When I started studying New York State child care policy in spring 2023, I met Ms. Rhodes, co-founder of Western New York Child Care Action Team, while supervising a qualitative study of Erie County child care providers. Ms. Rhodes introduced me to local providers and coached me through the ins and outs of a complicated industry seeking concrete reforms at the State level. Now, I am embedded in the Child Care Community of Erie County and remain inspired to effect political change, beginning with workforce compensation reforms which will improve wages for child care workers. My passion for this work is largely influenced by Ms. Rhodes’s mentorship, helping me understand the nuances of early childhood education and care, as well as connecting me to other researchers, advocates, providers, and parents who are impassioned about child care policy reform. I had an opportunity to interview Ms. Rhodes, and to publish the interview here with the support of Weave News.

On Wednesday, December 13, child care advocates from across New York State gathered in front of the midtown Manhattan building where the Governor stays on New York City trips, 633 Third Avenue. There were close to 30 activists huddled together holding signs, speaking into mics, and demanding that Governor Hochul sign the Decoupling Bill. The Empire State Campaign for Child Care, led by Dede Hill, Executive Director of the Schuyler Center, hosted the rally. I was there, too.

On Thursday, November 16, I attended a “huelga estudantil” (student strike) held in Madrid, Spain, in support of Palestine. I was amazed to look out at the crowd and see such a diversity of young faces ranging from middle school students to university-age young adults. It was a truly diverse coalition of young people who were all there for the same reason: to condemn the current Israeli assault on Gaza and call for an end to the Israeli occupation. The fact that such a large group of students left their classrooms vacant to take to the streets in support of Palestine gave a strong sense that Gen Z is fiercely challenging the normalization of Israeli oppression.

s part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by Ione Belarra, leader of the leftist Podemos party and Minister of Social Rights in the Spanish government between 2021 and 2023. Belarra spoke at a Podemos-organized event at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid marking 76 years since the beginning of the Palestinian Nakba.

This year, the children of two families outside Buenos Aires celebrated a simple yet essential pleasure for the first time in their lives: the warmth of a shower inside their own home. This sea change resulted from the work of a group of volunteers who undertook bathroom construction in 48 hours under the auspices of Módulo Sanitario, an Argentinian non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides bathrooms for those without access to them.

It’s been more than a month since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. In that month, I carried on with my day-to-day activities albeit with a heavy heart for the victims of the war. The officials and military combatants are not at the center of my thoughts and worries – the civilians are. Before the attacks, they bore the brunt of the war and terror in the region, and for decades after they will, too.

As part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by Spanish activist and Eurodeputy Miguel Urbán at an October 20, 2023 public event in Madrid held in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As part of my commitment to bringing justice-oriented voices from Spain to a broader audience, especially in the context of the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, I am providing this English translation of remarks made by journalist Olga Rodriguez at an October 20, 2023 public event held in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As the Israeli military continues to subject Palestinians in Gaza to a brutal siege accompanied by heavy aerial bombardment, citizens around the world are rising up to express their solidarity with Palestinians and to demand that Israel and its international supporters be held accountable. At a march held in the Spanish capital, Madrid, protesters sought to focus attention on the role of the European Union (EU) in enabling Israel’s war crimes.

In the first article in this series, I explored some of the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous communities in Thailand as well as their efforts to build networks of solidarity. To provide additional insight into the subject, I had the opportunity to speak with Pi Phnom, an Indigenous journalist based in Northern Thailand. He is known for founding the Indigenous Media Network (Thailand) and has collaborated with other Indigenous organizations such as the Inter Mountain People Education and Culture in Thailand Association (IMPECT) on many pertinent Indigenous issues in the country.

In my first Weaving the Streets installment, I described how my interest in street art was born as a child in Mexico, and I focused on the artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and her installation “We are More” in New York City. I am very excited about this second article because I was lucky enough to interview a street artist myself and learn about street art in NYC and the community of street artists first-hand. For this article, I will be featuring Savior El Mundo, a street artist, but also a dancer, curator, and more, who shared with me his own journey as an artist born and raised in New York City.

“De norte al sur, de este al oeste, la lucha sigue, cueste lo que cueste! (From north to south, from east to west, the struggle continues, whatever it takes!)” With this and other slogans ringing in the air, hundreds of activists of all ages filled the streets of downtown Madrid, Spain, on September 15 to demand rapid decarbonization and climate justice. At a time when news reports here are filled with stories of floods, fires, and killer storms throughout the wider Mediterranean region, Madrid’s 15S Climate March provided a much-needed dose of what is usually missing from those reports: a clear-eyed look at the policy steps that must be taken in order to face down our climate crisis.

“I am not optimistic. I think it will get harder and harder.” This was St. Lawrence County (NY) farmer Dan Kent’s response when asked how climate change will impact local farmers in the years to come. Localized farming practices have both economic and environmental advantages for the North Country. But with warming temperatures and varying weather patterns, local farmers in the region will need to find ways to adapt in order to maintain their livelihoods and retain the benefits of local food systems.

On Thursday, July 20, 2023, Abra Lee, ornamental horticulturalist and Black historian, presented research from her forthcoming monograph, “Conquer the Soil.” This public lecture inaugurated the 2023 Garden Walk series of events, coordinated by Gardens Buffalo Niagara, which includes the East Side Garden Walk, on July 22-23, 2023, and the Buffalo Garden Walk, on July 29-30, 2023. In other words, Buffalo has a two-week flower festival – and Abra Lee got us started.

The East Side Garden Walk brochure strikes me as a rich primary source on cultural politics, nonprofit orientation, and community power in Buffalo. I’m a historian, so I imagine this brochure being useful to a young scholar in 2050, when she’s trying to understand how the Buffalo Renaissance of the early 2000s transitioned into the re-urbanization of the city.

Ms. Gail Wells is Founder of Buffalo Freedom Gardens and a Project Consultant for Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo. Founded in 2020, Buffalo Freedom Gardens has two aims, first, to help residents create sustainable food sources on the East Side of Buffalo through urban farming and, second, to bring the vibrancy of horticulture to urban spaces. Between 2020 and 2021, Ms. Wells and Buffalo Freedom Gardens helped more than 80 residents start gardening – front-yard, backyard, raised bed, and container gardens – to feed their households and beautify their homes.

Sara E. Jablonski is a 4-H Team Educator in the Cornell Cooperative Extension Erie County. She develops 4-H Youth Development clubs in the Buffalo, NY, and Amherst, NY, areas. She helps young people find their spark! She is one of my colleagues at Cornell in Buffalo, and she was kind enough to share with Weave News the work she does in the community and the flowers that she admires in Buffalo.

I’ve lived in a city most of my life. Save 5 years in Canton, NY, as a St. Lawrence student, I have lived in either New York City (21 years) or City of Buffalo (16 years). I’m a city creature, ranging through one or another major city. Flowers and gardens have not always been of interest to me. In New York City, I lived close enough to Central Park to enjoy some of nature’s bloom. Three blocks from my railroad apartment in El Barrio was the 97th street entrance to the park. As a teen, it wasn’t the park’s green spaces that attracted me, but the hilly walkways that outlined the grassy field. I blazed those roads with my bike, catching enough speed to soar off short ramps made of broken sidewalk…

“Barbie was supposed to be called ‘Barbie and Ken’,” said Ken actor Ryan Gosling in a press tour interview. So, is Barbie and Ken a love story?

I’m a recovering college professor. Teaching is my drug – it gets me high. But these “highs'' never last long, and my addiction was costing years off my life. The problem isn’t teaching; it’s learning – learning is the purpose of teaching, and I cannot tell when, how, or why people learn in college classrooms. So to summarize, since 2007, I have been getting high off teaching, leading history classes at two different universities, and sharing my expertise with more than 1500 students until I resigned in 2023. In that period, I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression, I’ve fought off rashes and infections, and I’ve been hospitalized for stress-related conditions afflicting my heart, arms, and brain. Getting high on the job was killing me.