Vivian Solana:  I would like to share a link to the campaign “Western Sahara is not for Sale.” The web-site was created by a group of Sahrawi youth working from the hospitable refugee camps, which I wrote my article about, but also from the occupied territories and the diaspora. Its general purpose is to provide international visibility for the ongoing colonization of the Western Sahara. The site also has the specific purpose of seeking signatures from groups and organizations worldwide in support of a manifesto against the illegal, corporate plundering of the Western Sahara’s natural resources and the systematic violation of human rights in the territory: https://www.westernsaharaisnotforsale.org/.

In addition, please read and consider signing the following open letter. Addressed to concerned scholars and activists, the letter calls upon the USA to rescind former PresidentTrump’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara:

Open Letter of Solidarity with Western Sahara: Rescind US Recognition of Moroccan Sovereignty: https://www.petitions.net/letter_of_solidarity_with_western_sahara.

Tamar Shirinian:  I would like to share information about Kooyrigs, an organization in Armenia that works to support women through humanitarian work as well as educational projects.They have done some amazing work, especially following and during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabagh, to provide critical resources to pregnant women and new mothers.This is an organization to which anyone can donate. They are also open to educational collaborations: .https://kooyrigs.org/.

Brooke Bocast:  I consulted on an AJWS project in the community that I write about in my PoLAR article (they are not the NGO that I discuss in that article) and I was impressed with how the organization operationalized principles of social justice and equity on the ground:  https://ajws.org/where-we-work/africa/uganda/

Sarah Smith:  The Chuuk Women’s Council is an excellent organization that brings women’s groups across Chuuk together to take action on issues related to gender, environmental concerns, health issues, and pretty much anything else. It is run by, and for, Chuukese women:  https://www.cwcfiinchuuk.org/We are Guåhan is an organization resisting the environmental and human impacts of the imperial, militarized occupation of Guam. They aim “to unite and mobilize our people to protect and defend our resources and our culture”:  https://www.weareguahan.com/about-weareguahan/

Jaime Alves:  The coronavirus pandemic is devastating Black communities around the African Diaspora. In the overcrowded favelas of São Paulo, Brazil, the Black population is disproportionately dying due to the lack of access to healthcare while seeing their living conditions deteriorating even further.[1] In Cali, Colombia, the Black population is struggling with extreme poverty and alarming unemployment.[2] While in Colombia, paramilitary groups take advantage of the quarantine to kill Black and Indigenous social activists.[3] In Brazil, activists are fighting not only the virus but also deadly policing that imposes a permanent zone of exclusion through killings and disappearances.[4] As our grieving communities mourn loved ones and struggle to provide basic means of subsistence to those most in need, we join their effort in an urgent call to protect Black lives. Make your donation to assist Black communities in Brazil and Colombia to purchase food, hygiene products, and cleaning supplies.

To make your contribution to “El Chontaduro” a black grassroots in Cali/Colombia, visit:  https://www.casaculturalelchontaduro.com/

Donations can be done also through PayPal (Contact:+57 310 7080254).

To make a contribution to “Uneafro” a Black grassroots organization in São Paulo/Brazil, visit: https://uneafrobrasil.org/

Campaign members may be contacted through WhatsApp (+55 11 94759-2723 / Brazil) and (+57 310 7080254 / Colombia).

Claudia Fonseca:  I have no problem in recommending an organization to which people can make donations in the neighborhood where I’ve been doing field research for thirty years: The Coletivo Autônomo do Morro. The group is now an official ONG, but it ́s had a long trajectory: from the days of the participatory budget (of the leftist governments) to the neighborhood association (bringing together left and right) and, recently—during the pandemic—a loose network of present and past community activists. They hold together with episodic donations and subventions from places as diverse as the ILO, the government welfare agencies, the local chamber of commerce, and neighborhood shopkeepers: https://coletivomdc.org/

The Coletivo is a small-scale, modest organization. It has no downtown offices—just re-furbished rooms in an abandoned storehouse or, more recently, a small, abandoned chapel(no one quite remembers who owned the property). It does have a pedagogical project for fifty children (all ages) who spend their afternoons catching up with homework, doing capoeira, or learning rap. It has workshops to help people get into some sort of job (everything from recovering old computers donated by my university, to styling recycled clothes, to preparing CVs). Nearly all the middle-class professionals are unpaid volunteers. All the teachers and educators drawn from the neighborhood receive some sort of a salary.

One of the central actors in this process is the anthropologist Lucia Scalco. She did her PhD on digital in/exclusion ten years ago (under my supervision). We partnered on many issues because she happened to be doing fieldwork in the same neighborhood where I had established some long-lasting connections. Since then she has hooked up with many, many researchers (some of them from overseas), co-authoring articles with people such as Rosana Pinheiro-Machado (see Hau, 2020). But she has never sought a permanent post in the academic world because she has chosen activism as her priority.