{ "article": { "title" : "Samar Younes", "author" : "Samar Younes", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/global-resistance-art-samar-younes", "date" : "2025-02-04 15:33:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/samaritual_future-ancestors-3.jpg", "excerpt" : "", "content" : "EIP: When did you first start using AI for your art and what was your introduction? What was your initial inspiration into the AI art world?SAMAR: My embrace of AI emerged from a delicious paradox – physical limitations pushing me toward digital liberation. After years of crafting immersive installations with an almost obsessive tactility, health challenges and breast cancer forced a pivot in my artistic practice, teaching me to find beauty in mutation and imperfection as well as seek new digital artistic expression tools. The emergence of universe-building across physical and digital worlds and Web3 furthered my gravitation toward using AI, transforming it from mere computational tool into a digital djinn. This helped manifest visions my body sometimes couldn’t and introduced a digital sensibility that was missing in a space typically inundated with dystopian aesthetics and Western-centric views of the future. In seeking to transcend corporeal constraints, I discovered a medium that deepened my connection to embodied wisdom and ancestral knowledge systems, creating portals for reimagining cultural futures beyond colonial frameworks.EIP: Did you ever do other forms of artistic expression prior to AI?SAMAR: My practice dissolves disciplinary boundaries, seeing architecture as wearable art, fashion as inhabitable space, and storytelling as architectural form. From ALBA where I studied architecture, interior and visual communication in Beirut to Central Saint Martins where I studied Scenography and Narrative Environments in London, I developed languages for reimagining reality through environments, art, fashion, design and visual storytelling. For over two decades, I’ve transformed retail environments into cultural provocations - from sustainable sculptural interventions spanning 400+ stores worldwide to pioneering omnichannel narratives. As Global Visual Environments Director at Coach and Artistic Display Director at Anthropologie, I centered material manipulation and modular design, the use of recycled materials with an artisanal rigor that challenged luxury’s colonial gaze a decade before sustainability became fashionable. This trajectory from tactile manipulation to AI’s computational flexibility reflects a consistent ethos: challenging systems while amplifying cultural memory and resilience. Now, as Chief Imagination Officer at SAMARITUAL and mentor at NEW INC, I craft brand universes that honor ancestral intelligence while building post-binary futures. AI amplified rather than replaced this trajectory, becoming another strand in my hybrid practice where I leverage deep ethno-aesthetic acumen and artistic direction savoir-faire to merge artisanal intelligence with quantum craft.EIP: How do you program or train AI to avoid cultural insensitivity or misinterpretations of Middle Eastern themes?SAMAR: Rather than viewing AI as a potential threat to cultural authenticity, I see it as a medium for cultural regeneration. Through IMAGINAOLGY, my hybrid future edu lab, I’ve developed methodologies for circumventing AI’s orientalist gaze, deeply dissecting authorship, autonomy, and aesthetic biases. We treat archives not as static repositories but as living media for reimagining futures – where preserving stories becomes as crucial as preserving ecosystems. The goal isn’t to perfect processes but to rewild them, teaching others how to bend these tools away from their embedded biases about the Global South. My methodology creates conditions for cultural innovation rather than imposing limitations, treating computational ethnography as speculative fiction where every generation reinterprets their inheritance without losing its essence.EIP: How can your art medium be used to preserve and reinterpret Middle Eastern historical and artistic treasures?SAMAR: Through what I call ‘quantum heritage’ – my Transcultural Future Ancestors exploration uses advanced computation not just to preserve artifacts but to imagine their uncolonized evolution. From crafting immersive retail experiences to developing cultural strategies at SAMARITUAL, I translate culture into future-facing narratives. My work explores how indigenous concepts might have evolved if their progression hadn’t been interrupted by colonial violence, but instead were remixed, rewilded and subverted through artisanal radical imagination and collective intelligence – think Silk Road 2.0, where knowledge systems flow through digital caravanserais. Whether leading workshops at NYU or mentoring at NEW INC, I’m creating a digital archaeology of possible futures where artistic heritage actively shapes contemporary visual culture. It’s time- travel through algorithms, where past and future collapse into a kaleidoscopic now, and every artifact contains multitudes." } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "“Fuck My Political Career. People Are Dying.”", "author" : "Maya Al Zaben, Cameron Kasky", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/cameron-kasky-west-bank-politics", "date" : "2026-02-11 08:46:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cameron%20Kasky0102-2.jpg", "excerpt" : "Why Cameron Kasky Ended His New York Congressional Run to Call Attention to the West Bank", "content" : "Why Cameron Kasky Ended His New York Congressional Run to Call Attention to the West BankPhoto Credit: Alizayuh VigilPolitical urgency has a way of shifting when you witness systemic, unflinching violence and oppression. The 25-year-old activist Cameron Kasky knows this from experience. Last December, Kasky traveled to the West Bank while running for Congress, expecting the experience to inform his platform. Instead, his visit to the West Bank rearranged his priorities entirely. His campaign, and the limits of electoral politics, stopped making sense.“Fuck my political career,” Kasky told me, midway through our portrait photoshoot as he unbuttoned his suit jacket and set it aside. “People are dying.”Kasky, who is best known in the U.S. as a Parkland high school shooting survivor and gun reform activist, had spent days moving between Palestinian villages under military occupation. He went as an American citizen but more importantly, as a candidate running to succeed Congressman Jerry Nadler in New York’s 12th Congressional District. But when he returned, Kasky realized that what he witnessed could not wait for election cycles or party alignment. So he bowed out of the race.“When you see the conditions people there are living under [in the West Bank], [I began to have a] one-track mind, which is: what can I do to help everyone?” he said. “Given my circumstances, given the nature of where we are at on Israel-Palestine, the upcoming midterm being something for which many politicians are going to want to reposition themselves on Palestine, and given the momentum that I have in this political context in the country, I do not know if I will be able to help as much six months from now.”Photo Credit: Alizayuh VigilKasky was tired when he showed up to our shoot. He was fresh off a train from lobbying in D.C. for justice in the West Bank. Actually, taking off the suit was his idea. He wanted to look like what he felt like: just another guy. He chose to wear a simple black T-shirt and an olive tree necklace he’d picked up in Hebron. When I asked what he wanted to listen to while we snapped the photos, he said anything but the Drake I already had on. He wanted to look sad, because, he said, that was the truth. And still—visibly exhausted—he couldn’t stop talking, in the best way, about everything that happened during his trip to the West Bank.While in the West Bank, Kasky traveled through Beit Sahour, Hebron, Sebastia, Tuwani, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, and a small shepherd village in the South Hebron Hills called Umm al-Khair. Each place looked different, but they all shared the condition of occupation.As an American, his body moved differently through space than that of the Palestinians he had met. He could pass where Palestinians could not. He could film until a soldier barked at him to stop. In Hebron, for instance, he accompanied a woman named Nasrin home through a military checkpoint. What should have been a 10-minute walk became 90, as Israeli soldiers turned people away arbitrarily and with no explanation.Umm al-Khair, however, is where things really changed for him.The village is surrounded by Israeli settlements. There are no paved roads, no infrastructure, and at least 14 demolition orders hanging over it. Every night, residents stay awake watching grainy security cameras for settlers who might arrive on ATVs or in so-called “security vehicles.” Children grow up with the knowledge that their homes can disappear at any moment.There, Kasky met a 19-year-old student who had been kidnapped and beaten by settlers at 17. When asked about his future, the boy answered simply: “There is no future. I only think about tomorrow. Will there be settlers tomorrow?”What struck Kasky was how plainly he said it.“And it was just so interesting to me because he didn’t say that to try and make a political point or to add some sort of dramatic effect to the conversation. He was just speaking from his heart and saying, I don’t get to think in the future. I don’t know what the future is. My home can be destroyed.”In another encounter, Kasky met a young woman whose husband had been shot dead by a settler while holding their baby.She showed him a photo of her children. Kasky told her he dreamed of having beautiful children of his own someday. The woman replied: “Inshallah, they will play together.”He knows they probably never will.“I will never be allowed into the state of Israel again,” he said. “And you’re even more likely to be turned away trying to come in from Jordan. So an unfathomable amount of things would have to change dramatically for me to ever be able to see the people of Umm al-Khair again.”Even still, he tries to keep in touch with all of the people he met in Umm al-Khair, though he knows that danger lurks for them at every corner. Every time the young woman Kasky met takes more than a couple of hours to write him back, he feels a creeping fear that something unthinkable has happened. When she finally does, there is a rush of relief. But that, he says, is the feeling people there live with all the time.All throughout his experience, one nagging thought couldn’t escape his mind. “‘God damn it, I can’t believe I have to run for Congress right now,’” he kept thinking. “Because if I weren’t running for Congress right now, I would spend a very long time here.”Photo Credit: Alizayuh VigilWhen Umm al-Khair residents say, ”See you tomorrow, Inshallah,” they are not saying these words casually. It’s clear in the darkly sardonic inflection of their voice that they say it because they genuinely do not know if they will see each other again. When they promise tomorrow, they have to say “God-willing,” because only God can bless them with another day.Although morbid, Kasky says the residents continue to infuse every day with humor, love, and a real sense of community.“It was so shocking to me because I was like, ‘If I were living in these conditions, I don’t understand how I could laugh at all,”’ he explained. “But then I remembered my own experience as a school shooting survivor with all these victims of gun violence whom I’ve met, and everybody’s funny. And you realize that it’s because humor is one of the only weapons we have against trauma.”The violence in Gaza, he says, felt indistinguishable from what he had witnessed as a child. He struggled to reconcile the outrage Americans expressed over the shooting at his school with their relative silence about violence abroad. That’s why, when he returned to the U.S., Kasky no longer believed politics could come first.People questioned his decision to step away from the congressional race, especially his ability to help. Some voiced that perhaps he could do more for Palestine if he actually got elected—that Israel would not pause its next violent move to see how his election turned out.“The people I met can’t wait until November,” he said, thinking back to the residents of Umm al-Khair. “Their villages can be destroyed any day… Settlers who come from my own district in New York could kill them. I can’t make an emergency less urgent just because I’m running for office.”So, he began working directly with lawmakers, including California Congressman Ro Khanna, to push for legislation that addresses the human rights violations in the West Bank. Kasky says that having this experience, being in the West Bank physically, gives him leverage with lawmakers.“It’s easier to get a meeting when you say: ‘I saw this with my own eyes.’”The villages changed the scale of what he was seeing. For Kasky, Gaza and the West Bank are not separate moral categories. Destruction in Gaza is explosive and immediate, but it is just as procedural in the West Bank.“What’s happening in Gaza is snapping their neck,” he said. “What’s happening in the West Bank is slowly choking them out.”He rejects the idea that settler violence is a fringe problem, pointing to the leadership now shaping anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank for evidence, namely Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has publicly called for Palestinian towns to be destroyed and pushed to legalize settlements built in violation of international law. More recently, he has advanced policies allowing Israelis to purchase land in the occupied West Bank.“[Smotrich] makes Netanyahu look like a Care Bear,” Kasky explains. “He is exploiting the world’s attention towards Gaza to turn the West Bank into even more of a Wild West murder party. And nobody’s paying attention.”In addition to legislative action, Kasky also seeks to challenge the language Zionists, particularly American Zionists, are taught. As a Jewish American raised in a Zionist education system, Kasky feels a responsibility to speak directly to those who were shaped by it, having seen up close how its worldview is taught.“When you have a Zionist upbringing and you have friends with progressive values, you are presented with a choice when Israel-Palestine comes into the conversation,” Kasky said. “You can either blame your friends and assume that they’re wrong and fall victim to some predatory form of Jew hatred. Or you could make yourself uncomfortable and engage with educational materials to which you had previously been unexposed.”“I’ve lost [extended] family members over this ,” he said. “They think I’m a terrorist, and I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever. If you love this foreign country more than you love your family, that’s your problem.’”Photo Credit: Alizayuh VigilAs the shoot came to a close, Kasky seemed visibly more at ease. Somewhere in the conversation, I learned he is a Scorpio and that his parents were divorced. Small facts, but ones that shifted the tone. He felt more relaxed. He truly was just another guy who wanted to make a difference.I later asked Kasky what the word “activist” meant to him. In a world where activism is often reduced to slogans online, he talked about action.“It could mean accompanying undocumented individuals to immigration court to make sure they have somebody with them to serve as a support system while ICE is presumably waiting in the wings to pounce on their right to be free and safe,” Kasky said.He also thought back to a lot of the Westerners that he met in Palestine who sought to help by simply being there–a “protective presence,” he called it. “You are accompanying people who are on their own land to plow their fields and live their lives so you can serve as something of a buffer when the armed settlers come.” In his view, activism is simply knowing what tools are at your disposal and putting them to work for something that matters. It’s carrying the stories and experiences people in the West Bank shared with him—and telling the world about them.As he took his leave, Kasky turned to me and made a little gesture that I’ll never forget. It is a gesture he had learned from Muslim friends in the U.S. years earlier, one that took on new meaning in Palestine: a hand to the heart, then a subtle nod.Tap. “See you tomorrow, Inshallah.” Nod. That’s how he says hello and goodbye now." } , { "title" : "The Toll Working Multiple Jobs Takes on Young People", "author" : "Rainesford Stauffer", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/toll-working-multiple-jobs-young-people", "date" : "2026-02-10 13:57:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EverythingisPol-ZachHackman.jpg", "excerpt" : "“Rat race,” “chaos,” “stressful”: these are just a few ways young people are describing days stuffed with side projects, shift schedules, and Google Calendars color-coded by job.", "content" : "“Rat race,” “chaos,” “stressful”: these are just a few ways young people are describing days stuffed with side projects, shift schedules, and Google Calendars color-coded by job.Illustration Credit: Zach HackmanAt one of her three jobs, Makayla, a 22-year-old in Texas, pushes 80-pound crates on a dolly. The seasonal retail position demands a lot of walking and lifting, with customers pulling candles off shelves faster than she can unload them. Makayla (who is going by her first name to protect her privacy) is often sore to the point of pain when she arrives at her other job, where she’s a clerk for a judge, supporting the court’s day-to-day operations.Though Makayla lives with her parents (who she’s also helped financially in the past, she said), she pays for college tuition, living expenses, and transportation. She’s also saving to pay for law school herself. In addition to working retail and her job with the court, Makayla said she was lucky to find a paid internship related to her major, computer science, where she can build her own schedule. But between the cost of college and the rising cost of living, it feels like it’s not enough.“It [is] a rat race, but I don’t know who’s chasing me,” Makayla explained. “It’s like I’m chasing myself.”“Stressful” was one way young workers described days stuffed with side projects, shift schedules, and Google Calendars color-coded by job. “Tiring,” “chaos,” and “shitty” were among others. Makayla is among a growing number of young people with more than one source of income to make ends meet. According to a 2025 Harvard Youth Poll, 43% of young people surveyed say they’re struggling to get by with limited financial security.This lack of a financial safety net is no accident. This generation’s economic squeeze is the predictable outcome of decades of monopolization and private-equity consolidation while employee wages stagnate and costs of living soar. According to recent data from the Federal Reserve, in the third quarter of 2025, the top 1% of households owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth. This is the highest recorded disparity since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989.For a generation that’s never known work without a side of total upheaval—from the pandemic reshaping jobs and internships, to companies offering, then revoking remote work, to now attacks on university funding, the federal workforce, and more—stability feels impossible to come by. With exhaustingly high costs of living and even more political, societal, and economic uncertainty looming, second jobs and side gigs are a crucial part of creating a safety net for young people who don’t have a societal one to catch them.Why the job market feels impossible for young people right nowAsk anyone and they’ll tell you it’s a bad time to be job searching. After repeated cycles of corruption and privatization—turning housing, utilities, healthcare, and even crisis itself into profit centers—corporations have systematically hollowed out the middle class and extracted value upward. Even if pundits say that “the economy is growing,” all the profits are being pulled out by shareholders at the top. This leaves little for employees to receive basic societal benefits, including fair wages, health and retirement insurance, as well as any sort of path to upward mobility enjoyed by previous generations.These larger forces are what drive sluggish hiring and endless layoffs, which leads to fewer people leaving or changing positions. There are fewer entry-level jobs with higher requirements — on top of panic that companies are gutting entry-level jobs to replace them with AI. To boot is also the affordability crisis in which the costs of necessities, from healthcare to groceries, have spiked. This sprawling list of factors are part of why so many workers are hanging on to multiple streams of income.Cloud Benn, a 22-year-old in New Orleans, for instance, works as an English teacher, a gift shop worker in a cultural arts museum, and a writing tutor. Even when they were 18, Benn said working only one job has never felt viable. “Especially me being a minority. I’m Black, and I live in a city that is low-income. I [was] part of what was considered middle-class. I’m part of [the] low-class now with my family,” Benn explained. “Everything has gone up in price, and just to live, just to get your basic necessities, has gone up.”Rates of people working multiple jobs have been on the rise, including for workers ages 25 to 54, according to Elise Gould, Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But since less work experiencein a sluggish labor market could mean fewer opportunities to break into the workforce, it feels like a particularly disastrous time to start working life. Landing that one “first job” and working up from there feels like a myth, given the endless economic chaos of the last few years.During the start of the pandemic, young workers were disproportionately hurt by unemployment and job loss. As employers began hiring again, they had to work harder to attract and retain workers. Gould notes that, in that moment, workers had more leverage. But now, the hiring rate is depressed again, which could hurt young people more than others.Graduating into a weaker economy can set you back, Gould explained, depending on how long this weakness lasts. Joining the workforce during an economic downturn can negatively impact health, income, and career advancement. While Gould noted this wouldn’t necessarily set you back for your lifetime in terms of career, it could be harder. One notable example, of course, is elder millennials, who graduated into the Great Recession.Young people are seeing this instability, “among their peers, among their families, among people who often have a lot more experience than they do,” explained Noel Tieszen, a policy strategist focused on youth economic justice at National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy. This is especially seen with young Black workers, LGBTQ+ young people, and those whose families come from poorer socio-economic backgrounds. These communities are disproportionately impacted by unemployment or underemployment.Young people also play multiple roles within their social circles: They are often parents, caregivers, or contributing to their communities or households. When so much time is taken up with multiple jobs, “that’s less time for family. It’s less time for exploring skills and talents,” said Tieszen. “They’re just trying to get by day-to-day, surviving, not thriving.”It’s not just an affordability issueIn some fields, like the arts, it’s long been an accepted norm that pursuing certain lines of work might happen alongside a day job or extra gigs, an expectation of low wages or limited opportunities that many young artists are pushing back on. But there’s a huge variance in what multiple jobs can look like: While some young workers might have a side hustle outside their day job, others might work multiple jobs if they aren’t getting enough hours at one.Reporting outlines that, now, working various jobs is appearing across industries. For example, a 2023 survey found workers in the computer and technology space were more likely to have other forms of income; 2025 data found that one in six teachers work a second job; other 2025 estimates note workers in fields like educational and health services and transportation and utilities are more likely to hold a main job with a second job.But there are also larger shifts within the workforce that are reshaping young people’s relationship to it. Expectations that one will work their way up in a company are almost nonexistent, and stigma around job-hopping has largely been shattered. One 2025 survey noted that over half of Gen Z-ers surveyed think traditional employment will eventually be obsolete.Thomas Showalter, an independent consultant who specializes in the transition to adulthood, education, job training, and labor, pointed out that for his generation—he’s an elder millennial—the Great Recession was an “acute shock to the system” in terms of labor market prospects. Meaning, some millennials grew up with a sense that there was a social contract, only to find it didn’t add up in early adulthood. “For Gen Z, and probably for [Gen] Alpha too, I think it’s more of a chronic condition,” he explained. “What I observed over the years with younger people is [that] there was never a social contract; I’m just assuming that I’m going to have to hustle all the time.”This has led many young workers to try to create stability for themselves, since living off one source of income doesn’t always feel possible. Christopher Hendrix, a 25-year-old in Southern California, has a full-time job at a nonprofit, does community organizing work focused on youth homelessness, and is pursuing his master’s degree in social work. In his social circle, he said people are always thinking about what opportunity could be next, and that Gen Z can’t necessarily depend on one job to get them where they want to go. Hendrix grew up low-income and got used to working multiple jobs to support himself. “I can pay my bills. I’m stable, but I still have this itching thought that, no, you got to keep working, because one day it can be taken away from you,” he said.For some, working multiple jobs can also be a means of pursuing work they’re interested in.Izabella Escurra, a 23-year-old in New Jersey, works full-time in college admissions and in her off hours has a side hustle as a freelance publicist. “I feel like a lot of Gen Z people are using side hustles to make their own businesses or to take the entrepreneurial mindset,” she said.She thinks ballooning standards for entry-level jobs are a factor, too. “One to two internships, that’s really not the baseline for a lot of entry-level jobs anymore,” she said. “I think they’re seeing from their older siblings or older relatives that the job market isn’t what it used to be.”There’s a mental toll to the hustle, tooAs workers endlessly hustle, what looms is the toll it takes to work this much—and the potential ramifications it has on the rest of one’s working life.Burnout, which Gen Z is already experiencing higher rates of, can have a significant impact. “The structural conditions driving young workers toward multiple jobs—wage stagnation, job insecurity, rising costs of living—are themselves chronic stressors that compound the day-to-day demands of managing multiple positions,” said M. Gloria González Mora​les, an associate professor and director of The Worker Wellbeing Lab at Claremont Graduate University. There is also evidence that work experiences during formative career periods influence someone’s attitude toward work later.“No one talks about emotionally, how irritable it makes you,” said Makayla. “When you work so much and you’re tired, a lot of times you’re not present for the things you do.”But there are solutions. Morales pointed to the importance of social support, including from supervisors and coworkers. Workplaces can provide resources, including autonomy, skill development opportunities, and addressing health and safety and work-life balance, she added.“Policy approaches that improve wages, provide scheduling predictability, and strengthen worker protections could reduce the structural conditions that push young workers toward multiple job arrangements,” Morales said.Tieszen emphasized the need to ensure young workers are educated about their rights, noting growing interest among young people in unions. But she also noted it demands going beyond jobs: “It’s about making sure that the other systems and structures in society are functioning,” Tieszen said. Funding for healthcare, childcare, and transportation is critical. “The fear of losing a job and having hours cut is real, and it’s grounded in reality,” she said. If other systems are in place, that relieves stress.Benn said that figuring out how to even survive right now takes a toll, and also believes there needs to be more support and more opportunities for people to talk about what they’re experiencing.“There are people out there that are like, ‘Oh, young people don’t want to do anything,’” Benn said. “No, we are busting our ass. We’re tired, and we just want to lay down.”" } , { "title" : "Bad Bunny's Halftime Show Is About So Much More Than Symbolism", "author" : "Zameena Mejia", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/bad-bunnys-halftime-show-is-about-so-much-more-than-symbolism", "date" : "2026-02-09 09:10:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Bad_Bunny_SB.jpg", "excerpt" : "Joy Is an Equal Part of Protest as Rage", "content" : "Joy Is an Equal Part of Protest as RageOn Sunday night, Bad Bunny transformed the Super Bowl LX field in Santa Clara, Calif. into an homage to the Puerto Rican countryside for a historic, almost entirely Spanish set. Weaving through sugar cane fields and scenes of everyday life in Puerto Rico, he carried a football that said, “TOGETHER, WE ARE AMERICA” as he sang a career-spanning medley of his own songs, also splicing in a few classic hits from some of reggaeton’s pioneering voices like Tego Calderón, Don Omar and Daddy Yankee, and a surprise salsa rendition with Lady Gaga of 2025’s most popular song “Die With a Smile.” As red, white, and blue fireworks—specifically a light shade of blue similar to that seen in Puerto Rico’s independence flag—shot up around Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican artist unabashedly elevated the pride, joy, and struggles that come with being Latino in today’s political climate and reminded us that America is comprised of a full continent of sovereign nations and occupied territories–not just the U.S.For the fans who endearingly coined Sunday’s event “Benito Bowl,” this moment is about so much more than seeing the world’s most popular Spanish-language superstar take the stage: It’s about seeing Bad Bunny leverage his privilege to defend Latinos’ dignity, push back on the U.S. government’s draconian anti-immigrant actions, and rally the American public around something far more fortifying than violence: music and art.Bad Bunny’s performance comes at a time when Latinos and immigrants of other ethnicities in the U.S. are being disappeared, detained, and deported in historic numbers. They have been unable to go to work, send their kids to school, go to their houses of worship, or even attend mandatory immigration hearings without the fear of being targeted by federal law enforcement for the color of their skin or ability to speak English, regardless of their immigration status. In the past few weeks alone, Americans exercising their constitutional rights to protest and document ICE activity have led to the shocking deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minn., offering a sobering example of how ICE violence can (and will) affect all of the people in this country, not just Latinos. This does not even begin to cover how American imperialism is affecting Latinos abroad. It has only been a few weeks since the U.S. government attacked Venezuela (and gained more oil control, as a result), captured President Nicolás Maduro, invoked the Monroe Doctrine, threatened to intervene in additional Latin American nations, and continues to carry out deadly attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific.Holding this dichotomy–elation for the possible, humane future Bad Bunny represents, and the unmitigated state violence America has imposed on Latinos–is not easy. When “el conejo malo,” as Bad Bunny is also known in Spanish, appeared in a gray beanie hat with bunny ears at the halftime show press conference last week, it was difficult to not think back to just a couple of weeks ago when the image of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos went viral as he stood alone circled by federal agents, wearing a bright blue bunny hat when ICE detained him, and abducted him from Minneapolis to an ICE detention facility in Dilley, Texas. (Liam’s family, лoriginally from Ecuador, had entered the country legally and were in the middle of an active asylum case, but in being apprehended, they were denied their Constitutional right to due process, which applies to everyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status.)But, at a time when Latinos have been threatened with deportation just for speaking Spanish, Bad Bunny’s ascent to global stardom has reinforced Spanish as a language of resistance. Just three years after Bad Bunny’s first-ever Grammy Awards performance of Un Verano Sin Ti, he won the evening’s highest honor, Album of the Year, at the 2026 Grammys for his most political album yet, Debí Tirar Más Fotos. Importantly, though, he gave his acceptance speech almost entirely in Spanish, except for one message in English:“I want to dedicate this award to all the people that had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams,” he said.Here, Bad Bunny wasn’t just talking about Latinos; he was talking about everyone who has suffered under the oppression of white colonialism. And though Bad Bunny is first and foremost a celebrity and not our savior—for we must always save ourselves—this moment summarized a powerful, collective narrative shift that’s taking place in the U.S.: one in which the anti-immigrant sentiments expressed by the Oval Office feel completely out of step with the future that Americans are demanding. A future where art and music can be used for political good. A future where people can uphold the values of a democracy that includes and represents Latinos and immigrants of all backgrounds.Photo Credit: Eric RojasLeading up to the Super Bowl, anti-ICE posters have been plastered around San Francisco featuring unofficial artwork of el Sapo Concho—an illustrated toad character from Debí Tirar Más Fotos—with the words “chinga la migra” and “ICE out” in bold red and white words. In an ode to the communities across the U.S. who have formed rapid response networks and use red whistles to alert neighbors of ICE activity, the unofficial Sapo Concho also wears a whistle around its neck. Protestors have even dressed up as the album mascot, wearing “chinga la migra” shirts at parties around the Bay Area. Despite the NFL’s recent statements that denied there would be any ICE presence outside of the Super Bowl, Latinos in the Bay Area still feel distrust and fear.Up until this point, the halftime show marked Bad Bunny’s only Debí Tirar Más Fotos concert in the U.S. In 2025, he announced he had excluded the mainland U.S. from his world tour out of concern that ICE officers would target, detain, and deport his fans.And he was right. From the moment Bad Bunny made his Super Bowl Halftime show announcement in September 2025, right-wing conservatives doubled down on inciting fear. Within a week of the news, Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said she would ensure ICE presence outside of the Super Bowl. DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski alleged that Bad Bunny hates America. President Donald Trump denounced Bad Bunny’s role, first claiming to not know who the Grammy-award-winning artist was, and later calling the choice “ridiculous” and “terrible,” claiming that “all it does is sow hatred.”Yet it is the right wing that has spent months sowing division among Americans, asserting that Bad Bunny—born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, a U.S. citizen in the unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico—is “anti-American” and criticized the NFL’s decision to platform an artist who mainly sings in Spanish (which is the most commonly spoken non-English language in the U.S). In response, MAGA conservatives backed a competing halftime show created in protest against Bad Bunny and headlined by country rock singer Kid Rock.At worst, Bad Bunny has used his music to hold up a mirror to Trump’s administration since his first term in office. During a 2017 benefit concert for post-Hurricane Maria relief for Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny made and wore a shirt indirectly targeted at Trump that said, “¿Tu eres twitero o presidente?” which translates to “Are You a Tweeter or President?” In his 2020 song “Compositor del Año,” he rapped in defense of the Black Lives Matter movement, implored young people to vote, and said “there are more important things like fighting for the rights of immigrants,” all while calling out the president’s inaction. And despite his global popularity, Bad Bunny’s political stances remain a significant departure from mainstream political values, especially among the traditionally conservative, increasingly right-leaning Latinos in the U.S. and across Latin America. His ability to reach new audiences and draw connections between distant communities’ struggles by highlighting issues happening in Puerto Rico are prime examples of how global artists can use their music to challenge the political status quo and bring about progressive change.To non-Spanish speakers, Bad Bunny’s blend of salsa, reggaeton, dembow, bomba y plena, and rap makes for music that’s fun and catchy. Lyrically, though, it’s clear how he uses his art to send a loud message. Debí Tirar Más Fotos and its accompanying music videos tackle gentrification and displacement of Puerto Ricans on the island and its diaspora, honor Puerto Rico’s anticolonial heroes and pro-independence movements, and celebrate the resistance. On the song “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaiʻi,” which Puerto Rican crooner Ricky Martin performed at the halftime show, he connects the shared struggles U.S. colonization has brought upon Puerto Rico and Hawaii.Beyond American politics, Bad Bunny’s success as a politically forward Caribbean and Puerto Rican artist carries a deeper meaning within the Latino community. Historically, people from Caribbean countries have been marginalized and discriminated against for being largely racialized as Black—as a result of the legacy of slavery in the Caribbean—as well as for having vastly distinct accents from the rest of Latin America due to centuries of being subjugated by colonial powers. Bad Bunny’s success over the past decade brought about newfound attention on Puerto Rican and Caribbean genres, art, fashion, vocabulary, and history.For the many Caribbean Latinos who grew up being told their Spanish was “incorrect” or “not good,” seeing Bad Bunny’s ascent to mainstream TV programming, films, and the overall cultural zeitgeist – without having to codeswitch or change his accent – is validating. White supremacist ideals are still baked into many parts of Latino culture because of centuries of European colonization: for instance, in the way accents are forcibly “corrected” (whitewashed) in order to be deemed professional. Or in the way that traditionally Black Latin music genres like bachata, reggaeton, salsa, and dembow have historically struggled to achieve commercial success until they were extracted from Caribbean countries and performed by white and light-skinned artists from other parts of Latin America or Spain.Through his latest projects, Bad Bunny has invited the world to see Puerto Rico and the Caribbean in its totality—as so much more than just what can be consumed or extracted from our cultures.Photo Credit: Eric RojasThere’s a curious moment in Bad Bunny’s 2025 music video for “NUEVAYoL,” where he imagines a world where Trump apologizes to the Latino community in the music video: “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America, I mean the United States, I know America is the whole continent,” a Trump impersonator says over a radio. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants. This country is nothing without Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Cubans.” Without skipping a beat, those listening to this message shut it off and carry on with what they were doing.The success of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show feels like an extension of this very sentiment. It reminds us that our collective strength is more powerful than the divisive, hateful forces that try to silence us. As the NFL capitalizes on Bad Bunny’s stardom, a move that makes sense as the league aims to reach more Latino consumers and continue to push into international markets, it’s important to remember that the NFL needed Bad Bunny more than Bad Bunny needed them—and the Puerto Rican artist likely knows this. He not only brought his Debí Tirar Más Fotos party to the world’s biggest TV event, but he also demonstrated that joy is equally a part of protest as rage. Because nothing makes the opposition more upset than indifference. Than the dissent that it takes to go on living." } ] }