Welcome back to Cover Snark! These covers were all sent in by the community!
From Jane Buehler: At first glance (small thumbnail) I thought he was shooting out a laser beam from his chest!
Sarah: That’s an interesting place for a stigmata.
Amanda: Why is he so grainy, like his skin is the texture of a basketball.
Sarah: Wait. WAIT. Whatever this cheetah-print thing is, it is both above and below his pec. What IS that?! Why is it partially encircling his pec? Why is it shooting out pink silly string? WHAT IS THIS.
And this is only the first cover. God help me with this set.
From Jen: My cousin introduced me to you guys a while back. We have a regular cousin chat about your Cover Snark because it cracks us up.
Recently I was at a gift shop and saw this gem. I immediately shared it to the cousin chat and they encouraged me to submit it!
Thanks for giving us all so many laughs.
Sarah: At first glance this looks unremarkable, but the more I looked the tiltier my head got. Why does his chest hair patch match the small patch of hair on his arm? I’m presuming the Yankee’s logo is backwards on purpose but also ????
And her boobs are going in very different directions – unless she’s got one of those bathing suit tops that only holds in one tit and the other is free to roam. I Hate suits like that. Also she’s reading a book called HOWL and that’s very funny.
There are a lot of stylistic choices that I really like, and also some details that I do not get.
Claudia: I have one question — why he doesn’t seem to have eyes?
Sarah: I was wondering that, too! It looks like they got blurred or something? Why does she have features while he does not?
Amanda: Why are we not talking about the fact that he’s a satyr?!
Sarah: A satyr in that shirt!
From Marianne: This popped up in my edelweiss+ pre-approved and I had to embiggen because what was I even looking at? Who wears light beige jeans with their chaps???
Sarah: WHAT is WITH the cowboy-hat-hides-the-faces trend? Do people not like drawing faces? Or is kissing difficult (I imagine it is) to draw?
And WHY would anyone wear light jeans with chaps. I get that it’s a Look, but also it’s a Laundry.
Amanda: It reminds me of when you’re in middle school and you draw people with their hands in their pockets or behind their back so you can avoid it.
Sarah: “Where’s your teal and white cow print cowboy hat?”
“Why?”
“I need it for reasons.”
From Deborah: Is he giving himself a simultaneous breast and pelvic exam under the watchful eyes of Dr Giant Tree Wolf?
Sarah: That’s a very intimidating way to do a breast exam.
Amanda: It also looks like he’s checking his crotch. Perhaps he’s just making sure everything is where it should be.
Sarah: So many cover models do that. Should we be worried? (snip)
Alysa Liu exits the ice after making history. (Screengrab: the Olympics)
God, Team USA is amazing.
“They hate to see two woke bitches winning,” said US figure skater Amber Glenn, who got death threats from America’s least important humans when she dared speak her mind about the vile regime running the United States right now.
The word I want you to keep in mind for this entire post is winning, because winning is the word that differentiates Olympians from the vile MAGA pieces of shit who have spent over a week now BITCHING and MOANING and CRYING and COMPLAINING and BELLYACHING and WHINING and WHINING and WHINING, all because a number of our finest athletes have met their Olympic moments by saying Hey, you know what? I’m proud to be here, but it’s not that easy right now to embrace everything this flag currently represents.
They’re already winners because they’re there, every one of them.
And every MAGA American is an absolute fucking loser.
Not long after I started The Moral High Ground, the Paris Olympics happened. During those games the MAGA freakout was over the absolutely wonderful opening ceremonies, which totally murdered white American conservative Christian culture by … we forget how, but we’re pretty sure they still bear the scars of that sexy-ass French opening ceremony with the heavy metal and the gender fludity and the joie de vivre. This month, these whining fucking losers have gotten their culture destroyed by Bad Bunny’s flagrant Spanish-speaking behavior at the Super Bowl, and of course by all these Olympians out here, accomplishing things and some of them not even tonguing Donald Trump’s asshole like a good little obedient Nazis!
MAGA goes into these situations already mad, if you haven’t noticed. They go into every situation already mad, because despite all the years they’ve spent bitching about cancel culture and snowflake liberals needing their safe spaces, the reality is that MAGA Americans are the softest, most pathetic clumps of human detritus ever to waste our fucking time making us listen to their grievances.
Shut Up And Sing/Dance/Skate/Ski!
It is the damnedest thing.
There is this pathological tendency among MAGA Americans to be simultaneously the least valuable players of the entire human race, yet still manage to believe everybody who does things they can’t do is on this earth solely to entertain them. That there’s some unspoken tradeoff wherein God gave all these other people musical brilliance or athletic prowess or [name skill or talent here], therefore they shouldn’t be allowed to have opinions, unless of course those opinions conform with the dominant beliefs of the … least valuable players of the entire human race.
Which they seldom do.
Because winners don’t tend to look at the world the same way losers do.
They’re not eaten up by the same fears, the xenophobia, the hatred, the resentment. They’re not susceptible to politicians who tell them to blame all their problems on people who look different from them, or who are less fortunate.
They’re too busy putting in the work, and then winning. Or putting in the work and coming in second or fourth or really fucking it up, but developing the discipline and the heart to dust themselves off, perhaps heal, and then try again. (My God, bless Lindsey Vonn’s heart.)
I said it during the last Olympics, but it bears repeating that even when MAGA culture wars manage to get close to a place of excellence, it’s remarkable how far from the actual winner’s podium they happen.
(Why is Riley Gaines one of MAGA’s athletic heroes? Because she’s a fucking loser. Maybe if she had been a stronger swimmer she could have taken a better path in life.)
(snip; Substack Note embed that didn’t)
But enough about Riley Gaines, let’s talk more about Olympians!
These Team USA athletes have shown us these past two weeks how they are heroes in their disciplines, but also a number of them by truly representing the best of the USA, speaking calmly, humbly, compassionately, bravely about what it feels like to be competing under the American flag right now, as the nation that’s often been considered the hope of the world is struggling and buckling under a white supremacist, fascist, neo-Nazi regime that seeks to destroy it.
US freestyle skier Hunter Hess said wearing the American flag doesn’t necessarily mean supporting everything that’s happening in the US right now, and that “it brings up mixed emotions.” He continued: “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t,” and “I just think, if it aligns with my moral values I think I’m representing it.”
Another skier, Chris Lillis: “I feel heartbroken about what’s happening in the United States. I think that as a country we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we are treating our citizens as well as anybody with love and respect.”
Amber Glenn: “It’s been a hard time for the [LGBTQ] community overall in this administration. It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights.…I hope I can use my platform and my voice throughout these Games to try and encourage people to stay strong in these hard times.”
“First of all, I’d like to say I’m proud to be here to represent Team USA, and to represent our country,” Ruohonen began his statement. “But we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention what’s going on in Minnesota, and what a tough time it’s been for everybody. This stuff is happening right around where we live.
“I am a lawyer as you know, and we have a Constitution, and it allows us freedom of the press, freedom of speech, protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, and makes it that we have to have probable cause to be pulled over. What’s happening in Minnesota is wrong — there’s no shades of grey. It’s clear.”
You’re either with the Nazis or you’re against them. Period.
For speaking out, these Olympians, some of the real champions of this country, have been bullied, abused, received death threats. Amber Glenn has gotten it some of the worst, because MAGA trash always beats up women the hardest. She had to step off social media because of a “scary amount of hate/threats,” but even as the hate messages were rolling in — you know, while she was busy doing something worthwhile with her life — she said, “I know that a lot of people say you’re just an athlete, like, stick to your job, shut up about politics, but politics affect us all. It is something I will not just be quiet about.”
And then “They hate to see woke bitches winning,” she said on TikTok, posing with Alysa Liu and their team gold figure skating medals.
But my God, how the histrionics have flowed forth from MAGA!
The New York Post can’t fucking stop whining. Wrote their editorial board, “If you don’t want to represent your country, stay home from the Olympics. That’s the message that ungrateful athletes need to hear, after they tore into America in front of the international press.”
Ungrateful athletes. Ungrateful to whom, please, bitchass MAGA losers?
In another article, they outsourced the whining to MAGA nobodies and zeroes on the internet:
“This privileged athlete’s comments clearly show that he puts himself far above his country in this competition,” one user on X wrote. “His comments are an insult to Team USA and the spirit of the Olympics.”
“When you wear the Stars and Stripes, you represent ALL of us — not just the parts you like,” another commenter wrote.
“’Mixed emotions?’ Then stay home and let someone who loves this country shine.”
Another fumed that Hess’ “whole purpose in being there is to REPRESENT the USA,” adding that if he has mixed feelings, “there are other skiers that would love to be there.”
But other skiers didn’t make the cut, and guess who else didn’t? Literally every MAGA trash American punching out mad tweets with their diabetes fingers.
Of course, MAGA’s professional whiners, its elected politicians and pundits, have been doing everything they can to goose the culture war outrage for their little piggies.
“YOU chose to wear our flag. YOU chose to represent our country. YOU chose to compete at the @Olympics,” [Rep. Byron] Donalds (R-Fla.) wrote on X. “If that’s too hard for you, then GO HOME. Some things are bigger than politics. You just don’t get it.”
GOP Senator Rick Scott wants athletes caught expressing wrongthink to be “stripped of their USA Olympic uniform.” JD Vance said some shit but we couldn’t hear it over all the people booing him everywhere he went in Milan.
“Shut up and go play in the snow,” said GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, perhaps easily the stupidest member of Congress, at least on the House side. (Can’t definitively call him the stupidest in the whole building, not while Tommy Tuberville and Ron Johnson are still in the Senate.) He was mad about Hunter Hess’s remarks.
And of course, Stupid Hitler, 2016 election popular vote loser, 2020 total election loser, and 2024 couldn’t-even-get-50-percenter, called Hess a “total loser,” lied and said Hess said he “doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics,” and whined that he “shouldn’t have tried out for the team.”
Madame Miserable Megyn Kelly referred to Amber Glenn as “another turncoat to root against” on Twitter.
Raymond Arroyo, the little circus-cast-member-looking MAGA milquetoast who goes on Laura Ingraham to say Black guys love Trump because of how they love sneakers and mugshots, told Laura it’s “borderline treason” what Hess said. (He was also really upset that British skier Gus Kenworthy peed in the snow and spelled out “FUCK ICE.”)
Jesse Kelly: “I’m openly rooting against every one of these people. I hope they fall and embarrass themselves and come in dead last. Man, sports sucks now.” So very upset and angry.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s daughter Evita Duffy-Alonso: “I don’t know why we don’t start vetting these Olympians before they actually start to represent us overseas for their patriotism.”
Sure, Jan.
There is just no shortage of sad, whining, butthurt comments from these brokedicks, messages of hate from America’s Nothings to America’s Somethings, MAGA Cletuses and Karens whose grandchildren don’t call them on Christmas, but who yet sincerely believe they’ve got something valuable to say to our very finest Olympians. My God.
Here are two more, then I will stop giving these creeps airtime:
“I’d rather us lose with patriots, than win with traitors.”
“Hey kid, you’re not doing this Country a ‘favor’ by repping us. In fact, by doing what you’ve done… you’re NOT representing us. Take the uniform off. We don’t need ya.”
We don’t need them … for what? Do these people think they’re in some kind of relationship with America’s Olympians? Bless their hearts.
Notice, please, how these human fistulas all seem to think Olympians are there to serve them, to entertain them. All these mouthbreathers, incels and shut-ins, whining on Twitter and on Fox News that these winners refuse to represent them personally.
As if these nutsacks and walking participation trophies pounding out their messages with Cheeto dust on their scaly hands are somehow characters in our Olympians’ stories? LOL.
Here’s a cold hard truth:
They don’t represent you, MAGA, not really. Because they’re winners, and you’re fucking losers.
They’re winners, and you’re stupid, inbred cows, the absolute worst this country has to offer, the most rancid shit that ever lab-leaked out of the back entrance of God’s imagination factory while His little elves were out on a smoke break.
Sure, they technically compete under the same flag these dorks are always humping with their erections whenever that Lee Greenwood song comes on, but that’s about the extent of the connection.
Because they’re winners, and MAGA are fucking losers.
Lord, the New York Post was even forced to admit that in one of its pathetic articles, that Hess has been all over winners’ podiums at the World Cup and the X Games. That Lillis won gold in 2022 in Beijing. That Glenn is the reigning and three-time US figure skating champion.
Whining that these winners should be pulled from the team? Pffffffft. What, so some kind of 176th-place MAGA athletes can take their places? They think these woke Olympians are taking jobs MAGA would get otherwise?
Whine whine whine whine whine whine whine. That’s all we ever hear from these people.
And to make a picky point here, but no, pedophile-loving MAGA piss troughs, these athletes don’t hate their country. They hate what these MAGA fascists are doing to their country, as they’re trying to seize permanent power and turn the United States into a shithole that only reflects MAGA’s darkest and most perverted shortcomings, and yanks us all away from the light we’re striving for. They hate MAGA’s vile, inferior vision for a United States that’s nothing but a humping blanket all their most pathetic fucking fears, weakness, grievances and hatred, and a vehicle for retribution against all those who don’t have to live that way because they aren’t total fucking losers like MAGA.
So yeah, I guess Olympians really aren’t competing for the MAGA version of America that’s drenched in the piss-stench of failure. Reckon most of ‘em are too nice to say that, though.
One final thing: As Parker Molloy notes, what these Olympians have said is actually pretty tame, comparatively, and you can really see how far the fascism has encroached comparing this year’s statements to past years under Trump. An example is 2017 Lindsey Vonn, who said “absolutely not” to the prospect of visiting Trump’s White House. What about just before these Olympics? “I’m not going to answer that question because, I’m just not going to answer it,” she said. “I want to keep my passport.” Unfortunately not a crazy thing to say.
I am of course sure MAGA is thrilled at how these Olympics have gone for Vonn.
That said, I do think it’s swinging back the other direction. I think six months ago, nine months ago, these athletes might not even have said the things they’ve said. But then ICE started cold-blooded murdering Americans in the streets and building concentration camps and the Epstein Files just kept leaking out and the fascists are trying to ban James Talarico from saying words on Stephen Colbert, and, and, and.
People are fucking pissed. And I think decent Americans have gotten their groove back, and are much more full of the sense these days that we are going to win.
Speaking of winning:
And Then Last Night!
If you saw the women’s free skate on Thursday, you already know. If you didn’t, LA LA LA LA LA SPOILERS.
After one painfully unfortunate mistake in Amber Glenn’s short program — which waddling MAGA spectators also celebrated — she was pretty much out of medal contention in 13th place, but came back to have the free skate of her absolute life, and climbed all the way to fifth in the final standings.
And then it was Alysa Liu’s turn. She was third after the short program, but she just … did something incredible. She skated to “MacArthur Park,” and she just floated and bounced across that ice like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was flawless. You knew you were seeing something special, the way the commentators just shut. up.
“THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!” Liu shouted as she came off the ice. [It has been pointed out in the comments that she actually said “That’s what I’m FUCKIN’ talking about!” and that it was censored in subsequent broadcasts. This makes Liu even cooler. – Ed.] She won the US’s first women’s individual figure skating medal since 2006, the first American gold since Sarah Hughes in 2002.
Two winners.
Oh yeah, and again, the American skaters won the team gold. Which includes Amber Glenn.
Bigotry and racism pure and simple. It was once illegal in the US. But under Stephen Miller and tRump it is flourishing and supported. We must fight for acceptance and tolereance for those who are not white. So many gains since the 1960s are being erased illegally. Imagain being a kid, a preteen and having a bunch of masked men stop you and threaten you. Hey we keep being told that ICE is going after the worst of the worst to protect the public. Tell me what horrific crime could that child have done that would harm the public? According to ICE, he was not white and that is dangerous enough to the white racists who make up ICE and support them. Hugs
“The government’s decision is deeply disturbing and is just the latest example of the Trump administration targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”
John Russell (He/Him)February 18, 2026, 11:07 am EST
After elected officials raised a Pride flag on a temporary flagpole, activists raise the flag on the permanent flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City Feb. 12, 2026. Thousands gathered at the monument to see the flag raised after President Donald Trump had ordered the flag to be removed earlier in the week. | Seth Harrison/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK
The Trump administration violated federal law when it removed the LGBTQ+ Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, according to a lawsuit filed by several nonprofit groups on Tuesday.
The lawsuit, led by the Gilbert Baker Foundation — which honors the artist who created the original, eight-striped rainbow Pride flag in the 1970s — alleges that the administration’s “arbitrary and capricious” removal of flag earlier this month violates the Administrative Procedures Act and that the administration “misinterpreted” its own policies as a pretext for the flag’s removal.
“The policies the government says require removing the Pride flag expressly permit the [National Parks Service] to fly other flags that provide historical context to national monuments—which is precisely what the NPS official Pride flag did at Stonewall for many years,” the lawsuit states.
As the New York Times notes, an NPS-sanctioned Pride flag that has for years flown in Christopher Park, the site of the Stonewall Monument in New York’s Greenwich Village, was removed sometime during the night of February 8 with no notice or explanation. NPS later cited new guidance issued by the Trump administration in January mandating that “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”
But according to the lawsuit, neither the Department of the Interior policy on flag displays nor the administration’s January directive require the removal of the Pride flag.
“The Policy permits officials to ‘authorize the flying of flags and pennants, other than [U.S. and DOI flags], as appropriate, provided flags and flagpole space are available for this purpose” and “the Directive provides an exemption for flags that ‘provide historical context,’” according to the complaint. “Under the policies that they are purporting to be implementing, Defendants had discretion to allow the Pride flag to be displayed at the Stonewall memorial.”
“This was no careless mistake. The government has not removed other historical flags at other national monuments, most notably Confederate flags,” that lawsuit alleges. “Meanwhile, the assault on Stonewall is the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump Administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opprobrium.”
“These actions alone support a strong inference of animus against the LGBTQ+ community and that Defendants’ reasons for removing the flag were pretextual,” the lawsuit argues. “Because Defendants’ reasons were pretextual and based on an impermissible reason, i.e., animus toward the LGBTQ+ community, they are arbitrary and capricious.”
The lawsuit notes that while local lawmakers restored a Pride flag in Christopher Park last week, “Defendants have not restored the NPS-sanctioned Pride flag” and “continue to prohibit its display.”
The Gilbert Baker Foundation and other plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an order requiring the administration to restore the officially sanctioned Pride flag to the monument and to permanently enjoin the administration from removing it without, at minimum, taking into account the effect such a change would have, in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act.
“The government’s decision is deeply disturbing and is just the latest example of the Trump administration targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” Alexander Kristofcak, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said according to Courthouse News Service. “At best, the government misread its regulations. At worst, the government singled out the LGBTQ+ community. Either way, its actions are unlawful.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
This is horrific that a young person has had to live with racism all his life and now has to protect his family and others from a racist gang of thugs who only want to hurt brown people like him. He is doing a great thing but he shouldn’t need to do this in the land of the free. Hugs.
Cesar Vasquez, who has supported families of undocumented immigrants since age 14, has become a community lifeline – and a known ICE target
While most 18-year-olds worry about college papers and spring break plans, Cesar Vasquez drives through coastal California farm towns scanning for unmarked SUVs before dawn. He flips down his driver’s seat visor to look at a taped list of license plates he has already identified as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles, and jots down a few new ones he suspects could be. His phone buzzes constantly – tips from neighbors, text chains from volunteers alerting to ICE activity – all in an attempt to keep his community safe from being swept up in federal agents’ widening dragnet.
This is what organizing looks like for this son of undocumented immigrants. In his home town of Santa Maria, a small farming town on California’s central coast where over 80% of farm workers are undocumented, Vasquez has become both a crucial community lifeline and a known target of federal immigration enforcement.
Outside the ICE office in Santa Maria, California, Cesar Vasquez and a group of activists gather to decide who will patrol each neighborhood.
Vasquez began volunteering with the 805 Immigrant Rapid Response Network as a high school senior. Last August, he was hired full-time as a rapid response organizer, covering North Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, overseeing volunteers, supporting families and tracking ICE activity.
Routinely, he visits the families of detained immigrants. “There have been so many occasions where I walked through the door, and a kid was expecting their father or mother,” Vasquez said wistfully. “And it was just me, and I had to explain what happened to their parents.”
Other times, for Vasquez, the reality is personal. He recalled in December, speaking with families waiting for news about their detained relatives outside the immigration enforcement office in Santa Maria, when an ICE vehicle slowed down in front of them. The agent’s voice crackled from the car’s speaker, loud enough to carry through the open window: “How’s your mother, Cesar? We’ll go visit her soon.”
Vasquez drove straight home and found his mother washing clothes.
“I took her car keys and told her to stop everything she’s doing. My hands were shaking,” Vasquez said. “I then moved her to a secret location that I have precisely for this moment.”
As the sun rises in Santa Maria, Vasquez continues monitoring ICE activity in his neighborhood. The 18-year-old says he spends more time in his car than anywhere else these days.
Growing up as a birthright citizen of undocumented parents
Vasquez’s mother is one of the thousands of undocumented farm workers in Santa Maria whom he is trying to protect. She left her home in a tiny town in Mexico to cross the US-Mexico border at age 13 in search of a better life. Vasquez’s biological father was one of the first people she encountered – a Guatemalan American whose family was settled in California and who held US citizenship. He was also abusive and never legally married her, keeping her from accessing US citizenship, Vasquez said. When Vasquez was an infant, his mother ran away with her three children to Santa Maria, a town about 150 miles (240km) north of Los Angeles, where she found work in the strawberry fields. She has been trying to secure documentation for more than a dozen years now.
Vasquez distributes flyers on immigration rights to farmworkers in Santa Maria on 6 February.
Strawberry picking is physically demanding work, and the pay is minimal. Pickers spend hours bent over in the fields under the California sun, with no benefits, no sick days and no guaranteed work once the season slows between October and March. Climate change has made the labor even more precarious, disrupting growing cycles and shrinking paychecks. Rising costs of living – rent, food, transportation – have squeezed families further. In Santa Maria, where a two-bedroom apartment can cost $3,000 a month, many families crowd into single rooms or garages.
Built on an economy of strawberries, lettuce and wine grapes, Santa Maria has long depended on undocumented labor while rendering those workers largely invisible. Many arrived during waves of Mexican migration in the 1980s and 90s, settling into a community where immigration enforcement and workplace exploitation became routine. Before Donald Trump’s recent immigration priorities, ICE enforcement in the region tended to be more targeted – focusing on people with criminal convictions or referrals from local jails, rather than broad community sweeps. ICE didn’t even have a holding facility in Santa Maria until 2015.
But since 2025, enforcement has intensified dramatically with rapid‑response trackers documenting more than 620 immigration arrests across Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties, with Santa Maria often at the center of daily apprehensions. These high‑profile raids – often carried out with unmarked vehicles and tactical gear, drawing protests and criticism from community leaders – reflect a broader national surge in immigration enforcement under Trump.
Vasquez holds his mother along the river in Santa Maria. He keeps a feather with him, which he says brings spiritual cleansing when he burns sage.
When Trump was first elected, Vasquez was only nine years old. He was already well-acquainted with the repercussions of growing up in a mixed-status household.
“I mean, it’s common for most children of immigrants to be doing things for their parents like filling out their legal forms, right?” Vasquez said. “But in fourth grade, I had to learn what a warrant looked like and what rights I had.”
He was in a Halloween costume shop, age 14, when it clicked that his fears and concerns weren’t just his own. He overheard a woman at the register, saying she had saved all year to buy her son a costume, but it didn’t fit. The store wouldn’t take it back. Her shirt was stained with strawberries, her exhaustion visible. He’d seen his own mother do the same thing countless times, so he offered to buy the woman’s son the costume.
Building a network at 14
At age 14, Vasquez founded La Cultura Del Mundo, an entirely youth-led organization that eliminates what he calls the “red tape” associated with traditional aid. They prioritize direct, unrestricted support to families in need, asking, “How much do you need?” rather than requiring forms. The group then rapidly mobilizes whatever the family requests, whether that’s cash assistance, groceries, rent help or other essential support.
In August, La Cultura Del Mundo drew national attention when Vasquez organized La Marcha De La Puebla, a national protest against ICE raids that involved nearly 30 cities across 17 states, drawing about 10,000 participants.
Seventeen-year-old Claudia Santos is one of the many young people Vasquez has inspired. “My sister and I heard about a school walkout and just decided to go. After that, Cesar told us about a meeting at city hall, and that’s how I got involved,” Santos said. “I did it because I feel like the kids coming here from Mexico deserve a good future too.”
Vasquez packs up flyers to hand out to the immigrant community as they head to work in Santa Maria.
While Vasquez was organizing in high school, he was simultaneously struggling with his own mental health. He commuted by bus an hour each way to a school in a predominantly white neighborhood with good academic prospects.
When he told his counselor that he had anxiety, “she couldn’t understand that I was uncomfortable because I was brown in a white school, where the principal was racist and the students were racist. It led me to become really suicidal.”
Being misunderstood drove him closer to his community. He transferred to his local school and graduated early. Despite being accepted into San Diego State University, he deferred enrollment.
Most kids who grow up in Santa Maria look forward to leaving. One of Vasquez’s older sisters became a teacher in Los Angeles, the other a graduate student in the UK. But Vasquez likes that the impact of his work is immediate.
Tina van den Heever, one of his teachers from Santa Maria high school, said it was clear Vasquez was a leader with great potential: “To be honest, I worry about his safety, because as we’re seeing, the United States tends to silence people who stand up in the way that he does.”
‘I think about the kids being left behind’
During a four-day raid in late December, Vasquez’s uncle was among the 118 people detained.
“I think about the kids being left behind,” Vasquez said. “The children home for winter break whose parents never returned because of the December raids. And there was no way to know what happened to them because school didn’t reopen until days later.”
Vasquez distributes flyers on immigration rights to parents.
During the raids, flower vendors disappeared from the streets. When Vasquez later visited the area, the children of a family he had gotten close to told him they had gone inside after hearing his warning. They were safe.
The work – the constant alertness, the phone calls at all hours, the weight of knowing families depend on his network – has taken a toll. But he sees no alternative.
“I’m continuously preparing for the worst,” Vasquez said. He keeps a “to-go bag”, extra clothes and cash in his car.
Every time ICE picks up someone in the Central Coast valley, Vasquez plays the same song in his car: Hasta La Piel (Down to My Skin) by the Mexican American artist Carla Morrison. The lyrics speak to having and losing, wanting and not being able to say, intense love and desperate fear of loss – an homage to those who have been detained.
“They want us to be afraid,” he said. “But fear is what keeps people isolated.”
In the back seat of his car, a whiteboard filled with encouraging messages for Vasquez sits alongside an American flag.
Jennifer Chowdhury reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism
I follow Allison Gill’s Daily Beans morning audio podcast which gives the news from the prior day with the sources to verify it. This is one of the stories they cover deeply. They now have a video version called Beans Talk on the YouTube channel MSW. I do recommend them as a valid news source. Hugs
The iconic civil rights leader, who has died at 84, made anti-war and pro-diplomacy politics central to his presidential bids and his lifelong activism.
Jesse Jackson at a rally against the Gulf War in Washington, DC, on January 18, 1991. (Ricky Flores / Getty Images)
he Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr., the iconic champion of racial, economic, and social justice whose work as a young aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began a public life that would eventually see him mount a pair of transformative presidential bids, died Tuesday morning at age 84.
Jackson’s legacy is so rich, and extends across so many generations and struggles, that it cannot be contained in one reflection. He was, as the Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday, “a movement unto himself.”
Over seven decades in the public arena, Jackson emerged as one of the most multifaceted figures in American history: a legendary civil rights leader, a knowing and caring defender of the disenfranchised, a vital advocate for voting rights and voter mobilization, a savvy media critic who recognized the importance of challenging narratives that promoted discrimination and division, an essential ally of labor unions, a reformer of the Democratic Party, a friend to struggling family farmers and urban workers alike, and a counselor to presidents and prime ministers. He was, as well, a man of deep faith, who expressed that faith in his ardent advocacy for peace.
That dedication to peace was central to both his 1984 and 1988 presidential bids, a fact that is too frequently neglected in cursory reflections on those seismic Rainbow Coalition campaigns.
Political historians recognize Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy as the great anti–Vietnam War candidates of the 1968 presidential campaign. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, is often recalled as the most ardent foe of a US military intervention to be nominated by a major American political party since Democrats ran William Jennings Bryan in 1900. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean and former Ohio representative Dennis Kucinich are remembered for seeking the Democratic presidential nod in 2004 as sharp critics of the Iraq War. Barack Obama’s prescient opposition to the Bush-Cheney administration’s war of choice, which he voiced as early as 2002, did much to advance his successful bid for the presidency in 2008. And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose 2020 presidential bid Jackson supported, reframed foreign policy debates by explicitly rejecting the elite consensus about the US role in the Middle East and so many other parts of the world.
Jackson’s two 1980s campaigns deserve a key place in this proud history—both because they were uniquely dynamic and because they had a profound and lasting impact on progressive thinking about foreign policy. That’s one of the many reasons, when veterans of the Jackson campaigns got together, we often reflected on this too-frequently-neglected aspect of his political legacy. His was a powerful and transformative message that resonates to this day.
groundbreaking advocacy on behalf of economic, social, and racial justice at home, but Jackson also outlined what was then a fresh foreign policy vision, rooted in what has come to be known as progressive internationalism. He advanced a comprehensive—and morally coherent—argument for shifting American foreign policy away from military interventionism, nuclear brinksmanship, and Cold War posturing and toward diplomacy, cooperation, and dramatically reduced Pentagon spending.
Jackson understood precisely what was at stake, and he declared in a voice so resonant that it inspired a new generation of activists, “Peace is worth the risk!”
And he was taking a risk. It is important to recall how—as Ronald Reagan was ramping up the Cold War around the world and pouring US resources into heated conflicts in El Salvador and on the border of Nicaragua—Jackson boldly broke not just with the Republican president but also with many Democrats to make opposition to war a focal point of his bid.
After it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had mined three harbors in Central America, as part of an effort to destabilize the country’s left-wing government, Jackson declared in April 1984 that “the undeclared war against the people of Nicaragua…must be stopped.” In addition to criticizing the Reagan administration and the CIA, Jackson took issue with Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, the front-runners for the Democratic nomination that year, for failing to clearly deliver a message that the US must “stop our funding of terror in Nicaragua and El Salvador now and to withdraw all our troops from Central America.”
“It is not enough for Walter Mondale to call mining the harbors a clumsy and ill-conceived act,” argued Jackson. “It is not enough to imply that the main problem was not informing Congress adequately. Our foreign policy in Central America is wrong. We are standing on the wrong side of history. We are engaged in killing people, and starving people who are trying to work out their own destiny.”
Jackson’s 1984 Rainbow Coalition campaign shocked pundits by winning primaries and caucuses in key states, and by collecting roughly 20 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Jackson also made a historic trip to Central America and the Caribbean, where he met with regional leaders—including Cuban President Fidel Castro—and warned, “The signs of war are rising. We see the military buildup throughout the region. We see the United States taking sides instead of helping to reconcile the conflict. We cannot allow another Vietnam.”
The bitter legacy of the Vietnam War, which Jackson had opposed as a young aide to Dr. King, weighed heavily on his mind during the 1984 campaign. At the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, Jackson delivered a renowned, electrifying speech, in which he recalled,
Twenty years ago, our young people were dying in a war for which they could not even vote. Twenty years later, young America has the power to stop a war in Central America and the responsibility to vote in great numbers. Young America must be politically active in 1984. The choice is war or peace.
Jackson’s focus in 1984 and in 1988 extended beyond concerns about the “dirty wars” in Central America. He campaigned as an outspoken advocate for nuclear disarmament, embracing the “nuclear freeze” movement to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons by the United States and the Soviet Union. He called for a rethinking of US military and economic alliances in order to advance democracy and human rights, argued for an end to US aid to the violent apartheid regime in South Africa, and proposed a new approach to Middle East relations that respected the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.
As a 42-year-old first-time candidate in the fall of 1983, Jackson met with Arab Americans, urged the US to use diplomacy so that the Middle East would no longer be a ”flashpoint for both hot and cold war,” and said that any path to peace had to include a ”homeland and a state for Palestine.”
”It is a tragedy to see the lack of talk and dialogue in the Middle East, but it is even worse not to see it here,” said Jackson. ”The first step for peace in the Middle East is for black Americans, Arab-Americans and Jewish-Americans to start talking here.”
A young James Zogby, then the director of the Arab-American Antidiscrimination Committee, cheered Jackson’s inclusion of Palestinian rights in his campaign platform. ”He challenged us on 50 issues and not just one,” said Zogby, who would go on to place Jackson’s name in nomination at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. ”He respected us as Arab-Americans and didn’t pander to us. This is the first time ever that a presidential candidate has come before an Arab-American audience, and we don’t feel disenfranchised anymore.”
At the end of 1983, Jackson traveled to the Middle East and visited the Jaramana refugee camp in Syria, where on New Year’s Day in 1984, he told a group of Palestinian children, “Keep your dreams high. Don’t let anyone break your spirit. You’ll be free one day.” It was on that same journey that he secured the release of US Navy airman Lt. Robert Goodman, whose plane had been shot down over Lebanon and who had been captured and held by Syrian forces.
Jackson remained actively engaged with Middle East peace issues through the rest of his life. Among the memorials posted on Tuesday was one from former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wrote, “It was an honor to march alongside him against the Iraq War in 2003. May his legacy inspire us to strive for a world of dignity and peace for all.” More than two decades later, one of an ailing Jackson’s last great initiatives was an emergency conference—held at the headquarters of the Rainbow-Push Coalition in Chicago in early 2024—to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.
Jackson’s faith in diplomacy and negotiation was part of a broader commitment to creating the circumstances for peace to thrive. Just like his mentor King, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who linked his nonviolent civil rights activism in the US to the global anti-war movement—and who took his own huge risk for peace by standing against the Vietnam War—Jackson recognized the political courage that was required to advance that commitment.
As a presidential candidate, he showed that courage by talking about cutting as much as 25 percent from the Pentagon budget. In response to critics who claimed his ideas were too radical, Jackson told New Hampshire primary voters in February of 1984, “We are so strong militarily that we can afford to take measures such as these in the pursuit of peace.… We must fight for peace and give peace a chance.”
At the close of his 1988 campaign, in which he was endorsed by The Nation and won more than a dozen statewide primary and caucus contests, securing 6.9 million votes, Jackson pulled all the threads together in an epic address to that year’s Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. He spoke movingly of tackling poverty and inequality within the United States, but he was just as compelling in his discussion of foreign policy, which included a stirring call for disarmament that is as relevant today as it was 35 years ago.
The nuclear war build-up is irrational. Strong leadership cannot desire to look tough and let that stand in the way of the pursuit of peace. Leadership must reverse the arms race. At least we should pledge no first use. Why? Because first use begets first retaliation. And that’s mutual annihilation. That’s not a rational way out.
No use at all. Let’s think it out and not fight it out because it’s an unwinnable fight. Why hold a card that you can never drop? Let’s give peace a chance.
I went out shopping early this morning. Then I came home and after putting the stuff away I did all the dishes. It was not a lot but three days worth and last night I cooked a good meal. I am washing all the bed linens and all the towels in the chairs / places that Tupac lays on. So as I try to do they cartoon / meme post for tomorrow …. My mind is fractured. So these songs are in my mind. Sorry if this hurts anyone. Also remember I am not in danger of self-harm. I won’t do that to all of you who I respect so much. Hugs or best wishes to all as you appreciate the gesture. The songs below are shattering my thoughts. I walk alone, and I wish for the sound of silence. Oh, to have the thoughts in my mind stop! I desperately wish for it. I have not eaten yet today, nor did I after breakfast yesterday and Ron has called me 3 times asking me to eat. Even telling me to order something if it is more pleasing to me. I just can’t. I bought salad stuff today so maybe a salad later. I am so confused. I had four more ready to post and suddenly realized it was useless. Is my life useless? I do good things. My husband loves me. His cat sleeps pressed up against me at night, yet even last night as I struggled to sleep and he moved up onto my pillow I took no comfort from him. I am feeling so numb inside when I let myself feel anything at all because the government is forcing my pain doctors to reduce my medications despite the new MRI showing severe and increased damage to my spine. My doctors say it my be necessary for me to do surgery to get relief because RFK Jr. has determined that all pain clinics lower their clients morphine equviancy to less than 100. Those who do not feel chronic pain or live in long pain because they dont hve to suffer … well illegal drugs all of a sudden get a hollier than though about drugs. Seriously, this former drug adic is restricting needed medication from people like me with seriously damaged spines and no contributions to his campaigns. But drugs from a qualified pain doctor can mean the difference between living a quality life and suffering in even more agony. Hugs
I am sorry. I do not not want to worry anyone or cause fear. But I feel so… out of sync with the world. I just hurt. It is part physical and a lot emotional. The MRI I had just had showed many parts of my lower spine are showing far more damage than my doctors had thought. They thought I had a few more years before surgery. I cannot afford surgery. The MRI moved many of my lower vertebrae from the moderate to severe to extremely severe zone. One the report said was in civilian terms destroyed. The bone matrrial decaded, the inside soft stuff pushed out and the nerves were caught by the edges of the jagged edges of the bones both being forced out and being pinched and being pinced inside as I moved. It is why I cannot sit in my chair very long. Ron is going to get me an air seat when he gets home but I doubt it will help. I am sitting here thinking of why when my spine shows ever more damage the government is requiring that my pain doctors reduce everyone’s pain medications. Just because the former coke addict RFK Jr dosent feel the crippling pain that people like me do doesn’t mean he gets to stop our pain medication or at least shouldn’t. All that does is force us on to illegal drugs to get relief. I wonder if that is the point all along. Think of it, all the friends in pain suddenly not able to vote would change the election in plenty of ways. Hugs
Sorry, but I keep repeating the songs over and over. Hugs
Every body hurts. But today I hurt terribly. Sorry. Now I have to go struggle to make the bed because I washed the bed sheets. More pain. Hugs
After elected officials raised a Pride flag on a temporary flagpole, activists raise the flag on the permanent flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City Feb. 12, 2026. Thousands gathered at the monument to see the flag raised after President Donald Trump had ordered the flag to be removed earlier in the week. | Seth Harrison/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK
Cesar Vasquez, who has supported families of undocumented immigrants since age 14, has become a community lifeline – and a known ICE target
Scottie's Playtime 