Latest news with #politicalactivism
Fox News
21 hours ago
- Business
- Fox News
Walz urges Democrats to 'be a little meaner,' 'bully the s--t' out of Trump: 'A challenging few years'
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, called on his fellow Democrats on Saturday to "be a little meaner" and stand up to President Donald Trump, who he described as a "bully." Walz, a 2024 vice presidential candidate, was the keynote speaker at a Democratic Party state convention in Columbia, South Carolina, where he took jabs at the Republican president and sought to energize his party's activists. "Maybe it's time for us to be a little meaner, a little bit more fierce, because we have to ferociously push back on this," Walz told the crowd in the Palmetto State. The comment came after he said he had been accused of being "mean" when he threw criticism in recent months at Trump administration officials, including billionaire Elon Musk, who has since left his role in the federal government. "The thing that bothers a teacher more than anything is to watch a bully," Walz, a former schoolteacher, said. "And when it's a child, you talk to them and you tell them why bullying is wrong." "But when it's an adult like Donald Trump, you bully the s–-t out of him back ... This is a ... cruel man," the governor added. The Minnesota Democrat also criticized Trump as a "wannabe dictator" and an "existential threat." "Donald Trump is the existential threat that we knew was coming," Walz said, noting that, for Democrats, "it is going to be a challenging few years here." "We've got the guts and we need to have it to push back on the bullies and the greed," he said. Walz also appeared Friday night, along with Maryland Democrat Gov. Wes Moore, at the party's fundraising dinner and after-party fish fry hosted by South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn. Walz and Moore are on a long list of potential 2028 presidential candidates who have been traveling to early-voting states, although the Maryland governor said he would not run for the White House in the next election cycle. "I want to be clear: We can and we must condemn Donald Trump's reckless actions. But we would also be foolish not to learn from his impatience," Moore said in his remarks. "Donald Trump doesn't need a study to dismantle democracy or use the Constitution like a suggestion box. Donald Trump doesn't need a white paper to start arbitrary trade wars that raise the cost of virtually everything in our lives," he added. The events gave the two governors the opportunity to test out their messages in front of hundreds of Democrats in the state that has long held the South's Democratic presidential primary and, last year, kicked off the party's nominating calendar entirely. State party chair Christale Spain has said she will renew the argument to keep the state's number one position in the next cycle, although national party organizations have not settled their 2028 calendars yet and party officials in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada are also looking to go first. Just as he did on Friday night, Walz praised his fellow Democrats in his speech on Saturday for having the "courage" to keep fighting in a largely Republican state, where Democrats have not won a statewide election in about two decades and only hold one congressional seat. "Damnit, we should be able to have some fun and be joyful," Walz said. "We've got the guts and we need to have it to push back on the bullies and the greed." Walz has not officially said if he will seek a third term as governor in 2026, but acknowledges he is considering it. He has also given mixed signals on a potential 2028 presidential run.
Forbes
4 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Artist Pacita Abad Archives Going To Stanford University
Pacita Abad in her Jakarta studio circa 1994. The Cantor Arts Center and the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries today announced the acquisition of the Pacita Abad Archives. The vast collection of archival materials and ephemera spans over 30 years of the Filipina artist's career, from her time in the Bay Area during the mid-70s through her passing in 2004. Gifted by the Pacita Abad Art Estate, the Archives share intimate insights into the artist's globetrotting life and artistic production. Due to her political activism against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos as a student, Abad (1946–2004) left the Philippines in 1969 and traveled to the Bay Area to study law. There, she met future husband Jack Garrity. 'She walked into the room and everybody noticed her and gravitated towards her,' Garrity told 'She was vivacious, outgoing, and had a big belly laugh.' Garrity was representing Stanford University, where he went to business school, at a world affairs conference in 1973 in Monterey, CA when he was first introduced to Abad. She was there representing San Francisco's Lone Mountain College. 'A world affairs conference turned into a worldwide journey,' Garrity remembers. The couple would go on to travel and live in more than 60 countries throughout the course of their marriage as a result of Garrity's work in international development. Bangladesh, Sudan, South Sudan, Dominican Republic, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore. But first, back to San Francisco. 'After we met, we spent a year hitchhiking from Istanbul to the Philippines. She had been accepted to Berkeley Law School with a full scholarship and over that journey, she decided that she didn't really want to become a lawyer, she wanted to become an artist,' Garrity said. 'So we went back to Stanford to finish up my last year, and we did a deal. I said, 'Okay, if you work and help us get through business school this last year, I'll support you for art school.'' The couple lived together rent-free in a cabin on a small ranch while Garrity finished up at Stanford. He took care of the horses, she babysat and worked at the Stanford Medical School. This period of their life was captured by Abad in an early work depicting Garrity at the home. Foothill Cabin (1976) was acquired by the Cantor in 2023 and is currently on view there. The museum recently acquired two other major works by Abad, If My Friends Could See Me Now (1993), and 100 years of freedom: From Batanes to Jolo (1998). Pacita Abad and Jack Garrity, c.1975-1976, Pacita Abad archives (M3075). Abad was a diligent self-archivist, holding on to letters and photographs and fabric pieces acquired around the world throughout her career. Garrity has cared for this material since her death. When he moved to his current residence in Los Angeles, he sought out a home with a three-car garage to store all the boxes. They now go to Stanford. Garrity's selection of the school goes beyond his having attended there and the couple's time in San Francisco, although those connections didn't hurt. 'She had a very strong connection to the Bay Area,' Garrity said. 'That was where she first landed (and) fell in love with San Francisco during the Haight Ashbury days and summers of love and lots of music and diversity. She fit right in.' The Pacita Abad Archives joins the Libraries' growing collection of archives of Asian American artists, including those of Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) and Bernice Bing (1936–1998). At the same time, the Cantor is committed to building one of the most significant collections of Asian American art through its Asian American Art Initiative, a cross-departmental, institutional project dedicated to the preservation, collection, exhibition, and study of work made by Asian American artists. For Abad to be fully recognized as one of the greatest Asian American artists, and for the Cantor's Asian American Art Initiative to fully achieve its mission, the two needed each other. Their paths crossed at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where Abad's first retrospective was presented in 2023. Garrity attended the opening. So did the Cantor Arts Center's director Veronica Roberts. Despite growing up in the Bay Area and committing her life to the study of art, Roberts had been unaware of Abad. 'I randomly happened to be sick and in bed one day,' Roberts told 'I was on Tina Kim's gallery website and I saw a little thumbnail image. Who's Pacita Abad? I love this work. I kept clicking and clicking, and was like, 'Oh my God, how do I not know who this artist is!?'' Roberts went down a rabbit hole investigating Abad, learning about her connection to San Francisco, discovering the Walker was organizing her retrospective. Having just been hired as director at the Cantor, attracted to the position in part because of the Asian American Art Initiative, her wheels began turning. Fortunately for Roberts, Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander and Marci Kwon, co-founders of AAPI, were a step ahead of her. They'd already made contact with Garrity. 'I think we should try to bring the archives here in addition to making an important purchase, and we better do it now, because there's a retrospective, and it's going to be harder to as soon as that opens and more people figure out how great she is,' Roberts remembers telling her colleagues. Abad's retrospective would travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1 in New York, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. As Roberts predicted, interest in and demand for Abad's work soared following the critically acclaimed exhibition. At the Walker opening, Roberts met Garrity and introduced the possibility of his gifting the archives to Stanford. 'It was meant to be,' Roberts said. '(Pitchamarn Alexander and Kwon) already knew about the work. I was interested. We had a brand new archivist; she was interested. We all got it. Everyone was on board. Jack Garrity had gone to Stanford. He was trying to find a home for (the archive) and was so committed to her legacy and understood (San Francisco) was a key part of it. It was as good a match as you could ever have.' Collage made by Pacita Abad, c.1980-81. Pacita Abad archives (M3075). The archive includes photographs, unpublished works, sketches, exhibition records, correspondence, and personal artifacts. As part of the gift, the Pacita Abad Art Estate has allocated funds to the Libraries to support a dedicated archivist who will catalog and digitize the materials, ensuring their long-term accessibility. All materials will be accessible to the public free of charge with an appointment made through the Libraries. Notable highlights from the Archives include the first textile Abad ever acquired, a Turkish needlepoint made using red, green, purple, and metallic threads, and various menus that she created for social gatherings at her home—a hub of cultural exchange. The menus. 'We constantly were entertaining,' Garrity said. 'Luckily, being overseas, were able to have help, and so we would have dinners for 10 people, 15 people. People would be coming into town, and they'd say, 'I'm staying with some friends; can I bring them over?' Sure, no problem. We had dinner plates that she made in Indonesia. We'd have candles and flowers–she really did it up. Then she would make these menus and back them with Batik, just small ones, and say what we're going to eat.' Both Roberts and Lindsay King, Head Librarian of Bowes Art and Architecture Library at Stanford University, who got sneak peeks at the Archive materials, signaled out the menus among the items they saw. 'She was a great cook too, so you get a sense of who she was as a person,' King told 'There's a lot of pictures of Pacita (in the archive). I never got a chance to meet her in person, but you get a sense of her personality coming through the images. Oftentimes she seems kind of in mid-sentence, or she's doing some crazy thing. There's images of her in scuba gear because one of the series ('Underwater Wilderness'). A lot of us saw that picture and thought it would have been so cool to talk to her. That vitality comes through.' The scuba picture came from a gallery opening. 'To see a photo of her in the 90s at an opening in the Philippines of her underwater fish paintings and she shows up to her opening in her bikini and full scuba gear–she had the flippers, the tank on. I've seen a lot of artists in their studio photos or artists at openings and I will never forget this one,' Roberts said. 'It tells me so much about her personality, the way she embraced life. That really comes across in the work, but even more so in the papers, in the Archives, and photos.' The Archives also feature images documenting her worldwide travels, as well as the schematic for her final public art installation in Singapore—a vibrant bridge ornamented with over 2,000 concentric circles completed shortly before her passing. Together, it offers unparalleled insight into Abad's connection with the diverse artist and artisan communities around the world that she engaged with and championed. 'She clearly recognized that she mattered and that her work was meaningful because she saved so much. She saved everything,' Roberts explained. 'That's going to help us help people understand how fully she led her life and the extent of the impact and influence of her work.' Pacita Abad in San Francisco, c. 1970-73, Pacita Abad archives (M3075). Abad was not a well-known artist during her lifetime. Not unknown, but not well-known. The art world in 1985, or 1995, wasn't interested in Filipina artists working in fabrics, sharing Indigenous crafting traditions from Africa and Southeast Asia. Her international travels made her acutely aware of the difficult lives that most women lead around the globe and heightened her sensitivity to the severe political, social, economic and environmental challenges she encountered across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Also subjects she incorporated into her work. Also subjects previous generations of fine art tastemakers weren't interested in. The Walker retrospective coinciding with the art world's broadening interests catapulted her recognition to the stratosphere. What would she think of this? Garrity, a Bostonian and Boston sports fan, and Abad, a Boston sports fan through marriage, shared this story from Abad's final months as an analogy. 'She's in and out of a coma, and she came out one time, and I said, 'The Red Sox beat the Yankees in the (2004) playoffs.' She said, 'It's about time,'' Garrity recalls. 'A couple weeks later, when they beat the Cardinals, I said they won the World Series. And she said, 'finally.' That's how she would have felt about her work. She was always very confident in her work, and she believed her work should be in museums and should be widely collected.' So confident, the couple held onto work they could have sold during her lifetime knowing that her moment had yet to come. The art was what mattered, not the money. 'Artists never have any money, but they always seem to have a good time,' Garrity said.
The National
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
New book unfurls the rich life of Inji Efflatoun beyond her time in prison
On the night of June 19, 1959, Inji Efflatoun stood alone on a Cairo street, attempting to hail a taxi. As a car finally pulled over, a group of men rushed her, seizing and forcing her into the vehicle. It was a sting. After months of living in hiding, disguising herself as a fellaha and flitting from house to house, the Egyptian painter and political activist had finally been arrested. Efflatoun's arrest marked a pivotal point. It signalled not only the beginning of her four-year imprisonment but a powerful new chapter in her artistic and political legacy. At Al Qanater Women's Prison, Efflatoun produced some of her most renown works – paintings that captured the resilience of the incarcerated women and the brutal intimacy of confinement. She also recorded her famous memoirs on to cassettes, which were later transcribed and shaped her posthumous image. Though she recalled, in evocative detail, several phases of her life, it is her time behind bars that remains most closely associated with her name. But, as a new book reveals, Efflatoun's legacy and life was too expansive to be confined to a prison cell. The Life and Work of Inji Efflatoun is a project by the Barjeel Art Foundation, co-published with Skira. It is edited by Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and Suheyla Takesh, who are the foundation's founder and director respectively. The book presents, for the first time, an English translation of Efflatoun's memoir. The memoir elucidates several of her key moments. They begin with her early life in the Shura neighbourhood of Cairo and her time at the Sacred Heart School. They touch upon her early mentorship by Kamel el-Telmissany, from whom she learnt that painting meant 'an honest expression of society and self'. She speaks about her involvement in political groups advocating for women's rights and anti-colonialism. She expresses her heartbreak after the death of her husband Hamdi Aboul Ela, a prosecutor who shared Efflatoun's political ideals and who probably died from injuries sustained during his arrest and torture. She narrates details of her arrest, and how she managed to smuggle paintings out of prison. In short, the memoir describes a person who relentlessly defied confinement, whether the bubble of aristocracy, the constraints of gender norms or the physical walls of a prison. It portrays someone as fierce in her art as she was in her politics. For Efflatoun, painting and activism were not separate pursuits but shadows cast by the same flame. The memoir is translated from Arabic by Ahmed Gobba and Avery Gonzales, both former students of Al Qassemi at Yale University. He credits them with initiating the project. 'The book started when Ahmed wrote his final paper on Inji after he discovered that her family was from the same province of his grandfather,' Al Qassemi says. 'But her family were the landowners, and his family were the workers. And so there was this interesting relationship that was happening.' Gobba then proposed translating Efflatoun's memoir into English, and began working with Gonzales. 'Initially we were only going to publish the diary,' Al Qassemi says. The memoir is substantial, taking up a third of the 320-page book, and it is easy to see why it became popular when it was first published in 1993, four years after her death. 'Inji's life is fascinating,' Al Qassemi says. 'She came from an elite background and ended up forsaking all that privilege, choosing to be an activist, to stand up for the rights of the less privileged. She related to people who she fought for. There is no surprise that her book became quite popular, and that she's more known than other artists of her generation.' 'It started as a smaller project,' Takesh adds. 'Then we thought to commission one or two new essays on Inji's life and work to complement the memoir. One thing led to another, we kept discovering people's research, and eventually we ended up with nine new essays.' The essays explore the many facets of Efflatoun's extraordinary life. They examine her fearless activism and how her art served as both a personal outlet and a political expression – often reflecting the intensity of her struggles and convictions. Several essays consider her prescient sensibilities, as well as her active engagement with international networks of solidarity. The essays also touch upon her ties with the Soviet Union and her affinity with Mexican artists, particularly David Alfaro Siqueiros. Her exhibitions are portrayed not just as artistic milestones, but as acts of diplomacy that extended her reach far beyond Egypt. Efflatoun's personal life also finds its way into these essays. They trace the transformative nature of her marriage to Hamdi, a union that deeply impacted her, even as it ended in tragedy. Equally moving is her determined effort to learn Arabic – having been educated in French – which is framed as emblematic of her drive to connect with the fabric of everyday Egyptian life. 'We are also republishing three existing texts,' Takesh says. 'Two of them have been translated from Arabic. One of those is actually authored by Inji herself in 1972 as part of her participation in a conference in Tunis. The paper is about Egyptian modernist art, and she speaks about other people's work such as Mahmoud Said and Mohamed Nagy. She also situated her own practice within that constellation.' The book also features an essay by American artist Betty LaDuke, originally published in 1989. Written after LaDuke visited Efflatoun in her Cairo studio in the late 1980s, the piece presents a broad stroke of the artist's life before culminating with an interview that offers a rare, first-hand account of Efflatoun in her later years. Beyond the essay, LaDuke played a key role in shaping the book's visual narrative, contributing significantly to its rich collection of images. The Life and Work of Inji Efflatoun, in fact, draws from several private collections and institutional archives to present a vivid visual record of the artist's life, featuring her paintings as well as rare archival photographs. It is, quite possibly, the most comprehensive publication of Efflatoun's work to date, with high-resolution images that bring out the intricate details and textures of her paintings. As a whole, the book seeks to do justice to a painter who has too often – and unfairly – been reduced to her years in prison. 'One thing we did is expand on the two-dimensionality of Inji,' Al Qassemi says. 'Everything about Inji was about her arrest and time in jail. There were all these missing parts of her life. 'She spent four and a half years in jail, but she lived for many decades more than that. That's why we called the book The Life and Work of Inji Efflatoun. We actually go into parts of her life that have been completely neglected before.'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Only sane thing to do:' Writings, interviews tied to suspect in Israeli embassy staffer killings show political activism
The suspect accused of killing two Israeli embassy staffers has a history of political activism, including denouncing corporate power, US military actions and police abuses, according to a CNN review of interviews and writings linked to him. In a 2017 GoFundMe page that included his photo, a testimonial attributed to Elias Rodriguez described how, when he was 11, his father's deployment to Iraq sparked his political awakening and mobilized him to prevent 'another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal imperialist wars.' Authorities are investigating what led to the shooting late Wednesday outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where they say Rodriguez, a 31-year-old from Chicago, pulled a gun and killed a young couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Rodriguez yelled, 'Free, free Palestine,' as police detained him. In a complaint filed in federal court on Thursday charging Rodriguez with murder and other counts, prosecutors said he told police he was inspired by a US airman who died last year after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, to draw attention to the war in Gaza, calling him a 'martyr.' Police are also investigating a letter posted to X shortly after the shootings and apparently signed by Rodriguez that advocates for violent retaliation over the war in Gaza – a message shared repeatedly on that account. A CNN review of the account, @kyotoleather, found that it is linked to other accounts with the name and photo of Rodriguez, and includes replies where other users address him by name. The letter posted on Wednesday expressed fury over the 'atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine' and referenced 'armed action' as a valid form of protest – one that is 'the only sane thing to do.' 'What more at this point can one say about the proportion of mangled and burned and exploded human beings whom were children,' said the letter. 'We who let this happen will never deserve the Palestinians' forgiveness.' The letter was posted to X around 10 p.m. on Wednesday. It is not clear who posted it or if it was a pre-scheduled post set before the incident. In the years before his arrest in DC this week, Rodriguez allied publicly with several leftist groups in the Chicago area. The GoFundMe page created in August 2017 sought donations so Rodriguez could attend the People's Congress of Resistance in DC, an anti-Trump protest event. In a testimonial attributed to Rodriguez, he wrote he 'was 11 years old when my dad, an Army National Guardsman, sat our family down to tell us that he was being sent to Iraq.' He described being disturbed when his father returned from the deployment with 'souvenirs,' including a patch ripped off an Iraqi soldier's uniform. He wrote that he was alienated by American politics over the war. 'The Democrats will promise to protect the marginalized both here and abroad in 2018, like they did in 2006. And just like in 2006, they'll be lying. It's up to the people to protect themselves,' the GoFundMe testimonial said. Rodriguez's mother, reached by CNN, declined to comment for this story. The Army National Guard confirmed to CNN that a man identified in public records as Rodriguez's father was a member of the Army National Guard from 2005 to 2012, and deployed to Iraq from October 2006 to September 2007. In October 2017, Rodriguez attended a demonstration outside then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house to protest a police shooting and a bid to bring Amazon's second headquarters to the city. 'The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its Black residents,' Rodriguez told Liberation, a publication by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which identified him as a member at the time. He added that '[Amazon's] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city.' The PSL on Thursday said in a statement on X that Rodriguez is no longer a member and had only 'a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017.' The group added that 'we have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.' In January 2018, Rodriguez marched in another protest against Amazon in downtown Chicago organized by ANSWER Chicago, an anti-war group. Rodriguez told Newsy in an on-camera interview that 'if we can keep Amazon out, that is a huge victory and demonstrates sort of the power of people coming together, being able to say no to things like gentrification.' In a statement to CNN, ANSWER Coalition said the organization does not have individual members and that they are not connected to Rodriguez in any way. 'It appears he attended ANSWER protests 7 years ago and we are not aware of any contact since then. We obviously have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it,' ANSWER Coalition said. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a post on X, that 'the FBI is aware of certain writings allegedly authored by the suspect, and we hope to have updates as to the authenticity very soon.' The letter bearing Rodriguez's name describes the author's outrage over a perceived lack of action from Western and Arab governments to stop Israel's war in Gaza and advocates for armed action, which it compares to forms of nonviolent protest. 'An armed action is not necessarily a military action… Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions,' the letter said. The letter said that years ago, Americans would likely have not understood a violent attack on behalf of Palestine – 'such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane.' But amid increasing public pressure to end the war in Gaza, the author wrote, 'there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.' The letter ended with a note to the author's parents and sibling, and is signed 'Elias Rodriguez.' The same X account where the letter was posted has previously defended violent tactics, and expressed views calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. In response to another user's post supporting the shooting of others and calling violence an 'acceptable part of reality,' the account replied: 'Agreed - violence does not have to happen, but if it does, then it should.' 'What more evidence is needed that the colony and its recalcitrants will have to be totally extirpated by the end of all this,' the account wrote about Israel in another post responding to a video compilation of Israeli government officials calling for a total siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The social media posts show videos taken in the crowd from protests in Chicago against Israel's war in Gaza. In Chicago, Rodriguez most recently worked as an administrative specialist with the American Osteopathic Information Association, according to a LinkedIn account with his name and photo. 'We were shocked and saddened to learn that an AOIA employee has been arrested as a suspect in this horrific crime,' the group's president, Teresa Hubka, said in a joint statement with its CEO, Kathleen Creason. Rodriguez lived in the Albany Park neighborhood, where a next-door neighbor told CNN he was stunned by Rodriguez's alleged tie to the DC shooting. John Fry, 71, said Rodriguez has lived in the apartment next to his for about the past two years with a woman, although he said he did not know what their relationship was or the woman's name. 'They were very quiet, they were very friendly,' Fry said. Fry said he never had any political conversations with Rodriguez. 'We never did (talk politics) and now today, I regret that I never had a conversation with him because as you can tell I've been around a while,' Fry said, referring to his own age. 'You don't end war with guns and bombs,' Fry said. 'You end the war by going to the people, patiently explaining, and you know a vote is much more powerful than a bullet or a bomb.' CNN's Majlie de Puy Kamp, Sabrina Shulman, Evan Perez, Bill Kirkos, Whitney Wild and Lauren Chadwick contributed to this report Editor's Note: This story was updated to included a comment from ANSWER.
CNN
22-05-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Israeli embassy staffer shootings: Suspect investigated over posts about ‘armed action' as valid protest
The suspect accused of killing two Israeli embassy staffers has a history of political activism, including denouncing corporate power, US military actions and police abuses, according to a CNN review of interviews and writings linked to him. In a 2017 GoFundMe page that included his photo, a testimonial attributed to Elias Rodriguez described how, when he was 11, his father's deployment to Iraq sparked his political awakening and mobilized him to prevent 'another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal imperialist wars.' Authorities are investigating what led to the shooting late Wednesday outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where they say Rodriguez, a 31-year-old from Chicago, pulled a gun and killed a young couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Rodriguez yelled, 'Free, free Palestine,' as police detained him. In a complaint filed in federal court on Thursday charging Rodriguez with murder and other counts, prosecutors said he told police he was inspired by a US airman who died last year after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, to draw attention to the war in Gaza, calling him a 'martyr.' Police are also investigating a letter posted to X shortly after the shootings and apparently signed by Rodriguez that advocates for violent retaliation over the war in Gaza – a message shared repeatedly on that account. A CNN review of the account, @kyotoleather, found that it is linked to other accounts with the name and photo of Rodriguez, and includes replies where other users address him by name. The letter posted on Wednesday expressed fury over the 'atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine' and referenced 'armed action' as a valid form of protest – one that is 'the only sane thing to do.' 'What more at this point can one say about the proportion of mangled and burned and exploded human beings whom were children,' said the letter. 'We who let this happen will never deserve the Palestinians' forgiveness.' The letter was posted to X around 10 p.m. on Wednesday. It is not clear who posted it or if it was a pre-scheduled post set before the incident. In the years before his arrest in DC this week, Rodriguez allied publicly with several leftist groups in the Chicago area. The GoFundMe page created in August 2017 sought donations so Rodriguez could attend the People's Congress of Resistance in DC, an anti-Trump protest event. In a testimonial attributed to Rodriguez, he wrote he 'was 11 years old when my dad, an Army National Guardsman, sat our family down to tell us that he was being sent to Iraq.' He described being disturbed when his father returned from the deployment with 'souvenirs,' including a patch ripped off an Iraqi soldier's uniform. He wrote that he was alienated by American politics over the war. 'The Democrats will promise to protect the marginalized both here and abroad in 2018, like they did in 2006. And just like in 2006, they'll be lying. It's up to the people to protect themselves,' the GoFundMe testimonial said. Rodriguez's mother, reached by CNN, declined to comment for this story. The Army National Guard confirmed to CNN that a man identified in public records as Rodriguez's father was a member of the Army National Guard from 2005 to 2012, and deployed to Iraq from October 2006 to September 2007. In October 2017, Rodriguez attended a demonstration outside then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house to protest a police shooting and a bid to bring Amazon's second headquarters to the city. 'The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its Black residents,' Rodriguez told Liberation, a publication by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which identified him as a member at the time. He added that '[Amazon's] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city.' The PSL on Thursday said in a statement on X that Rodriguez is no longer a member and had only 'a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017.' The group added that 'we have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.' In January 2018, Rodriguez marched in another protest against Amazon in downtown Chicago organized by ANSWER Chicago, an anti-war group. Rodriguez told Newsy in an on-camera interview that 'if we can keep Amazon out, that is a huge victory and demonstrates sort of the power of people coming together, being able to say no to things like gentrification.' ANSWER Coalition's national press office did not respond to requests for comment. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a post on X, that 'the FBI is aware of certain writings allegedly authored by the suspect, and we hope to have updates as to the authenticity very soon.' The letter bearing Rodriguez's name describes the author's outrage over a perceived lack of action from Western and Arab governments to stop Israel's war in Gaza and advocates for armed action, which it compares to forms of nonviolent protest. 'An armed action is not necessarily a military action… Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions,' the letter said. The letter said that years ago, Americans would likely have not understood a violent attack on behalf of Palestine – 'such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane.' But amid increasing public pressure to end the war in Gaza, the author wrote, 'there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.' The letter ended with a note to the author's parents and sibling, and is signed 'Elias Rodriguez.' The same X account where the letter was posted has previously defended violent tactics, and expressed views calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. In response to another user's post supporting the shooting of others and calling violence an 'acceptable part of reality,' the account replied: 'Agreed - violence does not have to happen, but if it does, then it should.' Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, both Israeli Embassy staffers about to be engaged, were gunned down on a street in Washington, DC. CNN's Alex Marquardt reports. 'What more evidence is needed that the colony and its recalcitrants will have to be totally extirpated by the end of all this,' the account wrote about Israel in another post responding to a video compilation of Israeli government officials calling for a total siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The social media posts show videos taken in the crowd from protests in Chicago against Israel's war in Gaza. In Chicago, Rodriguez most recently worked as an administrative specialist with the American Osteopathic Information Association, according to a LinkedIn account with his name and photo. 'We were shocked and saddened to learn that an AOIA employee has been arrested as a suspect in this horrific crime,' the group's president, Teresa Hubka, said in a joint statement with its CEO, Kathleen Creason. Rodriguez lived in the Albany Park neighborhood, where a next-door neighbor told CNN he was stunned by Rodriguez's alleged tie to the DC shooting. John Fry, 71, said Rodriguez has lived in the apartment next to his for about the past two years with a woman, although he said he did not know what their relationship was or the woman's name. 'They were very quiet, they were very friendly,' Fry said. Fry said he never had any political conversations with Rodriguez. 'We never did (talk politics) and now today, I regret that I never had a conversation with him because as you can tell I've been around a while,' Fry said, referring to his own age. 'You don't end war with guns and bombs,' Fry said. 'You end the war by going to the people, patiently explaining, and you know a vote is much more powerful than a bullet or a bomb.' CNN's Majlie de Puy Kamp, Sabrina Shulman, Evan Perez, Bill Kirkos, Whitney Wild and Lauren Chadwick contributed to this report
