This Week with David Rovics

The Ai Tsuno Project's latest album, Save the Humans, drops on all the music streaming platforms on January 15th.  Ai Tsuno’s 10th album includes such instant classics as “Disarm Israel,” “Message from Gaza,” and “Bisbee, Arizona, 1917.”

A song for Renee Nicole Good, killed by ICE in Minneapolis on January 7th, 2026.

As much as Trump is behaving in ways that could be characterized as unprecedented, in other ways his behavior is surprisingly consistent with the history of US imperialism.

How is it that our oil is always underneath their soil?

What does the US invasion of Venezuela, the Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity Tent at the World Social Forum, and my visit to the US-Mexico border last weekend have in common?

Between abducting the Venezuelan president, killing scores of Cubans, boarding Russian tankers, and threatening to invade Greenland, the immediate future is feeling very sketchy.

Venezuela, 2026.

Meanwhile in Gaza, Israel is banning aid groups and starving all the children to death. Anyone going to kidnap Netanyahu and his wife?

Is there hope for planet Earth? Well, there's always the prospect of being saved by Aliens from Outer Space. Title track of Ai Tsuno's January 15th album release!

Miko Peled was on Al-Jazeera the other day, making so much good sense, I had to write a song about it. “Disarm Israel” will be one of several catchy tracks about the ongoing US-Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people that will be part of Ai Tsuno’s January 15th album release, Save the Humans.

Chris Cook did an absolutely wonderful wrap-up of 2025 for his Gorilla Radio podcast, consisting of snippets from interviews he did throughout the year, with a song of mine between each one!

Perhaps the most broadly notable thing about Bisbee is the town's outsized role in US & Mexican labor history. And the most timely piece of information about Bisbee? I'm playing there this weekend!      

One of the things that 2026 holds in store is what some are already calling "the trial of the century."

A guided tour of Ai Tsuno's 9th album, which consists of 12 songs David Rovics created with Ai Tsuno over the course of December, 2025. Topics covered include the ongoing Gaza genocide, the trial of Luigi Mangione, the corporate internet, and the beauty of Bonoboville. The Red and the Blue drops on the music streaming platforms of January 9th, 2026.

If you're feeling hopeless, most likely the first thing you should do is leave all your devices in a hole somewhere and go outside. This will be one of the tracks on my next album with Ai Tsuno , The Red and the Blue, which, if all goes as planned, will drop on all the music streaming platforms on January 9th.

The modern internet, controlled as it is by the world's biggest corporations and their conflict-promotion algorithms, has become a nightmare of monolithic proportions. This will be one of the tracks on my next album with Ai Tsuno , The Red and the Blue, which, if all goes as planned, will drop on all the music streaming platforms on January 9th.

There's really no such thing as red or blue -- just lots of folks like me and you.

My biggest hope for 2026? That by the end of it we'll be experiencing a more or less normal winter in the northern hemisphere, and not a nuclear one. This will be one of the tracks on my next album with Ai Tsuno , which, if all goes as planned, will drop on all the music streaming platforms on January 9th.

What makes a piece of music good? What makes a song a good song? The music industry has, for a century or so, been obsessively oriented with creating mysterious and exciting identities for artists they want to turn into stars. The industry emphasizes the artist, rather than the art. The art itself, along with the producers, lyricists, session musicians, engineers, and promoters, are all those kind...

I sat down this morning with the intention of writing a bit of a travelogue about my recent travels in Texas and Georgia, but then I wrote this song instead. I'll probably eventually write the travelogue, too.

British members of Palestine Action on hunger strike are close to death, Israel's "ceasefire" is just a continuation of the famine, disease and slaughter Israel continues to deliver to the Palestinian people, and across the west, leaders express their deference to the genocidal killers, ship more weapons, and ban words and phrases that make fascists uncomfortable. The hunger strike continues In th...

Members of Palestine Action are being held without bail or trial in England for trying to stop a British-sponsored genocide.  Many are on hunger strike, and the doctors say they are dying, as their organs are beginning to fail due to some of them now going on 6 weeks without eating.  Meanwhile in Australia, they are talking about passing a law to say that the phrase, "globalize the intifada" is ha...

In the aftermath of an event like Bondi Beach, media can play the role of building bridges and finding mutual understanding, or it can play the role of being the propaganda arm for a genocidal regime.

David Rovics is an activist musician who composes songs that educate about historical events, provide political analysis about current events, and raise up people from social movements. His solidarity with Palestinian liberation is deep, spanning his entire musical career. Recently, his entire 50-album catalog on YouTube Music was deleted. Clearing the FOG speaks with Rovics about the retaliation...

Steve Zeltzer and I talked for over an hour about all sorts of interesting things the other day.