Pat Taub
2025 was a dark year.
Disturbing news became routine: ICE terrifying migrant communities; the gutting of critical federal departments, like Education and the Climate Research Center; mean-spirited cuts to food stamps, heating allowances, and Head Start; rolled back protections for gay, lesbian and trans individuals. Casualties from Israel’s genocide spiked on a daily basis, filling our screens with horrific images.
Dark times call for courageous acts. In this post I’m honoring women who took bold stands for human rights in 2025.
Francesa Albanese
UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Albanese’s unrelenting support for Palestine rights against Israel’s genocide made her a popular spokesperson for humanity in a world that turned its back on the rule of law. The US government has tried to silence Albanese by imposing strict sanctions, blocking her credit cards and entry into the US, preventing her from attending UN meetings in New York City.
Medea Benjamin
Co-founder of Codepink, a women-led peace group. At 73 Medea is unstoppable, walking the halls of Congress to challenge elected officials’ human rights records, calling them out for their support of Israel’s genocide.
Adelita Grijalva
Newly sworn-in Latina Congresswoman from Arizona, who jumped right into action, challenging Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary for ICE’s illegal arrests, and promising to stand by Epstein’s survivors in their fight for justice.
Adelita Grijalva
Epstein survivors
For courageously speaking out as (frequently underage) victims of sexual abuse, which has resulted in lifelong trauma.
Epstein survivors holding photos of themselves when under Epstein’s influence
Judith Butler
Author of the ground-breaking book, “Gender Trouble,” advancing the rights of binary and transgendered people. Butler maintains while gender is assigned at birth, it is actually fluid and can change as the individual matures. Supporters of gays, lesbians and trans people frequently cite Butler when challenging Trumps’s attacks on gays, lesbians and trans individuals.
Kali Nicole Gross
Author of Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times, Gross has unearthed remarkable stories of Black women who lied, cheated, stole, and hit back to defend their honor and demand justice. Timely for providing a context for the continuing ways Black women are unjustly treated by the law.
Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez
Immigration Rights Activist, who rose to national prominence during Trump’s first term, when, to avoid deportation, she and her children took sanctuary in the First Unitarian Church in Denver. After receiving a stay of deportation and leaving sanctuary, Jeanette carried on her activism for immigrant rights. In retaliation, last March, ICE agents re-arrested her at Target, when she was on a work break, sending her to a detention center. After months of tireless advocacy by her family and community she was released on December 22, 2025.
Jeanette with two of her four children
Fatma Hassona
This brave, 25 y.o. photojournalist from Gaza is among the 35 female journalists murdered by Israel in the current genocide, and the subject of a new documentary,” Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” Fatma learned the documentary was accepted at the Cannes Film Festival just a day before she was killed during an airstrike on her home.
Fatma Hassona
Katherine Franke
Renowned Columbia law professor forced into early retirement for supporting Columbia students protesting for Gaza. Franke playfully posts videos from her “new office in the Columbia storage facility,” where she breaks down legal challenges to Trump.
Kamran Ahmed
Among the six young British activists jailed for their alleged involvement in break-ins at the UK’s branch of the Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems in Bristol and at the Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire. The hunger strikers’ demands include immediate bail, the right to a fair trial and the de-proscription of Palestine Action, which accuses the UK government of complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Kamran was recently hospitalized due to complications from her 50-day hunger strike. Supporters worry she may be close to death.
Palestine Action hunger striker Amu Gib, 30, has been hospitalized after 50 days of refusing food.
Artists of Uprise 2025
An exhibition last March of 100 female artists at Untitled Space in Manhattan, whose theme was activism through art. Their mission statement reads: “to amplify voices that are too often silenced, challenging the systems that perpetuate inequality while offering a hopeful vision for the future—one where justice, freedom, and human dignity are not just ideals, but realities.”
Image by Alison Jackson for “Uprise 2025”
The Mothers and Grandmothers in Gaza
Most of us find incomprehensible the daily struggles of Gaza’s mothers and grandmothers who have buried countless relatives, including infants and children. They now face an impossible winter, sheltering in wind-ravaged tents, flooded from unrelenting rain, while contending with meager food supplies and medical care.
Gaza, December, 2025
