In recent weeks, the city of Minneapolis has become a laboratory of civil resistance against operations conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). The migrant community and its allies have deployed a range of strategies combining the tradition of social movements with creative approaches to protect their neighbors. Documented by local and national media, these actions provide a repertoire of tactics that can be replicated in other contexts. The Minneapolis experience echoes historical struggles, from neighborhood alert networks … Read more

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have become popular as tools to protect online identity and bypass censorship, and they are widely used by journalists and activists. However, protection is not automatic: it depends on the provider’s integrity and business model. Choosing a service requires evaluating its logging policy, jurisdiction, and monetization practices. Investigations, such as those conducted by Zimperium, have revealed that more than 65% of free mobile VPN applications contain vulnerabilities or collect data without consent, enabling its sale to … Read more

In social movements, a psychosocial phenomenon known as learned helplessness occurs when individuals or activist groups, after repeated exposure to repressive or invisibilizing situations, internalize the belief that they cannot change oppressive structures. This mechanism undermines individual and collective confidence, weakens the capacity for joint action, and facilitates political paralysis. A historical example of this dynamic is the Solidarity movement in Poland during the 1980s. Founded in the Gdańsk shipyards and led by Lech Wałęsa, it mobilized around 10 million … Read more

Historical Introduction Between January and April 2003, one of the largest transnational mobilizations in contemporary history took place. In response to the impending US- and UK-led invasion of Iraq, approximately 36 million people took part in anti-war protests across hundreds of cities in more than 60 countries, according to estimates cited in academic studies and later compilations. While widely referenced, these figures remain subject to historical debate and include mobilizations carried out over several months. February 15, 2003 marked the … Read more