Grahame Russell, Rights Action, November 6, 2026
After losing her Senate bid in Florida by a razor thin margin, while receiving no support from the Democratic Party establishment, Angie Nixon wrote:
“People of Florida. We broke state legislature super majorities because we drove turnout while everyone wrote us off. […]
I’m an organizer. And I look forward to getting back to what I love and know best.
Organizing THE HELL out of my state. Let’s get to work!”
“I am an organizer – let’s get to work.” Amen.
After the U.S.-mid-term elections, we breathe a sigh of relief - a small sigh, but real.
Recently, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election in part due to massive, citizen activism and organizing. Lula - Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – was re-elected President of Brazil in part due to an urgent, country-wide, citizen education and mobilization campaign.
We encourage folks in the U.S. and Canada to watch Democracy Now’s coverage this week, starting on November 4, to learn more about quite a number of positive mid-term election results, and to learn more about the role of citizen-led, community organizing and mobilization work that made the differences.
So today, we give thanks to and are again inspired by grassroots, community education, organizing and mobilization work that goes on year in, decade out, in the U.S., in Canada, and across our one and only planet - community-based work on all local-to-national-to-global issues of inequalities and injustices, genocides, violences and interventions, corruption and greed.
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability,
but comes through continuous struggle."
Martin Luther King
No false illusions
Even as we feel some relief, we have no illusions as to what one set of positive election results can actually change inside the richest, most powerful interventionist and imperialist country on the planet, in these times of blatant U.S.-led, Western-supported aggression and interventionism across the Middle East and the Americas.
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
Paolo Freire
The challenges are huge. Most of the crucial work that needs to be done is simply to start to stop doing the wrong thing. Firstly, and foremostly stopping the genocide in Palestine, and on into Iran, Lebanon, and across the Americas where the U.S. has been intervening very publicly, destructively and violently.
The crucial work also needs to be done inside the U.S., to start to stop the violent, deadly and fundamentally illegal ICE attacks, round-ups, deportations and jailings in the growing network of privatized prisons.
‘Elbows-up’ hypocrisy and complicity from Canada
Even as the U.S. has been the leading supporter of the genocide in Palestine and acts of aggression and interventionism across the Middle East and Americas, we denounce again the open support, or quiet self-serving complicity of Canada, without addressing here European complicity, in the genocide in Palestine and pretty much every recent case of U.S. aggression and interventionism.
A lot to begin to undo and stop
This is a lot to begin to undo and stop. Powerful and wealthy economic, political and military forces from the local-to-national-to-global levels are invested in all of this. This is even harder inside countries like the U.S. where there has been full bi-partisan support for the genocide in Palestine and most acts of aggression and interventionism across the planet. (In Canada, there is similar, full Liberal/Conservative party support for most of all this.)
Still, the mid-term elections in the U.S., Lula’s victory in Brazil and Mamdani’s victory in New York, remind us, ever again, that on-going grassroots, community work, year in, decade out, to educate, organize and mobilize ever more people – whether related to electoral processes or in response to the full array of crucial human issues across the planet - is the only thing that can ultimately defeat the interests of powerful, undemocratic, corrupt political, economic and military forces, from the local to global levels.
“If we don’t pull our struggles together, if we don’t connect the struggles together and the overall larger patterns of extraction, the larger patterns of colonialism, the larger patterns of empire, the larger patterns of massive moneymaking - if we don’t connect those dots between the struggles, we are never going to get anywhere.”
Rhiannon Giddens, Democracy Now interview
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn
“If you are not careful, the press will have you hating the people being repressed
and loving the people doing the repressing.”
Malcolm X
Change media sources
Rights Action urges folks to diversify news sources as antidote to oftentimes propagandistic reporting of government and corporate media in U.S. and Canada. Democracy Now, Gray Zone, DropSite News, Real News Network, CounterPunch, Intercept, Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, Breach, rabble.ca, Orinoco Tribune, Electronic Infitada news, Al Jazeera News (for Palestine related reporting), BreakThrough News, Canadian Dimension, …
“There will come a time when the rich own all the media and it will be impossible
for the public to make an informed decision.”
Albert Einstein
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TESTIMONIO
Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala
Book, 2021
13 BRAVE GIANTS
How We Won the Landmark Hudbay Minerals Lawsuits in Canada
the Mynor Padilla Criminal Trial in Guatemala, and at What Cost!
Report, 2025
What the Landmark Hudbay Minerals Lawsuits Exposed and Left Unresolved
By Grahame Russell
Blueprints of Disruption interview: with Grahame Russell
Canadian mining imperialism, Hudbay Minerals lawsuits & Guatemala's 13 Brave Giants
EcoJustice Radio interview: with Grahame Russell
Garifuna people & Honduras in resistance to U.S. & Canadian exploitation, violence & corruption