Archive

Updates from Adam Isacson (November 16, 2024)

Hello, I’m back. My production of these “weekly” emails fell off when my two-month work sabbatical began six months ago. I failed to restart them because my election-season rapid-response communications work on the border and migration, especially the production of daily border updates, took far more of my time

Updates from Adam Isacson (May 21, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. I'm back from a few days in Medellín, Colombia, where

Updates from Adam Isacson (April 30, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's edition is pretty bare-bones. I've been

Updates from Adam Isacson (April 23, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. Sorry to have missed two weeks of "weekly" messages. It&

Updates from Adam Isacson (April 1, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's edition includes a Weekly Border Update with a

Updates from Adam Isacson (March 26, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's edition is pretty average. There's a

Updates from Adam Isacson (March 19, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. Sorry I missed an email last week: a little side project threw

Updates from Adam Isacson (March 4, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. If you were to read and watch everything in this week'

Updates from Adam Isacson (February 25, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's email has a lot going on. There'

Updates from Adam Isacson (February 19, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's email is a bit lighter, mainly because we&

Updates from Adam Isacson (February 12, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This is another long one, looking back on a really eventful but

Updates from Adam Isacson (February 6, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. There's a lot in this week's edition—most

Updates from Adam Isacson (January 29, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's edition is as jam-packed as you'd

Updates from Adam Isacson (January 22, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's edition has a fair amount of content, including

Updates from Adam Isacson (January 14, 2024)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. As of Thursday, I'm back from a week of post-New

Updates from Adam Isacson (December 23, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. I know I said in last week's email that it

Updates from Adam Isacson (December 19, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. I'm writing a couple of days late because this is

Updates from Adam Isacson (December 11, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. As I warned in my last note, there's less to

Updates from Adam Isacson (December 5, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This one is a bit late because I got invited to testify

Updates from Adam Isacson (November 21, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. Consider this one a "double issue." Thursday is a big

Updates from Adam Isacson (November 13, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. When I sent last week's message, I'd been

Updates from Adam Isacson (November 6, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. I just spent two weeks in Colombia, most of it in regions

Updates from Adam Isacson (October 30, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This is a quick edition, as I'm on research travel.

Updates from Adam Isacson (October 22, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This week's e-mail is shorter. I'm somewhere in

Updates from Adam Isacson (October 15, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This past week, the issues I work on were eclipsed by the

Updates from Adam Isacson (October 9, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. It was one of those weeks where I was missing new developments

Updates from Adam Isacson (October 1, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website, probably quite a while ago, to receive regular updates. If you'd like to stop getting these, just follow the instructions further down. This one has a border update; a

Updates from Adam Isacson (September 25, 2023)

Hi, this is Adam. If you're receiving this message, it means you signed up on my website, probably quite a while ago, to receive regular updates. I stopped doing these messages a while ago, then the mailing list service I was using got bought by—and killed by—

Coming soon

This is Adam Isacson, a brand new site by Adam Isacson that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #63

Greetings! It looks like I missed a week there. It's a bit frustrating: whenever things get particularly eventful for the issues I cover, it means there's less time to sit and throw together an e-mail, so you end up hearing less from me. As you can

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #62

There's a lot to share this week, most of it about Colombia. Below is the English text of two pieces that got published in Colombian outlets over the weekend, which should give a thorough look at where U.S. policy toward Colombia stands as Colombia nears an entire

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #61

WOLA Podcast: Understanding Colombia’s Latest Wave of Social Protest I recorded a very good conversation with my colleague Gimena Sánchez, who I don’t think has slept since Colombia’s protests—and the government’s crackdown—began on April 28. She does a masterful job explaining what’s going

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #60

Greetings and thanks for reading. This week's edition is long, and no fun at all. I even ran out of time to put in funny tweets. Unless you share my mania about what's happening in Colombia or at the U.S-Mexico border, reading this update may

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #59

When I was in college in the early nineties, El Salvador was showing Latin America that a bitter civil war could end in negotiations, and that a country with a long history of dictatorship could start opening up and transitioning to democracy. Twenty-five years later, in the mid-2010s, Colombia held

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #58

This week's e-mail has no bells and whistles, just the usual border and Colombia updates, upcoming online events I've seen announcements for, and a reduced number of funny tweets. I'm working on a few publications, podcasts, a video, and hopefully an event that I

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #57

Hello! Sorry to have neglected to send an email last week. I had to respond to an urgent request from a legislative office, which coincided with a 3-day trip to New York to visit family (everyone is vaccinated now, I saw my father IRL for the first time since 2019)

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #56

I hope you had a good holiday, if you celebrate. Or at least a good spring weekend if you're in this hemisphere. Here's how Washington looked last Monday. Not bad: WOLA Podcast: “People coming from the Western Hemisphere have been perceived as inherently not refugees” Yael

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #55

It's Holy Week, the week before Easter—which if you're a Latin Americanist based in Washington, usually means the pace slows down. Congress is out of session, and much of the region is on holiday, or at least less "open" than usual. You won&

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #54

I'm sending this a day later than usual because… I work on the U.S.-Mexico border at WOLA. As you can see from the two written pieces posted below, that has meant a lot of clearing up confusion about a sad but very complicated situation. This means

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #53

As the below updates on the border and Colombia make clear, last week was a pretty intense time. Not disastrous—there's some good news mixed in, and the new administration is slowly showing signs of moving in a good direction—but the pace is 24-7 right now. (Not

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #52

So this is it. This is the week where most of us hit our "one year of social distancing" anniversaries. Mine is pretty vivid. On the morning of Wednesday, March 11 (my half-birthday, I turned 49½), I took a crowded Metro (subway) car to Capitol Hill, mushed against

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #51

You have to look for it amid the bleakness, but there are some green shoots of good news out there. The pending availability of vaccines and plummeting new COVID case data, at least in the United States, are big ones. So is the gradually expanding entry into the United States

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #50

This is my 50th send-out in 2 1/2 years. Which means, if you do the math, that these emails are hardly "weekly." But I'll keep that word in the title, because I like aspiring to things. It was an eventful week for issues I work

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #49

This is a long one, and I don't expect anyone to read this e-mail all the way through. A couple of things I was working on got published last week, and then the "weekly border update" is a monster because—though I tried to be brief

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #48

I did a bunch of writing and lined up some podcasts during this first week of February…but nothing is public yet. I expect that next week's e-mail is going to be pretty long. But for now, what's below are the things I've been

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #47

I think I speak for everyone in the United States when I say I'm glad we are finished with January 2021. While we entered it with the Capitol building intact, we also started January with a president spreading dangerous lies on his Twitter account, Mitch McConnell running the

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #46

We have a new president. One who seems empathetic and wears a mask. One who put out a bunch of good executive orders, and whose State Department said some good things about Colombia, right off the bat (see the weekly updates below). One who isn't Donald Trump, and

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #45

I'm writing this on the evening of Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As someone online pointed out, this is the last night that we go to bed knowing that a full day of the Donald Trump presidency lies ahead. This is it. Sweet dreams. Two off-topic end-of-Trump-era

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #44

The last thing you want to read is another take on the horror that took place 1.5 miles from my house last Wednesday. I'll make mine quick, and it may surprise you. I'm feeling optimistic. All around the world, illiberal elected leaders—"authoritarian populists&

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #43

Happy new year! Let's hope it truly is. This e-mail is a shorter, "coming back from vacation" edition. I spent the past two weeks largely unplugged, though I couldn't stop reading the news in Latin America and put dozens of articles in my database.

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #42

Happy holidays, everyone. I've been off—or at least writing while avoiding meetings and email—since Wednesday. As a result, this message is a bit shorter than the past few. Also, there are no upcoming events to talk about. One thing I've found in my time

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #41

These e-mails just keep getting longer. Which makes sense, there's a lot to talk about and we made a lot of stuff last week. With the end-of-year holidays approaching, the next few weeks' missives might be a lot shorter. Already, the list of upcoming events near the

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #40

That first week of December was pretty full, and this e-mail links to a lot of stuff. Much was happening here in Washington, too. In a first, a government commission released a good report on drug policy. Congress finished work on the Defense bill, with a good provision on Colombia

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #39

I hope everyone in the United States had a good holiday. Here in Washington it was just the three of us, eating an epic meal and Zoom-calling relatives from our isolation. In Latin America, where it was just a normal week, people were recovering from two hurricanes (Central America), protesting

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #38

Happy Thanksgiving if you're reading this in the United States (or are a U.S. citizen elsewhere). If you're not, then, well, "happy next Thursday." Pandemic Thanksgiving means just my wife, daughter, and me eating turkey at home while Zooming and FaceTiming relatives. Including

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #37

I haven't done one of these for quite a while, and I apologize for that. But I look forward to running another streak of "weekly" updates until I fall off of this horse again. It's nice to be back, and there's a

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #36

This one is going to be briefer than normal, and I'm going to skip a week after this. While clowning around in the park with the family back on June 7, I leapt for a tree branch, missed, and landed painfully hard on my hand. When I finally

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #35

This is sort of a "double issue" because I missed last week's newsletter, for the first time all year. This time last week, Sunday and Monday, was a hard time here in Washington. My family had gone to the Sunday May 31 protests, and the atmosphere

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #34

There were a lot of meetings, talks, and events last week, all of them on my computer screen, leaving me bleary-eyed by Friday. At least when you're writing onscreen, you can look away every few moments. Zoom takes a toll. That's not news to anybody, but

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #33

I hope all is well with you. Here in Washington, the mayor extended our stay-at-home order through June 8, and WOLA's offices will be empty through at least July 4. Initially, I'd figured we'd be back to semi-normal by Memorial Day (May 25th). Since

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #32

I hope you're well. For me, Tuesday May 12 will be the two-month anniversary of my last day working outside my house. Probably similar for you, depending on what you do for a living. Like you, I'd thought that by two months in, the worst would

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #31

Last week was bookended by alarming human rights developments in Latin America. On the weekend of April 25 El Salvador's president showed horrific Abu Ghraib-like photos on his Twitter account of half-naked gang members forced to huddle together in prisons. On the weekend of May 2 we learned

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #30

April is nearly over, the end of social distancing remains out of sight, and here in the United States we keep learning more and more about how hollowed out our institutions are. The size of the rebuilding job we'll all need to do is daunting. Still, I'

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #29

Hello again, I hope that you’re well—and that if you’re not, that you’re recovering quickly. I’m OK: just another week of wearing a stupid Billy-the-Kid bandanna over my face, paying $7/roll for a six-pack of "institutional" toilet paper, and giving myself what

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #28

Greetings! Last week, Holy Week or “Semana Santa,” is usually one of the quietest  of the year in Latin America as the region takes off work and slows down. This year, though, it wasn’t easy to distinguish it from what is now a “normal” week: the whole world has

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #27

Wednesday, March 11 was the last day I went out in public and spent a lot of time at close quarters with strangers. I boarded a very crowded Metro train to Capitol Hill, then sat in a packed hearing room to hear the commanders of U.S. Southern Command and

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #26

Hi, it’s Adam. Still here, still keeping busy, still keeping distant, and still…if not happy, then at least staying even-keeled. Glad to say that everyone I know is in decent health, as far as I know; the few who’ve tested positive are recovering or recovered already. I

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #25

Hi, thanks for reading. I very much hope that you're well, and that you stay well. For me at least, this first week of "work at home" wasn't as isolated and meditative as I'd expected. It wasn't Walden Pond: there

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #24

I hope your first several days of social distancing and toilet-paper hoarding have gone well. I also hope you’re in good health and looking out for more vulnerable family members and neighbors. (If you’re home with small children without school or daycare, though, I don’t know what

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #23

Though there are a few cases here in Washington DC now, coronavirus hasn’t really affected life and work here yet. Congress is in full session and holding many hearings this week (including two relevant to Latin America), the universities are in session, music venues and restaurants are full, there&

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #22

This was one of those weeks when everything feels like it’s happening at once. (In this line of work, such weeks tend to concentrate between February and May, and again in the fall.) I had 16 or 17 appointments on the calendar, colleagues from Colombia in town, Congress fully

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #21

I was on the job for only two days last week. We visited some of my in-laws in Florida, which extended our President's Day holiday through Wednesday. Bringing our "colombiapeace.org" site into the 2020s When I came back to Washington, I threw myself into a

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #20

This was a week of government data dumps. * U.S customs and Border Protection (CBP) released its January border apprehension numbers. It shows another decline in the number of children and families—most of them asylum seekers—detained at the border last month. And why would they come, when the

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #19

This is a good time of year to talk to legislative staff about what we’re working on. I’ve had a few meetings and other interactions lately with people who work for relevant congressional committees or for concerned members of Congress, mainly about what I’ve seen on my

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #18

In a week that saw impeachment smothered and Brexit finalized, I didn’t work on either of those things. So you don’t have to read yet more about them here. Maybe just stick with The Onion: Report: Fighting Rising Tide Of Authoritarianism Sounds Like A Lot Of Work “After

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #17

I’m glad I had a chance to return to El Paso and Ciudad Juárez this past week, five weeks after my last visit. With a small group of WOLA board members, fellow staff, and supporters, I talked to scholars, Border Patrol agents, advocates and activists, attorneys, shelter managers, and

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #16

In Latin America, this was a grim week. (I write that sentence a lot, I think.) The number of social leaders murdered in Colombia already this year surpassed 20, while the country's military got itself embroiled in a big new wiretapping scandal. Venezuelan opposition legislators got pursued and

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #15

Happy mid-January. It’s over 70 degrees this weekend in Washington, because that’s what our climate does now. A memo and a podcast Here are two bits of “content” from the past week: * The Colombian government issued a draft decree that would re-start a U.S.-backed program of

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #14

I dislike new year’s resolutions: if you want to change a habit, you need to work at it all year, not just around an arbitrary date. It’s hard. But still, I solemnly resolve here to write these updates more often in 2020. I haven’t sent one since

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #13

It's been a dizzying two weeks since I last wrote. I returned from Colombia, had eight days in Washington, then spent a couple of days in Tallahassee, Florida. There, Florida State University's Center for Global Engagement, and its College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, made

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #12

I’ve spent a lot of October in Colombia. In fact, I’m here right now, having just finished participating in a weekend conference on Latin American security put together by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Bogotá office, with people from at least 10 other countries. Before that, I spent

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #11

I’m back from my third visit to the San Diego-Tijuana border so far this year. I spent much of Monday with U.S. authorities, CBP and Border Patrol. Tuesday was an excellent day-long meeting with non-governmental groups from all four border states. I went to Tijuana on Wednesday, and

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #10

This week will see the first day of spring in Washington, and it’s about time. Even with frequent travel to warmer latitudes, it’s been a very long winter. I’m trying to write this from my backyard, but I think I’m rushing the season—it’s still

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #9

I came back late Wednesday from a 10-day trip to San Diego and Tijuana. Six days were for work, four were with family, but during all ten we worked volunteer shifts at a migrant shelter on the San Diego side. Then I came back to Washington just in time for

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #8

There's less content to share this week. I've done a lot of writing, mainly about Colombia, but I'm not ready to share it yet. Plus, we've got a big group of Colombian colleagues arriving Monday night, they'll be with us

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #7

Last week is finally over. I'm fine, I guess. I hope you are too. Washington was at its ugliest the past several days, except for the good people protesting outside the Senate. Meanwhile, I'm just here trying not to refresh 538's "latest polls&

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #6

This was a pretty intense week on the job, but I feel like we have a lot to show for it. As a result, though, this is going to be a pretty long e-mail. Apologies in advance! Let's get into it. Few upcoming events this week First, this

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #5

The big event at work this week was WOLA's annual human rights award dinner, where we got a chance to uphold Guatemala's anti-beleaguered but persistent anti-corruption fighters. Otherwise, it was a week of meetings with officials and talking to journalists about Colombia, and writing things that,

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #4

A week ago right now, I was flying back from Colombia. That trip feels like it happened a very long time ago. This week, while catching up on what I missed during that 9-day trip (and celebrating my 48th birthday on Tuesday), I wrote a few things that will come

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #3

Greetings from Colombia! Much of the week was spent with no keyboard or internet access at all, in cars and on boats. Here's the only post I've put up this week—a bunch of photos and a brief overview of our trip. It's been

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #2

Hi! I'm headed to the airport shortly—I'll be in Colombia for the next nine days. With two WOLA colleagues, I'll be visiting a troubled part of the country (I'll say where later), and then will spend the last few days of

Weekly adamisacson.com - Issue #1

I'm trying out something new here: a way to share posts to my site in a weekly e-mail. As of now, I'm not committing to doing this regularly. We'll see how it goes. Five links from the past week Caroline Stauffer, “Native Peoples Sour