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Seble Samuel is attending the UN COP 22 climate change negotiations in Marrakech with our friends Climatetracker.org. She will be reporting on the summit on location all week. The United Nations climate change negotiations have been rolling in Marrakech for one week with the goal of solidifying the Paris Agreement -- an international climate accord to limit global warming -- and mapping a way forward for low-carbon and climate-resilient development. High-level leaders are now arriving for the second and final week of negotiations.

Having watched the U.S. electoral horror show unfolding over several months, I'm trying to stand back from the emotional shock of the appalling outcome, to think of some of the themes for progressive activist debate and research in politics and communication.  What understandings are relevant to the political action that our collective survival now necessitates? A rock and a harder place

As a mixed-race woman of Black heritage, I have always connected deeply to Shakespeare's Othello. For people of colour growing up in a predominantly white nation with a deeply Eurocentric curriculum, non-white characters like Othello are significant because they affirm our existence in literature, and help us articulate our struggles with internalized racism and white supremacy. There are so few instances in Western literature where Black characters are permitted to exist, let alone to exist as multifaceted, sympathetic, and central. Othello is one of the rare texts in the English literary canon to make a Black character its protagonist and to focus on issues of anti-Black racism.

If a principal who posts seemingly xenophobic videos and comments on her Facebook page isn't guilty of professional misconduct, who is? The York Region District School Board (YRDSB) isn't saying. It's been over two months since the YRDSB first received complaints about Ghada Sadaka, principal of Sir Wilfrid Laurier School in Markham, Ont., who posted contentious messages about Islam and Muslims on her Facebook page. She has since apologized for those comments, saying:

Mainstream journalists and other commentators are quick off the mark to make comparisons between the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency and the referendum vote last year in Britain to leave the European Union. An example of this is an otherwise interesting and informed commentary on November 9 by the Toronto Star's global economics reporter Tanya Talaga.

A first draft: 1. Send love to everyone who is feeling personally scared for themselves or their families and loved ones because of The Result. Open to immediate requests for care, support and solidarity. 2. Set aside fight-or-flight response in order to align deeply with the most effective use of our time on this planet, from an intention of compassionate action. 3. Vigorously and resolutely engage people who seek to blind themselves and others to the central contribution of neoliberalism to where we find ourselves. (And, when needed, consciously tap a bit of that fight-or-flight to boost the aforementioned vigour.)