July 16, 2026
Statement from Radical Women Australia and U.S.
Defend Free Speech! Stop the Criminalization of Dissent!
The right to speak out, organize, and protest is under coordinated, global attack. Across the United States, Australia, and other imperialist countries, governments are expanding police powers, stretching terrorism laws, and redefining political dissent as criminal activity. The targets may differ between immigrant rights organizers, Palestine solidarity activists, labor militants, transgender organizers, and socialists, but the objective is the same: to intimidate movements that challenge state violence, ongoing colonialism, racism, and capitalism. And though these cases are separated by oceans, they are connected by a shared pattern of repression.
Movements in their sights
In Texas, the Prairieland Nine received extraordinary prison sentences, 30 to 50 years, after protesting outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center. Under Trump’s executive edict, federal prosecutors advanced a novel interpretation of “material support” laws, arguing that political organizing itself could constitute support for terrorism. Civil liberties advocates warn that this precedent threatens anyone engaged in militant protest, regardless of whether they participated in violence.
In Spokane, Washington, three immigrant rights activists were convicted on federal conspiracy charges stemming from a peaceful effort to block the transfer of detained immigrants. Their prosecution rested on an expansive theory of conspiracy that many legal observers argue threatens First Amendment protections by treating collective civil disobedience as organized criminal conduct>
Across the English-speaking world, governments are following similar paths. By conflating antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Australia’s new anti-hate laws have dramatically expanded state powers while placing pro-Palestinian activism squarely in the crosshairs. Political slogans, such as “From the river to the sea,” are increasingly characterized as hate speech; police have been granted broader authority to stop, search, and detain people; and legislation creates mechanisms that could be used to prohibit political organizations. At the same time, left-wing and transgender activists face growing surveillance and policing of their organizing, while governments throughout the AUKUS (a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) alliance increasingly frame anti-capitalist and anti-war activists as potential security threats rather than democratic participants.
These developments should concern everyone. History teaches that governments rarely begin by outlawing all dissent at once. Instead, they isolate one movement after another, insisting that each new restriction is exceptional and necessary. Immigrant rights organizers are portrayed as criminals. Palestine solidarity activists become extremists. Labor militants become economic saboteurs. Environmental defenders become threats to infrastructure. Socialists become enemies of the state. The categories shift, but the strategy remains constant.
For a coordinated fightback
As socialist feminists, Radical Women rejects every attempt to weaponize accusations of terrorism, extremism, or hate against legitimate political organizing. We unequivocally oppose antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ+ violence, ableism, xenophobia, and every form of oppression. Expanding state repression has never protected marginalized communities. The same institutions empowered to silence one movement today will inevitably be turned against others tomorrow.
Capitalism is entering a period marked by widening inequality, militarism, ecological crisis, and growing resistance from working people. Rather than addressing these crises, ruling classes increasingly and brutally rely on surveillance, policing, and criminalization to contain dissent. This is effectively a demolition of our rights.
Every major advance in human freedom has depended upon people exercising the very rights governments now seek to restrict. Workers won unions through strikes that were declared illegal. Black freedom fighters confronted laws that criminalized resistance. Women fought for suffrage despite arrests and imprisonment. LGBTQ+ people challenged police repression long before their movements gained legitimacy. Indigenous peoples continue to defend their lands and lives despite criminal prosecution. Democratic rights have never been gifts from those in power; they have been won through struggle.
When repression grows, our response must be solidarity, not retreat! Radical Women calls for broad united fronts that unite labor unions, socialists, immigrant rights organizations, Palestine solidarity groups, Indigenous movements, feminist organizations, LGBTQ+ activists, anti-racist campaigns, students, faith communities, and civil liberties defenders to resist the criminalization of dissent.
We call for:
● Immediate dismissal of politically motivated prosecutions against peaceful activists.
● Repeal of laws that expand police powers or redefine political advocacy as terrorism
or hate speech.
● Full protection of the rights to organize, protest, strike, assemble, and engage in civil
disobedience.
● International solidarity among working-class and liberation movements confronting
repression.
● Mass demonstrations, community defense campaigns, legal support efforts, and
public education to defend democratic freedoms before they are further eroded.
Remember: an injury to one is an injury to all! Authoritarianism falters when movements stand together. The struggle to defend free speech and political dissent is inseparable from the struggle against racism, sexism, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism itself. Radical Women stands with every movement targeted for speaking truth to power, and calls on all defenders of democracy to do the same.