The corporatization of soccer under the corrupt FIFA has been going on for decades. This is more evident than ever with this summer’s World Cup games playing now in cities across North America though with the bulk of the games in the US under the racist reactionary Trump presidency. Professor George Wright, an expert on class, race and sports spoke to Pacifica’s Steve Zeltzer about the nature of FIFA during this North American iteration of the quadrennial World Cup.
The North American FIFA World Cup finale is scheduled for July 19th at in East Rutherford, NJ/ for July 19th at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. The website SeatGeek lists a ticket to that Final Game starting at $9924.
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In a high profile travesty of justice that marks another low point in the Trump regime’s war on domestic dissent and resistance, eight Prairieland defendants were sentenced to a combined 450 years in federal prison for their roles in the July 4th 2025 “noise demonstration” including fireworks and a subsequent police provocation outside the private Prairieland ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas. Here is a brief mainstream local NBC Dallas affiliate report in the aftermath of these grotesque sentences imposed on June 23rd.
In that report you heard in order Hope Song, the mother of Benjamin Song, followed by Song’s attorney Philip Hayes and Brian Buford, the attorney for Zachary Evetts. The statement read by Miller defending the sentences was from Ryan Raybould, US Attorney Northern District of Texas. The federal judges presiding over the trials and sentencing are Chief US District Judge Reed O’Connor and US District Judge Mark Pittman.
The eight Prairieland Defendants and their sentences are:
Benjamin Song — 100 years;
Maricela Rueda – 70 years;
Branford Morris – 50 years;
Zachary Evetts – 50 years;
Savannah Bitten – 50 years;
Elizabeth Soto– 50 years;
Cameron Arnold – 50 years;
Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada– 30 years
For updates on their cases, appeals, and to support their defense efforts, see the website https://prairielanddefendants.com/
A July 1st update there announces – “Additional Federal Prairieland Defendants, Including Those Who Took Plea Deals, Sentenced Today to Prison Terms Ranging From 22 Months to 50 Years”.
What follows is a reading of an article published on Common Dreams on June 29 by Hannah Riley Fernandez. It’s entitled — Trump Admin Wants the Prairieland Sentences to Scare You Into Silence — NSPM-7 is the architecture of a system designed to make dissent unthinkable, but it won’t work.
National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) is an ominous and sweeping federal directive signed by Trump last September directing a so-called “whole-of-government” approach to investigate and disrupt so-called “domestic terrorism” and “organized political violence.” The administration’s intentions and publicly clear and mounting abuses represent a heightening campaign to ramp up targeting and suppression of domestic dissent and resistance. Hannah Riley Fernandez also links Prairieland to the recent Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta and offers lessons gleaned through that earlier struggle.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/prairieland-ice-trial
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Next, independent Journalist CC Campbell Rock from New Orleans reads Frederick Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”.
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We thank all of Pacifica’s sister stations and affiliates that contribute to the production of this show. Today’s program was produced by the Capitalism, Race & Democracy collective, with contributions from Steve Zeltzer, Ann Garrison, Polina Vasiliev, and Thomas O’Rourke.
You can find this and all previous episodes at our website “capitalism race and democracy dot ORG”. Make sure you click the subscribe button. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, @PacificaCRD.
Thanks for listening.
Music:
The Clash – I Fought the Law (Official Video)
América Los Tigres del Norte
