Katelin (she/her)

🚨🤠 NC attorneys & law students, we need you!! Join me as a volunteer on the Hotline! We answer questions from voters, report problems & ensure access to the ballot. It's an easy, non-partisan opportunity to get involved this Election!

Everyone's eyes should be on Texas. House Dems, who returned voluntarily, were given mandatory 24/7 DPS surveillance to maintain their attendance. One democrat, @NicoleCollier95, declined DPS custody –– and she's forced to stay locked in the House, potentially until Wednesday.

This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings. Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half. I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls. I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed. I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission. I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards. I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith. I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting. O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it. Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance. Anas Jamal Al-Sharif 06.04.2025 This is what our beloved Anas requested to be published upon his martyrdom.

A lot is happening with federal student debt at the moment. Here is some of our thoughts — and what we think you need to know.

Statement on My Politically-Motivated Detainment by U.S. Customs & Border Patrol After spending a month in revolutionary Cuba, I was welcomed back to the Great Satan by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) detaining me, interrogating me, and seizing my phone in Miami International Airport on 19 May 2025. Every step of the way both to and from Cuba, I experienced endless harassment, secondary screenings, and physical groping by Transportation Security Administration (TSA). All of this indicates to me that I am on some sort of domestic terrorism watch list, as a result of my anti-imperialist political activity and my criminal record for taking direct action to resist the amerikan-zionist genocide against Palestine. For context, I am 20 years old. For every flight I boarded, the airline would not print out my boarding pass, or allow me to board the flight at the gate, without special permission from TSA and additional screening. Several airline staff told me they had never seen this type of flagging before. In JFK and Miami airports, over and over again TSA physically groped me, searched all my belongings, and swabbed me for explosives; during both of my Miami layovers, TSA made me exit and go through security multiple times although I had never left the airport, forcing me to miss my return connecting flight; just to make the connection from Miami to New York, I was searched 5 different times. Multiple TSA officers indicated to me that these orders were coming from way above their paygrade in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership. When I entered customs upon landing in Miami from Havana, I answered CBP's legally required questions — where I traveled, how long I was there, what license my trip was under ("Support for the Cuban People"). CBP pulled me into secondary questioning when I refused to answer an additional question of how I paid for the trip. They put me in a waiting room where I was the only white person, because state repression is already the daily reality for Africans and migrants from the Global South, regardless of their political activity. I watched migrant families with little kids leave questioning clearly traumatized. CBP searched all my belongings and asked for my phone passcode, the specifics of what I did in Cuba, and with whom I traveled. It was clear I was not saying a word, and they quickly gave up on the interrogation, seized my phone, and released me. As panic and counterinsurgent legal advice proliferates from liberal influencers, activists, and attorneys alike, my experience adds further proof that the best response to detainment/interrogation is to stay calm, shut the fuck up, and give out no information. Why on earth would we dialogue with the Gestapo of the Fourth Reich? DHS, CBP, ICE, the U.S. police, the U.S. military, every arm of the U.S. empire, domestically and internationally, has always existed to wage war and genocide against colonized people and all those who resist imperialism. Last month comrade Musa Springer was also detained for hours, intensively questioned, groped, and had their devices seized when they returned from Cuba, specifically for their support for Palestine and the student intifada. CBP regularly detains U.S. citizens traveling from Cuba, often at random, but these are new, targeted escalations. All this intimidation serves to break our bonds of international solidarity and discourage us from learning from one of the greatest human achievements in history, the Cuban Revolution, which the U.S. blockade, regime change programs, and counterinsurgency warfare are attempting to strangle to death. In recent months the U.S. Empire has intensified its war against Cuba, attacking Cuban international medical brigades and international travel to Cuba, two major lifelines for the Cuban economy, which the U.S. has besieged for over 60 years with genocidal, unilateral, extraterritorial sanctions. U.S. diplomats in Cuba appear to be provoking a complete rupture of diplomatic relations. On 13 May 2025, the State Department re-listed Cuba (along with Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the DPRK) as a country not fully cooperating with the U.S. on terrorism because Cuba has given asylum to U.S. citizens fighting for national liberation from the U.S. Empire like revolutionaries from the Black Liberation Army and the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña. My trip to Cuba was completely licensed and legal, but it is futile for revolutionaries to base our politics, especially our defense of people facing repression, in the empire's framework of legality. Revolution will always be illegal. Like the zionist genocide against Palestine, the U.S. blockade against Cuba is also illegal under international law, however, the empire continues to function on a basis of complete impunity for its ongoing and rampant violations of international law and fundamental human rights. With the direction things are going, soon travel to Cuba could be heavily restricted if not banned outright like it was for decades before. Elders I have met on Cuba solidarity brigades would fly as youth from the U.S. to France to Czechoslovakia to get to Cuba or arrive in freight ships from Canada, subverting the travel bans, while other groups would organize completely unlicensed protest trips to Cuba. The Cuban people's resiliency shows us we can withstand any repression, any siege, any attack, even by a much greater power, if we are organized, disciplined, and unified around principles of militant anti-imperialist resistance. It is not lost on me that upon my return from Cuba, falsely characterized by imperialist propaganda as a brutal, repressive police state, I was immediately surrounded, detained, and harassed by dozens of armed state agents multiple different times. I would have been surprised if this didn't happen — it was the only welcome back I could imagine receiving in the U.S. where our daily lives are characterized by violent state repression, and I have become unavoidably numb to body pat downs, strip searches, chains and shackles, and the deprivation of my "rights" through my own experience of incarceration. Looking back, it would have been smarter to leave the phone behind in Cuba and travel completely deviceless. This incident was the second time my phone has been seized by federal authorities since the Al-Aqsa Flood, first in November 2023 by the FBI after my arrest for attacking an Elbit Systems factory in New Hampshire with Palestine Action U.S.. Enabling my personal phone to get seized is one of the greatest tactical errors I have ever made; it exposed and endangered not only me but every single contact I had on that phone. This time, I traveled with a phone I bought and used only for this trip, and I factory reset the device before leaving Cuba, wiping all its data, leaving only a sticker on the back quoting the great martyr Jonathan Jackson: HELL WILL BE THEIR REWARD. My advice to fellow organizers is to never fly or cross borders with your personal devices, to use strong alphanumeric passcodes and encrypted messaging platforms, and for riskier activities, to use burner phones, secure operating systems like Graphene OS, or no devices at all. Develop an understanding of digital security and threat modeling, and research these tools, rather than implementing them for the sake of implementing them. More importantly than specific tools or tactics, we must put politics in command and develop our political framework for as to why greater levels of security are necessary: because fascism has been here since this empire's very inception, we are in a state of war, and one day all our work, even legal aboveground work, will be targeted, and is too risky to be kept in a glasshouse. This trip to Cuba was my first time traveling outside of the U.S. since the State of New Hampshire banned me from leaving the country and deemed me a flight risk (using my past three trips to Cuba as a justification) while I was facing 37 years in prison in 2023/2024. I am not a "perfect victim" and you cannot defend me based on my innocence. I am guilty of wanting to destroy imperialism by any means necessary. I have a criminal record, I have been under federal investigation for years, and I morally and politically support the Axis of Resistance and all liberation movements falsely labeled as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Specially Designated Nationals, and State Sponsors of Terrorism. No intimidation enacted by amerikan, gusano, or zionist thugs could possibly force me to back down from these beliefs — that we must lift all U.S. sanctions and abolish the terror lists and designations, that we must respond to fascist repression by building unity in resistance, and that we must uphold armed struggle against imperialism, abroad and here, such as the alleged actions of political prisoner Elias Rodriguez, who brought the war home. History will absolve us, and hell will be their reward. Disclaimer: This is a statement on behalf of myself and no other individual(s) or organization(s). Also published online at @unityoffields: unityoffields.net/statement-on-m…

@RepMGP Thank you for your advocacy on standardizing headlights brightness!!

Car headlights have gotten absurdly bright – roughly doubling in recent years – and it's dangerous for others on the road. I encouraged the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to look into setting better maximum brightness standards in their upcoming infrastructure bill.

📢 Reminder: Cutting federal funding for SNAP just means states foot the bill. And if they can’t? Families lose coverage. Kids go hungry. And states have to make impossible decisions to balance the budget. ncbudget.org/federalletter #MedicaidMatters #SaveSNAP #ncpol 2/2

@ncspeakerhall The NC DMV needs legislative leadership to invest money into with any overhaul to ensure there are more DMV offices across the state, that are fully staffed with people making a living wage. I'm curious if this DMV took a week off together to save money.

Our citizens are using vacation days just to spend them at the DMV and this office is taking an ENTIRE WEEK off?? I’m optimistic that things will change under new leadership, but it’s clear we’re in desperate need of an overhaul.

Griffin’s continued challenge to 65,000 NC vote is a baseless insult to voters who did nothing wrong! Text 888-OUR-VOTE (you'll text me) to learn if your vote is being challenged and what you can do about! demnc.co/griffin

People who are incarcerated disproportionately have disabilities, and too many die by suicide in NC jails/prisons. Thanks to Dr. @CraigWaleed, DRNC's Project Manager against solitary confinement, for advocating based on his own experience. End Solitary! H/T @rachelcrumpler_

Yes! NC must prioritize community-based care for older adults & people w/ disabilities. #NCGA, please raise pay for direct care workers to keep up w/ the needs & desires of people w/ age-related or other disabilities who want to avoid facility-based care. states.aarp.org/north-carolina…

Why must we organize the South? The unique role of the U.S. South & a strategy to build worker power and organization across the region Read: southernworker.org/organize-south

Cuba has been sending doctors all over the world for decades. They are highly trained, highly respected, and carry out genuine humanitarian missions. Rubio is attacking them because they proudly serve humanity and not money, which is a dangerous concept for the US ruling class.

📢The #ncga has the power to address NC’s most urgent needs — starting by pausing the elimination of the tax on corporate profits AND the cuts to the personal income tax rate that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy few. (1/6)

Why are Republicans in Congress supporting federal budget cuts that could take away health care access, groceries & care for millions of NC families? ANSWER: To fund tax breaks for the rich. @ThomTillis & @SenatorBurr can stand with NC communities by opposing these cuts!

The election results will not deter us. We will rise, organize, and fight relentlessly for the change we are owed. ✊🔥 Our movement is unstoppable, and we will not back down. 💥 Don’t Quit-Organize!

In case this story has gotten lost in the sea of news hitting you daily, here's a super-simplified version of what's happening between Attorney General Jeff Jackson and the Republican controlled NC legislature. #ncpol #ncgov #bitesizedpolitics

The UAW funded the iconic signage at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs & Justice, connecting economic justice and racial justice. President Reuther said: “We cannot successfully preach democracy in the world unless we first practice democracy at home." 📸@librarycongress

Seguimos en la manifestación "El Pueblo contra Griffin". En medio del evento, conversamos con Ann Webb de @CommonCauseNC sobre el estado del caso y qué sigue. ¡Atentos a lo que nos dijo!

Today, we honor civil rights activist Eula Johnson for leading efforts to end segregation in Broward County, Florida. #BlackHistoryMonth

NC lawmakers, w/o any opposition, voted to use incarcerated individuals to clean up road debris in WNC. Under law, "no prisoner working on the public roads...shall be paid more than one dollar ($1.00) per day." This is exploitative, abusive, and forced unsafe working conditions.