Oh, What a Tribulation
News from JAH, May 28, 2026 (World Hunger Day)
Until there are no longer
First-class and second-class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man’s skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war
Bob Marley, War, Rastaman Vibration (1976)
Soul Rebels,
World Hunger Day 2026 finds nearly three billion people worldwide unable to afford a healthy diet.
Many millions starving.
If human beings survive the next one hundred years, if we overcome the multiple tyrannies that afflict us, it is likely that future generations will look back on our age with disbelief.
They will wonder how our species got entrapped in a system that mistook economics and pursuit of ‘profit’ for life and well-being …?
Why we tolerated a system where the essential necessities of life - food - could only be purchased for money?
They will marvel that money was made central to being and that if you were poor or middle-class money could only be acquired from labour.
If there was no work, people suffered and starved.
To find work they risked their lives, joined foreign armies or attempted perilous sea and land crossings.
Many died lonely and painful deaths.
The funny thing was that even when four hundred million people worldwide had no work, they stuck to this system. It was called capitalism.
Another world was possible
What will amaze our descendants most is that we had knowledge of alternative, fairer, less destructive ways of organising human society.
For example, in April 2026, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, released the Roadmap on Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth. The Roadmap explores a total of 80 measures that can both reduce poverty and inequalities and ensure we remain within planetary boundaries.
The Roadmap consolidates solution-oriented ideas that have been surfaced by people like Kate Raworth with her groundbreaking concept of Doughnut Economics, as well as work that has been done on ‘well-being economics’ by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
It comes at a time when there has been a small explosion of interest in alternative economics: such as the Global Fund for a New Economy; the Emerging Political Economies Network; the New Economics Foundation; the New Economy Hub.
Ideas of another world are emerging.
In local communities and in some cities they are already in practice.
The problem is that death-capitalism (“Todkapitalismus”) is a parasite that will not die quietly.
Our descendants will see that what humans lacked was power to implement these alternatives.
It’s to power that I now turn.
Democracy Watch
The media is fixated on Trump.
It’s understandable. Trumpism is a paradox: a grand comedic farce, anarchy wrapped in enigma, but with existential consequences.
But while we are hoodwinked by the terminal tomfoolery of a dementia-stricken idiot, democracy and people’s power is being stolen in other parts of the world.
In India, the fascist Narendra Modi is consolidating power and turning India into a one party state. Removing 12% of voters from the electoral role in West Bengal – read: SIR in West Bengal: How exclusion of nine million voters could shape state politics – helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a ‘historic victory’.
Keep up with the truth of what is happening in India. Read The Wire
But don’t be fooled. Electoral manipulation, intimidation and detention does not a happy population make.
A satirical online movement, the Cockroach Janata Party, created after the Chief Justice of India described young people as cockroaches, got twenty million Instagram followers in a matter of days, eclipsing the BJP’s 8.7 million followers!
Now the tech bros have shut it down.
On a more material level a strike wave is shaking industrial areas in Northern India.
If the right vehicle can be found the anger and alienation will wash away the BJP in minutes.
There’s the real calamity ….
Reasons to be Cheerful, part 20
We shall overcome …. some way.
Resistance is growing. But so is resistance to the resistance.
♥️The global solidarity movement for Palestinian freedom is now what the Anti-Apartheid Movement was in the 1980s. On Nakba Day 2026, Fox News (nogal! I promise never to quote them again) counted 736 protest events across 39 countries. In London quarter of a million people joined the march.
♥️ In Germany the trial of the Ulm 5, political activists involved in civil disobedience, has started. Across Germany there is a growing movement of school students using school strikes to protest German rearmament and conscription.
Read: More than 50,000 pupils expected to strike over German rearmament policy and German students expand their strike against conscription and militarization to 150 cities.
But mirth and mockery are sometimes as powerful as marching.
♥️ Trust Banksy to hit the nail on the head. A pop-up statue appeared in central London of a strident man, marching, his face blinded by a flag.
♥️ … and exiled Russian punk band Pussy Riot pitched up at the Venice Biennale and forced the Russian pavilion to briefly close.
Or is it?
Activists Bookshelf
People wrote feverishly in the end times.
And yet they wrote beautifully.
I recently popped into Love Books in Johannesburg to pick up Rebecca Solnit’s The Beginning Comes After the End. On display were new novels by Douglas Stuart (he of Shuggie Bain) and Amitav Ghosh (he of the Ibis Trilogy); a meditation on love by Han Kang; and a new work by Patrick Radden Keefe.
All on the same shelf!
A new novel from Elif Shafak, In One Brief Moment All Eternity, is in the wings.
What riches.
Read:
In celebration of Bob and George
Bob Marley died on 11 May 1981, 45 years ago.
His philosophy on life and money reflected the values embraced by News from JAH. Bob espoused natural mystic, natural life, positive vibration, music, revolution, equality, love, creativity, possibility.
I celebrate his life and work through this newsletter, not because I need a God, I don’t.
But because Marley’s music is a constant reminder of how it’s the poets and musicians who are closest to the pulse of our existence. They give us joy, rhythm, warning, reason to move and to mobilise.
They also foresee and forewarn.
It’s autumn now in South Africa.
It’s Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
Spring always reminds me of George Orwell’s lovely salutation to Nature and his argument that “by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable.”
“So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, Spring is still Spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”
Orwell’s essay was written 80 years ago.
What’s changed?
Read: Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
Behind all the noise of politics and persecution the natural forces of the planet are reminding us of the damage we have already done to the earth.
The planet is cooking. Extreme heatwaves are taking place simultaneously on several continents. A devastating El Niño may be gathering over Southern Africa.
People are dying.
We are going to have to learn to live differently. Activism is a necessity not a choice.
Embrace it.
We can.
Love and Peace,
Mark
Heywood
Written and researched by a human being. No AI involved.
The Justice and Activism Hub is a change tank for a time of change. We are committed to strengthening social justice struggles through connection, collaboration, coordination, convening and catalysing.
News from JAH is also now available here on Substack. The playlist of songs that I feature is available here. If you enjoyed this newsletter please forward it to other soul rebels. You can also contact me at markjamesheywood@gmail.com