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Free Alaa
My brother (Alaa Abd el Fattah, the British-Egyptian political prisoner who has spent more than 10 years behind bars in Egypt for his work as a pro-democracy activist) finished his second five-year sentence in an Egyptian prison last September. A few days before the last day of his sentence, my mother had the sense that they didn’t plan to release him because there were none of the usual procedures that would be happening in the final days of someone serving their full sentence. And so she decided that if the 29th of September came and he was not released, or was not in the process of getting released, she was going to stop eating, that she would be on an open-ended hunger strike for as long as he remained detained beyond his five year sentence, which is where we are in right now, more than eight months later. It seems so drastic of her to take that position, but I think it was the only thing she felt was strong enough, as strong as the level of injustice that Ali is facing.
There is international support for her journey, which has been quite moving. If it weren’t for this enormous wave of solidarity erupting everywhere, not just here in the UK, not just in Egypt, where people know Ali, but everywhere—mothers in Syria, activists in Berlin, Denmark, and Lebanon—I don’t think she would have been able to make it to this wondrous and miraculous state where she is sustaining the hunger strike despite her age. She’s building a connection with mothers all over the world which is giving her the strength to continue and go beyond what is expected on a medical level. So she and we rely on this support, this international wave of solidarity, to take us to the final conclusion of this very long journey of 11 years of incarceration, of Egyptian prisons having a complete hold on our lives and the future of our kids. She is relying on this wave of support to get Ali out of prison and get him reunited with his son, Khaled, who lives in Brighton.
There is no legal basis for what the Egyptian regime is doing with Aliyah right now. Even the Egyptian domestic laws do not allow someone to be detained beyond the end of their sentence.
The problem with Egypt is that there is no longer any judicial entity that is independent enough to challenge decisions made by the State Security or, in our case, the president. It seems that the presidential office is the one handling our case directly. Ali has been detained and tortured and deprived of so many rights, moved between prisons, and tried before an emergency court. Because he was tried in an emergency court, there is no way to appeal; the sentence went to the president directly. There are many layers of injustice he has gone through every step of the way. We tried to challenge them, but there was not a single judicial institution that was willing to look at our legal complaint. They forced us to go through a trial without allowing Ali’s defense team to have a copy of the case file. During every court appearance, Ali insisted that they couldn’t proceed without his lawyers having a copy of the case file to understand what he was facing. The judge decided to adjourn for sentencing without the prosecution presenting their statement and their case, and without the defense presenting their defense. It was a sham of a trial.
The UN Group on Arbitrary Detention, after a thorough investigation of everything they could access relating to Ali’s case, issued a statement a couple of weeks ago unanimously stating that he is in arbitrary detention and should be released right now. But the Egyptian regime, since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power, is negligent about anything to do with justice. What’s legal? Human rights? All background noise that they can simply squash if it doesn’t serve them. The international community is doing an amazing job… supporters, NGOs, lawyers, journalists, everyone, except the governments. We believe that it’s only with this solidarity movement that Ali is going to be freed. Maybe this will pave the way for others like him in Egypt, whether they be political prisoners in Egyptian prisons, British nationals detained abroad, or basically anyone anywhere in the world targeted for speaking their mind and for choosing to be vocal about human rights issues and violations committed by states.
We need to put pressure on governments, particularly governments that are strengthening the hold that the Egyptian regime has on the country and its people. These governments have turned a blind eye to all the atrocities this regime commits against its own people. We must continue pushing the UK Government, because at the end of the day, they are responsible for the wellbeing of my brother and every British citizen. The Egyptian Government and the British Government are allies. They have joint investments. They have joint projects. They communicate on global and regional issues all the time. In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard to ask an ally or to make sure an ally says release one of your nationals, particularly when they have fully served their sentences.
My mother, somehow, miraculously, is hanging in there. Every time she receives a bit of news or sees a clip of someone somewhere standing in solidarity with her, it gives her another push and another morale boost to continue. I hope our UK officials are capable of acting fast with the promptness that is worthy of the level of suffering and sacrifice she and my brother have endured.
Find out more at FreeAlaa.net
In Conversation:
Illustration by:
{
"article":
{
"title" : "Free Alaa",
"author" : "Mona Seif",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/free-alaa-by-mona-seif",
"date" : "2025-07-20 17:35:46 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/19maylailadowningstreet.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "My brother (Alaa Abd el Fattah, the British-Egyptian political prisoner who has spent more than 10 years behind bars in Egypt for his work as a pro-democracy activist) finished his second five-year sentence in an Egyptian prison last September. A few days before the last day of his sentence, my mother had the sense that they didn’t plan to release him because there were none of the usual procedures that would be happening in the final days of someone serving their full sentence. And so she decided that if the 29th of September came and he was not released, or was not in the process of getting released, she was going to stop eating, that she would be on an open-ended hunger strike for as long as he remained detained beyond his five year sentence, which is where we are in right now, more than eight months later. It seems so drastic of her to take that position, but I think it was the only thing she felt was strong enough, as strong as the level of injustice that Ali is facing.There is international support for her journey, which has been quite moving. If it weren’t for this enormous wave of solidarity erupting everywhere, not just here in the UK, not just in Egypt, where people know Ali, but everywhere—mothers in Syria, activists in Berlin, Denmark, and Lebanon—I don’t think she would have been able to make it to this wondrous and miraculous state where she is sustaining the hunger strike despite her age. She’s building a connection with mothers all over the world which is giving her the strength to continue and go beyond what is expected on a medical level. So she and we rely on this support, this international wave of solidarity, to take us to the final conclusion of this very long journey of 11 years of incarceration, of Egyptian prisons having a complete hold on our lives and the future of our kids. She is relying on this wave of support to get Ali out of prison and get him reunited with his son, Khaled, who lives in Brighton. There is no legal basis for what the Egyptian regime is doing with Aliyah right now. Even the Egyptian domestic laws do not allow someone to be detained beyond the end of their sentence.The problem with Egypt is that there is no longer any judicial entity that is independent enough to challenge decisions made by the State Security or, in our case, the president. It seems that the presidential office is the one handling our case directly. Ali has been detained and tortured and deprived of so many rights, moved between prisons, and tried before an emergency court. Because he was tried in an emergency court, there is no way to appeal; the sentence went to the president directly. There are many layers of injustice he has gone through every step of the way. We tried to challenge them, but there was not a single judicial institution that was willing to look at our legal complaint. They forced us to go through a trial without allowing Ali’s defense team to have a copy of the case file. During every court appearance, Ali insisted that they couldn’t proceed without his lawyers having a copy of the case file to understand what he was facing. The judge decided to adjourn for sentencing without the prosecution presenting their statement and their case, and without the defense presenting their defense. It was a sham of a trial.The UN Group on Arbitrary Detention, after a thorough investigation of everything they could access relating to Ali’s case, issued a statement a couple of weeks ago unanimously stating that he is in arbitrary detention and should be released right now. But the Egyptian regime, since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power, is negligent about anything to do with justice. What’s legal? Human rights? All background noise that they can simply squash if it doesn’t serve them. The international community is doing an amazing job… supporters, NGOs, lawyers, journalists, everyone, except the governments. We believe that it’s only with this solidarity movement that Ali is going to be freed. Maybe this will pave the way for others like him in Egypt, whether they be political prisoners in Egyptian prisons, British nationals detained abroad, or basically anyone anywhere in the world targeted for speaking their mind and for choosing to be vocal about human rights issues and violations committed by states.We need to put pressure on governments, particularly governments that are strengthening the hold that the Egyptian regime has on the country and its people. These governments have turned a blind eye to all the atrocities this regime commits against its own people. We must continue pushing the UK Government, because at the end of the day, they are responsible for the wellbeing of my brother and every British citizen. The Egyptian Government and the British Government are allies. They have joint investments. They have joint projects. They communicate on global and regional issues all the time. In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard to ask an ally or to make sure an ally says release one of your nationals, particularly when they have fully served their sentences.My mother, somehow, miraculously, is hanging in there. Every time she receives a bit of news or sees a clip of someone somewhere standing in solidarity with her, it gives her another push and another morale boost to continue. I hope our UK officials are capable of acting fast with the promptness that is worthy of the level of suffering and sacrifice she and my brother have endured.Find out more at FreeAlaa.net"
}
,
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{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
}
,
{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
"content" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent PublishingJoin Everything is Political on November 21st for the launch of our End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine.This members-only evening will feature a benefit dinner, cocktails, and live performances in celebration of a year of independent media, critical voices, and collective resistance.The EventNovember 21, 2025, 7-11pmLower Manhattan, New YorkLaunching our End-of-Year Special Edition MagazineSpecial appearances and performancesFood & Drink includedTickets are extremely limited, reserve yours now!Become an annual print member: get x back issues of EIP, receive the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine, and come to the Anniversary Celebration.$470Already a member? Sign in to get your special offer. Buy Ticket $150 Just $50 ! and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine Buy ticket $150 and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine "
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,
{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}
