The Wild Reed

Thursday, October 15, 2026

This Is the Moment We “Start Fighting Like Hell”

Writes Julia Conley:

“I have rarely wanted to be wrong more,” said one journalist Wednesday night after The Wall Street Journal confirmed what many supporters of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar had suspected: that the Department of Homeland Security’s raid on her home this week was part of an investigation that is ultimately aimed at deporting her.

The Journal reported that U.S. officials confirmed the Trump administration aims to revoke Omar’s (D-Minn.) citizenship, which she obtained in 2000, five years after she arrived in the U.S. with her family from a refugee camp in Kenya. Omar is originally from Somalia, and President Donald Trump has made Somali Americans a key target of his mass deportation agenda and his racist attacks on immigrant communities.

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seized Omar’s passport, cellphone, personal computers, and notebooks, according to The Wall Street Journal, when they searched her home in Washington, DC.

Authorities have also issued more than a dozen subpoenas and are seeking testimony from people including Omar’s family members before a grand jury.

A Justice Department official told the WSJ that the agency plans to build its case on allegations that Omar lied about her age when she became a citizen.

Federal investigators have been examining whether Omar’s father, who died in 2020, altered her age to say she was 17 instead of 18 on immigration paperwork when he applied for citizenship. Doing so would have allowed Omar to acquire citizenship through her father.

The congresswoman, who is currently running for a fifth term, has previously denied committing immigration fraud, which Vice President JD Vance has openly accused her of. Other Republican elected officials have explicitly attacked Omar for her criticism of Israel and for being a Muslim, with Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) calling her a “terrorist.”

Trump has suggested the progressive lawmaker should be deported for “always complaining” and has called to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.”

Journalist Peter Sterne said Wednesday evening that “many on the left suspected” the administration was attempting to deport Omar, “but it’s still wild to see the WSJ confirm it.”

Dylan Williams of the Center for International Policy emphasized that the raid and investigation – carried out just weeks before the midterm elections and as Americans are already voting, though the Justice Department typically does not take actions against candidates just before an election – are “an attempt by the Trump administration to stir up its flagging base ahead of elections that are going to be brutal for them.”

“Nonetheless, we need to fight this fascist, un-American abuse of power, hold those responsible accountable, and stand with Ilhan Omar,” said Williams.

[. . .] New York state Assembly Member Diana Moreno (D-36) said of the WSJ’s reporting, “This is either the breaking point of our democracy or the moment we start fighting like hell to win back this country from the authoritarian demons in the White House. I stand with Ilhan Omar.”

– Julia Conley
Excerpted from “Omar Raid and Investigation
Aimed at Deporting Congresswoman, Officials Say”
Common Dreams
October 15, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
Ilhan Omar’s Home Raided by DHS Following Trump Deportation Threats – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, October 12, 2026).
“Bogus”: Minnesota State Senator Zaynab Mohamed on DHS Raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. Home – Democracy Now! (October 14, 2026).
“Part of the Fascist Playbook”: Ilhan Omar Condemns Trump DHS Raid on Her Home – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams (October 13, 2026).
Marjorie Taylor Greene Comes To Nemesis Ilhan Omar’s Defense, Calls Trump Administration’s Investigation “Bullshit” – Michael Luciano (Mediate, October 14, 2026).
Trump Says Lawmakers Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Should Be Removed From U.S. – Erin Hale (Al Jazeera, February 26, 2026).
In State of the Union, Trump Slams Somalis Over Fraud; Rep. Ilhan Omar Shouts Back – Sydney Kashiwagi (The Minnesota Star Tribune, February 25, 2026).
Ilhan Omar: “You Know Damn Well I Was Going to Respond to” Trump’s State of the Union “Lie” About Somalis – Eric Garcia (Independent, February 25, 2026).
“You Have Killed Americans,” “Black People Aren’t Apes”: Democrats Ilhan Omar and Al Green Protest Trump’s State of the Union – Democracy Now! (February 25, 2026).
Al Green and Ilhan Omar Interrupt Trump’s State of the Union Speech As Democrats Rally Outside Capitol – Rising (February 25, 2026).
From Minneapolis to Somalia: Here’s Everything Trump Gets Wrong About Somalis – Jordan Liz (Common Dreams, February 22, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

ILHAN OMAR
• For Rep. Ilhan Omar, Silence Is Never an Option
• Rep. Ilhan Omar: “These Findings Are Shocking, But Sadly, Not Surprising”
• Dean Phillips: Quote of the Day – February 3, 2023
• Ilhan Omar: “The Coup Attempt on January 6th Was a Warning for What’s to Come If We Don’t Act”
• Ilhan Omar: Quote of the Day – October 28, 2021
• Hadas Thier: Quote of the Day – June 11, 2021
• Ilhan Omar: Quote of the Day – May 29, 2021
• Ilhan Omar: Quote of the Day – January 13, 2021
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2020 U.S. Election Results
• Rep. Ilhan Omar Responds to President Trump’s Authoritarian Threats
• Quote of the Day: Ilhan Omar – August 11, 2020
• Ricardo Levins Morales on the “Deepest Political Fault Line” Separating Democrats Ilhan Omar and Antone Melton-Meaux
• To Whom the Future of America Belongs
• Ilhan Omar: Stepping Into Her Power
• Ilhan Omar: Quote of the Day – April 13, 2019
• Progressive Perspectives on the Ilhan Omar “Controversy”
• Ilhan Omar on The Daily Show
• Juan Cole: Quote of the Day – February 11, 2019

THE RISE OF FASCISM IN THE U.S.
• Brenna Zeimet: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• “Our Country Right Now Is At a Crossroads”
• George Conway: The Trump Administration Is a “Criminal Organization”
• Mark Greene on How ICE Is a Weapon of the Epstein Class
• Tommy J. Housman on Reactions to the “Defining Image” of Trump’s America
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• The “Creeping Fascism of Trump’s America”: A View from Australia
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Something to Think About . . .

– Source: The Conscious Observer

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Shining On
• Being the Light
• A Light That Will Always Shine
• How the Light Comes
• Until the Light Returns
• “There’s Light in Love, You See”
• Light and Dark: “Both Holy, Both Life-Giving”
• Photo of the Day – December 30, 2011
• Photo of the Day – October 21, 2010
• Photo of the Day – October 19, 2010
• Living From the Heart
• A Gift for the Soul
• “And Sweetest – in the Gale – Is Heard”
• The Smile

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Season of Descent

The following article by Tahverlee Anglen was first published in the October/November 2026 issue of The Edge magazine, a publication that serves as a “community for higher consciousness” in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

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The Season of Descent

By Tahverlee Anglen

The Edge Magazine
October-November 2026

The sun slowly fades, the cool temperatures roll into our energy like a long-forgotten hug, and the earth prepares for its long season of rest. Regardless of where you are located [in the northern hemisphere], there is a shift that happens as the year begins to turn inward. The earth’s energy changes and moves into a period of rest. A period of tending to its roots. A time to replenish after months of outward motion of continually reaching higher toward the sun.

I spend significant portions of my year on what I call “full systems firing” energy. I am creating, teaching, writing, traveling, holding space, and continually bringing ideas into form. I love the seasons of my life when the energy is moving outward and everything feels alive with possibility. There is something intoxicating about watching the seeds you planted begin to grow. But we cannot stay in the season of growth forever. Working with the return of the dark nights is a powerful way to recharge and rebuild your own resources.

For a long time, I struggled with that. Slowing down felt like I was losing momentum. Resting meant I wasn’t creating. Turning inward felt like a wet blanket on my exciting life and spiritual growth. So much of our world celebrates what we produce and accomplish. Even in our spiritual practices we continually look for the next “big” thing to do to get to the next stage. We want the next awakening, the next manifestation, or the next level of understanding. We are always reaching for something. But nature does not do this.

The trees need to slow their growth and shed their leaves. The plants need a break to allow their roots to flourish. The planet needs the inward time to replenish, to descend. So too with us. We need breaks from reaching towards the sun so as to take our energy downward and inward.

There is something sacred about pulling your energy inward as the nights get longer, and focus on tending to your own roots, your own soul, and pause. The descent is the place where we strengthen our fortitude and gather energy.

If we choose to spend this season with more time by candlelight without the glare of artificial light and put our screens away, we may just find that life will indeed carry on as it needs to, but our internal energy systems will replenish. A good practice to do once the sun goes down is to journal on what wisdom is waiting for you in the darkness. Ask yourself what parts of you were neglected while producing, achieving, and reaching outward. Doing this while in the quiet of the evening or longer, darker mornings, will support your time in the descent.

This is where the season of descent has changed me the most – just slowing down long enough to ask the questions and simply sit with what arises. Sometimes it’s just more rest. Sometimes it’s grief for what changed in the previous season. Sometimes I even discover a hidden treasure of an idea that was buried underneath the busyness of living. And sometimes the answer lies in just being willing to sit in the darkness, under a starry sky, and breathe it all in.

So as the light fades, let it remind you to descend too, to turn inward, to complete the season of outward momentum and take time to replenish your own roots. I promise there will be another season of reaching towards the light, but for now, be willing to see what grows in the dark.

– Tahverlee Anglen
The Edge
Oct./Nov. 2026

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Time to Go Inwards
• To Dream, to Feel, to Listen
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• God Rest Us
• Allow Everything to Rest Right Now
• Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
• A Renewed Mind
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• A Prayer of Anchoring
• Cultivating Stillness
• A Sacred Pause
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• October Vignettes (2024)
• October Vignettes (2023)
• October Afternoon
• An Autumn Walk Through the Neighborhood
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame!

Image: Michael J. Bayly (Benson, MN – 10/11/26).

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Photo of the Day

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Stay Supple, Like a Reed
• The Sun in the Reeds
• The Wild Reeds of Diamond Lake
• The Wild Reeds of Wood Lake
• Photo of the Day – March 21, 2026
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – October 13, 2024
• The Now
• Photo of the Day – December 13, 2022
• Sunlight and Reeds
• Photo of the Day – January 26, 2017
• My Saaxiib Qurux Badan at Diamond Lake – March 29, 2019
• Photo of the Day – September 21, 2013
• Season of the Soul
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Oak and the Reed

Image: Michael J. Bayly (Delano, MN).

Quote of the Day

To those who are upset over Trump’s plan for a public execution, which news channel do you watch?

Cuz the news I watched showed this:

Not only have 74,000 Palestinians been publicly executed in the world’s first live-streamed genocide over the past three years, U.S. taxpayers all pay for Israel’s carnage. Both Biden and Trump took your tax dollars to pay for mass murder in Gaza.

Where was your loathing of barbarian behavior during this? Did you only develop it after Trump was elected?

– Lady Bunny
via social media
October 11, 2026

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Why the Establishment Wants Zack Polanski to Resign

Council Estate Media is a U.K.-based website and newsletter focusing on “working class politics and creeping authoritarianism.”

Earlier today it published the following on Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. Polanski recently lost the Holborn and St Pancras by-election to Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali.

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The media is telling us today that 1 in 3 Brits think Zack Polanski should stand down as Green leader. This is an interesting way off saying 2 in 3 Brits do not think he should stand down!

He just got TEN TIMES more votes in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election than his party got under Caroline Lucas, so why are they pretending things are getting worse for the Greens?

Do you really think they’re concerned for the welfare of the party? Or do you think they’re more concerned that the Greens are finally influencing the country’s political direction? Answer honestly.

Prior to Polanski, the government only felt pressure from the right and that kept the conversation exactly where media moguls and billionaires want it to be.

Suddenly, Polanski shifted the conversation in the other direction, and instead of talking about how bad Muslims and immigrants are all the time, and how we couldn’t afford to do anything other than slash welfare, we were talking about the cost of living, issues that affect real people, and our government’s complicity in genocide.

Keir Starmer is a war criminal who had no answers to the problems people were facing. He offered only managed decline and contempt for workers. The moment we started having conversations that exposed that, his government collapsed.

If it wasn’t for Polanski, we’d still be stuck with a prime minister who completely ignores the needs of ordinary people. We now have a prime minister in Andy Burnham who at least pretends to listen and who will make some concessions.

This is only happening because of Polanski’s leadership. If the Labour government returns to letting us down like it did under Starmer, the Greens are there to fill that void. Labour knows they can no longer afford to ignore our concerns.

The Greens are ensuring the people who aren’t supposed to have representation under neoliberalism are heard.

The last thing the establishment wants is for those voices to grow louder and turn into real power. They see Zack Polanski as a threat to the status quo in a way they don’t with any other political leader.

All of the politicians who’ve spent years letting us down are joining ranks with the media who’ve poisoned our political discourse to bring down one man. That should tell you everything you need to know about who is on your side.

– Council Estate Media
via social media
October 10, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
Labour Beats Greens to Win Holborn and St Pancras as Polanski Faces Call to Resign – BBC News (October 9, 2026).
Zack Polanski Signals Green Party Overhaul After Row Over Zionism Vote – Aletha Adu (The Guardian, October 11, 2026).
Yes, It’s Been a Tough Week for the Greens: But Don’t Lose Sight of How We’re Transforming British Politics – Zack Polanski (The Guardian, October 11, 2026).
After Holborn and St Pancras: Can the Green Party Still Influence U.K. Politics? – Jonathan Fenton-Harvey (The New Arab, October 13, 2026).
Zack Polanski Hits Back at Andy Burnham After PM Rules Out Deal With Greens – Kate Nicholson (HuffPost, October 14, 2026)>
“You're a Prime Minister Who Arms a Genocide and Locks Pensioners Up for Opposing It”: Zack Polanski Hits Back at Andy Burnham Over “Antisemitism” Row – Marco Suttie (The National, October 14, 2026)>

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

ZACK POLANSKI AND THE GREEN PARTY OF ENGLAND AND WALES
• How the Green Party Gained Power in the U.K.
• “Green Wave 2026 is Global”
• The Rational National’s Take on U.K. Green Party’s “Brilliant” New Ad
• Zack Polanski’s Christmas Message
• Zack Polanski’s Message of Hope
• “The Answer, Actually, Is Hope”

GREEN PARTY OF THE U.S.A.
• Meet Some of the “People-Powered” Green Party Candidates for 2026
• Butch Ware on Why Third Parties Are Crucial
• Campaigning With the Green Party of Minnesota
• With the Green Party at Twin Cities Pride
• MPR’s Major (But Unsurprising) Failure
• Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t
• Jill Stein on the Importance of the Green Party
• Dayvon Love: “You Actually Don’t Care Where Jill Stein Is”
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• Something to Think About – December 8, 2024
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”
• Jill Stein: “Americans Deserve Choices”
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• Demolishing the False Narrative About Jill Stein and the 2016 Election
• Cornel West: “The Next Step Is a Green Step, a Progressive Step”
• Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein: Is a “Historic Collaboration” in the Making? (2016)
• Voting Green: Hope Over Fear

A Course in Miracles and the Sufi Way

If you’re a regular visitor to The Wild Reed you would know that I understand and define my spiritual path as “mystico/prophetic,” a term I first encountered in Catholic priest and theologian Albert Nolan’s 2006 book, Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom.

Reading the signs of the times, Nolan says, is prophetic work, and such work was integral to Jesus’ spirituality. We know this because Jesus recognized and spoke out against the oppressive assumptions, practices, and structures of the social and religious establishments of his time. He “turned their world upside down,” Nolan reminds us, and “the conflict that this created became so intense that in the end they killed him to keep him quiet.”

Jesus was not only a prophet, however; he was also a mystic, a person who longs to experience oneness with God. Because he was both mystic and prophet, Jesus, says Nolan, was rooted in a “mystico-prophetic spiritual tradition,” one embodied by the Jewish prophets who came before him and which lives on to this day in those whose perspectives and actions provide a powerful example of “prophesy and mysticism forming an inseparable whole.”

Vilayat Inayat Khan, son of renowned Sufi mystic and teacher Inayat Khan, reminds us that Sufism, like all mystical traditions, seeks first and foremost to awaken us to our oneness with God; or, in the words of A Course in Miracles teacher Marianne Williamson, to align us with the “living light.” Meditation, which involves cultivating stillness, plays an important role in this type of awakening and aligning.

Since around 2020 I have discovered that what most grounds and guides me in the mystico/prophetic tradition is my being both a student of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and a seeker on the Sufi way, the “path of the heart.”

For quite some time now I’ve been reflecting on what Sufism and ACIM share in common. The short answer is that both of these systems of transformative thought share the same call: the total surrender to the Creator, the Beloved. Writes Clarice O’Bryan: “Both Sufism and The Course call one to go within and listen for the voice for God,” which is Love. This call has a profound mystical focus on non-separation, the ultimate illusion of the material world, and the realization of inner divine oneness.

With all of this in mind and heart, here are four core similarities shared by these two mystic traditions.

• The Illusion of Separation: Both traditions teach that the fundamental problem of human existence is the belief in separation from God or the Divine. ACIM states that separation is a dream-like error, while Sufism views multiplicity and ego-identity (nafs) as veils hiding the ultimate unity of reality (Tawhid) or Oneness of Being (Wahdat al-Wujud).

• Forgiveness and Inner Purification: ACIM centers its entire curriculum on forgiveness, which undoes the ego’s projections and grievances. Similarly, Sufism emphasizes tazkiya (purification of the heart) and the letting go of worldly illusions, anger, and egoic attachments so as to achieve spiritual clarity.

• Direct Experiential Knowledge: Both paths look past rigid external rules and dogmas to prioritize a direct, inner experience of the divine. Classical Sufism is the esoteric (bāṭin) heart of Islam, while universal Sufism is a resolute expression of the mystic heart of all the religions. For its part, ACIM operates as a self-study spiritual thought system that bypasses organized religious structures.

• Love as the Transforming Force: Both systems treat universal love as the ultimate healing power. Sufi poetry (like that of Rūmī) famously portrays divine love (ishq) as the dissolver of all boundaries, echoing ACIM’s premise that love is the only reality and fear is its absence.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

THE SUFI PATH
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Love, the Sufi Way of Being
• The Sufi Way
• A Precise Metaphysical Claim
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• Inayat Khan and the Sufi Message
• “Like a Stream Running Into the Ocean”
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan on Mysticism
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• The Gorgeous One
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan and the Winged Heart
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrender
• The Journey Home
• Living From the Heart
• Bismillah
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

A COURSE IN MIRACLES
• A Course in Miracles: A Gift of Peace
• Why A Course in Miracles Is Not “New Age”
• Mysticism and Miracles
• Gifts of Abundance
• I Am One With the Beloved
• Being One With the Beloved, the Source of All Things
• Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One
• Dwelling in Peace
• The Peace of God
• You Are My Goal, Beloved One
• Be In My Mind, Beloved One
• Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• In the Stillness and Silence of This Present Moment
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Today I Will Be Still
• I Need Do Nothing . . . I Am Open to the Living Light
• Aligning With the Living Light
• An Expression of Humility
• Choosing to Awaken
• Choosing to Understand
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Marianne Williamson

Related Off-site Links:
Recalling Hazrat Inayat Khan and his Universalist Sufism – James Ford (Patheos, February 5, 2022).
Inayat Khan and Universal Sufism – Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion, December 8, 2024). The Sufi Concept of “Fana” – And Why Modern Psychology Is Only Just Catching Up – Ahmad Fatahillah (Medium, May 22, 2026).
3 Truths From A Course in Miracles That Inspire Inner Peace – Carolyn Jean Roney (The Huffington Post, December 6, 2017).
Heaven Is Real, Hell Isn’t: My Spiritual Journey Through Ego, Love and Seeking Out Peace – Aui’a Vaimaila Leatinu’u (Pacific Media Network, December 11, 2025).
Simply Consciousness: An Interview with David Hoffmeister – Claudia Navone (Thrive Global, July 3, 2019).
The Power of Your Thoughts and A Course In Miracles: An Interview with Marianne Williamson – Aubrey Marcus Podcast (December 24, 2024).

Friday, October 09, 2026

Quote of the Day

It’s starting friends, the pre-election violence is ramping up. If you look at what they’re doing in California and New York, if you look at the threats they’re making in Minnesota, if you watch the drones over Minneapolis and Columbia Heights every single night - you know it’s getting real.

They are trying to tell you that you need them to protect you from the immigrants and the gangs and the fraud. They are trying to tell you that you should fear your neighbors and put your faith in their armed men who will “keep you safe.” They are lying to you so that you will give them the power to oppress you. They can’t let this election happen because if they lose, they will be held accountable for the laws they’ve broken, so they are going to come with force and they’re hoping you will side with them when they do because of your fear.

Somali people are not your enemies, they are your neighbors. They are beautiful and generous and kind and they make this place better. You don’t need to fear them, they aren’t hurting you. Immigrants are not your enemies, they are your neighbors. They make your community better! You don’t need to fear them, they aren’t hurting you. No one is hurting you except the government that is promising to save you, they are raising your prices and taking your healthcare and sending armed, masked men to follow your school buses. Don’t let them tell you that you are in danger and don’t let them tell you they will keep you safe – neither are true.

You will never be safer by attacking your neighbor. Either we’re all safe or none of us are; either we’re all free or none of us are.

– Brenna Zeimet
via social media
October 9, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
“Abolish ICE”: Protests Erupt in New York City After ICE Agents Shoot Father with 5-Year-Old Son in Car – Democracy Now! (October 9, 2026).
Trump ICE Surge in California Condemned as “Clear Attempt to Intimidate” Latino Voters – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, October 9, 2026).
Mosques Step Up Safety After Trump’s Comments Targeting Somali Minnesotans – Estelle Timar-Wilcox (MPR News, October 9, 2026).
Operation Metro Surge Hasn’t Ended. It’s Expanded to the Suburbs – Nicolas Scibelli (Sahan Journal, February 19 2026).

UPDATES: Warning Signs Are Flashing Red for American Democracy – Ben Manski, Michael Shank, April Doner (OtherWords via Common Dreams, October 11, 2026).
Mamdani Says ICE Agents Who Shot Man in New York Looked Like “Mass Shooters” – Keely Aouga (The Guardian, October 12, 2026).
New York ICE Shooting Illustrates Deliberate Policy of Harm and Medical Neglect – Chuck Idelson (Common Dreams, October 12, 2026).
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Home Raided by DHS Following Trump Deportation Threats – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, October 12, 2026).
Bigoted, Racist, Nationalistic Trump Targets Ilhan Omar With DHS Raid Weeks Before Election – Robert Reich (Common Dreams, October 13, 2026).
After Raid of Omar’s Home and Latest ICE Shooting, Rep. Delia Ramirez Unveils Bill to “Dismantle” DHS – Stephen Prager (Common Dreams, October 13, 2026).

See also the following Wild Reed posts:
• “The Fascist Fist Is Tightening Because It Knows That It Is Losing Its Grasp on Us”
• The “Power, Peril and Importance” of What’s Happening in Minnesota
• Only the Beginning
• The North Remembers
• “It’s All Lies and Propaganda”
• What This Moment Feels Like in Minnesota
• Quote of the Day – February 23, 2026
• Greg Ketter: A Valiant Minnesotan
• Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• More Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Honoring Renée Good and the “Astonishing Surge of Courage” of Minneapolis
• Renée Good and Alex Pretty: “They Were Alive. Then They Were Not”
• Bruce Springsteen and the Streets of Minneapolis in the Winter of ’26

Image: Brenna Zeimet, who on 9/11/26 wrote on Facebook: “These men stole a woman from her home in my community yesterday. These men brought assault rifles and tactical gear to raid a home on a quiet street looking for one woman. These men would not identify themselves, but they had ice vehicles and agents in their mix. These men would not show their warrant even to the lawyer who was on scene trying to protect the rights of this community member. These men staged in the Columbia Heights Police Department (CHPD) parking lot after they stole one of our neighbors – talking, laughing, moving equipment between their trucks, taking off their vests so they could drive their undercover vehicles around the community without being spotted. These men partnered with CHPD, putting the woman in the back of one of our squad cars after they took her. This is what it is like to live in a lawless, violent police state.”

Thursday, October 08, 2026

Love, the Sufi Way of Being

I came across the following online today quite by chance. It’s a beautiful piece written by Mariam Davids, and one that is appropriate to share as part of my ongoing series on the Sufi Path.

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Love, in the Sufi tradition, is not a simple human feeling, nor a passing emotion. He is the very breath of existence, the key that opens the door of divine mystery. He is both the source and the goal, the fire that consumes the ego, and the light that reveals Unity.

Love, the Essence of Creation

Wise ones say that the whole universe was created by love. “I was a hidden treasure, and I sought to be known,” says an expression attributed to the Divine. Love is therefore the force that drives the Being to manifest itself, to unfold itself through the multiplicity of the world.

Love is what gives meaning to the soul’s journey. He is the invisible thread that connects every being to the Whole. When we truly love, we align with the cosmic movement of returning to the Origin.

Love That Transform

True love is not just an attachment, it is a transformative force. He burns the fleeting to reveal the essential. In the Sufi tradition, the image of fire is often employed:

• Majnoun’s love for Leïla becomes a mystical quest; he doesn’t just love a woman, but through her, he discovers absolute love.

• The Moth and the Flame: Lover is like a butterfly attracted to divine light. He dances around until he’s completely consumed, achieving the perfect unity.

• The Wine of Love: Rûmî speaks of love as an intoxicating wine that makes one forget the self, that dissolves the boundaries between the lover and the Beloved.

Thus, to love truly is accepting to be transformed. It’s losing a part of yourself in order to become greater than yourself.

Loving and Leaving Me

The ego is the greatest obstacle to love. As long as we remain attached to our small identity, we cannot fully love.

Rûmî reminds us: “Tear your ego into thousand pieces, become dust under the feet of the Beloved. Only then will you understand what Love means.”

To love is to die to oneself in order to be reborn into Infinity. It’s to forget, no longer see separation between “I” and “the other,” between “I” and the Divine.

The Love That Unites

In the pursuit of love, there is first separation, desire, drive towards the other. Then comes the union, the dissolution of dualities: there is no longer lover nor Beloved, there is only Love.

True love is not possessive, it does not seek to hold, but to release. He is like the wind that caresses without closing.

Love does not need external proof. He lives in the silence of a glance, in the shared presence, in the simple joy of existing together.

Walk the Path of Love

To love is to choose a difficult path. It’s about accepting yourself to be broken, to be vulnerable, to be transformed.

Sufis dance, sing, cry and laugh, because they know that every emotion, every encounter, every moment can be a mirror of divine Love.

So, what to do?

• Love without expecting in return.
• Be a channel of love, not wanting to own.
• Look for the beauty everywhere, even in adversity.
• Remember that every being is a manifestation of the Beloved.

Love Is the Way

Love is not a destination, it’s the journey itself. The one who loves is already walking on the path.

Rûmî whispers to us again: “Yesterday I was clever, I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, I am changing myself.”

Because love begins within us. He is the key that unlocks all doors. He’s the answer to all questions.

And you, on this path of love, where are you?

– Mariam Davids
via Facebook
February 20, 2025

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Sufi Way
• A Precise Metaphysical Claim
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• Inayat Khan and the Sufi Message
• “Like a Stream Running Into the Ocean”
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan on Mysticism
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• The Gorgeous One
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan and the Winged Heart
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrender
• The Journey Home
• Living From the Heart
• Bismillah
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

Related Off-site Links:
Recalling Hazrat Inayat Khan and his Universalist Sufism – James Ford (Patheos, February 5, 2022).
Inayat Khan and Universal Sufism – Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion, December 8, 2024). The Sufi Concept of “Fana” – And Why Modern Psychology Is Only Just Catching Up – Ahmad Fatahillah (Medium, May 22, 2026).

Image 1: Subject and photographer unknown.
Image 2: Paulo Pascoal as photographed by Francisco Martins.

Wednesday, October 07, 2026

Quote of the Day

Above: An Israeli runs to a shelter in Ashkelon on October 7, 2023.
(Photo: Tamir Kalifa/The New York Times/Redux)

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians – including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

– Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani
New York City
October 7, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
NYC Mayor Mamdani’s Statement Marking 3 Years Since October 7 Attacks Calls Out Israeli Government’s "Ongoing Genocide" – Jesse Zanger, Ali Bauman (CBS News, October 7, 2026).
Israeli-American Council Criticizes NYC Mayor Mamdani’s October 7 Statement – Amanda Castro (Newsweek, October 7, 2026).
Zohran Mamdani’s October 7th Anniversary Statement Causes Unwarranted Controversy – David Doel (The Rational National, October 7, 2026).
October 7: The World Must Stop Starting the Story in the Middle – Mohammed Altaj (Common Dreams, October 7, 2026).
The Problem With Israel Goes Much Deeper Than “Netanyahu’s Extremist Government” – Eric Ross (Common Dreams, October 7, 2026).
Gaza Genocide “Not Over,” Says U.N. Expert as Israel’s Onslaught Enters Fourth Year – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, October 7, 2026).
Israeli Activist Maoz Inon Lost His Parents on October 7, Decries Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza – Democracy Now! (October 7, 2026).
After October 7, I Learned That Movements Need Grief Spaces – Alison Avigayil Ramer (Waging Nonviolence, October 6, 2026).

UPDATES: “There Must Be Room to Mourn Every Single Life,” Mamdani Says of October 7 Attack and Genocide That Followed – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, October 8, 2026).
To Speak the Truth: On the Mediated Obscene – Abby Zimet (Common Dreams, October 10, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “Nothing About Today is ‘Unprovoked’” (2023)
• Phyllis Bennis: “If We Are Serious About Ending This Spiraling Violence, We Need to Look at Root Causes”
• A Year of War Against Children (2024)
• Anti-Genocide Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Reflects on the First Anniversary of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”
• Why What’s Happening in Palestine – and Our Response to It – Is So Important
• Two Years of “Indescribable Horror” (2025)
• No Justice, No Peace
• The Architecture of Settler Colonialism
• Do Nation States Have the “Right” to Exist?
• Chris Hedges: “The Genocide in Gaza Is the Beginning. Welcome to the New World Order”
• “The Moral Issue of Our Generation”
• Genevieve Fraser: Quote of the Day – August 26, 2026
• “One More Destruction of Our Collective Humanity”

Image of Mayor Mamdani: Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press.
Image of October 7 third anniversary vigil in New York City: Photographer unknown.

Tuesday, October 06, 2026

Progressive Perspectives on Zionism As a Form of Racism

The U.K. Greens have just voted that Zionism is racism.

In Brighton, party members approved it. With that, the Green Party becomes the first party with seats in the country to declare itself, in writing, anti-Zionist.

The motion calls Zionism what it is: an ethno-nationalist project for a Jewish state in historic Palestine. The displacement and dispossession of Palestinians are not an accident. They are part of how that state was built and maintained.

They did not invent the phrase. The U.N. had already written it, on November 10, 1975.

On December 16, 1991, it was forcibly erased. Israel refused to attend the Madrid Peace Conference – the U.S.- and Soviet-sponsored negotiations with the Arab countries – if that phrase remained in force. Washington moved the votes. The resolution that repealed it did not even debate the substance: it simply ordered its revocation.

The phrase was archived. The fact was not.

Today, a British party has written it again.

Is someone finally saying it out loud, or will they try to erase it again?

– We Stand With Francesca Albanese
via social media
October 4, 2026

The U.K. Green Party has voted to recognize that Zionism is a form of racism.

In other news, the party recognizes that water is wet, fire is hot, and, (believe it or not), genocide is wrong.

A political party that tells the truth? How did this happen?

Cue the outrage of the Israeli apartheid regime, its proxies, and its smear machine.

The truth must remain unspoken. Those who defend human rights must be punished. The regime must be obeyed.

– Craig Mokhiber
via social media
October 4, 2026

In the following 7-minute video commentary, Richard Sanders of Double Down News "exposes Green Party 'Zionism is Racism' Smears."

In the 3-minute video below, Matthew Cooke discusses the U.K. Green Party vote to declare Zionism as racism. Here is how his commentary is intoduced:

What is Zionism? A European ethno-nationalist movement to establish a Jewish-majority homeland in Palestine.

This has required ethnic cleansing, ethnic partition, and apartheid, according to Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem.

And now genocide, according to a U.N. Commission of Inquiry, with senior Israeli ministers openly calling for the annexation of any remaining Palestinian territory.

Nearly two million have been bombed and driven from their homes. Most civilian buildings destroyed or damaged. Most hospitals and schools. More than 70,000 killed (a conservative estimate), mostly civilians, more than half of them women and children.

What is the largest Zionist movement in the United States? Christian Zionists. Largely the same groups supporting Trump’s ongoing ICE raids and the return of concentration camps.

Ethnic cleansing is neither a Jewish nor a Christian value. Ethno-nationalism is an appalling desecration of religion. It is racializing Judaism and Islam, emboldening white supremacy, creating forever wars, and destabilizing the world.

Related Off-site Link:
Zionism: From An Idea to Genocide – TRT World (October 7, 2026).

See also the following Wild Reed posts:
• Do Nation States Have the “Right” to Exist?
• “The Mistreatment and Discrimination Against Palestinians Is Not Unprecedented. It’s Baked Into the Foundation of the Political System in Israel”
• For Some Jews, Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians is Yet Another Jewish Tragedy
• Remembering the Six-Day War and Its Ongoing Aftermath
• Something to Think About – July 29, 2018
• Noura Erakat: Quote of the Day – May 15, 2018
• David Norris: Quote of the Day – August 12, 2014
• Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• More Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• “A Genocide Has Been Normalized”
• “This Is a Genocidal Project”
• Outrage and Despair
• “It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”
• Protesting Weapons Manufacturer and Genocide Enabler General Dynamics
• “A Year of War Against Children”
• Anti-Genocide Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Reflects on the First Anniversary of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”
• Hope and Courage – Christmas 2024
• Chris Hedges: “Israel Has No Intention of Halting Its Merry-Go-Round of Death”
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden Administration
• The Theft of One’s Soul: Omar El Akkad on the “Lesser of Two Evils” Argument
• How Genocide Becomes Ordinary
• “A Holocaust, Live-streamed”
• Why What’s Happening in Palestine – and Our Response to It – Is So Important
• Israel’s Actions in Gaza: “A Clear and Present Moral Collapse”
• Protesting Israel’s “Starvation Campaign” in Gaza
• A Call to Divest from Israel
• A Poem That Remains Painfully Relevant
• Two Years of “Indescribable Horror”
• No Justice, No Peace
• The Architecture of Settler Colonialism
• Chris Hedges: “The Genocide in Gaza Is the Beginning. Welcome to the New World Order”
• “The Moral Issue of Our Generation”
• “One More Destruction of Our Collective Humanity”

Opening image: PA Wire/Maja Smiejkowska

The Wild Reed

Thursday, October 15, 2026

This Is the Moment We “Start Fighting Like Hell”

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Something to Think About . . .

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Season of Descent

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Photo of the Day

Quote of the Day

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Why the Establishment Wants Zack Polanski to Resign

A Course in Miracles and the Sufi Way

Friday, October 09, 2026

Quote of the Day

Thursday, October 08, 2026

Love, the Sufi Way of Being

Wednesday, October 07, 2026

Quote of the Day

Tuesday, October 06, 2026

Progressive Perspectives on Zionism As a Form of Racism

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