May Day is a chance for the global left to come together and gain clarity on the direction of movements. It serves as a consistent coordination point each year. The core idea of May Day is to recognize the challenges labor has faced over the years, especially since the onset of the fourth industrial revolution.

One concern, which I express in this video, for labor movements internationally is that much of their policy proclamations and political speech is bound by the fourth industrial wave, which is the automation of physical labor, but the fifth wave, what we are in now, is the automation of thought processes. Not enough labor movements have experts in artificial intelligence or influence in this policy sphere.

Another concern I express is that the left as a whole is very fragmented with many thousands of different types of messages. Domestically, in the United States, if the left is to run successful opposition against the current Presidential admin, they need to consolidate into a bloc. At the moment, they are very far away from a bloc and their opposition will struggle to overcome the burden of political repression and other coordination challenges.

Some blocs form through a national identity but nationalism is challenging because left nationalism would be reflective of right nationalism and nationalism is usually not effective for minority groups interested in achieving political ends as at some point it must be transformed into state power. A strong national identity on the left will lack cohesion and marginalize the internationalist interests like Palestinian Liberation, which is already struggling to compete within a highly tense and fragmented cluster of groups as the perspective of the left in the U.S. turns its focus to the Trump Administration.

Watch the video and let me know what you think.

A rant, Christopher Sweat is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Watch the video to learn more, and here are a few brief notes on my thoughts.

In just six seconds, law enforcement chose to shoot seven or eight bullets into an innocent man in Douglas County, Colorado. While we don't live in a police state, the police have not been held accountable for their reckless and life-ending mistake. I'll share my thoughts on this issue and how these situations undermine liberty and freedom.

We should never allow anyone to prevent us Americans from critiquing our law enforcement agencies.

According to John Locke, “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom."

When police wrongfully terminate an individual’s life, they violate the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which explicitly protect against the deprivation of life or liberty without due process of law. Anyone who violates due process by unjustly taking life without legal justification and who breaches natural rights under both philosophy and constitutional law should be held’ should be held accountable for homicide.

Any district attorney's office that fails to bring charges for criminal behavior and prioritizes law enforcement's will over its citizens' rights should be dissolved and rebuilt immediately in accordance with our Constitution.

Locke wrote in Second Treatise of Government:

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people.”

As you know, I have been closely following the calls for Palestinian liberation and the protest movements in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C..

After a disruption at a Downers Grove, IL town hall hosted by Rep Sean Casten, I interviewed Nick Sous, one of the local Chicago leaders at U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), to get his perspective.

Nick explains some of the tactics and strategies he has been using to escalate the issue of Palestinian liberation and his domestic and foreign policy preferences.

We were able to source a video of the disruption and the coverage the event received on CNN.

When you practice disruptive politics, you often aim to get media attention because it can help with fundraising or policy action. There is no sure guarantee of coverage, and the disruptions can be risky. But you’ll hear directly from Nick and I do think there is quite a bit to be learned here.

What do you think about disruptive politics?

I was on the ground covering the TeslaTakedown protest in Chicago. Later this week, we will release footage from 13 other cities. This video focuses on Chicago. In fact, you’ll see I got into it with protestors after a group was harassing Chicago PD for about 15 minutes.

This movement was primarily catalyzed by shareholders’ activism. Elon Musk has been neglecting his role as the CEO of Tesla, a publicly traded company, and activist investors will target the public companies where they feel the management is not operating in the best interests of its shareholders. Elon Musk has been primarily focused on his role within DOGE, which has created headwinds for Tesla. Shareholder activists took the perception in civil society, weaponized it, and effectively created an emergency for Tesla management. Now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is looking to deemphasize his role in DOGE as his companies face the turmoil created by his political activities.

You’ll see signs calling him a fascist, demanding his deportation, and criticizing his government involvement and wealth.

These protests culminated in weeks of targeting Tesla dealerships around the country. Individuals and small groups defaced Tesla cars, lit them on fire, threw paint on the dealerships, held small protests on the lots, and directly targeted Tesla charging stations and car owners.

I’ll provide more analysis this week but this is just a taste and you may find some of the drama interesting.

A note on the video… I wanted to run it raw. No editing is needed. You can see the protest footage up close and personal. There’s no need for me to twist it like the mainstream media does.

A rant, Christopher Sweat is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Now, in the video Jinan Chehade speaks mid-March on Michigan Avenue and E Wacker Dr. during the protest on Saturday, March 22nd.

Chehade says, "We know this was never a true ceasefire, even before the bombing started on Tuesday."

She discusses her views on liberation, escalation, and the severity of the situation in Gaza.

This March contrasts with the end of the ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel resumed its war against Hamas on March 18 with aerial bombings followed by ground incursions in northern Gaza and the seizure of the Netzarim corridor bisecting the enclave. (Oxford Analytica Daily Brief, 21 March 2025) The analyst community acknowledges that Israel has relative freedom of action in the region of Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. Still, the domestic political environment in Israel is unstable and has been unable to conclude a political solution.

Hugh Lovatt, Senior Policy Fellow and European Council on Foreign Relations argued that Netanyahu's government is taking an illiberal turn at home. Lovatt writes the Israeli government's inability and unwillingness to set out a realistic vision is being exacerbated by a significant mismatch of Israeli expectations and tensions between the Israeli government and military leadership.

There is a growing consensus in the international community that the Israel-Gaza conflict is Netanyahu's war, as he has intertwined his personal survival with the nation's survival, preferring a prolonged and drawn-out conflict in Gaza as a way to extend his rule over Israel.

So long as the Likud party has a majority in the Knesset, incentives to coordinate with the PLA and Hamas in peace talks are limited.

Steve Witkoff, who leads the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, spoke to Tucker Carlson last week and mentioned the importance of getting everyone to the table. Qatari partners have been the main diplomatic lever for coordination between Israel, Hamas, and the PLA, but there are commitment problems and coordination challenges in how things currently sit.

In the meantime, at least 50,021 Palestinians have been killed and 113,274 wounded since Israel began attacking the territory in response to an attack led by Hamas on 10/7/2023.

In this episode, I host Lee Edwards, a General Partner at Root Ventures in San Francisco. We discuss the political scene in San Francisco, the impact of AI on labor, Tesla, Waymo, the education system, and how we have traditionally adapted to disruptive technology. Lee invests in engineers who are starting companies that tackle the hard problems in software, such as developer tools and services, software infrastructure, applied AI and ML, and Computer Vision. In recent years, Lee has been a CTO at Teespring, a mechanical engineer at iRobot, a software engineer at Pivotal Labs, a Lead Engineer at SideTour (acquired by Groupon in 2013), and an engineering manager for GrouponLive. He graduated from Olin College of Engineering with a degree in Systems Engineering.

Connect with Lee - X/Twitter: terronk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeredwards/ Root Ventures: https://root.vc/

Avantika Mehra joined me to talk about her unique perspective on the future of technology. Avantika is an emerging leader, a technologist, and an interdisciplinary thinker. I think you will see this conversation as fun and an exercise in creative thinking. Avantika had originally inspired some of my thinking on the future of advanced economies, which included my thoughts on computers, the labor market, and the general societal impact technology will have. Avantika plays around with interesting frameworks and theories and applies them to industry with many existing practical technologies. She has a good sense of what is ahead. She spent her early career in consulting and technology startups and now spends her time in spatial computing (you may know this as AR/VR, though it is far more encompassing of multiple computing techniques.)

Avantika also has a substack, which you can find here.

And follow her on Twitter for more!

https://twitter.com/avaa411

I host Dr. Kaleb Demerew to speak again, this time about a highly relevant topic, Red Sea Rivalries which he published here - https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/red-sea-rivalries/

This is a fascinating discussion that talks about the social, political, and maritime history of the Red Sea region, including European and Middle Eastern influence on the waterway.

We discuss the Houthis in Yemen, Egypt, Ethiopia, UAE, Turkey, Iran, Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Italy, and many other powers who have influenced the region.

You can find more on Dr. Kaleb Demerew here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaldemerew/

Enjoy!

It was awesome to host Pyotr for a nuanced and informative discussion on the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict. We dug deep into domestic U.S. politics, Russia foreign policy, Ukraine foreign policy, political polarization and more.

I hope you enjoy it!

You can find more from Pyort here:

https://twitter.com/PKurzin

https://www.youtube.com/@theglobalgambit/videos

I hosted Mark Blyth, Brown University, and Sven Steinmo, University of Colorado Boulder (you remember Sven from his piece, Trump is not the Problem) to discuss their perspectives on austerity, democracy, dictators, protest, populism, knowledge economy, technology, advanced economies, and more! We dug deep into political dynamics in France, Brazil, Sweden, Germany, the United States, Israel, China, Italy, Turkey, etc. My friends in high finance will enjoy Mark Blyth's analysis!

Mark Blyth, is The William R. Rhodes ‘57 Professor of International Economics and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He is someone who may have heard through his collaboration with Nicholas Nasim Taleb in their piece, The Black Swan of Cairo: How Suppressing Volatility Makes the World Less Predictable and More Dangerous. Or maybe in one of Mark’s many books like Great Transformations, Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Angrynomics, The Future of the Euro, and more. His research focuses on how uncertainty and randomness impact complex systems, particularly economic systems, and why people continue to believe stupid economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary.

Find Mark Blyth on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MkBlyth

and Sven Steinmo on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SvenSteinmo

Thanks to Sven Steinmo for putting this together!

Watch the video version on YouTube here:

And look back at Sven Steinmo’s piece, Trump is not the Problem or his introduction to our platform.