miraculous late-career resurgence, he was not just synthesizing soul history but almost confrontationally using it to speak for him.

– Craig Jenkins
Excerpted from “D’Angelo Saw His Future in the Past”
Vulture
October 15, 2025

[D’Angelo's 2014 album] Black Messiah didn’t disappoint. Despite its lengthy gestation, it appeared to fit perfectly with increasingly troubled times: released not long after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Black man Michael Brown led to unrest in Missouri, its lyrics dealt with gun violence and systemic racism.

Its raw, dense, avant-soul sound shifted unpredictably from furious to dream-like: you could hear traces of Sly and the Family Stone’s legendary 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, updated for a new era. It was superb.

It was also the last album D’Angelo was to make, although a single, “Unshaken,” appeared in 2019. As late as last year, when D’Angelo appeared alongside Jay-Z on the soundtrack to the comedy-drama film The Book of Clarence, there was talk of a follow-up: his long-time collaborator Raphael Saadiq told journalists he was working on a new album. Whether that music will now ever appear is open to question.

You could, if you wished, view D’Angelo’s career as frustratingly scattered: it would certainly have been nice if he had released more music than he did. But, then again, he leaves behind a perfect catalogue: only three albums in 30 years, but all of them are of an extraordinarily high quality. It was a conundrum neatly summed by Questlove, who was asked about D’Angelo in the long, grim gap between Voodoo and Black Messiah. “I consider him a genius beyond words,” he offered. “At the same time, I say to myself: how can I scream someone’s genius if they hardly have any work to show for it? Then again, the last work he did was so powerful that it’s lasted 10 years.” The music D’Angelo did release will ultimately last far longer than that.

– Alexis Petridis
Excerpted from “Experimental, Sensual and Political,
D’Angelo Radically Redrew the Boundaries of Soul Music”
The Guardian
October 14, 2025

I always felt like D’Angelo wasn’t a mere mortal, he didn’t walk the same Earth as you or me. He was touched, he had magic – you could call it soul, you could call it grit, but whatever it was, it was otherworldly. To me he was the only singer of his/our generation who could go toe-to-toe with ’60s-’70s legends like Marvin, Al Green, Sly, Sam Cooke. I say “our” generation . . . I clearly remember when the Brown Sugar single came out. I’d only started buying vinyl 12”s a year or so before. When D landed in the record bins, everyone took notice. He completely reinvented R&B. He made it gritty, he brought a hip-hop attitude . . . he was working with Bob Power and Ali Shaheed, so if you were a Tribe fan you were immediately mystified. He made his Rhodes sound like nothing on this planet. And that voice, those harmonies. . . . When that first album dropped, nothing was the same.

Of course then Voodoo came and changed all music – everything. The tour that followed was the stuff of legends. Every player in his band was a deity in their own right.

Over a decade passed without an album. How do you top those two? And then when no one expected it, Black Messiah dropped and was another 10/10. Not only that but D was playing guitar now. With so much gumbo, so much funk. And he had Jesse Johnson on tour with him.

None of this is normal. We’re lucky to have been alive to have witnessed ANY of this. To have heard just ONE stack of harmonies from this man. Thank you D’Angelo. You were my favorite. Your music will stay with me, with us, forever. Send it on.

– A-Trak
via social media
October 14, 2025

Thank you. Thank you a million times over. To create, to shift, to shape and reshape, to push, to inspire, to fuel, to illuminate. An artist can only dream to achieve one or a few of these things. How amazing to witness him who did all of it and so masterfully.

I rediscovered Voodoo in my college days. It opened up the world for me. it became a defining element of art that’s very responsible for where I started. I stack my backgrounds the way I do because of him. I feel unafraid to experiment and evolve because of him.

I think we were all hoping to hear much more from him, but he has given us more than a lifetime of sound. Nothing but gratitude to be around in the same space and time as that sound. God Bless his family. Superbly done. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

– Alex Isley
via social media
October 14, 2025

When Terrorism Charges “Reek of Political Theater”

Memphis-based Rachel Hurley has worked in the music industry for 30 years, most notably as a music publicist for folk, Americana, and country independent musicians. She’s also worked extensively in film and television, and is the creator of the Make Memphis! website, which invites community and city leaders to “share ideas for making the city a better place to live for everyone.”

On her website, Rachel and the City, Rachel notes that “this is not my first rodeo when it comes to fighting the power. I’ve built a lot of social capital, and I’ve chosen to spend it on speaking out about the fall of our government. And I’m about to go even harder.”

Case in point: the following piece by Rachel which she posted earlier today on social media.

____________________

Welp. They did it.

Trump’s Justice Department just filed its first terrorism charges against alleged “Antifa” members after a July 4th attack on an ICE detention center in Texas. Attorney General Pam Bondi is already tweeting about prosecuting the “left-wing terrorist organization” known as Antifa. Which is a problem, because as you know, Antifa isn’t an organization.

The attack itself happened and it was violent. A group in black tactical gear hit the Prairieland Detention Center near Alvarado late that night - graffiti, fireworks, a setup that lured guards outside. When police arrived, someone opened fire from the woods, hitting an officer in the neck. Another sprayed 20 or 30 rounds before their rifle jammed. The cop lived. Ten people were arrested. Two - Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts - are now charged with terrorism.

Here’s where things start to reek of political theater. In September, Trump signed an executive order labeling Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Except that doesn’t exist under U.S. law. “Domestic terrorist organization” is not a legal category. You can only designate foreign groups – think ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Even Trump’s own FBI director once said Antifa is “a movement or an ideology.” Which means there’s no Antifa HQ, no bank accounts, no membership list, no CEO of anti-fascism.

So when the Department of Justice charges people with terrorism for being “Antifa,” what they’re really doing is stretching that label to criminalize ideology. You can’t provide “material support” to an idea, no matter how extreme.

And the timing isn’t random. Trump signed that executive order days after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated – despite no evidence connecting his shooter to Antifa. But the narrative stuck, and here we are, with the DOJ turning that fiction into precedent.

The irony? Far-right extremists remain the country’s biggest domestic terrorism threat. Every federal report for the last decade has said the same thing. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that 57% of domestic terror attacks since 1994 came from the right - mostly white supremacists and anti-government extremists. Left-wing extremists (ideologically “left”) account for about 25% of attacks and plots, while religious / jihadist (international Islamist) motives make up roughly 15%, and ethnonationalist motives (separatist, race/ethnic ideologies) is about 3%.

Yet Bondi and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are talking about “infiltrating leftist terror cells.”

No one’s defending what happened in Alvarado. Shooting at cops is not protest – it’s attempted murder. Charge them for that. But terrorism? That’s a label reserved for coordinated acts meant to intimidate a population or coerce government policy – and you can’t pin that on an ideology with no structure.

This is less about safety and more about setting precedent. Once you normalize treating ideas as terrorism, it’s open season on dissent. Today it’s “Antifa.” Tomorrow it’s environmentalists. Or labor organizers. Or journalists.

The attack in Texas was real. The terrorism charges are performative. The administration isn’t fighting extremism – it’s just padding its authoritarian playbook.

– Rachel Hurley
via social media
October 16, 2025

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Why Omar Fateh Is the Right Choice for Mayor of Minneapolis

Omar Fateh has worked with determination and strategy on policies that serve working people. . . . He is the type of leader we need at City Hall. He doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t fold and he doesn’t forget who he’s working for: you.

– Patricia Torres Ray

Patricia Torres Ray (pictured with me at right at the 2013 DignityUSA National Convention) is a former member of the Minnesota Senate whose district included parts of Minneapolis. Yesterday she had an op-ed published in the Star Tribune in which she makes the case for Minnesota State Senator Omar Fateh to be the next mayor of Minneapolis.

As a supporter of Omar and his mayoral campaign, I was happy to see Torres Ray’s endorsement, one that I share below in its entirety.

_______________

Minneapolis, let me tell you what I know about Omar Fateh.

I served alongside Fateh in the Minnesota Senate. From the very first conversation we had, I saw in him a determination and tenacious leader who refused to give up in the face of hardship or setbacks. He frequently reminded us of our duty to our constituents and the obligation to work harder to fulfill our campaign promises: to work harder for all of you.

Fateh came to the Senate determined to represent the voice of working people. He proposed to guarantee minimum wages for Uber and Lyft drivers who were getting poverty wages, to provide University of Minnesota graduate students with stronger union protections, and to make college in Minnesota not just affordable but free.

I supported these ideas, but I didn’t believe we could convince the majority of our peers to vote for all of these proposals. Fateh worked with determination and strategy on every one of these policies, and today they are the law for all Minnesotans.

He took on billion-dollar Silicon Valley corporations like Uber and Lyft, who were threatening to hold our state hostage, and won. Today, every driver in the state earns a living wage and has better protections.

He secured bipartisan support to offer free college tuition for students from working-class families. That is something few leaders anywhere in the country have managed to do.

Fateh wants to bring his political insight and tenacity to Minneapolis, and I believe our city needs his strength and political intuition to move us forward. He wants to build a safe Minneapolis where people can afford to live, raise their families, and start businesses. A place where seniors can keep their homes and age in place, and where all of us, despite ability, can access every corner of our city.

He wants to raise the minimum wage to $20 by 2028, listen to the voters and pass rent stabilization while still exempting new construction, and protect renters from eviction. These are real, tangible changes that can ensure families are not forced to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table.

Fateh believes public safety comes from care, not crackdowns. He secured $19 million for Minneapolis for public safety, which has remained untouched by the current administration. He will put those resources to work to implement consent decrees, diversify 911 responses and clear case backlogs.

I served with Fateh, have seen how relentless he is, and know he is the type of leader we need at City Hall. He doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t fold and he doesn’t forget who he’s working for: you.

– Patricia Torres Ray
“Why Omar Fateh Is the Right Choice”
Minnesota Star Tribune
October 14, 2025

When MAGA extremists attack us, and also, at times, the establishment Democrats, it’s because they’re scared. They’re scared of the multiracial, working class coalition that has been rising up in Minneapolis and in Minnesota. And they’re scared of having a city where ordinary people have real power.

– Omar Fateh

Also yesterday, Omar was interviewed by journalist Mehdi Hasan on his podcast, Mehdi Unfiltered. It’s a very informative 24-minute interview, though I wish people would stop reffering to Omar as "the Mamdani of Minneapolis." Yes, while it's true that he and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have similar progressive platforms, Omar Fateh is very much his own man. He deserves to be recognized and respected as such.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:21 Switching roles from senator to running for mayor
03:53 George Floyd
05:42 Palestine and antisemitism
08:46 Campaign policies
10:09 Charlie Kirk, facing racism and Islamophobia
16:06 What makes you qualified for mayor?
18:07 Revoked endorsement
21:28 Standing up to Trump

Related Off-site Links:
Minnesota Sen. Omar Fateh Says He Won’t Back Down Despite Islamophobic Threats – Brianna Kelly (Bring Me the News, September 25, 2025).
Four Candidates for Minneapolis Mayor Weigh In on Major Issues Facing the City – Jon Collins (MPR News, September 19, 2025).
People “Are Tired of Backroom Decisions”: A Conversation with Minneapolis’s Omar Fateh – Peter Lucas (The Nation, September 5, 2025).
Omar Fateh Has All the Right Enemies – Alex Skopic (Current Affairs, September 5, 2025).
State DFL tries to disenfranchise the City DFL – David Tilsen (Southside Pride, September 3, 2025).
Minnesota Democrats Stab Omar Fateh in the Back – Concernicus (August 27, 2025).
DFL Reverses Omar Fateh Endorsement – Left Reckoning (August 26, 2025).
Democrats in Minnesota Revoke the Mayoral Endorsement of Omar Fateh – I Am Blakeley (August 23, 2025).
The State DFL Spits on the Minneapolis DFL – Steve Timmer (LeftMN, August 23, 2025).
Minnesota DFL Revokes Endorsement for Omar Fateh in Minneapolis Mayoral Race – Naasir Akailvi (KARE 11 News, August 21, 2025).
Rep. Ilhan Omar Condemns Party’s Decision to Throw Out Fateh Endorsement – Torey Van Oot (Axios, August 21, 2025).
How Did This Happen? – Ed Felien (Southside Pride, August 5, 2025).
Minnesota Democrats Endorse Socialist Omar Fateh for Mayor Over Incumbent Democrat Jacob Frey – AllSides (July 21, 2025).
Who Is Omar Fateh? Mamdani of Minneapolis Faces MAGA Abuse – Kate Plummer (Newsweek, July 15, 2025).
CAIR-Minnesota Condemns Anti-Muslim, Racist Hate Targeting Sen. Omar Fateh Amid Rising Political Violence – CAIR-Minnesota (July 15, 2025).
Minneapolis Gets Its Own Mamdani – Kayla Bartsch (National Review, July 15, 2025).
Minneapolis Mayoral Candidate Omar Fateh Faces Racist Trolling: “Go to Mogadishu” – Times of India (July 14, 2025).
Omar Fateh Will Work Across the Aisle If Elected Mayor – Melody Hoffmann (Southwest Voices, April 2, 2025).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

OMAR FATEH
• A “Racist and Factless Meltdown” Over Omar Fateh
• Omar | Jazz | DeWayne
• In His Efforts to “Build a City That Works for All,” Omar Fateh Secures a Key Endorsement
• Something to Think About – July 25, 2025
• The Longstanding Fault Lines Within the Democratic Party Have Surfaced Again in Minnesota
• Omar Fateh: “We Need to Meet the Needs of Working People”
• “Hopeful and Grounded”: Omar Fateh’s Vision of Democratic Socialism

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and Democratic Socialism
• Bernie Sanders: Quote of the Day – June 12, 2019
• Heather Cox Richardson on the Origin of the American Obsession with “Socialism”
• The Biblical Roots of “From Each According to Ability; To Each According to Need”
• Something to Think About – December 14, 2011
• Jonty Langley: Quote of the Day – August 17, 2011
• A Socialist Perspective on the “Democratic Debacle” in Massachusetts
• Obama a Socialist? Hardly
• Obama, Ayers, the “S” Word, and the “Most Politically Backward Layers in America”
• A Socialist Response to the 2008 Financial Crisis
• Capitalism on Trial
• What It Means to Be a Leftist in 2025
• Ted Rall: “Democrats Are Not the Left”

The Wild Reed

Friday, October 17, 2025

Thoughts on the Eve of “No Kings Day” 2.0

Photo of the Day

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Groove and Grace: Remembering D’Angelo

When Terrorism Charges “Reek of Political Theater”

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Why Omar Fateh Is the Right Choice for Mayor of Minneapolis

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