Jeff Pearce
I need you to take a good look at the photo above circulating of Abiy Ahmed’s goons arresting Mahlet Solomon, the assistant manager for superstar Teddy Afro. Look at how many men they sent to arrest one woman. And by now you should know the rest of the story: that just for listening to his music, you can get arrested in Ethiopia. Even as I wrote this, word came in that federal cops broke into Teddy Afro’s private studio and office then vandalized and stole items of equipment.
The huge response alone to the Teddy Afro album should be a wakeup call to all those working for the resistance in Addis, in Gondar, wherever they can form resistance cells, and it should be a wakeup call to you out there in the diaspora. His tunes are playing around the world in confirmation, telling you—telling everyone—that people are hungry for freedom.
Abiy can remake the capital all he wants for gullible tourists, but art that is genuine and resonates with meaning will always beat out shiny, pointless glass and heartless steel. The pulse of a nation beats in its people, not in a government’s window dressing. Here is a chance for the people to choose their own anthem, to sing the future.
But what are you doing to help this fight? Exactly? Many of you consider me a friend, an ally, but I can’t be a good friend if I don’t tell you the truth, and the truth is that most of you are failing. In your tactics, in your approach, and to be blunt, in the damn lazy way you pursue your activism.
What are Ethiopian diaspora groups doing about Mahlet Solomon’s arrest? AEPAC, Save Ethiopia Forum, United Women of the Horn? What did they do? They sent a letter. To US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Impressed yet?
I’m sure as hell not. For crying out loud, Rubio is part of Donald Trump’s fascist regime that ignored Congress and assassinated a leader right in the middle of negotiations and then invaded that country, Iran. That’s the guy you’re appealing to over human rights? The Trump regime told Zimbabwe and Zamiba it would withhold HIV drugs and other health care aid unless these countries rolled over and gave up their rare earth minerals. This is who you expect to play conscience of the world? Who will keep Abiy in check?
I have great respect for these organizations, and if they can somehow make their case behind closed doors in conference rooms, I wish them the best of luck. But if I were you, I wouldn’t bet on their success. They are trying to extract hope from a bunch of psychopaths.
The cause needs more. It needs new methods. It needs fresh energy. But you’re not giving it.
Sorry, but all of you out in the diaspora keep doing very silly things which hurt your cause, and then you wonder why you can’t get proper, accurate news coverage from Western media. Because you have abdicated your responsibilities. Listen, I get it. You’re exhausted. The Pretoria Agreement and its aftermath disillusioned everybody, and it broke so many hearts, including mine. So now you go through the motions of just reading stuff online and retweeting it.
But it’s dumb. It’s downright idiotic to repost anything written by Martin Plaut even if he’s suddenly “discovered” Amhara massacres. This is the guy who lied about you and your history all through the TPLF War! He has not changed his spots! He wants one thing, and that’s to use you. And yet some out there are gullible enough to repost his garbage because there’s so little else out there. You are helping him, not the cause.
The same thing happens with reposting Amnesty International reports and stuff from Human Rights Watch. For the love of gawd, why are you doing this? Again, these people outright lied and manufactured garbage out of nothing during the war. What? You think they can be useful now? They want to raise money. That’s all they’re here for. To keep the perpetual outrage machine going over “Hopeless Africa.” That’s their grift. Because they make money out of it. They’re conflict merchants, and you are acting as the delivery guy for their poison pizza.
A famous definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Please, I’m begging you. Stop with the retweets, stop enabling the bloodsuckers, and rely only on Ethiopian sources and Ethiopian voices. And start getting in the faces of the conflict merchants. Get confrontational. I have heard good people, smart people, repost an article by Reuters or the New Humanitarian, and it’s full of mistakes or gives a slanderous version of your history, and they say to me, “Well, the article makes a couple of good points, it’s useful.” No, it’s not. And you endorsing it with a repost just perpetuates the slanders.
Look at what Palestinians and their allies are doing online. They don’t settle. They don’t compromise for their rights. They are merciless about ripping into the passive wording, the euphemistic language, of the New York Times or the BBC when they try to soft-pedal Israel in Gaza or Lebanon. When a Western reporter tries to airbrush Palestinian history, they hold his feet to the fire. As they should. They don’t meekly respond with gratitude over crumbs! They insist, “No, you get it right. Get it accurate, or we will hound your ass, and we will embarrass you for your factual errors and your bias.”
This is what you have to do. Get confrontational. No one ever won their freedom and human rights by asking for them politely. Even the nonviolent tactics of Martin Luther King and John Lewis worked on confrontation. See me. Hear me. Don’t look away because we are moving forward right in your face.
There are very sinister efforts being made to try to get Fano declared a terrorist group. The reasons for this are obvious. To discredit the one armed force that offers any viable alternative to Abiy’s blood-soaked government. The Palestinians have had to deal with such slanders over decades, and even now, when you watch the evening news in America, you can feel like you’ve fallen into a parallel universe. The relentless pounding Israel gives Lebanon is still ridiculously framed as only a fight against Hezbollah. Ironically, it’s Israeli media where you learn about the genocide. That’s where you find coverage of Zionist hardliners openly bragging about creating a “Greater Israel.” On NBC? ABC? Not a word.
But while people are still dying, at least the truth is getting out. And that’s happening because Palestinians, Lebanese, and yes, Iranians who are not batshit crazy cult followers of a monarchist thug, are putting their own journalism out there.
Ethiopians can do this, too. There are ways to do it, ways to tell your stories for a global audience, not just your own echo chambers. When the TPLF War started, a glut of blurry, shaky phone cam footage came out that was so damn terrible, of course, it never broke through to the Western media. It’s one of the reasons I was motivated to fly over and report on the war. You need to adopt professional standards, professional reporting methods and do the job in English, the lingua franca that can carry your message around the world.
Yes, there are ways to get the news out, to get the truth out. I have a plan for this. But we need young journalists who are willing to take direction to step forward. As always, you can reach out to me. Let’s talk.
This new wave of gentle confrontation has to extend to everything that’s done for the cause. I’ll keep saying it until it sinks in. A protest is not a goal in itself. The protest is a means to an end, to reach a specific objective. Stop thinking that because you march on a Saturday afternoon that this is helping. It does squat. Speeches made in Amharic do not make the evening news in London or Paris or Minneapolis because no one outside your bubble is fluent in the language.
You’re going through the motions. Protest isn’t supposed to be convenient. It’s not supposed to be ritual. Not for you, not for the target you want to influence.
Let’s be clear. I don’t want to see anyone get arrested. Those who occupied tents at universities for Palestine had a good idea years ago, but they brought a 1960s knife to a 21st century gunfight. Cops on campus laughed in their faces and dragged them off to cells, and their university presidents shrugged and said, “Oh, you thought you’d be indulged? No, we’re suspending you.” Because they have no shame. We are living in a shameless age.
The new way to affect those with power is to hit them where it hurts. It’s not about awareness anymore. It’s not even about educating them. It’s about attacking their credibility and making life so uncomfortable that it’s bad for business. The white cabinet minister in Ottawa or Washington do not give a damn about you, the African. She never has, he never will. Their compassion is puppet theater.
If they had an ounce of compassion, they wouldn’t talk out of both sides of their mouths when the US bombs Iranian heritage sites and when children in Gaza get shot in the head by Israeli snipers. Come on. If Marco Rubio can lie about Iranians, if he can lie about white Ukrainians, do you really think he gives a mouth full of spit about brown people in Africa?
You can’t make them grow a conscience. That’s not the job of activism these days. The new job is to imply the threat of public guilt. Make them fear being associated with the wrong side.
For now, your numbers alone won’t do it. But you can create art, you can create spectacle. And every time you do, you have to keep hammering away, “Why doesn’t the media cover this? Why are they so incompetent?” They hate that. Don’t just tag them. Don’t just protest outside their network studio. That’ll do nothing. They’ve seen it before. You’ve got to dig, present the real facts, and make them look as incompetent as you know they are. Expose them to the rest of the world so that they finally do their jobs.
Do it enough, someone will finally pay attention. No, they will not do it because they care about you—they just want the story. There’s your chance to make them get the facts right, and if they don’t, hold them accountable all over again.
You can do other things.
As I suggested on social media: You should wallpaper the Internet with the image of Mahlet Solomon’s arrest. Shove it in the feeds of all the accounts for cabinet ministers and diplomats of the Abiy regime. Make them choke on it.
Each week on an afternoon for your break, for your lunch, whatever, go to the Ethiopian embassy or consulate in your city. Don’t go on a weekend when the staff will be away—that’s useless. Go on a weekday. And blast some music from Teddy Afro’s new album right outside their windows.
Play it loud. Drive them nuts. Sing the tunes if you have to, but keep reminding them, keep wearing them down with the message; It’s time to face the music.
There are other things you can do, other creative tactics. For those organizations who are interested, now is the time to implement them. If you are a diaspora organization in the UK and mainland Europe, I want to hear from you and work with you. If you are an Ethiopian journalist fully fluent in English, I want to hear from you and so do others. Let’s get the momentum going for something that can truly make a difference.
This column was originally offered as a pre-recorded message for an event on X Spaces Saturday April 25, 2026. You can hear the original recording here on YouTube.
https://jeffpropulsion.substack.com
