I Saw Assata in Havana

at a farmer’s market I’d visited, Calle 19 y B, her visage wholly

unbothered, starkest foil to the New York metro area police posters dated ’73

which an inmate, first meeting her behind bars, reportedly said made her seem

bigger, scarier, than in real life. She’s a figure in at least two imaginaries. In one of them

swathed in teal and jade Ankara atop a wicker peacock chair near the pork, fist up

the whole time. In the other, this one, a simple tee and denim daytime look, rounded

gold earrings with little leaves on ’em, braids stretching behind her: veins,

deltas sketched on a map, black and black-

and-blue, hands shuffling through the produce, hands

unbound, skin so lively and smooth she looked in-person airbrushed

to my dream eyes. I approached at first

with Spanish to present a bit less of a threat.

You’re from Jersey? Which part?

Up north, Essex and Hudson counties.

You here for that two mil, then?

The horizon loomed

on the horizon. We choked on

Quebec’s flames;

Big Bird got fired; bastions

vaporized; our sclera red, our robot

therapists gagging on grandiosity;

Xmas gig-decorators spreading

tinsel; Sesame Street

now a development zone

needing philanthropists; men

turning man-o-spheres;

Higher Ed hitting new lows.

Data centers siphoned

water, info. A doom-com:

“When the Climate Met DSM-VI.”

Who would douse

the puppets and pundits

now on fire; can we count

on “viewers like you.”

This poem was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. 

For court watchers, signal. For ICE watchers, salute.

My impatience as the cryptopad doc reconstitutes itself.

Wherein walking next to someone in public constitutes obstruction,

Invites arrest. I try to read

Between the lines of the statistics. My neighbors plead:

We especially need white-presenting folks.

I review my chances of detention, of doxxing.

Could I, as a friend fears, become de-naturalized?

As if I had been artifice, & after five years here, became flesh–

Or, eyeing my old greencard status,

A sudden opposite of alien—a resident earthling, a resident familiar.

My adjunct colleagues and students are fired. Scratch that.

They receive, quote unquote, letters declining reappointments.

Officially, the admin can’t share why. ...

Seb Alex is an animal rights activist, lecturer, photojournalist and author who runs the Middle East Vegan Society and has given animal rights advocacy workshops to over 1300+ activists across Europe, the Middle East and Australia. He is the author of the free e-book When Logic and Animal Rights Meet, which explains how logical fallacies are used to justify animal exploitation and how you can detect them. 

Q: Why do you recommend animal advocates study logic and argumentation? 

Alex: The reason why I believe it’s important for people to understand how arguments work in order to discuss animal welfare issues intelligently is because I strongly believe that we have reason, logic and ethical consistency on our “side” of the argument. Although emotional approaches also work with some people, an appeal to emotion isn’t always as powerful as a simple logic-based argument that someone can’t build an answer against. Ultimately, the cause we fight for is one where the suffering or exploitation of other animals depends on how well we fight for them. Given the importance of this issue, I believe every advocate should understand how to build strong arguments for animal rights.

Q: What’s an example of the kind of logical thinking you’re talking about? 

John Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His powerful new book The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves “peels back the myriad layers of myth, falsehoods, and bad faith that keep us eating meat.”

Q: You have said that “The animal economy today is the greatest system of mass violence and injustice in the history of the world.” What do you mean?

Sanbonmatsu: The Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as the attempt to obliterate a people’s or ethnic group’s identity by undermining its “biological structure” and “elemental means of existence.”  By analogy, we as a species are engaged in genocide against all the other animals of the earth—that is, against sensitive beings known to possess intelligence, subjectivity, complex emotions, and a demonstrated vulnerability to trauma.  So extreme are the harms we routinely inflict on other animals that we would consider them war crimes were they inflicted on members of our own ...

Sinergia Animal is an international animal protection organization working in countries of the Global South to reduce the suffering of farmed animals. They are currently running a divestment campaign to pressure the World Bank to cut off factory farm funding. Fiona Cameron of Sinergia spoke to Current Affairs.

Q: Why is cutting off the financing an important part of addressing factory farming? Tell us a bit more about what kinds of pressure can be exerted this way.

Cameron: To address the core problems of factory farming, we have to follow the money. Banks are key drivers of factory farm expansion. Much financing supporting industrial animal agriculture comes from large commercial ...

Marina Bolotnikova is an award-winning journalist whose work focuses on factory farming and animal activism. She has previously contributed to Current Affairs and presently serves as an editor for

Q: What are some of the stories you’ve covered that you think are the most important?

Bolotnikova: I’d point to a 2023 feature I wrote for Vox, “The bitter civil war dividing American veterinarians.” It’s about the veterinary profession’s support for factory farming, and a movement of insurgent veterinarians ...

Captain Paul Watson is a Canadian environmental activist and co-founder of Greenpeace who later founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Known for his direct-action tactics against illegal whaling, overfishing, and ocean exploitation, Watson has spent decades at sea, leading controversial but influential campaigns to defend marine life. He joined Current Affairs to explain why he has spent his career ramming and sinking whaling ships. 

Q: Could you tell us a bit about your efforts to stop whaling? How have you attempted to intervene in order to save whales?

Watson: I began my opposition to whaling in 1974 as a cofounder of the Greenpeace Foundation. I served as first officer on all the early Greenpeace anti-whaling voyages, and in 1977 I established the Sea Shepherd movement to intervene against illegal whaling operations by using a strategy that I called “aggressive nonviolence”—meaning intervention without causing any injury. 

In 1979, I hunted down and rammed ...