Podcasts about palestinian americans

The first phase of the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal began to move forward this week as Israeli and Palestinian hostages have been released and aid trickles in. “The crossings were partially reopened, so some aid is coming in — food, water, and medicine — but only a small amount compared to the huge need,” says Intercept contributor Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi. “People are surviving, but every day it is still a struggle.”“There is a pause in the bombing, and I say 'a pause' because there are still people being killed,” says James Zogby, the president and co-founder of the Arab American Institute.This week on the Intercept Briefing, we hear from poet and writer Al-Wawi about what it's been like in Gaza over the first few days of the ceasefire. Then reporter and host Jonah Valdez speaks to Zogby who, along with a delegation of Palestinian Americans, are meeting with members of Congress to ensure the current ceasefire holds and to push for an arms embargo on Israel.“We were challenging members of Congress, not just on ending the weapons supplies to Israel because they've so abused them — in violation of U.S. and international law — but also to consider what are the needs of those who remain behind, the millions of Palestinians still in Gaza,” says Zogby. Valdez and Zogby dig into the details — or lack thereof — in Trump's plan, how Israel is already breaking the ceasefire agreement, takeaways from past efforts to broker peace through the decades, and how the American public can continue pushing lawmakers to achieve lasting peace, healing, and reconstruction that benefits Palestinians. “Nothing's going to happen on the Israeli side in terms of concessions, unless there's a threat of punishment coming from the U.S. or the international community,” says Zogby. “That's what happened during Oslo [Accords]: The U.S. let Israel get away with murder, and they just kept doing it. If Donald Trump lets them do the same thing — and I fully expect that he probably will — then I don't expect this to move toward completion.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mo Amer is the creator and star of the hit Netflix comedy series Mo. It's a first-of-its kind Palestinian-American sitcom with a fraught plot line about the American immigration system and the hope to return, at least for a visit, to his family's homeland. We talk to Mo Amer what it's like to make a show so centered on the real facts of his own life, and to be thrust into the role of spokesperson for Palestinian-Americans at this particular moment.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

“The Only Thing Different Is the Gas Chambers.”Grammy & Emmy-winning producer Fredwreck — the man behind hits for Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, Britney Spears, and more — joins Habibi House for his most unfiltered interview yet.From breaking barriers as one of the first Palestinian Americans in mainstream hip hop to calling out political hypocrisy and hip hop's silence on Palestine, Fredwreck brings history, heat, and honesty.

This episode of Buddhist Geeks features a candid and heartfelt conversation between Vince Fakhoury Horn and Tasshin Fogleman about Palestine, the TPOT subculture, and what it means to embody true Bodhisattvahood. They explore the limitations of online discourse, especially around contentious issues, and reflect on the importance of good-faith dialogue, friendship, and spiritual integrity in times of crisis.Join Vince Fakhoury Horn and Brian Newman outside of Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of 2026 for a 10-day intensive jhāna retreat. There, we'll be exploring The Flavors of Jhāna.Episode TranscriptVince:Hey Tasshin.Tasshin:Hi Vince.We just talked before I hit record. We just talked still. It's like formally. Hi. Hi. Tasshin: We're here. Vince: Yeah, exactly. That's good to see you. Tasshin: Yeah, good to see you too, brother. Yeah. Vince: Yeah, man, I appreciate you being willing to I invited you to have this conversation on X or my favorite platform to hate, Tasshin:My favorite platform to love.Vince: Great. I was there with you for a while, but yeah, it's getting a little weird. It's it's getting a little Faschy, X but we'll probably talk about that. So I propose that we talk about, this was the theme I proposed to you, which is Palestine, TPOT, and True Bodhisattvahood.. And it's, I guess in response to a lot of frustrated, angry, maybe righteous and not in a necessarily, in all bad sense. But yeah, in some posts that I've been sharing on X since I don't know it's been ongoing since the October 7th in my case. So I guess I wanted to explore that with you because I consider you to be one of my friends in the TPOT subculture, which we can get into and talk about what that actually is, Uhhuh because it's pretty, and it's it's vagueish, but, or decentralized at least.But it seems like you're well respected in this decentralized subculture and I think I'm part of that as well, but I seem to be taking a very different role from you and how I relate to it, which is a little bit more critical and Challenging and, I haven't found that's really endeared me to many people in the community.But some people like yourself have engaged with my critiques in what feels like a good faith way, and I've really appreciated that. So I thought, it'd be cool to have a, an even more personal conversation where people could see potentially if we decide to release any of this.And I don't know, just the human side of this, which doesn't come across often in 280 characters. Tasshin: Yeah. I appreciate all that context. I think that's really helpful and I think it's good to have a conversation about this. I think that I've been really struck by your perspectives on this and in general, I really value your perspectives and your opinions about the path and about practice and, we've had a number of disagreements over the years, but I've always walked away, like really learning a lot. And yeah, I do try to engage in good faith and I think especially one of the practices I have just for any kind of conflict in general is if I feel like text-based mediums especially can only hold so much.I don't even like to discourse or disagree on Twitter. I use it for other things and it's hey, if I'm, I've said this to you before, if we have a disagreement, let's get on a call and actually talk about it. And because it's just, you can actually hear the other person's perspective and where they're coming from in a way that text just really doesn't afford.So I'm glad we're talking about this. Yeah, I think it's great. Yeah. Vince: And the downside of doing that without recording it and sharing it back, because of course then it's just like a private thing that happens Right, and doesn't necessarily filter out in the same way to the collective. Tasshin: Totally. Totally.SoVince: This is cool. Yeah. Thank you. Tasshin: Do you have any suggestions for where you'd like to start or what feels like a good starting place?Vince: I would be curious to see your take on what TPOT is or how you'd describe that phenomena. I did spend a little bit of time reflecting on it, and I came up with a little, like micro definition, but I don't think it's exhaustive this a starting point.But I'm curious even before sharing that, if there's anything, thoughts on TPOT and what it is, if you've thought, have you meditated on that? How do you can, Tasshin: yeah. I love that and I'm so curious what your definition will be. I suspect it'll be spicier than mine, but I liked what you said earlier about it being a decentralized community.because I, I felt a little bit of trepidation before this conversation for really all three of the things you want to talk about. I feel like, so woefully inexpert in and I really don't know as much as I ought to about the war, and I don't know as much. I, I don't know. I'm not, I'm in TPOT certainly, but I'm not, there's no elected four figure leader or something.It's decentralized, as you said. And then also at the Bodhisattva path, I'm like still figuring it out very right. As we all are so right. But yeah, TPOT, I think for me it's very much about specific people, like their specific friends that I've cultivated very deep friendships with, that I've met through Twitter, and developed those relationships through Twitter and their, I think some of my closest friends at this point are people I've met through Twitter and they're friendships that I treasure and I think it is decentralized.I think it's. Spread throughout the world at this point. Like I can go to any major city and meet people who are connected to this network. And I, like my friend Andrew Rose has been talking about it recently as the network where it's yeah, it's not really about Twitter anymore. And it's not really, it's a larger cloud of people that are connected and I think it's not necessarily ideologically on the same page, like people having the same perspectives or even shared practices.There might be shared interests and common overlaps, but I think people have very different perspectives on the world. And it's more, if anything, I'd say it's like a developmental similarity where, for me at least, it really helped me to, I started to enter TPOT. I could go into detail, but as I was individuating from being at the monastery for many years and it's I mean it from a developmental perspective, it helped me jump from three to four in the Keegan stages where it's like I was in a tribal state of mind identified with the maple ideology and worldview and practices, which was great for me at the time. It really was. And then it's, it stopped being great for me and I had to find a new way and being with so many weirdos from around the world who saw things so differently really helped me to find my own way and find my own life. So I feel a sense of connection and intimacy with it, and like indebtedness to it, where it's these are my people and a help that helped me to find myself in the world.Yeah, that's what TPOT is to me at least. Vince: I like what you're saying about the developmental part. I guess I see the phenomena similarly like this is something that. There's a lot of people coming together, not, like you said, around a particular ideology or like framework.Which is very common. Like a bunch of people come together on a specific book or teacher or teaching or whatever. This is different because there are teachers and teachings that are, you see commonly in that community. But it's pretty broad. Yeah. Tasshin: And you don't have to buy into any of them.I think there are major, if anything there's like themes, like non coercion is a big one or Right. And people bring their own interests and you don't have to be interested in the same things other people are interested in. Vince: But there's something, if you put all those themes together, you'd start to see like broader theme of Absolutely.Yeah. The connection there. Yeah. Which I think you're totally right. It's, there's something maybe developmental underneath that. I was thinking about the book, The Postmodern Condition. Which David Chapman originally recommended to me. He's one of the, he's a TPOT Philosopher.Maybe he wouldn't he probably reject that phrase term, but he is a philosopher and well respected in that space. Tasshin: Sure. Vince:And I remember the the author Jean-François Lyotard, he said, simplifying to the extreme, “I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta narratives.”And I find there's something very postmodern about this community where there's a kind of general skepticism toward meta-narratives, of thinking that like one way of describing reality could be totally comprehensive and true for everyone, everywhere, all the time.And I see that as one of the things I really appreciate about TPOT. In terms of it representing a move out of like the modern condition, which was much more like about trying to find the right ideology and all these clashing Isms, Communism versus Capitalism versus all these kind of clashing religions.Who's got the best, which framework is going to come out on top, and everyone's going to eventually believe it's like some, I see that as the more of the modern condition. And so in that sense it feels like a real relief, to see communities, that are forming around.Around this. And it, I guess that's the reason for me, I always connect my experience of coming up in the integral community, Ken Wilber's community with TPOT because it felt like a very similar kind of vibe there. Where so many people I met were just doing radically different kinds of things.And, there'd be someone who's super into, like spiritual surrender, the lineage of Adi da, who is also like a concert pianist that I'm literally describing an actual person I worked with. And then someone else would be like, super into video production and have no interest in spiritual practice or meditation, but they have a lot of interest in like psychological work.And yeah, I guess that's something I've seen is consistent with the TPOT world. Is this sort of like postmodern incredulity towards meta narratives?Tasshin: How would that fit with it being I've never really understood this, but would you describe TPOT as meta-modern, or not meta-modern.Vince: I guess for me, I would say the center of gravity of TPOT seems to be in the transition between modern to postmodern. Like that I would call that post rational. Because the main mode of modernity is rational individualism. It's this is Ken Wilber's and Jean Gebser's take, but I find that to be true.So people like are questioning the limits of rationality and model making are post rational. I see, and I think as a result they're postmodern. But there's a transition, it's like there's a awkward developmental phase where you're letting go of, the absoluteness of models and you can ken Wilber called it the “performance contradiction.” He said, you can you can absolutize that too, or you can say everything is relative. That statement isn't a relative statement, it's an absolute statement. All perspectives are valid. Okay. That perspective you're saying is more valid than any other perspective, which says that certain perspectives are more valid than others. And so like the whole idea of postmodernity rests on a performance contradiction. That's, or at least the early stages of it where you're deconstructing that mo deconstructive, postmodernism Robert Kegan, would call it.He also has a reconstructive postmodern phase. I don't think TPOT is in the reconstructive postmodern phase, but I think some people in it are. It's like there's a spectrum, within, there's a center of gravity, but there's a spectrum. As well or more, it's like a scatter graph, Uhhuh, where like most of the dots are in the center around this sort of modern to postmodern transition, but then there's like trailing off in both directions.You'll see some people that are more traditional that are there just treating it like a group. I'm sure you saw that probably at Vibe Camp. Probably some people there that are just like. Just drinking the Kool-Aid and don't really, aren't really, maybe vibing in the same way as everyone else.Tasshin: Uhhuh. Vince: And then you find some weird people too that are like aliens even within the space. Who seem to be like a David Chapman I mentioned. He seems like a, an alien to me. Tasshin: An example, Vince: I think he's talking, I think he's a meta-modern Tasshin: thinker.Vince: I don't know.So I, I see a mix, but I mostly see people in the Yeah. Like early postmodern stage, Tasshin: I recently saw a really nice tweet from Mechanical Monk where, which I can link you to later, but he drew this diagram or made like a video of what TPOT is, and he was arguing that like TPOT is a moving target where like i'm thinking of these people. And then you're thinking of these people and there's some overlap, like you and I are both friends with, like Daniel Thorson for example, or. Some other people that we'd have in common, or I know who David Chapman is or whatever. And so there, there's enough overlap that we could be like, oh, we're both pointing at TPOT, but then you don't know some people that I'm pointing to and I don't know some people you're pointing to.And then eventually this is happening more and more. Or people use the acronym TPOT and you're like, I've never seen you. I don't know who you're talking about, and I don't know what you're describing. I think you and I have enough of a shared sense of the thing, but yeah, I thought that was a really good point, that it's not like a homogenous group.Like it has a no, no one likes, this is a very probably like post rat thing to do. Nobody likes labeling it. So it's everyone's unhappy with the term TPOT. Nobody wants to identify as TPOT or as a post rat or whatever. Even the term, Vince: I mean in the phrase the acronym TPOT itself isTasshin: relative and it's like relational.Vince: This part of Twitter. Yeah, no, you're saying it's like a network and I see that. There was a site for a while, I don't know if you saw it, where you could like, you could see the sort of it was like a ranking or listing of the most sort of central, I do remember that inside of a network, it was like the tea, you could pull up TPOT and see a list.I was like, I'm on that list. Which I would, which I would take myself, I would opt out of that list if I could choose to. But it's not a choice as you're part of this network.Tasshin: Yeah. If you know the acronym ar arguably you are in it. It's just once and.Vince: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So what I hear you saying from like the network perspective is like you, you see it from your point of view of the network. And the network is evolving, it's not static. It continues to grow and change and shift. That's right. So your view of it is changing and shifting with the network.That's right. So you both, you have both a limited view and it of something that's changing. That seems true to me. Which doesn't mean we can't talk about it. Or try to, come up with something useful to say about it. I would describe it this way. I'll tell you how I would describe it.Yeah. Yeah. Let's hear it. Oh boy. I'm not so sure about the last part. No, it's not that bad. So I describe TPOT as a weird, and here I'm using the weird acronym, Western educated, industrialized rich and democratic post rational subculture that's connected by shared interest in self-agency and awareness.Tasshin: That seems good. Something that's popping out to me is just also how much of this is specifically enabled by the internet and Twitter in particular, or I think there's something starting to happen that you could call like a Twitter like Blue Sky is a Twitter or Mastodon is a Twitter. I hope we have other Twitter likes in the future.because as you said, X is becoming fahy. Or to me, the thing that a Twitter is very much like a public library, and then Twitter happens to be a company and it's that has skewed incentives and stuff like that. But any case I'm like, yeah that all, everything you said tracks and then it's I think it is meaningfully enabled by technology, right?And whatever a Twitter like is in particular. Vince: Okay. Yeah. That's good. So that's missing in my description here. I agree. It's enabled by that and there's something too like it. The tech, the technology itself is very postmodern. These platforms and microblogging platforms, like you're getting these really tiny little snippets that are largely decontextualized.And you're just seeing a bunch of decontextualized atomized information flowing constantly through your stream without, you have to put the context together. That's right. The platform itself does not do that. In fact, it, if you're not, if you don't have the capability to do that, it might actually be really problematic because That's Tasshin: true.Vince: Yeah. You don't know. So I'd say it's almost perfectly compliments the subculture, the design of it.Tasshin: That's true. And it makes sense of like why you would feel a resonance with, I wasn't in this myself, but from what I imagine the integral community and then also why that would be different of I imagine Twitter wasn't a huge part of that back then because it, I don't even know what the were, but wasn it wasn't even, it Vince: wasn't, no, Twitter launched the year after I left the Integral Institute. So yeah. It wasn't part of that blogging and podcast or very early, like web two was part of it for sure.But it was primarily an in-person community. It was centered. It was like centered in person and then had a sort of one to many kind of broadcast media kind of web 2.0 media thing to it. So it did look a lot different than that. It occurs Tasshin: to me that, at least in my experience, the technology feels really central to the thing.And the properties you named are almost like emergent or like the kinds of people that would resonate with it or something, or be able to make full use of it or Right. What have you. But it doesn't seem intrinsically necessary, but it does seem to me almost, like that if you have a Twitter, like something like this subculture would arise and I could see different, similar subcultures that had different properties or even an ideology or like different developmental stages or something.But I think that a Twitter is really good at clustering people who can vibe together or relate to each other and in a way that's more emergent. I think a lot about individualism and collectivism and I think that this kind of technology affords the possibility of yeah, basically a Hegelian synthesis of individualism and collectivism where each person can be their own individual, but also be in community with a larger network that respects their individuality, but can coordinate as a whole and.I think Twitter likes uniquely make that possible. And I could see ones that were like clusters that were meaningfully different. You'll see sometimes people talk about this, they're like, maybe there's a whole other cluster that's not connected to us at all that we have no idea about. Almost the I forget what the alien version of that is, but like the likelihood that there's an alien is civilization in any given solar system.It's maybe they're out there. Who knows. Vince: Something like, like the Drake equation would describe the Drake equation, how likely that would be. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. You're using the term Twitter. I don't know if we've talked about this, but I will explicitly not use that term anymore to refer to X, mainly because I think people are confusing the term Twitter with the term microblogging. Huh? Since it was the original Microblogging platform, I think a lot of times we conflate Twitter with Microblogging. And so when you say Twitter, like I, that's another way to me of saying Microblogging.What's Tasshin: important to you there? Vince: It's important to me to stop being so sentimental about Twitter because Twitter's dead and whatever that it was, is gone. But Microblogging is alive and well and it's probably doing better now than when Twitter was alive. So I think it's somehow by being sent sentimental Twitter, we mask our ability to perceive what's happening in broader terms with microblogging. And we potentially overlook a lot of nasty shit happening on X.com as well by doing that. Tasshin: I see. Yeah I tend to use the word Twitter for different, maybe sentimental reasons as you're saying, but it's an intentional use on my term. On my part. And maybe I'll just use the word Twitter and you can use the word X and we can Vince: Yeah, no, it's fine.Proceed accordingly. It's No, it's fine. I just wanted to point that out. Very good. That's a difference in frames. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This has been very conceptual so far, but I'm curious to bring it a little downward too, because I remember maybe it was like a week after October 7th Hamas attacked civilians in Israel and.I knew from my own experience having grown up in a, as a Palestinian and American household and having watched this to some degree play out over 40 plus years, 40 years at the time that I was like the blow back from this is gonna be 10 x at least. Because that's consistent. Throughout time it's always Israel will respond with 10 times the amount of violent force at least. And so I was like, if you take the numbers, I was like, that's. That's catastrophic. That's gonna be terrible. And so I knew within the first week, and I shared this on X, that this is going to be a genocide.And so for me, this is the perspective I'm coming from is like I've known that a genocide has been going on for, from the beginning. Have known that the intention or that the likely the likely response was gonna be genocidal. And I think there's a lot of debate about whether or not this is I think that debate is now totally foolish from my point of view.You frame this for instance, as a war, I would call it a genocide. I would say the genocide rather than the war. Or the occupation, which more, more accurate description. because a war assumes that there's two countries, two sides that are equivalent and they're at war.But this is rather like a group of people who've been dispossessed and occupied for decades. Who wrongly lashed out and hurt civilians. But who did so from the point of view of being in a one up, one down power position? So like the group of people or Palestinian people, had been occupied, their movements are controlled.Things coming in and out of Gaza were controlled in terms of water, food, et cetera. Many people described it as an open air prison. Including a colleague of mine who lives in Tel Aviv. He described it that way to me one time. And so from my point of view, it's a lot of times people don't understand when they enter into this, the history of this, that just the basic history of occupation.And so to frame it as a conflict between two equals is a, in a way obscures the power. Dynamics at play where, one group has so much more power over the other and has so much more are literally like nuclear power that's backed by the most powerful military in the world. Who has a lock on the un Tasshin: In Vince: terms of our ability to veto the Americans. So it's David and Goliath rather than, two superpowers going to war. So that's one thing I'll just share is just the frame for me of Palestine. And so I'm, I've been seeing it that from the very beginning.And what I've found with, on, on platforms like X and with the community of TPOT is. Just this sort of maddening silence. Or this sort of schizo, in my experience is like a schizophrenic feed, where on the one hand I'm seeing Palestinian activists and intellectuals and people who are I think doing good work at bringing awareness to an ongoing livestream, genocide.And then an another group of folks more in the TPOT space who are kind of sharing their psychotic explorations and talking about their cool practices and giving, challenging takes and all of which has this other very different vibe which is much more self-focused. And and the two of them in contrast really, that's, for me, that's my, that, that's the tension I'm existing in.And I can totally relate to the self. Absorbed interest in my own transformation and wanting to play around. And it, I totally get that because that's where I've been. Like that's my background as well. But it's, yeah, it's maddening to see these two side by side. And I feel like there's so much missed opportunity with TPOT given that it's so influential right now in culture, in our mainstream culture.And so I guess I, I'm saddened by the fact that I don't see that community having really come around to care much about what's happening in these kind of global situations. Like you, you talked about individualism and collectivism. I feel like it's way more skewed toward individualism in the TPOT world than it is collectivism.So I, that's actually a criticism I'd have. I don't feel like they're both ending it at all. But. Anyway. Yeah, that's just a little bit where I'm coming from,Tasshin: I hear you. Just first off, really mourning and grieving the plate of the Palestinian people that's happening and feeling personally connected to that because of your family and watching the news very closely and really actively grieving that, of just the evil that's happening and caring about that and wanting to see that change and end, and seeing that as a genocide, not as a war.And really appreciating people who are speaking up and being vocal about it and trying to work for change to resolve that crisis and. It feeling used the word like schizophrenic to see TPOT, which seems like self-absorbed and individualistic, where it's like people are talking about whatever they're on about, and it's I got this metaphor hearing you talk about it, of someone who's starving, who's like incredibly hungry, and then they're like next to some rich people who are like having like coffee and talking about, some obstru philosophy and you're like, I'm starving.Can you please give me some of your food? There I'm having a real problem here and you're talking about this stuff that really doesn't matter. And yeah, that being really painful and then also a care about you're like, yeah, TPOTs incredibly powerful and culturally powerful and why aren't you talking about this?You should be talking about this so that we can use your power for good and change the world in that way. Vince: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a naive of me to expect that in some way. So this is where I get a little, this is where I feel the bind. It's on the one hand I intellectually get if this really is developmental as we're describing if this cultural phenomena has a developmental dimension to it, then why would I expect the bulk majority of people who are, coming out of individual rationalism to be focused on anything other than that kind of things are related to that.Who would be well Tasshin: positioned to make a change that had positive effect in the world from a developmental perspective? Vince: That's a good question. I guess anyone could. So maybe the issue isn't the underlying development, but it's the culture, the cultural expression of that. In this case, it's, WEIRD is, I think a good way of putting it, white sorry, Western, but those two are connected, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.It feels like a lot of what you're saying is true because we're, we are in this WEIRD culture in the US largely, especially the educated TPOT, whole US is not WEIRD. A lot of, there's a lot of uneducated people and people without access to resources, but but we're having this weird conversation.And meanwhile in the global Commons, we're like you said, right next to people that are posting videos constantly of people being, shot and killed and assassinated executed, like right there, children starving, et cetera. And it's it, this is the critique that Postmodernism has had for a long time of modernity.It's like the colonialist thing. It's like how is it that we have so much privilege to be able to have these conversations in the first place, because we ourselves are living on dispossessed land. Like we ourselves dispossessed the Native Americans to be able to be here, we ourselves brought African slaves from Africa to be able to take care of our cotton mills and our run our agricultural industry.And so we ourselves built a country on those very foundations and we ourselves as Western people escaped persecution in Europe. Our whole history of escaping persecution and then bringing it with us is what's happening with Israel and Palestine, from my point of view, it's the same basic pattern.I think it's hard to see that when you're focused on you Tasshin: On Vince: your individual journey of transformation and without being able to zoom out into these broader collective patterns that are shaping you as much as you are shaping yourself. And I wonder if sometimes, like we overestimate our agency, or we over-index on our agency in this community. That'd be my, I guess my question or challenge to folks. Tasshin: Can you say more about that? The over-indexing on agency? What you mean by that? Vince: Yeah, so like for me the synthesis of the agency, of agency and communion is what I'm most, most interested in right now.Because that schizophrenic split feels like it's a split of these two, where it's like you have people that are high agency and have lots of opportunity and privilege, and then you have people that have extremely low ability to opt to effectively exercise their agency. They barely can get food. So it's like such a huge contrast there. And what's the difference between these two groups of people? Like historically it's the only reason I'm on this side of the street is because my grandfather was able to get into this country in 1950.And he was lucky, essentially. So like the only difference is basically luck of birth. Like where are you born? And we, I think we take so much credit for the stuff that is, has nothing to do whatsoever with us. It's like when Obama, said you didn't build that and everyone fucking flipped out.You don't know if you remember that he was talking about, I don't know, he was talking about infrastructure and there was a huge backlash from the Right. Like we built that, in hyper American individualism. And it's I think, you know what the genocide and Gaza's taught me is I'm just lucky.I'm just lucky because I have cousins who are in the West Bank right now and they're living in concentration camp type environments. Like they, they're scared to leave their home because people around them are getting shot by settlers and, five Palestinian Americans have died in the West Bank this past year.People who are just going over there to visit family. So it's extremely bad right now, even in the West Bank, which is considered to be the more stable of the two Palestinian regions. In Gaza, I have two family members here in North Carolina and Asheville that are mar married into my family. So they're not direct family members, but their spouses, and they both have lost over 200 family members in Gaza. Which is hard for people even in the West to understand, because they don't, we don't come from big families like that where you could even imagine having 200 family members.But yeah, like whole family trees are essentially being wiped out. Yes. Are cut down. So it's, to me it's very, because I'm in both worlds. I'm teaching meditation and I'm hearing about, what's going on for my cousin in the West Bank, and I'm hearing about what's happening for other Palestinians that I know.I'm like, this is, it's a very hard tension to hold. So for me, the synthesis of agency and communion is I can recognize, like I have a certain amount of agency in part because of the communal situation. Like we have a community that optimizes for agency. And it optimizes for agency at the at the negative at the expense of many other communities, agency and has historically and even presently, like a lot of.The opportunities we have are because of they've been taken rather than, it's like not an omni win situation. So I feel like there's a lack of kind of acknowledgement of that, that often in part because you start to feel really bad. And if there's anything I've noticed about TPOT is like, people don't want to feel bad.Like people wanna empower each other and raise each other up. And I think there's something beautiful about that. But to me it's come, it comes at the expense of valid criticism, of being open to hearing valid criticism. And that's the kind of, that's, that adds how I felt. I've been res largely, my, my criticisms have been responded to.It's oh yeah, this is, you're just like it's I'm a downer. I'm like, yeah, sorry. It's fucking, it is a downer. It really is. How do you, I know that's general and broad, but how do you respond to something like that?Tasshin: Can you ask a, I there's a lot of thoughts running through my mind. Can you ask a specific question? Vince: I'm just curious what your general Yeah. Sense of that is.Tasshin: First off, my heart hurts. It hurts to know that violence is happening at scale and it hurts to hear that. And I'm okay hurting.I know, I've done a lot of, I, I can feel that, but it hurts and I feel sad and I feel grief knowing about this travesty that's happening. AndI feel that about a lot of things that I know about in the world now, including this. And that's always,yeah. Hard to be with. And I try to learn how to be with that and, i'm grateful for the opportunity to be reminded of what's happening and to be connected to it. I feel a desire to have change occur that feels like it matters. I would like war, genocide, evil violence to end. I'm a pacifist.My, one of the worst days of my life every year is when I pay taxes. I hate paying my taxes, partly because it's annoying bureaucratically, but even more so because I feel like I'm compromising my own ethics by supporting the US military. And that I every year I decide I'm gonna pay my taxes so that I can contribute, continue to be part of this society in a legal and upright way.I'm not morally opposed to taxes as such, but I am morally opposed to what my government does with those taxes, including I don't know the full extent of this. I'm sure you know much more, but certainly being complicit in this war, genocide, violence, murder. Bombing evil. Yeah. And other evils known and unknown.I know that and I've been around a little bit. So that hurts. That's the first and foremost thing. And I feel for you, having family i's just I went through just a couple years ago my mom dying of cancer, and we knew about it four years before she died, three, four years before she died.And she lived a blessed life, and I felt perfectly ready to let her go. And it was still really hard. And it's imagine my family members being murdered at scale and being starving and being oppressed and in all kinds of ways that I can only imagine. It's that my heart would just be breaking on a daily basis.And I feel for you, my friend, going through that and, for the Palestinian people more broadly, such that I'm connected to them and for all who are subject to war. It's just it's just evil. It's just e that, like you, you wanna call it genocide? I'll just call it evil, like it's, I think violence is evil and war is evil and genocide is evil and bombs are evil and guns are evil.And murder is evil and killing children is evil. And it's just, my heart breaks at that. As far as the other specific things you were saying, I'm reminded of a an argument that I've had or witnessed many times where there's kind of two recurring schools of thought in our culture where how do I summarize this? Because I've seen this in a lot of specific instances, and I don't wanna get into the specific instances, but let's take a simple example like say your relative was a Trump supporter, and you personally didn't vote for Trump and don't want Trump to be president. There are people in our culture at this time who would say the thing to do is to be disconnected from that Trump supporter and to never talk to them and to shame them for who they are and or give them radio silence and cut ties.And that's a whole school of thought that applies to many issues. And then there's a school of thought that says how are you gonna change their mind if you don't stay connected to them, if you don't really understand where they're coming from and listen to them and talk to them and share your own perspective.And I tend to be more in the latter school of thought of connection is the basis of change. Actually hearing other people's perspectives, sharing my own, to the extent that it's possible. And you're not. Beating each other up or whatever shooting at each other. But I think being connected to people is the basis of change.And I'm getting here somewhere here with this, which is to me, I hear you saying, I'm not part of TPOT. These are the people that are in TPOT. They're silent, they have these, I don't know, I hear you talking about like collective blind spots, which I think are very valid. I'm glad you're mentioning them, but it's like those people have the blind spot.And this is their problem. And to me I could be wrong, but think, Vince: It's really the Palestinians problem. They're the ones that are suffering for the collective blind spot. They're suffering a lot more. Tasshin: Yes.I think that. You could usefully see yourself as part of TPOT, and that by staying connected to people in TPOT and speaking to them, you can change their minds. I think you've changed my mind about things about this and had an impact on me and had a causal influence on me. And I see you having that impact on a other people.And I think that if you took that perspective, there's more or less efficacious ways of doing that. Ways that, that, that's a question that's come up for me about this is actually about like theories of change. And just one more thing is I was recently in Santa Fe, my dad moved to Santa Fe and when I was there, there's a lot, my dad is like very near the Santa Fe is the capitol, and he is very near the capitol where the government is.And so there's just always protests there like at least once a week. And I get, I personally, me, Tasshin, get so angry at these protestors because I, in my current worldview, think that their theory of change is just shit. They're like, by going to this place and having a sign, I'm gonna change the world. It, to me, I see that is like by and large, incredibly efficacious and not gonna produce the change that they want.And do I know what the theory, what a theory of change is that would produce it? No, but I am spending all of my time and energy on things that I think will have a positive change in the world. Even if they're not enough, even if they're not direct enough, even if they're not gonna end or resolve all the issues I care about, which are many.I am putting all of my time and energy into things that I believe are efficacious. And presumably they think it's efficacious too. They think this is worth doing because they're doing it. And in a way I'm wrong about it because demonstrably people think that holding a sign in front of a capitol is gonna change the world.But, Vince: It does boost their agency when people protest that's, it's an exercise in agency. Tasshin: I do think there's a critical threshold where if enough people protest something, I can't have a change. Obviously that's happened Vince: Arab Spring. Tasshin: Exactly. So it's not, it's definitely not useless. But my point to you as an individual that I care about as my friend, is I think you're actually incredibly well positioned to have a cultural impact on this group that you already are connected to, and that there are more or less efficacious ways of doing that.Like this conversation is efficacious, right? We're having a real conversation between two people who respect each other. We're recording that so that other people can listen. I think that's actually likely to produce the change that you're desiring to some extent. Is it gonna it's hard to say.Vince: It's hard to say. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, I think you and I have talked about this in the past too. I have, some of the biggest changes I've been through have come through people challenging me even violently. And my whole upbringing, as you can hear, it's rooted in violence. Yes. So it's like the story of my family.Is one of resilience in the face of violence, Tasshin: Uhhuh. So this is the recurring thing we always argue about. Yeah. Or one of the several things. Vince: Yeah. It's an, it's like in a place where we rub, I think, but Yeah. But it's understandable. So I'm a little more Okay. Ruffling feathers and even having active conflict with people because I know that sometimes that's actually good.Sometimes if you're too nice, people won't hear you. If you have something powerfully challenging to say, it will just be like, oh yeah, that's nice. And I can just incorporate that into my worldview and feel good about knowing about it, but actually not really be doing anything significantly differently.So it's like a, I don't know, this is in the abstract, but. Tasshin: There's two things there. What there's one is, which is like, how nice are you? And I actually do honestly believe that you would be more efficacious at seeing the changes you want to see, at least in the local community if you were nicer.In addition to being kind. I do think you're kind, that's not an issue. But separately from that, like you, one of the things we talked about recently on the timeline was you're like, I've just been considering blocking people left and right. And I think that Oh, I have been blocking them lost.Exactly. Vince: I've lost half of my friend network in the last year. Tasshin and so that's where I am. So here let me push back a little bit. I lo yeah. I lo I love what you're saying, but I don't think it's my job to do that. I think it's your job to do that, to, to be the one that can be nice and change people's minds on this topic.Tasshin: Oh, that's true. It is my job. You're right. I Vince: agree with you. Yeah, because because I'm too close to it. It's too painful for me. Like people start saying stuff to me. It is like I'm hearing them deny the entire, like truth of my whole identity, my family identity. It's no, like this is true.I'm not, I'm gonna have argue with you like you are dehumanizing me and everyone that's Palestinian right now. Even by having an argument, having even framing this as a debate, is there a war going on? Who's responsible? Et cetera. So it's like what I find is I want to keep talking because I want, it's like the Buddha, he's, and I'm comparing myself to the Buddha here.I know he is gonna fly really well, there, there's an analogy here where he's I'm awake. Okay. Who can I, teach this to, very few are gonna understand it. Because it's subtle and hard to get grasp. My companions, the ones I was practicing with they seem like they'll get it.They have very little dust in their eyes. So I guess I see my role as really more like the people that have very little dust in their eyes. Maybe I can reach them. What's the difference Tasshin: in this case between someone who has dust in their eyes and someone who doesn't, from your perspective?Vince: Are they, yeah. Are they awake to their complicity in a gen, in an active livestream? Genocide? Are they aware? I pay Tasshin: my taxes and, Vince: That's part of it. That's part of it. Yeah. It's like paying taxes. You, like you said, you can't really stop paying your taxes.My uncle did that. Went to prison. I actively Tasshin: choose Vince: to pay Tasshin: my taxes. I think I could stop paying my taxes. Could, I'm saying every year I considered you can do that. Vince: I seriously Tasshin: consider it. Every you'll to prison. Every year. Vince: You'll, you will go to prison. Tasshin: Yeah, exactly. And I believe I can have more impact, positive impact on the world by paying my taxes and not, and I, every, it's a trade off.Literally every year I make this decision again. Vince: Yeah. So it's, to your point, it's not it's not like a black and white thing where it's like. I'm complicit in this very obvious way that I'm just choosing not to. It's, it, the complicity is deep and it's multidimensional, subtle and Tasshin: systemic and multi-generational.And even, Vince: and yeah, and for me it's I was hanging out with a couple of my cousins recently who are from Palestine. They immigrated here in the early nineties when Palestinians were kicked out of Kuwait. And so they were here, they had to rebuild their life. They lost everything. And I grew up with them.And they're doing advocacy work now in the us And when I hear them, talk about their experience, it's like they're being, they're dealing with shit that I'm not having to deal with. Like one of my cousins recently lost her job. She was a high level exec at a tech company in San Francisco.And she thinks it's likely that she lost it because of her advocacy work within the company. So when I guess when I see. I've lost the thread a bit here in terms of connecting back to what we were talking about. But where was I going with that? Tasshin: You were saying something as my job as being TPOT versus your job.Vince: So like when I talk to, say I'll talk to my great uncle my grandfather's brother who grew up in Palestine, and I'll hear the kinds of things that he'll share. And like I, I don't have those kind of views. Like he's extreme compared to me in terms of like how he's viewing things.This is my interpretation. There's a definitely antisemitic tendencies in, in the family system that I've seen explicit and I understand why. Like I have a lot of compassion. I don't actually let it stand. I challenge it when it arises. Even now. This is this uncle I'm talking about.It's his family and his daughter that's in the West Bank right now. He's considering going to visit her in a couple months. He might get shot and killed while he is there. It's quite possible. For me it's like I, I see I can listen to him and I can hear him talk about stuff and I can sort through the pain and the antisemitism to hear, some of the, what's genuine and sincere and I can be there for him.And then I feel like I can reach out and connect with some people and share my pain and what I'm going through and, offer challenges or whatever to some folks. Recently right after September October 7th someone from he lives in Israel. He is American. We have the same background lineage of a pasta tradition.He invited me on to, to have a dialogue about this about what was happening. And and then after our we split, and we're not able to have any conversations anymore. Because some of the things I saw him writing on X and so the perspectives that he seemed to be taking, and we got to a point where we pulled in a mutual mentor someone someone who's like a master mediator.And their basic feedback was like, sometimes you can't have a conversation. Sometimes it's just not possible. And I feel like that's where I'm getting largely, it's it's just not possible for me to have a conversation with a lot of people right now. Because of how 10 how sensitive this is. And so you say, when you say to or I hear if you were kind or if you were nicer, you'd be more efficacious, if I were able to be, I would. But I'm not. Tasshin: And the second part of what I was saying there is that when you block people, you are closing yourself off from the possibility of changing them.And from what I've just heard from, and I'm okay with that. Yeah, exactly. That makes a bit more sense to me now from what you've said. But Vince: I'm not gonna change a Zionist's mind, I don't think, someone who's like a, Christian or Jewish Zionist, I don't think I'm gonna change their mind by sharing something on like a micro blog.Tasshin: That, one of the really urgent questions for me here is what is a theory of change that produces genuine end to war violence, genocide? What actually resolves that? Actually because if I let me figure out how to put this. I am currently putting my time and energy.Into the things that I think I can do that will have the highest benefit from my current understanding and vantage point. I literally spend every day of my life waking to sleeping, doing the thing that I think is best based on my, admittedly flawed, limited perspective, my own weaknesses and blind spots.But I do that every day. Every day. And if I thought that I could lead to the end of war, genocide, violence, evil in a scaled way I would work much harder to bring that about. I'd have to think about how it fits into all the things I'm doing and balance. But I really wanna know how someone like, I, I would hope for example, that the service guild at some point will have a peace department.Currently, we, as we have a love department, a curiosity department, an empowerment department. I would love for us to have a peace department. I want other departments, us to be able to have infrastructure for other focused crews. At some point it's the Peace Department should be bringing about peace.And I don't know how to do that. Even peace Pilgrim my hero, she spent 30 years working in the way that she knew how for peace. And I don't think she wasted her time far from it. But there is still not peace on earth after her doing that. Vince: Sure. Some of this reminds me, has echoes of the effect of al altruism movement.Yeah.Tasshin: I think they I feel how to put this, I have different aesthetic and ideological views with them on specific points, but I feel very sympathetic to their larger efforts and yeah, what do we actually do to actually have a real impact? I feel very I feel kinship with that, even if there's specific things I disagree with or don't vibe with.So yeah, that's noted. Vince: Yeah, I think if we were to zoom, like not to take the two global perspective of like, how do we stop all genocide, war, et cetera. And that's a good question, but to me it's like, how do we stop this specific one that's happening right now, Tasshin: Uhhuh.Like how, Vince: Because that's sure. So how do we stop it? Obviously you Tasshin: don't have to know, but what a different way of putting the question that's maybe a bit more reasonable. I think it, it's very Vince: noble. Like you, you stop Israel from killing Palestinians. That's how it, okay. And what leads Tasshin: to that causally?Vince: Probably having a Palestinian state would be a necessary part of that. And what leads to that? The US has to stop vetoing it in the us. And what leads Tasshin: to that? Vince: They change in US leadership and change. And what leads to that? People putting pressure and voting and grassroots organ organizing.Ah, that's Tasshin: where you lose me. Vince: Yeah. Look at look at Zohran Mamdani. He's a good example of how that's actually happening right now in the, he's the only candidate, like major candidate that I've seen recent in recent times. Progressive candidate who's actually vocal about this, who isn't on the, both parties, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both supported the ongoing genocide. They're equally complicit. Tasshin: So basically we should or not leaders that are clear this in your perspective. What I'm hearing is Yeah. Yeah. The salient thing is elect leaders who are clear that this is a genocide who will end us complicitness and help and who are focused on economic populism.Vince: because our country really need, we need that right now. Tasshin: You lost me there. How does, what does that have to do with ending this genocide? Vince: You could it's both and so it's if you look at, this is a good example, I think part of, I grew up in the as probably you did too, in the.In the fading years of the political consensus between the neo-conservative and neoliberal parties, Tasshin: Uhhuh, Vince: who largely agreed on most everything, Tasshin: Uhhuh. Vince: They were both totally fine with military expansion. They were both fine with free trade agreements that hollowed out rural America and towns like in North Carolina, textile towns.Yeah. To save 5 cents, on a shirt made in Vietnam, we're totally fine letting an entire communities die, In towns we haul it out. So it's that kind of mentality, it's like what I grew up in and, it's like the arguments were mostly like stylistic. It's which style of the same ideology do you prefer?Tasshin: Coke versus Pepsi Vince: Ex. Exactly right. Coke and Pepsi. And Obama. He was, you fit right into this. He was not a departure, he was a rhetorician. Tasshin: Yeah,Vince: he sounded like a departure, but wasn't so true. Bestie. Yep. I think when I look at it in those terms, I say, okay what is so interesting about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement?It is actually presenting an alternative to the previous consensus. And I, the way I see American politics right now, and I could be wrong, is there's an emerging, there's a new emerging polarity. That alt left and right, quote unquote yeah, gosh, ne neo fascism and neo progressivism.And there's, and are you saying Tasshin: neo progressivism is the answer here? Vince: I'm, no, I'm not actually Uhhuh. Okay. Although, because some neo fascists don't want us to be sending money to Israel, Tasshin: Uhhuh, Vince: Marjorie Taylor Greene there, there's been a number that recently people who are like, why are we sending billions of dollars to Israel every year when we can't even take care of our own people?Yeah. And so I agree with that Uhhuh, what I actually think is emerging and has to emerge as an alt middle. It's a new. Consensus. And that alt middle will almost certainly not wanna continue propping up an American em military empire. Both alt-right and alt left. That's something they agree on.They don't want to be constantly waging endless wars. They don't wanna be always sending all of our money into our military budget. And is Tasshin: that connected to the populism you're talking about? Vince: Yeah, it is. Okay. It's a it's a strand of populism that's interested in retracting the American Empire and not continuing to create so many problems abroad.And who recognizes that doing so hurts us at home, Uhhuh, and because these things are interconnected. I see. Tasshin: Okay. Thank you for explaining that. Can I recount what I heard just now? Your, I, our, a shared goal that we have is we would like this war, genocide, violence, evil to end. We'd like it to end.And the way that comes about is Israel stops doing what it's doing. And the way that comes about is Palestine is a state and the US stops vetoing certain things at the un. And the way that happens is there's political pressure on the US to show up in a different way. And you're saying that the way that happens is we elect politicians who are want that course of action and also care about this populism and the relationship of how we're spending our money at home.Yeah. And the way that we do that is get involved in local political movements that support candidates that have that perspective. Vince: I think that's one of the most direct ways that uhhuh, that we can as Americans affected this. I'll tell Tasshin: you right now, I, I need to do due diligence on learning more about this, but I will very seriously both take that into consideration for my own voting and then also in how I speak about voting to my friends and people I'm connected to.That's not much. But this is more. That's what I really care about. I wanna make sure that whatever actions I take, I am that I can see. It matters to me that I can see how there could be a causal chain where this actually results in the things that we want, if that makes sense.I don't know why that matters to me so much, but it does. Vince: Yeah. Okay. We haven't talked about Bodhi Safa hood yet. Yes. So maybe I could bring that in. Yeah. Tasshin: Thank God, please. Someone helped me. Yeah. Vince: I don't know if you, it's a Tasshin: struggle out here. Vince: I don't know if you've heard this quote from Ujima Roshi Japanese Zen teacher.He said a Bodhi Safa is an ordinary person who acts like a true adult. Tasshin: I had never heard that before, but I love it. And what does true adult mean to you? Vince: I think a true adult is someone who sees a problem and they respond to it. And. A true adult recognizes the complexity of the situation and acts anyway with that with incomplete information with whatever resources and ability that they have while acknowledging that they're limited.So that's a start. True adult cares about themselves and others. I could even, I could actually inhabit as a true adult. I both take care of my life at home and I care about the impacts that that the country and systems I'm embedded in are having in the world. That I'm causal in, that I have some causal influence over, even if it's minimal.Tasshin: You know what I'm reminded of Vince is video game levels and I feel like. It seems it seems cr crass to pick levels, but I feel like, I don't know, let's say a level eight Bodhi Safa I'm not level one anymore. I'm not even level five anymore, but I feel acutely, like I'm really only level eight and I think it's gonna there are 10 Vince: levels aren't there In this game?I, oh no. Bodhi the boomie, the boom. No.Tasshin: I know what you're talking about. But also that's not the measurement system I'm using. Okay. You're not, Vince: it's not a traditional boomy model. No. Tasshin: I'm thinking like, I never played it, but like World of Warcraft, I'm pretty sure 80 is like a threshold in World of Warcraft.It's I'm pretty sure you need like a level 60 or 70 Bodhi Safa to have global systemic change at the level that's needed for the thing we're talking about. And I'm like I know if I have a friend that has a mental health crisis, like I'm struggling to barely be able to support them in a meaningful way.Like I'm embarrassed by how. Incompetent. I am at even that helping one person that's having a mental health crisis. Like I can help a little bit, but like I know someone who's an extended network right now is having their partner's having a major schizophrenic episode and I'm like, here, I can send you a link that might help you.That's that's so pathetic. That is so disgustingly pathetic for actually having an impact in the world. It's humiliating to admit, but here we are because there's real suffering and you have to do whatever we can to help. And so I would like to it would be great if I ended this year as a level nine Bodhi, that would be awesome.And do I want to have global systemic positive change on a historic scale? Absolutely. I hope that every passing year I'm more and more capable of. Large scale, positive impact, and I'm just so acutely aware of how incompetent I am and how limited I'm really doing everything I can to have a positive impact at the scale that I can right now.And it's it's pathetic and humiliating in the context of this larger suffering. I'm fine with that. I'm not embarrassed to say that, but it is humbling, it's it's not nearly good enough. And I think the more acquainted you are with how much suffering there is in the universe, the more humbled you are by that, by one's own incompetence to, and then you do, that's the Bodhi SA of vows, anyway, is just to be like greed, hatred, and end without end like vow to end it. Like you just, you get up and do something anyway. Vince: Yeah. I've. There's a distinction that's commonly made in like a, I would call it like in the woke pluralistic cultural scene of like intention versus impact.And that's an important distinction when you're starting to get into questions of race and racialization, because people will say things with a good intentions that hurt other people because they're ignorant of the impact that has for someone else. And here I think it's I think of that too with what you're saying, where it's okay yeah, like I want to become a, be a more impactful Bodhi Safa.I want to have a more net positive impact in the world. And on the one hand yeah, I could say, like you're saying it, I feel humbled and maybe embarrassed by how ineffectual I am. And. I also feel humble about the fact that I don't know the impact that I'm having. I don't understand it. And I feel like this is really, you probably have had a similar experience putting media out into the worlds, like with Buddhist geeks when we launched that, the hundreds and hundreds of people that I heard from over the years who are like, that had such a powerful impact on my life.And I'm like wow, okay. I, that was definitely not what I was aiming for. I was just doing something I thought was cool at the time. Honestly. And so that wasn't even necessarily my intention, but that was the impact. And so I'm amazed, I am amazed at how effective people can be without even knowing it. It's like hard sometimes. Hard to know. It's hard to measure. And that's where I would say it's the challenge here with what you're saying is I want to see if I'm effect. You have to be able to measure the effectiveness to be able to know, and we can't fully measure, we can get better at measuring, like we can maybe get more sophisticated in seeing and understanding our impact both negative and positive.But it's really difficult without going into you really have to have an understanding of the whole to be able to see your individual impacts on the whole. And I don't know, where am I going with this? Just to say there's some kind of feedback loop here that I think is like what the Bodhi Safa is driven by.It's like constantly coming back to. A wise or compassionate intention. And then do trying your best to live from that place, even if you're, not effectual. And then doing your best to understand the impacts of your actions So that, you can, that can inform how you act the next time that you're trying to be, coming from this place of genuine wisdom and compassion. And there's some kind of sharpening of like skillful means that happens in this feedback loop. Tasshin: Yeah. Vince: And to me, it's like the Bodhi Safa is one who's engaged in the pro in that process rather than Yes. Then there are different levels then are depths or degrees of skillfulness.And probably in different domains too.Tasshin: Yeah, of course. Multiple axes. Vince: So I hear what you're saying and I think that's valid. Like it isn't up to any, I don't think it's up to individuals to solve the global challenges.Tasshin: No, but I'm also like, I'm aware that I think I am I was just humble, so now I can be a little arrogant.I think I'm uniquely well-suited to create systems that actually do have causal impact on the historic scale over time. It just takes a long time and it takes very careful thought and a lot of care and consideration and love and effort. And so I would like to build systems that have a net positive historic impact on the scale of humanization.And as far as I can tell I'm playing my cards that way, where like I would really hope that if we fast forwarded 30 or 40 years, we would be like, Hey. The Service Guild did really good stuff that was net positive on human society and our civilization and the planet. And of course there'll be fuckups along the way where we mess up and I make just dumb mistakes and whatever.But I would hope that it's net positive and that it has a genuinely historic obvious impact on the world that was positive. So that's part of why my care, that's why I would wanna have this conversation at all, is like, how can I build systems that actually do have that kind of impact on ending, yeah.Including ending violence of all kinds and this conflict, this genocide, this war, this evil in particular. Vince: Yeah. I think that's a great intention. I, there's like a, there's a quote in the Bava Gita that's coming to mind. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's some, something about acting without any thought of results or it's happens in that famous dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. Yeah, there's Tasshin: a difference in da I, I've been influenced a lot by DAAs strategy, and they talk a lot about the difference between means ends and conditions, consequences.And we're really trying to create the conditions for good consequences. So can I guarantee that we would have a particular result? Absolutely not, but absolutely not. But I think we can create the conditions for historic benevolent beneficent impact.Vince: It's interesting you're talking about a guild. Because to me it's I think of the Bodhi Safa as a more of like a. A relational phenomena. Tasshin: It's Vince: Team Bodhi Safa. Rather than a Bodhi Safa.And so it seems like a lot of the challenge here is around coordinating and connecting and aligning, collective alignment. And these are the things I think are very hard for people who've been trained to individuate and who are focused on their own agency. John Vey, the philosopher, he points out like when you take role, you are rolling yourself into that. You're losing a certain kind of agency by inhabiting a role, say role of father, role of teacher role of whatever you're limiting yourself in that role.And, but, and yet you have to play roles in cult in community Tasshin: to do anything. Yep. Vince: So I guess, yeah I don't know where to go from there. From here. Tasshin: I would summarize our conversation so far as follows. TPOT such as it is an emergent developmental p

On January 20, 2025, and within hours of returning to power, the Trump administration issued an executive order that the U.S. government would recognize only two genders, male and female, defined at birth. In contrast, in 2014, the Supreme Court of India ruled that transgender people have the right to self-identify as male, female, or a “third gender.” The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019 in India allows transgender people to have a self-declared gender identity and receive a certificate of identity. It is currently estimated that there are more than 3 million third-gender people living in India alone. Similar rulings and laws have been passed in neighboring Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.  What are the implications and impacts on the transgender people of the rest of Asia and the United States? At a time when the current U.S. administration has issued an executive order recognizing only two genders, we will discuss this and other issues with Amrita Sarkar, one of the leading transgender activists of India, and Zia Jaffrey, author of The Invisibles: A Tale of Eunuchs of India.  Amrita Sarkar is a leading activist who has been working for the transgender community and their wellbeing for more than two decades and has been involved in numerous capacity-building initiatives for the same communities at the national and international level. She is the one of the founding members and the Secretary of IRGT – A Global Network of Trans Women and HIV. She also has made two films on transgender issues. Amrita is a trained counsellor and had completed her post-graduation in social welfare.  Zia Jaffrey is the author of The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India (Pantheon/Vintage). She has written cover stories, features, and book reviews for many publications, including Vogue, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Elle, where she ran the front of the magazine, wrote literary pieces, and cultivated new voices. Her work has been anthologized in several tomes, most recently, in PEN America's India at 75, and Toni Morrison: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. She has covered South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, AIDS, and the Israel/Palestine conflict, and is currently writing a book about Palestinian-Americans. Organizer: Kalidip Choudhury   An Asia-Pacific Affairs Member-led Forum program. Forums and chapters at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the show: A Taxpayer speak-out against the continuing US-supported Israeli genocide in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. You'll hear the voices of Palestinian Americans and their supporters at Tax-Payers Against Genocide. The group is suing US members of Congress– democrats and republicans– for funding the ongoing and highly illegal slaughter, including the continuing shipments of 2000 pound bunker buster bombs The post A Speak Out Against The US Supported Genocide in Gaza appeared first on KPFA.

This week with Ed the Sock and Liana Kerzner: the BS behind Conservatives who claim their countries "can't afford" social programs but can afford tax cuts for the super-rich; the love affair between rich Republicans and poor, uneducated voters; it's time for the Loud Left to STFU; how to beat a bully - and it's not with Pierre Poilievre; why pro-Palestinian Americans still think Kamala Harris would have been worse than Trump and more. 

This week with Ed the Sock and Liana Kerzner: the BS behind Conservatives who claim their countries "can't afford" social programs but can afford tax cuts for the super-rich; the love affair between rich Republicans and poor, uneducated voters; it's time for the Loud Left to STFU; how to beat a bully - and it's not with Pierre Poilievre; why pro-Palestinian Americans still think Kamala Harris would have been worse than Trump and more.

On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians started returning to northern Gaza after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement.  The ceasefire is currently in its first stage; 33 hostages will be returned to Israel and 2,000 Palestinian prisoners will be released. Despite initial celebrations, many are nervous about whether this ceasefire will hold, and what Gaza's future will look like.  Today, we hear reactions to the ceasefire from three Palestinians in northern California who have family in Gaza. This episode was produced by Jessica Kariisa, Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and Mel Velasquez. It was edited by Alan Montecillo and hosted by Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Links: Tentative Relief and Fear: 4 Bay Area Palestinian Americans React to the Gaza Ceasefire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Negotiators for Israel and Hamas announced plans for a six-week ceasefire that would stop the fighting in Gaza, return 33 hostages to Israel and release around 1,000 Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons. However, its future remains uncertain. Reset checks in with Palestinian Americans and Jewish leaders emergency physician Dr. Thaer Ahmad, journalist Deanna Othman, Rabbi Steven Philp of Mishkan and Rabbi Michael Schwab of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.

Local Jewish and Palestinian-Americans respond to a potential ceasefire reached between Israel and Hamas. Also, a feline behavior scientist's new book, “Play with your Cat!” Finally, jazz-hip hop fusion band Lab Rats hosts wildfire benefit shows. Israel-Hamas Ceasefire

This week Lara and Michael cover the new lawsuit brought by Palestinian-Americans and DAWN against the U.S. State Department under the Administrative Procedure Act seeking to oblige the U.S. government to comply with the Leahy law and cease military assistance to Israel which is involved in grave violations of human rights through the conduct of its occupation forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Michael comments on Israel's occupation of hundreds of square kilometers of Syrian land in the aftermath of the vacuum created by the fall of Bashar Al-Assad and Lara characterizes this as an act of aggression under international law which has hardly been described as such by mainstream corporate media. Lara refers to the latest reports from international organizations characterizing Israel's conduct as genocide including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Lara mentions an Israeli massacre of seven children from the same family in the Northern Part of Gaza and the frustration that accompanies the lack of policy change in the face of the most horrific admissions by Israeli soldiers of their crimes reported by the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. 

Biden's Cognitive Decline Should Be the LIE OF THE YEAR; Media Is COMPLICIT In Cover-Up! Robby Soave (00:00) Americans DON'T BELIEVE Crime Is Down, But FBI Has SURPRISING NEWS (11:33) FBI's AGREEMENT With COVID Lab Leak Theory IGNORED By White House?! Report (19:59) Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene DEMAND Congress' 'Sexual Slush Fund' Be MADE TRANSPARENT (31:10) Biden SUED After ABANDONING Palestinian Americans In Gaza: Interview (38:44) Cringe: Don Lemon SMEARS H-1B Visa Opponents As Dumb Racists (48:04) Dungeons and Dragons SUFFERS Woke Takeover; Orcs NOW OFFENSIVE?! (57:01) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Day in Legal History: Georgia Bans LynchingOn December 20, 1893, Georgia enacted the nation's first anti-lynching law, making lynching a felony punishable by up to four years in prison. The move marked an early, if largely symbolic, legislative response to the epidemic of racial violence that gripped the United States during the late 19th century. While Georgia's statute was groundbreaking, it was neither robustly enforced nor particularly effective at curbing mob violence, particularly against Black Americans. The systemic racism entrenched in law enforcement and the judiciary often allowed perpetrators of lynchings to escape accountability despite the new law.Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a prominent journalist and anti-lynching activist, highlighted the shortcomings of Georgia's legislation in her 1899 pamphlet Lynch Law in Georgia. She chronicled specific cases of mob violence in the state, exposing how the justice system failed to protect victims or prosecute offenders effectively. Wells-Barnett's work underscored the inadequacy of anti-lynching laws that lacked mechanisms for federal oversight or impartial enforcement.The Georgia law represented a small step in acknowledging lynching as a legal and moral wrong, but its impact was limited by the pervasive culture of white supremacy. Over the following decades, activists like Wells-Barnett continued to advocate for stronger federal anti-lynching measures, culminating in legislation like the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, signed into law in 2022. The 1893 Georgia statute remains a pivotal, though imperfect, historical moment in the struggle for racial justice and the rule of law.Starbucks Workers United, the union representing baristas at over 500 of Starbucks' 10,000 U.S. stores, has announced a five-day strike starting Friday after a breakdown in final-stage bargaining sessions with the company. The strike will initially affect unionized stores in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle, with the union expecting the action to expand to hundreds of stores by Christmas Eve. The dispute centers on the company's failure to offer immediate pay raises for unionized baristas in its latest proposal. This marks the first strike since February, when both sides agreed to resume negotiations, and follows high-profile strikes like last year's Red Cup Day walkout. Starbucks claims the union prematurely ended the bargaining session and states it is ready to continue negotiations, highlighting agreements reached on over 30 worker-focused issues. The company also emphasized its average compensation package of $30 per hour for baristas working at least 20 hours weekly, while reaffirming its commitment to improving the worker experience.Starbucks Union to Strike Friday in LA, Chicago, Seattle (2)The U.S. government faces an impending shutdown as a Republican-backed funding proposal failed in the House, exposing deep divisions within the GOP. President-elect Donald Trump opposed a bipartisan funding deal, demanding debt ceiling changes, but his alternative plan failed to unify his party. Thirty-eight Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to reject the measure, highlighting challenges in advancing Trump's agenda despite Republican control of Congress and the presidency.House Speaker Mike Johnson, struggling to manage the crisis, vowed to propose a new solution but faced mounting criticism. Trump and ally Elon Musk condemned the bipartisan deal and pressured Republicans to hold firm, complicating efforts to pass even a stopgap measure. The shutdown threat could furlough federal workers and disrupt essential services during the holiday season.The discord underscored the GOP's internal fractures and Trump's polarizing influence as he pushes aggressive policy demands. While Trump framed the impasse as a fight against excessive government spending, Democrats criticized his demands as political maneuvers to advance tax cuts and other priorities. With the midnight deadline looming, no resolution was in sight, leaving federal agencies and workers bracing for a shutdown.Trump-Backed US Funding Plan's Failure Showcases GOP FissuresNine Palestinian Americans have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, accusing it of failing to evacuate them and their families from Gaza amid ongoing conflict and a severe humanitarian crisis. The plaintiffs allege discrimination by the State Department, claiming it neglected to offer the same evacuation efforts typically extended to Americans in other conflict zones, such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Sudan. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, names President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as defendants.The lawsuit, supported by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and attorney Maria Kari, argues the U.S. violated the plaintiffs' constitutional right to equal protection. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the litigation but emphasized that ensuring the safety of U.S. citizens is a priority and noted prior evacuation efforts from Gaza.The conflict, which escalated after Hamas' October 2023 attack on Israel, has led to over 45,000 deaths in Gaza and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Plaintiffs argue that the U.S. has failed to adequately address the safety of Palestinian Americans amid accusations of war crimes and genocide in the ongoing violence.Lawsuit alleges U.S. failed to evacuate Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza | ReutersThis week's closing theme is by Béla Bartók.Our closing theme for this week is String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 (Sz. 67) by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, a towering figure in 20th-century music. Born in 1881, Bartók was not only a celebrated composer but also a pioneering ethnomusicologist, deeply committed to collecting and incorporating the folk music traditions of Eastern Europe into his compositions. His work often fuses the rhythmic vitality and modal scales of these traditions with innovative harmonic language and formal structures, making him one of the most distinctive voices of his time.Composed between 1915 and 1917, Bartók's String Quartet No. 2 reflects both personal and historical turmoil. The piece emerged during World War I, a period of great upheaval, which undoubtedly shaped its emotional intensity. This three-movement work alternates between lyrical introspection and passionate turbulence, mirroring Bartók's exploration of the tension between Western classical forms and the folk influences he revered.The opening movement (Moderato) is contemplative and almost nostalgic, its long, flowing melodies underscored by a subtle tension. The second movement (Allegro molto capriccioso) bursts forth with ferocious energy, driven by dance-like rhythms and aggressive interplay between the instruments. Finally, the third movement (Lento) brings a return to introspection, its sparse and haunting textures evoking a sense of profound melancholy.Bartók's String Quartet No. 2 is both challenging and rewarding, offering a glimpse into the mind of a composer navigating a complex emotional and cultural landscape. Its raw expressiveness and structural ingenuity make it a fitting conclusion to our week, capturing both the struggles and the beauty of human creativity.Without further ado, Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 17 - enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Today on the Show: Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans file a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accusing him and the US state department of violating a law that prohibits the US from sending military aid to foreign security forces committing gross violations of human rights. Also a new group “Organized Power in Numbers” forms to fightback and take on Trump head on. And the State of California announces a new  precedent-setting regulation requiring advance notice of agricultural pesticide use The post Palestinian Americans File Lawsuit Against US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken appeared first on KPFA.

It's Hump Day! Sam speaks with Madi Oates, shift supervisor and bargaining delegate for Starbucks Workers United (SWU), based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Michelle Eisen, organizing member of SWU, to discuss Starbucks recent update to its parental leave policy. And then, Sam is joined by David Dayen, executive editor at The American Prospect and co-host of the Organized Money podcast, to discuss the prospects of the Democratic Party going into 2025 and beyond. First, Sam runs through updates on the GOP's continuing resolution, the Matt Gaetz ethics report, the Fed's rate cuts, Senate judicial confirmation, Lina Khan's FTC, Luigi Mangione, Palestinians' and Palestinian-Americans' suit against the State Department, Trump's legal woes, Amazon labor action, and the US' TikTok ban, also expanding on the GOP infighting around the continuing resolution and Mike Johnson's message to unelected billionaire bureaucrats Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Madi Oates and Michelle Eisen then join as they dive right into the major victory won by Starbucks Workers United in securing the same level of paid parental leave for Starbucks' workers as it provides for its executives, tackling the major exploitation and effort put on the company's pregnant workers and unpacking the various policy benefits that this negotiation has won. Stepping back, Eisen and Oates paint a picture of the major progress SWU has had in expanding its US presence, organizing some 5% of stores nationally, and the major progress they've made in securing rights and fair wages for their members, before looking forward to the future of this fight, as Starbucks' myriad open unfair labor practice cases and lack of a clear economic proposal come into their crosshairs. David Dayen then joins, first touching on the coalescence of a rudderless Biden Administration with a floundering Democratic Party that seems incapable of working as an opposition party, dissecting the overlap of these issues in the role the party's gerontocratic class putting their egos and ideological commitments over the need for the party to readapt to a younger electorate with vastly evolved concerns. Expanding on this, Dayen and Sam zero in on the role Nancy Pelosi has played in legitimizing this cling to power (even amid failure), with her recent obstruction of AOC's bid for Dem chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee serving as a key example of her refusal to back down from dictating a party for which she is no longer Minority Leader. Wrapping up, they assess the problem of Democrats' utter dearth of a plan for acting as an organized opposition to Trump, and whether internal dissent in the party will be able to push leadership back on track. And in the Fun Half: Sam unpacks Trump's plan to privatize the USPS, with some helpful confusion added by a member of the TimCast team, before tackling RFK Jr's ongoing pivot right on abortion. Sean Hannity is suddenly pro-Europe, Kowalski from Nebraska helps us understand why food in the US is unhealthier than in Europe (freedom… and deregulation), and the DOGE caucus sets their sites on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Hillary from Brooklyn helps us understand the NYPD's attempt to charge Luigi Mangione with terrorism, and John from San Antonio parses through the turnout and demographic numbers for the 2024 election, plus, your calls and IMs! Follow Michelle on Twitter here: https://x.com/michelleeisen Find out more about SWU here: https://sbworkersunited.org/ Follow David on Twitter here: https://x.com/ddayen Check out Organized Money here: https://www.organizedmoney.fm/ Check out all the work at the American Prospect here: https://prospect.org/ If you can donate to the GoFundMe in honor of the late Janie Ekere, a writing fellow at the American Prospect: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-fund-janie-ekeres-final-farewell Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Join Sam on the Nation Magazine Cruise! 7 days in December 2024!!: https://nationcruise.com/mr/ Check out StrikeAid here!; https://strikeaid.com/ Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 20% off your purchase! 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Since Hamas militants attacked Southern Israel on October 7, taking roughly 1200 lives, and capturing hundreds of hostages, the Israeli military has responded with overwhelming force in Gaza. Bombs and other military actions have killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of the homes, businesses, schools and mosques in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed – and millions have been displaced.And there is no end in sight to the bombardment. The U.S. State Department says Hamas has refused for weeks to engage in cease-fire talks. Previously, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly stalled a cease-fire and hostage deal by adding new conditions to negotiations.For the past 12 months, Palestinian Americans and the wider Muslim community in the Seattle area have been urging the U.S. to halt weapons transfers and funding to Israel. On Saturday, roughly 500 protesters gathered at Pier 62 on Seattle's waterfront to demand change.  Yesterday, we spoke with members of Seattle's Jewish community about how they're remembering the first anniversary of the October 7th attack on Israel. Today, we're speaking with members of Seattle's Palestinian and Muslim communities about the effects of the war in Gaza. Guests: Akram Baioumy, an Imam with MAPS (Muslim Association of Puget Sound)  Yaz Kader, a Palestinian American and an uncommitted delegate from Washington state at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. He's also the author of a new Op-Ed in Real Change News, called “Silencing the Palestinian voice at the local and national levels”. Relevant Links: Silencing the Palestinian voice at the local and national levels - Real Change See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many Palestinian Americans have been trying — for nearly a year — to evacuate family members out of Gaza. But evacuating loved ones is an opaque process with rapidly changing conditions at the borders.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Chicago's mainstream media biased against Mayor Johnson? Ben riffs. Then Ray Hanania riffs. Soon they're riffing about absolutely everything, including…Trump, swing voters, Palestinian -Americans, Michael Madigan, Ed Burke, Danny Solis, Gaza, why Ray may vote Green, why he may vote for Kamala and TIFs. Ray Hanania is a columnist, suburban government spokesman, and a stand-up comedian.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alex, Kenny and guest TIME Magazine's Yasmeen Serhan, discuss Keir Starmer's moRose Garden speech, whether the difficulties were predicted or are additional, whether the rhetoric is expectation management or augurs Austerity 2.0. Palestinian-American, Yasmeen Serhan then leads a hugely illuminating conversation on the US Election and why so many Arab-Americans remain Uncommitted to Kamala Harris. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “It was a dull speech. Starmer promised change… but he also promised that politics would take up less space in our lives. So, I guess, what he's endeavouring to do is bring about this change in as non-dramatic a way as possible.” “For the first time I question the balance of the top team. Now that they're in government, I look around that top team and I think: who is the risk-taker there? I see a lot of risk-averse people. But if the situation is as dire as they describe, they need someone who will take a few risks.” “Democrats and people who are supportive of Harris/Walz need to get it out of their heads that they can threaten voters by saying ‘my opponent is insane'. That is not a good get-out-the-vote strategy. You can't fit that on a bumper sticker.” “As a Palestinian-American, speaking to other Palestinian-Americans, this is such an emotional issue. You can't tell them they must vote for a ticket that may just continue what we've been seeing. You can't ask them to sign off on a policy that may kill their family members.” CALLS TO ACTION Yasmeen's writing can be found here. The Labour Conference list of exhibitors is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the polls, convicted felon Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are essentially tied. Jill Stein, Cornel West, and RFK, Jr. are third-party candidates, supported by far-right dark money groups aiming to "Ralph Nader" the election in Trump's favor. Meanwhile, mainstream media—especially the New York Times—continues to normalize MAGA fascism. Amidst growing election anxiety, it might be difficult to hear the pleas from the Uncommitted movement and their Democratic allies, who are advocating for a permanent ceasefire and hostage deal to end the war in Gaza.  To help us understand the Uncommitted movement and its significance in this election, this week's guest is Palestinian-American and Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman. She was on a short list of Palestinian-Americans who submitted a two-minute speech for the DNC, which was ultimately rejected, despite the invitation to Democratic leadership to collaborate on the text. Though not an Uncommitted delegate herself, Rep. Romman will explain how to bridge our differences and move forward with a unified front. Holding our elected officials accountable isn't just a civic duty—it's essential for enacting real change and enforcing laws effectively, especially those to hold war criminals like Netanyahu and Hamas accountable. Despite the challenges ahead, there's a glimmer of hope. This week's bonus show, exclusive to our Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller ($5/month) level and higher, delves into how Trump broke the law (yet again!) to come to power in the 2016 election by accepting an illegal campaign donation from Egypt's dictatorship. To access this and all bonus episodes, be sure to subscribe to the show! Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation—we couldn't make this show without you! * Join us at a Gaslit Nation event! Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller level and higher, join the conversation at our live-tapings! Meet these incredible authors! You can also drop your questions in the chat or send them ahead of time through Patreon! Subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit to join the fun! September 16 at 7:00 PM ET: In-person live taping with Andrea and Terrel Starr at the Ukrainian Institute of America in NYC. Celebrate the release of In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of Andrea's film Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland. Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters get in free – so message us on Patreon to be added to the guest list. Everyone else can RSVP here: https://ukrainianinstitute.org/event/books-at-the-institute-chalupa/ September 17 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with investigative journalist Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Her book has been highly praised by Bill Browder, the advocate behind the Magnitsky Act to combat Russian corruption.  September 18 at 4:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with the one and only Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan, author of A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It. September 24 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with David Pepper, author of Saving Democracy. Join us as David discusses his new art project based on Project 2025.   Show Notes:   WATCH: Kamala Harris addresses war in Gaza 2024 at Democratic National Convention | 2024 DNC Night 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oogNVOqnChc   Watch: Palestinian American Lawmaker Gives Speech the DNC Wouldn't Allow on Stage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8K5FIp-GN8   How to Stop Trump from Stealing the Election https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/7/30/how-to-stop-trump-from-stealing-the-electionnbsp   Fani Willis vs. Trump: The Nazis Strike Back https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/01/24/fani-willis-trump-nazis  

Pelosi makes no apologies at the DNC for her role in Biden's exit. Former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan delivered a speech on the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in which he slammed the Republican party. The DNC shuts out Palestinian Americans, and the UAW is not pleased with that. Cuomo rips corporate influence at conventions." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks

Bridgeview, Ill., just 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, is home to one of the largest concentrations of Palestinian Americans in the country. The town, nicknamed “Little Palestine,” traditionally votes Democratic. But now, ahead of the presidential election, residents are seriously reconsidering how they vote, because of President Joe Biden's approach to the war in Gaza.Today, host Martine Powers speaks with White House reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb about Little Palestine, the broader rift in the Democratic Party over Gaza, and whether Vice President Kamala Harris changes the calculation for Muslim and Arab American voters. Today's show was produced by Ariel Plotnick with help from Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Naftali Bendavid.Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

Join Counterpunch Radio contributor Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt, in conversation with activists and community organizers, Alakaʻi Kapānui and Fatima Abed, to discuss the Palestinian Solidarity movement in Hawai'i. From being the first “state” to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, to the #CancelRIMPAC campaign against the world's largest Navy exercises, Hawai'i organizers are drawing deeper connections between the military occupations of Hawai'i, Palestine, and the Israeli apartheid state. Decades of Native Hawaiian-led demilitarization efforts and current Palestinian and Jewish-led grassroots community are finding ways to collaborate towards genuine security. Alakaʻi Kapānui is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Jewish activist and community organizer. She is the poʻo (head) of Kona 4 Palestine and co-founder of Huliau o Nā Wahi Kapu both of which focus on the demilitarizations and deoccupations of Hawaiʻi and Palestine. She has been a Hawaiian Kingdom and sovereignty activist since 2018 through Hui Aloha ʻĀina and with a heavy focus on cultural reconnection and practice. She is a kiaʻi o Mauna a Wākea, Mākua, Kaloko Loko ʻIa, and Pōhakuloa. As the head of Kona 4 Palestine, she has been able to begin to reconnect to her Jewish heritage and since started working with other pro-Palestine organizations by hosting a series of teach-in events that directly address Palestine and global imperialism. And as a co- founder of Huliau o Nā Wahi Kapu, she has been able to focus on the ends of military leases and occupations such as Pōhakuloa Training Area, Mākua Valley, and the parallel military occupation of Palestine. Aloha ʻāina ʻoiaʻiʻo. Fatima Abed (she/they) is a Palestinian and Puerto Rican human rights and animal activist residing in Hawaiʻi. She is the founder of Rise for Palestine, a grassroots organization focused on lobbying for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a free Palestine. Spearheading the campaign to adopt a ceasefire resolution in Hawai‘i at the “state” level, Rise for Palestine hosted teach-ins and film screenings, led rallies, and mobilized nearly 26,000 emails and phone calls to elected officials from residents throughout the islands. Once resolutions were given hearings, Rise for Palestine led the effort to mobilize testimony, helping to secure more than 1,600 pages of written testimony and numerous, powerful verbal testimonies in support of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in the State House and Senate. These efforts led to Hawai‘i becoming the first “state” in the nation to adopt a resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire resolution for Gaza, with 72 of Hawai‘i's 76 elected legislators voting in support. Fatima has also led events to support Sulala Animal Rescue in Gaza, the only animal rescue still operating under fierce bombardment. You can follow Sulala and Saed on instagram: @Sulalaanimalrescue Fatima is currently traveling the continent, gathering the stories of Palestinian-Americans, and activists and students who are fighting for a free Palestine. She is headed towards the DNC as an elected “Uncommitted” delegate for the “state” of Hawai'i. Here she will uplift and echo all of the voices of the activists she encountered during this genocide in Gaza to US media and elected officials. Follow her journey and support here: https://gofund.me/8c8b0b1e And on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RiseforPalestine Follow Rise for Palestine on Instagram: rise_for_palestine If you know anyone interested in sharing their stories you can contact her at rise4palestine@gmail.com. More The post Alakaʻi Kapānui and Fatima Abed appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Ralph welcomes professor M. Steven Fish, political scientist and author of “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge” who argues that winning elections is about more than policy positions, it's about projecting strength and dominance. And Donald Trump plays that game better than his Democratic rivals. Plus, former Navy Petty Officer, Phil Tourney, who was aboard the USS Liberty when it was attacked and nearly sunk by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats during the Six Day War in 1967, tells us why 57 years later, he still fights for accountability.M. Steven Fish is a comparative political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in democracy and authoritarianism, religion and politics, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. He writes and comments extensively on international affairs and the rising challenges to democracy in the United States and around the world, and he has published commentary in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. His latest book is Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge.Dominance can be used for good or for ill. The Republicans have used it to advance injustice and corruption. And the Democrats need to—as they did in the 20th century, very often—use it in favor of justice.M. Steven FishWhat's holding them back? PAC money? Corruption of campaigns? Lack of character? Fear of skeletons in their own closet? What's holding them back if it's so obvious?Ralph Nader, on why Democrats aren't more dominantThe Republican Party historically has been the party of “no”, once the Civil War was over. When they were formed in 1854, they were the party of “no” against slavery. But after that, they're the party of “no” against labor unions, “no” against progressive taxation, “no” against Medicare, “no” against Social Security, “no” against environmental health regulation, “no” against consumer protection, “no” against raising the minimum wage, “no”, “no”, “no”. And the Democrats— in those examples at least—were “yes”, “yes”, “yes”, and they never bragged about it.Ralph NaderPhil Tourney served aboard the USS Liberty as a US Navy Petty Officer on June 8th 1967, when the Liberty was attacked by Israeli planes and torpedo boats. He is President of The USS Liberty Veterans Association, which was established to provide support for survivors of the attack. The efforts of the LVA are also focused on ensuring the US government finally conducts the public investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty.I can't explain the carnage that went on, but that ship— all of us came together. All the spies, all the ship's company we all came together…we saved that ship, to tell the truth—and we were ordered by Admiral Isaac Kidd never to say anything about it. He boarded our ship and told us to shut up or we'd end up in prison, fined, or worse— we all knew worse meant death. That's what they told us. To shut up. They took away our First Amendment rights and Congress has not done a darn thing in 57 years. The line is, “It was a case of mistaken identity, that's where they left it.Phil Tourney, President of the USS Liberty Veterans AssociationIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 5/28/241.  In Rafah, at least 35 people were killed Sunday night when Israel bombed a “tent camp housing displaced Palestinians in a designated safe zone,” per Al Jazeera. AP reports that at first, Israel's military claimed it had “carried out a precise airstrike on a Hamas compound,” and only after photographic and video evidence of the horror inflicted on civilians emerged did Prime Minister Netanyahu reverse this position and claim the strike was a “tragic mishap.” Israel's assault on Rafah continues despite the U.N. International Court of Justice ordering Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive” in the South Gaza city, per the BBC. 2. The Guardian is out with a disturbing report alleging “The former head of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency…threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation.” This expose details how Yossi Cohen, the former Israeli spy chief, threatened ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, reportedly telling her “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don't want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.” The paper also hinted at further forthcoming revelations, noting that they are working with +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call to expose “how multiple Israel intelligence agencies ran a covert ‘war' against the ICC for almost a decade.” This piece notes that “According to legal experts…efforts by the Mossad to threaten or put pressure on Bensouda could amount to offences against the administration of justice under article 70 of the Rome statute.”3. Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports through his newsletter that “The Biden administration has publicly admitted that it is working with tech companies to…suppress pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment,” under the guise of “limit[ing] Hamas's use of online platforms.” As Klippenstein explains, “Platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook have long banned terrorist organizations like Hamas. Now, however, the federal government is pressuring companies to ban ‘Hamas-linked' accounts and those of pro-Palestinian Americans.” Human Rights Watch raised the alarm about censorship of pro-Palestine content in a report from December 2023, which detailed “Meta's…‘systemic…censorship' of speech regarding the…war.”4. Over Memorial Day weekend, activists assembled in Detroit for the People's Conference for Palestine. In a surprise address, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke to the crowd, decrying the genocide in Gaza and asking "Where's your red line, President Biden?" the Detroit News reports. Tlaib went on to call Biden an "enabler," who "shields the murderous war criminal Netanyahu." Over 100,000 Michigan residents voted “uncommitted,” in the state's Democratic primary.5. Celebrated actor Guy Pearce was recently photographed by the French subsidiary of Vanity Fair during the Cannes film festival. When he posed for the photo, Pearce wore a Palestinian flag pin; yet when the photo was published, the pin had been photoshopped out entirely. The Middle East Eye, which covered this story, reached out to Vanity Fair asking for a comment on why they edited the image, but did not receive a response. Vanity Fair restored the original photo and apologized, claiming it was a mistake, but many are not buying it. As one social media commenter put it, “This is a reminder that the media... will do anything and everything to hide any form of solidarity.”6. The American Prospect's David Dayen reports “[The American Prospect] has learned that during [Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco's recent trip to California to participate in the 2024 RSA Cybersecurity Conference]…[she] had an off-the-record, no-readout briefing with several tech executives.” As Dayen notes, this meeting comes “at a time when the DOJ is suing both Google and Apple,” and as Monaco has spoken of making corporate criminal enforcement a higher priority at Justice. As there is no official record of this meeting it is impossible to know what was discussed, but the cloak-and-dagger nature of this rendezvous raises serious questions about DOJ's commitment to pursuing the lawsuits against the tech giants. We demand the Deputy Attorney General disclose the content of this meeting at once.7. The Reform Party, originally founded by Ross Perot, has announced that it “has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr.…for President of the United States.” The most significant effect of this nomination, as the party notes, is that it “will hand [Kennedy] our automatic ballot access in the State of Florida as well as our advantages as a qualified party.” According to Kennedy's campaign website, he is now eligible to be on the ballot in states totaling 229 electoral votes, though Axios has a lower tally. Kennedy now faces a race against the clock to qualify for the upcoming presidential debates, though even if he does qualify his participation is not guaranteed as both the Biden and Trump campaigns have agreed to sidestep the Commission on Presidential Debates.8. In more Third Party news, the Libertarian Party has chosen Chase Oliver as their 2024 presidential nominee, per POLITICO. Oliver gained national attention for his 2022 campaign for Senate in Georgia, with some claiming his candidacy forced the race to a runoff, ultimately resulting in the reelection of Democrat Raphael Warnock. During that race, Oliver describes himself as “armed and gay.” Both former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vied for the Libertarian Party nomination. Trump himself addressed the convention in person but was roundly booed. He was ultimately deemed ineligible, while Kennedy received only 19 votes. However, Larry Sharpe, a longtime Libertarian Party member and unsuccessful vice presidential candidate expressed alarm about Kennedy's potential impact on the party. Sharpe said “We're gonna lose ballot access in probably 22 states. We're not gonna make more than half a percent…RFK sucks the money out of the room and he gets the ‘I'm mad at the system votes' that we used to get because we're the only other guy on the ballot.”9. The Teamsters union is turning their presidential endorsement over to their members. Since May 19th, Teamsters locals have been holding polls to determine which candidate the national union will endorse. This is a marked departure from the traditional endorsement structure, which is typically decided in a top-down fashion by the national union leadership. However, this process could result in a Teamsters endorsement of Donald Trump – a real possibility based on the union's recent flirtation with Trump and the GOP more generally. We urge the union not to endorse Trump, who has an abominable track record on labor issues, clearly documented by the AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers of America.10. Finally, Bloomberg Labor reporter Josh Eidelson reports the United Autoworkers union is petitioning the National Labor Relations Board, to “discard the results of last week's Mercedes election in Alabama, [and] asking the agency to hold a new vote due to alleged misconduct by the company.” CBS 42 reports this alleged misconduct includes “poll[ing] workers about union support, suggest[ing] voting in the union would be futile, target[ing] union supporters with drug tests and [per UAW] “engag[ing] in conduct which deliberately sought to exacerbate racial feelings by irrelevant and inflammatory appeals to racial prejudice.'” In addition to these complaints, Mercedes is reportedly under investigation by the German government for anti-union activity during this campaign. In a statement, the UAW wrote “All these workers ever wanted was a fair shot at having a voice on the job and a say in their working conditions…Let's get a vote at Mercedes…where the company isn't allowed to fire people, isn't allowed to intimidate people, and isn't allowed to break the law and their own corporate code, and let the workers decide.”This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC), discusses why some Arab and Muslim-American organizations and individuals living in the San Francisco Bay Area boycotted the San Francisco City Hall Iftar, stating that Mayor London Breed and several city officials have made racist, harmful, and dangerous comments about Palestinians, Muslim and Arab-American communities during the ongoing Israeli Genocide in Gaza where more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, and while Israel is deliberately starving 2.2 million Palestinians by denying the entry of food and other essential supplies into Gaza.

Ramadan is a time for fasting, good deeds and charity for Muslims around the world and here in Chicago. But the holiday's usual celebrations are more somber due to the war in Gaza. Reset sat down with a group of local Palestinian Americans to discuss how the holy month feels this year. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.

The holy month of Ramadan begins this week. It is a holy month of worship for Muslims during which they worship, study the Quran, pray and fast from sunrise until sunset.It is a time of light, but Ramadan feels different this year, especially for Palestinian-Americans, says Eman Abdelhadi. She is a professor at the University of Chicago, whose research focuses on Muslim-Americans. Abdelhadi says "every moment of joy feels stolen and elicits a sense of guilt." The guilt she describes is connected to the mass death and suffering in Gaza. What does Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza mean for the holiest of Muslim holidays? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Tonight on NJ Spotlight News: Governor Murphy announces the state will use $95 million in settlement money from the opioid industry to expand recovery services and support people battling addiction; Palestinian-Americans in New Jersey whose loved ones are in Gaza make a desperate plea to elected officials to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas; Workers at Anheuser-Busch in Newark stage a "practice picket" outside the brewery as they negotiate a new contract with the company; One south Jersey lawmaker introduces a bill to suspend tolls for drivers who are forced to use the Atlantic City Expressway when Route 40 is flooded; Bergen County joins an ongoing lawsuit against New York's congestion pricing plan; NJ Spotlight News budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer discusses the latest revenue report, which showed tax collections were down in the past six months.

The debate over solar energy in Michigan may move to the ballot. It's been another remarkable week in national and state politics. Nationally:  A three-judge DC court of appeals panel unanimously shoots down Donald Trump's claim that a President has full immunity from crimes. The Supreme Court signals that it will not allow states to take Trump's name off the ballot. Nikki Haley comes in a distant second in Nevada, losing by 30 points to “none of the above.” The Republican caucuses in the House and Senate admit it: they are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Trump Organization. Former Fox News troublemaker Tucker Carlson joins Vladimir Putin's PR staff. Meanwhile, the national economy keeps strengthening … but Joe Biden still doesn't get credit from voters. VIDEO: “Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.” - President Biden In Michigan: The Wall Street Journal raises more than eyebrows with a story labeling Dearborn as “America's Jihad Capital”. It turns out Kristina Karamo isn't the only Republican Party chair who's been fired. Former Michigan GOP chair Ronna “Don't Call Me Romney” McDaniel is on her way out as national GOP chair. The Biden administration is in Michigan looking to make peace with angry Michigan Muslims and Palestinian-Americans. A landmark court case in the Oxford High School murders comes just days before new Michigan gun safety laws go into effect. And efforts are underway to undo one of the green energy laws that goes into effect next week. We're joined by Nick Dodge of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. =========================== This episode is sponsored in part by EPIC ▪ MRA,  a full service survey research firm with expertise in: • Public Opinion Surveys • Market Research Studies • Live Telephone Surveys • On-Line and Automated Surveys • Focus Group Research • Bond Proposals - Millage Campaigns • Political Campaigns & Consulting • Ballot Proposals - Issue Advocacy Research • Community - Media Relations • Issue - Image Management • Database Development & List Management ===========================

President Joe Biden is sending senior advisers to Michigan to meet with Arab-American and Muslim leaders over criticism that the White House is not doing enough to demand a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. One of the people invited to the meeting is University of Michigan neurosurgeon Dr. Yamaan Saadeh, who's been trying to get his family out of Gaza. "You know, there has to be a mechanism to allow and to help families of Palestinian-Americans to leave Gaza," Saadeh said. The Detroit Free Press reports Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad Turfe, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Mariam Bazzi, Dearborn Attorney Ali Dagher, and Arab-American news publisher Osama Siblani will attend the meeting. The White House has not officially announced the visit. Arab-Americans and Muslims want Biden to do more to stop Israel's counterattack, which has been ongoing since October, when Hamas attacked southern Israel. "Overall, we're grateful that President Biden is sending senior aides, you know, I think that's kind of the bare minimum, but it's still not enough." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After three months of carnage, the US continues to support Israel's genocide in Gaza. While the bombs rain down, tens of thousands are killed, more are seriously injured, and millions are displaced, protests have raged across the country and around the world, with demonstrators calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to US aid to Israel, and an end to Israel's occupation of Palestine. Building on the previous, record-breaking March on Washington for Palestine last November, dozens of organizations held a second march on Saturday, Jan. 13, with tens of thousands converging on Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington, DC (organizers estimate the number of people who attended over the course of the day is in the hundreds of thousands). Reporting on the ground once again, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez returns to DC to speak with demonstrators at the March on Washington for Gaza. This podcast also includes clips from Palestinian-Americans who spoke at the rally, courtesy of BreakThroughNews. Watch the full livestream of the rally. Speakers include: Mazin Badr; Xana; Yasmeen El-Agha; Colleta Macy; Iysha Macy; Adam Abosherieah; Dr. Alaa Hussein Ali; Faisal Saleh; Randa Muhtaseb; Willow Defreitas Kick; Abed Ajrami.Studio Production: Maximillian AlvarezPost-Production: Alina NehlichHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer:Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-podSign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/newsletter-podLike us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealnewsFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealnews

At the historic National March on Washington for Gaza, Palestinian Americans spoke out about the murder of family members, and about the terror and destruction of their homeland by Israel. And in our first episode of The F-Word for 2024, historian Gerald Horne discusses synergy between the settler colonial regimes of Israel and the United States. Plus headlines on the latest in Palestine, vigil on Capitol Hill for slain Gaza journalists, activists protest move of DC's pro sports teams to Virginia, renown South African photographer Peter Magubane dead at 91... Palestinian athletes mount campaign to have Israel banned from 2024 Summer Olympic Games. And More.   “On the Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation's Capital” gives a voice to the voiceless 99 percent at the heart of American empire. The award-winning, weekly hour, produced and hosted by Esther Iverem, covers social justice activism about local, national and international issues, with a special emphasis on militarization and war, the police state, the corporate state, environmental justice and the left edge of culture and media. The show is heard on two dozen stations across the United States, on podcast, and is archived on the world wide web at www.onthegroundshow.org. Please support us on Patreon or Paypal. 'ON THE GROUND' SHOW FOR JULY X, 2024 The show is made possible only by our volunteer energy, our resolve to keep the people's voices on the air, and by support from our listeners. In this new era of fake corporate news, we have to be and support our own media! Please click here or click on the Support-Donate tab on this website to subscribe for as little as $3 a month. We are so grateful for this small but growing amount of monthly crowdsource funding on Patreon. PATREON NOW HAS A ONE-TIME, ANNUAL DONATION FUNCTION! You can also give a one-time or recurring donation on PayPal. Thank you! Links: Breakthrough News Complete Coverage of National March on Washington for Gaza. Campaign to ban Israel from the 2024 Olympics in Paris. ANSWER Coalition

Join Ghassan Shamieh, a courageous immigration attorney fighting for justice on the frontlines, fueled by his Palestinian heritage and experiences at the International Criminal Court and his deep understanding of South Africa's apartheid system. His groundbreaking lawsuit against the US government shines a light on a shocking disparity: Israeli-Americans whisked away on chartered flights and cruise ships, while Palestinian-Americans were left behind. This episode explores themes of advocacy, inequality, immigration, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the pursuit of peace.Check out our visual reels on social media: www.linktr.ee/superhumanizerLink to video mentioned in episode: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0DmL0bOvDN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==Check out our reels on social media: www.linktr.ee/superhumanizer

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan Israel has killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th, 8,000 of them children. This “indiscriminate bombing,” as President Biden called it, has to stop now. Biden has the power to end it, with a simple Christmas phone call to Netanyahu.

Questions around Tammy Murphy's fitness for higher office … accusations from a former Governor Murphy campaign staffer on how the first lady addressed sexual assault allegations; Plus, Palestinian Americans here in New Jersey continue to grieve their losses in Gaza and push for a ceasefire; As, pro-Palestinian students claim they're receiving death threats and calls for expulsion from school for their peaceful support; And, a $100,000 settlement between Bridgewater Township and the parents of a Black teenager in a racially charged incident at a local mall that went viral.   

In an attack that shocked the world, three Palestinian American college students were shot and wounded while walking in Burlington on Nov. 25. The men were in Vermont visiting family for Thanksgiving.Police allege that 48-year old Jason Eaton stepped off his porch and shot the three men. The attack appears to have been unprovoked and the assailant said nothing before opening fire, the victims told police. Eaton has been charged with three counts of attempted second degree murder, and authorities are investigating whether to add a hate crime charge. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held as he awaits a bail hearing. The three victims, all age 20, are Hisham Awartani, a student at Brown University in Rhode Island; Kinnan Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania; and Tahseen Aliahmad, a student at Trinity College in Connecticut. They were classmates at the Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker high school in the West Bank. Two of the students are U.S. citizens and one is a legal resident of the U.S. They have been treated at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger called the attack “one of the most shocking and disturbing events in this city's history.”U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., cited the attack when he reversed himself on Tuesday and called for an indefinite cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War. “The impact of the conflict in the Middle East has reverberated across the world, and we've seen the effects here at home in the form of Islamophobia and antisemitism,” said Vermont's junior senator. “This cycle of fear, intimidation, and violence must end.”U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the attack in Burlington was part of “a sharp increase in the volume and frequency of threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities across our country since Oct. 7.” That was when Hamas launched a surprise attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, according to Israel's Foreign Ministry. Hamas' attack sparked a bombardment and ground invasion by Israel that has so far killed some 15,000 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The United Nations reports that two thirds of the victims are women and children. The Council on Islamic Relations reported an “unprecedented” 216% increase in complaints of Islamophobic or anti-Arab bias from October 7 to November 4 compared to the previous year. The Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents surged 316% in that same period. On this Vermont Conversation we speak about the attack on the three Palestinian American young men with Burlington resident Rich Price, the uncle of Hisham Awartani, who was shot in the spine. Doctors have told the family that Hisham may never be able to walk again. We are also joined by Wafic Faour, a Palestinian who is a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, and Fuad Al-Amoody, vice president of the Islamic Society of Vermont. “This hideous crime did not happen in a vacuum,” Hisham Awartani texted from the ICU.“I am but one casualty in this much wider conflict,” he wrote to a professor who read the statement at a vigil at Brown University this week, according to the Boston Globe. “Any attack like this is horrific, be it here or in Palestine. This is why when you send your wishes and light your candles for me today, your mind should not just be focused on me as an individual, but rather as a proud member of a people being oppressed.”Rich Price told The Vermont Conversation that his nephew and his friends who were attacked “represent the best and brightest of Palestine and what it means to be Palestinian.” Price said, "It's important that we stop dehumanizing Palestinians, that we create a place where you can both advocate for the rights of Palestinians, stand in solidarity with Palestinians, and not be viewed as antisemitic or anti-Israeli.” He said that is essential to achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.Fuad Al-Amoody added that while he was moved by the outpouring of support for the three Palestinian Americans in Vermont, it underscored a painful reality. “If this tragedy happened in Palestine (to) the same three people, I don't think we'll see the same compassion that we're seeing right now here.”“If you remove that ‘American' and just the ‘Palestinian' remains, I wish, I hope (that) the compassion, the solidarity is shown to the same people in Palestine,” Al-Amoody said. Wafic Faour said that after this tragedy, “I hope people will learn that Palestinians are no different. They are human.”“We should go after hate crimes if it is against Palestinians, or Muslims, or because of Islamophobia, or antisemitism or anti-black and anti-Brown. We have to teach our kids that racism shouldn't be part of our daily life here.”Price observed, "To be Palestinian in this world is difficult. You learn how to deal with trauma, you learn how to deal with tragedy, and I'm seeing in these boys resilience and strength that would really just be awe inspiring to anyone to witness." "They had big dreams to build a bright future. And my hope is that this has pushed pause on that and that they can resume building that bright future sometime soon."

A 'humanitarian pause' comes to Gaza, and it's late, toothless, but something? Comedian Gareth Reynolds joins to talk about the hostage exchange and the shooting of three young Palestinian-Americans in Vermont. Then Stop Cop City organizer Kamau Franklin joins to talk about the wildly racist RICO charges in Georgia against nonviolent demonstrators, and how both Republican and Democratic leaders are in lock step when it comes to police militarism. Finally, New Hampshire is miffed that the DNC tapped South Carolina to vote in presidential primaries first and goes full Karen by scheduling their vote beforehand anyway. We decide which state should really be voting first.Featuring:Kamau Franklin, Community Movement Builders & Stop Cop Cityhttps://communitymovementbuilders.org/Gareth Reynolds, comedianhttps://twitter.com/reynoldsgarethTHE BITCHUATION ROOM IS BACK AT SF SKETCHFEST on Sunday January 28th at 7pm with Miles Gray of The Daily Zeitgeist, Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report and Nato Green. Get tickets here: https://sched.co/1VUttThe Bitchuation Room Streams LIVE every TUESDAY and FRIDAY at 1/4pmEST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/franifio and Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/franifioSupport the show by becoming a Patron: www.patreon.com/bitchuationroom to get special perks and listen/watchback privileges of the Friday *BONUS BISH*Follow The Bitchuation Room on Twitter @BitchuationPodGet your TBR merch: www.bitchuationroom.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vermont Edition focuses on where we are in the investigation of the shooting of two Palestinian Americans and a Palestinian in Burlington, and what exactly a hate crime designation is.

A 'humanitarian pause' comes to Gaza, and it's late, toothless, but something? Comedian Gareth Reynolds joins to talk about the hostage exchange and the shooting of three young Palestinian-Americans in Vermont. Then Stop Cop City organizer Kamau Franklin joins to talk about the wildly racist RICO charges in Georgia against nonviolent demonstrators, and how both Republican and Democratic leaders are in lock step when it comes to police militarism. Finally, New Hampshire is miffed that the DNC tapped South Carolina to vote in presidential primaries first and goes full Karen by scheduling their vote beforehand anyway. We decide which state should really be voting first.Featuring:Kamau Franklin, Community Movement Builders & Stop Cop Cityhttps://communitymovementbuilders.org/Gareth Reynolds, comedianhttps://twitter.com/reynoldsgarethTHE BITCHUATION ROOM IS BACK AT SF SKETCHFEST on Sunday January 28th at 7pm with Miles Gray of The Daily Zeitgeist, Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report and Nato Green. Get tickets here: https://sched.co/1VUttThe Bitchuation Room Streams LIVE every TUESDAY and FRIDAY at 1/4pmEST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/franifio and Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/franifioSupport the show by becoming a Patron: www.patreon.com/bitchuationroom to get special perks and listen/watchback privileges of the Friday *BONUS BISH*Follow The Bitchuation Room on Twitter @BitchuationPodGet your TBR merch: www.bitchuationroom.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The victims' families and multiple civil rights organizations want law enforcement officials to bring hate crime charges against a man accused of shooting two Palestinian Americans and a Palestinian in Burlington this weekend. But recent history suggests obtaining a hate crime conviction in Vermont is difficult.

Monday briefing: Gaza hostage releases; Palestinian Americans shot in Vermont; COP28; Derek Chauvin; Booker Prize; and moreRead today's briefing.

On this Friday show, we present Part 2 of the Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Election Roundtable which was live-streamed on November 13, 2023 with special guests Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve, and Robert Cruickshank. In Part 2, the panel breaks down results for Seattle City Council District 7 and reflects on the implications of Seattle's elections on progressive priorities. For those disappointed in the results, encouragement is given to remain engaged after the election, re-evaluate strategy and messaging, and work on building relationships around issues everyone supports. The conversation then moves outside of Seattle to encouraging results from around the region - a more progressive and more diverse King County Council, success for initiatives addressing cost-of-living concerns in Tacoma and Bellingham, promising municipal election outcomes in Bothell, Spokane, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Redmond, as well as defeat of a right wing incumbent in the Snohomish County Sheriff race. Plus, a discussion of the exciting upcoming move to even-year elections for King County races and the need to address an unintended consequence this turnout-boosting change has on citizen initiatives! As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find guest panelists, Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB, Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank, and Andrew Villeneuve at https://www.nwprogressive.org. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Katie Wilson Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative last November.    Andrew Villeneuve Andrew Villeneuve is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer.   Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.   Resources Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Election Roundtable Livestream | November 13th, 2023   Transcript [00:00:00] Shannon Cheng: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Shannon Cheng, Producer for the show. You're listening to Part 2 of our 2023 Post-Election Roundtable, with guest panelists Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve and Robert Cruickshank, that was originally aired live on Monday, November 13th. Part 1 was our last episode – you can find it in your podcast feed or on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. You can also go to the site for full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show. Thanks for tuning in! [00:00:44] Crystal Fincher: We'll transition to District 7, which we saw the third incumbent running for Seattle City Council, who - this is a very, very close race still, but it looks like Andrew Lewis may have run out of runway to come back in this race. What was your view of this, Robert? [00:01:03] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I mean, Andrew Lewis won a close election in 2019 and he appears to have lost a close election here in 2023. I know that there is - we'll see the spending slide in a moment, but there's more spending certainly against him than his colleague Dan Strauss saw. I think that looking at the map - and there it is, I mean, it's almost 2:1. Similar to Davis, Andrew Lewis got nearly half a million dollars spent against him. If you look at the precinct map so far and compare it to 2019 - in 2019, Andrew Lewis held his own on Queen Anne, on the top of Queen Anne - that sort of island up in the sky of privilege and prosperity. Andrew did pretty well, won a bare majority in Queen Anne, just like he won in the district as a whole. If you look at the map from 2023, Queen Anne almost uniformly going to Bob Kettle. Now again, not all ballots are in, but I think you see - another thing that stood out to me is downtown. Downtown Seattle, Belltown - a lot of renters, also a lot of condo owners - that also seems to have gone to Bob Kettle. So I think that the narrative about public safety probably tripped up Andrew Lewis here. And I think Andrew Lewis - he voted against the drug ordinance in June when it first came up, but I think that was the right thing to do from a policy perspective. And then he wound up voting for it after working out a deal with the mayor's office to improve the ordinance. Voters may not have liked that, and certainly Bob Kettle ran pretty hard against that - putting out campaign messaging saying that Lewis was waffling, which is never a thing you wanna have said about you. I think that this is one where Strauss made the pivot that Lewis didn't really wanna make. And I think we, again, as progressives, gotta look at this and think - Lewis stood where we wanted him to stand, especially in that vote in June. And I think figuring out how to support candidates when they do things like that is going to be really important. This is another one obviously where turnout was different - a significant drop-off of turnout from 50% turnout in 2019 to 40% turnout in 2023. Again, you don't need much shift in turnout - especially if it comes among younger voters, renters, people living in dense communities - giving the victory, potentially to Lewis had they shown up. So this is where I feel like we can talk about Lewis - what Lewis should have done. I also look at the progressive movement as a whole and think - what did we all need to do differently in this election? I think finding ways to really fight for someone like Lewis, who's with us on most things, and certainly took up what I thought was a courageous vote in June - We've gotta reflect on that and think how we do better next time in these types of close races. [00:03:55] Crystal Fincher: What did you think, Andrew? [00:03:57] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I think District 7 is the most conservative of the seven districts. And so the deck was kind of stacked against Andrew Lewis to start out with. And then as Robert said, the public safety piece was kind of big here. How much did voters see and hear about why Andrew Lewis was taking the votes and the actions that he did? Because for those of us who follow politics closely, we are interested in what happens at council, we're interested in the votes, and we pay an inordinate amount of attention and consume a lot more information. We might've been able to follow what Andrew Lewis was saying a lot more easily about why he voted the way he did in June, and then what he did in the fall - the late summer and fall - that caused him to take a vote that many people might've thought was contradictory to the vote that he took in June. And so I'm not sure how many voters were able to follow what was happening there. And it might've looked like, to use the old political cliche, flip-flopping. And if that's the case, if that's how voters perceived that, that could have been a negative. And Bob Kettle certainly being able to capitalize on that - that could be a very powerful thing if people are already feeling a little unhappy, disenchanted. We saw at the beginning of this year - we did a citywide poll right before the election that was for the initiative, the social housing initiative - we had the special election, we did a poll before that. And pretty much everyone in the council got a negative job performance rating, except for Sara Nelson, who had a slightly positive one. And I looked at that and went - Hmm - 'cause we weren't just assessing, how do you feel about the council as an institution? 'Cause that's a separate question. It's possible to like your member of the institution and dislike the institution - we see that dynamic with Congress. But here, people actually - we had in the poll, we had people rate each councilmember and the ratings were not good for most of the incumbent councilmembers. Sara Nelson being the exception, as I mentioned. So people were already unhappy, and then you take this public safety dynamic and this confusing position-taking that is going on, I think for many voters, and it becomes something that leaves you feeling not confident about voting for the incumbent. And I know Andrew Lewis worked really hard. I know he did a lot of door knocking, that I think they did try to leave it all out there in the field. But when you put together the low turnout, the money that was spent against Andrew Lewis, you put in the fact that it's a very conservative district out of the seven to start with, then you have the recipe for a Bob Kettle victory. Bob Kettle had a lot working for him. I don't think he ran the strongest campaign we've ever seen in Seattle city elections history. I think he just was lucky. He was a beneficiary of circumstances. So I'm gonna miss Andrew Lewis on the council - One of our board members is on his staff and I just think he brought a lot to the council. And I hope he runs for something else or stays involved in politics because I appreciate his vision. [00:07:01] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I do appreciate his vision. And I think you're onto something with the confusing. It's confusing to be able to explain that, and I think that wasn't the only set of confusing votes that he took. There was a notable one last year, early this year - time doesn't mean much to me anymore - that he took there, and while that does happen and while there are certainly justifications, that's a hard thing to explain. And when you do, you better be clear and hope it cuts through to the voters. And I think that's a really hard thing to do for the general public, particularly when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars painting some of your votes in a different light. We saw in one of those ads with Bob Kettle - Sara Nelson blaming deaths on Andrew Lewis, which I think was disingenuous. But it just showed the amount of spending, the type of rhetoric that was in this race and that they really felt he was vulnerable on public safety and they certainly took advantage of that. I wanna shift a little bit and talk about what this means moving forward for the city of Seattle. What does this council mean for the city? I wanna start with Katie. What are we likely to see? [00:08:25] Katie Wilson: [baby crying] Can you come back to me? [00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: I sure can. We'll start with Robert. [00:08:30] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah. I share the baby's thoughts on this. It's not good, folks. I think what this election will have done is turn the 2020s into a lost decade for Seattle. I think we're going to spend the next four years until 2028, when a new council is inaugurated, playing defense. I think it's going to be very difficult to advance new policies, especially around housing, transportation, and climate. I think that especially for the next year or so, some of the most regressive forces in the city are going to feel emboldened. People who don't want new housing, people who want a transportation policy centered around cars and nothing else are gonna feel really like the wind is in their backs and they can really push harder than they might otherwise have pushed. I think there's going to be big fights over a comprehensive plan that's supposed to be approved next year. And this incoming council may not be as friendly to dense urban housing that we need to tackle the climate crisis and the affordability crisis as some of the other candidates would have been. We have to renew a transportation levy next year. Is that going to be focusing on a new sustainable transportation plan that focuses on transit, people who walk, people who bike, or is it gonna be tripling down on cars? Those are some of the things that come to mind. The fight over JumpStart and taxing corporations is going to be significant. It's quite possible that this election turns out to foretell a significant decline in the quality of life in Seattle - if we see budget cuts to major public services, to libraries, parks, and certainly human services, I'd worry a lot about that. It's also possible that we don't see an incoming council that's really focused on building enough housing, especially affordable housing, and transportation options to make it easier for people to live and work here - that we become even more polarized into a city of the very rich and the very poor. So I think we gotta be clear right here as progressives. The messaging we had on public safety, on homelessness wasn't working. Again, I don't think we should throw out our core values, but we've got a lot to learn from here. And the messaging that does work for us - housing, that people want people to fight for their rights as renters, wanna fight for affordability - we didn't do enough of that, I don't think. And finally, we need to figure out what pulls our people out to the polls. Do we need to start running ballot initiatives at the same time as mayoral elections, as city council elections in November? I think we should very seriously start considering that. But we're in for four years of playing a lot of defense and we're gonna lose a decade when we really can't afford to lose it to tackle affordability, racial justice, police reform and climate. [00:11:11] Crystal Fincher: What are your thoughts, Andrew? [00:11:13] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I like to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. And I think that there's an opportunity to persuade the council to be progressive. And I think that we can see a lot of great things happen with this council if people put in the work to create the relationships and to connect with folks - I'm someone who believes you create the future you wanna see. And I'm not a huge fan of predictions either because I think it's really hard to make them and they're so often wrong. So my advice to those who are concerned about the outcome of this election is it's time to dig in and to build the relationships with those new councilmembers and to talk to them now before they get sworn in and to create that connectivity - that connective tissue - that should exist and make sure that again, people have had a chance to hear what it is we're looking for. There's a lot of research, including NPI's research that shows people want the things that progressives in Seattle have been campaigning for. We want, for example, a more pedestrian-friendly city. We want a city that's not so car-centric. We want a city that has better transit. We want more housing. We want to make sure that as we're building the housing, we're not also losing our tree canopy because that is a critical tool in the fight against climate damage. So there's a lot that can be done, I think, by the council. And the mayor and the council need to hear from people now and not after they make a decision that people are unhappy with. It's not just the public testimony that matters, but it's also the work that's being done in between. I like to think of the holiday season as a time for catch up and preparing for what comes next. And my suggestion to those who are listening is - okay, yes, celebrate the holidays - whatever you celebrate, do it. Don't lose out on your holiday traditions. But while you're preparing your plan for Thanksgiving, send off a note - find the information for the people who won their council races and send them a note and tell them what you're looking forward to in the next council and the policies you're hoping that they'll champion - and see what happens. I think that we don't put enough value on what we do after the election. There needs to be activism that comes after the voting has stopped and the counting is done - and before people take office and start governing - that in-between time to me is a critical time to get opinions shared with people who are coming in. So that's what I would encourage folks to do. [00:13:44] Crystal Fincher: I want to strongly second that encouragement. I think that there is a lot of opportunity and whether you're happy with the results or not, I think it's really important to remain engaged after the election and to push for what you want whether it's a progressive or a moderate council. I also think that there is value in building relationships and there's value in starting a dialogue. Everything that we do is a result of coalitions and sometimes those coalitions don't look exactly like we expect them to. There are several issues that are very, very popular among Seattle residents that you look at what the council ran on and it may seem opposed - maybe that's the opportunity for some dialogue and some movement there. Looking at setting up alternative response - that may be a little - I think most people have something more comprehensive in mind than the trial that just started, getting that spun out in all neighborhoods in a more comprehensive way 24/7 certainly is really popular - one of the highest polling issues in Seattle, there's opportunity there. Progressive revenue polls really high in the city as we head into this time of a pretty significant deficit in the City's budget. There's opportunity for dialogue to say this is absolutely critically important to me, my neighborhood, my neighbors and to make sure that councilmembers understand the impact that Seattle programs, that different things in your community have on your life. This is really a time to get engaged - to let the councilmembers, incoming councilmembers, know it's important. And the existing councilmembers - who knows what they're liable to do. Now, some of them don't have to worry about what voters might think - that may have been part of their equation before. So there may be an opportunity for some bold action even before some of the existing ones end up going. So I just really do second that and point out that there are still some things that are really popular among residents in Seattle that I think they're looking to see these candidates deliver on. Katie, did you wanna add anything? [00:16:00] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I apologize if this is repetitive since I wasn't listening for a little bit, but yeah, I mean, the thing that is foremost in my mind is progressive revenue in the City budget. Knowing that the city is going into a situation where there's a more than $200 million a year shortfall starting in 2025. And I think there will continue to be efforts to basically repurpose the revenue from the JumpStart corporate tax to fill that gap. And so my kind of worst nightmare - well, maybe not worst nightmare, but one of the bad nightmares for what could happen with the new council aligned with the mayor and kind of pressured by the Chamber of Commerce and similar interests - is that they basically just gut JumpStart, take all of that money away from affordable housing, away from Green New Deal, away from equitable development. And basically it just becomes a general fund slush fund for the police budget. And I could totally see that happening. So that is, I think, something that will be a big issue next year, assuming that the economy doesn't just totally turn around and suddenly the shortfall evaporates. So yeah, I mean, and I think that to what Crystal just said - given that the councilmembers will have an opportunity in the coming weeks as they complete the budget process to vote on potential revenue proposals. I know Councilmember Sawant every year proposes some massive increase to JumpStart, like doubling it or something. So, you know, maybe on their way out, some of the outgoing councilmembers will just say, f--- it and we'll do that. But I'm sure the new council would reverse it right quick, but it would be fun anyway. [00:17:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, and one thing I do wanna add - another thing that is very popular and necessary in the city, and that seeing you with your baby there reminds us all of, is the importance of childcare and how critical it is that the council play an active role on making it more accessible and affordable to the residents of Seattle and how important that is to Seattle's economy. So look forward to seeing what plans and action they have there. I wanna switch gears a little bit. We have talked a lot about Seattle for all this time, but let's talk about some of the other races. Let's talk about the King County Council races. So the first one up was Jorge Barón versus Sarah Reyneveld. We also saw Teresa Mosqueda versus Sofia Aragon. I think with Jorge Barón, we saw him do one of the things that's relatively rare in Seattle politics - and that was lock down both The Stranger and The Seattle Times endorsement, which usually equates to a pretty comfortable victory and I think we saw that here. But we also saw a race with Teresa Mosqueda and Sofia Aragon that was a little closer than some people anticipated. Why do you think that was, Robert? [00:19:03] Robert Cruickshank: So I think that that district includes a fair amount of Burien. And I think Burien's politics this year were very polarized around - you might say The Seattle Times, Brandi Kruse narrative of, we gotta crackdown on visible homelessness in ways that are really just appalling and honestly dishonest. Sofia Aragon had been mayor of Burien and sort of leader in that effort. And so people who were invested in that narrative, whether they're in West Seattle or in Burien portions of the district, had a champion. That said, Teresa Mosqueda is an incredibly effective politician and legislator. I wanna give a shout out to Kamau, @Kamaumaumau on Twitter, who's got a Mosqueda theory of politics - talk about popular stuff, pick a few strategic fights and highlight them, get elected, pass a bunch of taxes to solve people's problems, and then talk about it. The fact that Mosqueda was a very effective and visibly effective leader on the Seattle City Council, I think, helped insulate her a little bit from some of the criticisms that that council got. Those criticisms never really seemed to stick to Teresa Mosqueda - while Lorena González was going down to defeat, and Ann Davison was being elected our city attorney, and Sara Nelson getting elected citywide seat in 2021 - Mosqueda won with 20-point victory citywide that same year. And so I think Mosqueda, you have to give your hat off, take your hat off to Mosqueda for running a smart campaign, being a smart politician, showing that she's engaged on the issues, but also championing some really popular things and making sure voters know about it. So I think there's a lot to learn from Teresa Mosqueda and how she was able to pull out this victory, which was a close one, obviously. They threw everything they had at her and she prevailed. And I think that's a big kudos to the type of campaign she ran. [00:21:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you think the electoral theory of Mosqueda holds up, Andrew? [00:21:07] Andrew Villeneuve: I think so. I mean, Teresa Mosqueda is one of the people who's impressed me the most in local politics the last few years. I've had her at one of the NPI events, speaking about issues that are important. She is someone who understands data and she's very quick to realize - okay, this is the policy that will help us in 20 years. And so I really appreciate that about her. She's very passionate about even-year elections, which I hope we'll say a couple more words about, 'cause I think that is a remedy for some of the things that we've been talking about this past hour. But when you look at her performance on the electoral map, Teresa Mosqueda doing well in places like Georgetown, performing well on Vashon. People sometimes forget that Vashon is a part of King County - it's a critical part of that district, the 8th District. So I see Sofia doing well in some parts of West Seattle. Robert mentioned Burien, another critical place. But that Vashon performance - that is an orange island on the general elections dashboard for Teresa Mosqueda. And looking at some of the precincts - I see 64% here, 73% over there. I mean, those kinds of margins matter. And I think that's how Teresa Mosqueda was able to build that majority. And of course, when you start - maybe it's a close race on Election Night. But when you start in a better position than your opponent, that late progressive ballots are just gonna lift you much higher. So the race - when that certification arrives, it's not gonna appear as close as it was on Election Night. So I do applaud Teresa Mosqueda for running a good campaign for the County Council. And I think, with both Jorge and Teresa coming in, the County Council is getting more diverse. I think it's gonna get more progressive. I think we're gonna see some exciting new policies coming out of the Council. This is what we need. We're at a critical time. King County is on some very steep fiscal shoals, and we need the Legislature to step in, and we need progressive tax revenue options for King County like yesterday. And I'm hopeful that Teresa and Jorge will go down and advocate for that in the Legislature. And knowing them, I believe they're well-positioned to do that and bring that fresh energy that King County needs to the legislative delegation and say - Look, folks, this can't be something we punt and just don't do this year and just leave it to next year, and then it's the same story next year. We've gotta change and break out of that cycle. [00:23:33] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And I know Mosqueda put in a ton of time on Vashon, which makes a difference. You have to show up. She's incredibly effective in what she does. She's a budget expert. And I'm excited to see what she does on the King County Council. There's an interesting dynamic that we don't see a lot of times. We saw Seattle move in a more moderate direction, but we saw the King County Council move in what looks to be a more progressive direction. What do you think accounts for that? I'll open it up to anyone. [00:24:05] Katie Wilson: Well, I'll just say one thing about the Mosqueda race. I mean, I don't know - I think, Crystal, you said it was pretty close. But in the end, I don't think it is that close - it's like a 10-point margin, so it's actually kind of a pretty big, major, major victory for Mosqueda. And I just looked up the PDC numbers - I don't think that Sofia Aragon ran that much of a campaign, so I think that's something to consider. Mosqueda, I think around $150,000 for Mosqueda's campaign, around $100,000 for Aragon. So it doesn't surprise me too much that she won by that much, even though so much of the district is outside of Seattle. But yeah, I mean, I think it's super interesting that the King County Council looks like arguably a place where a lot more interesting progressive stuff could happen in the next four years than the Seattle City Council. [00:24:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I'll interject really quick. The same thing that we talked about with engaging, building relationships, holding these electeds accountable to what they said they would do in the election and to what your neighborhoods need are just as important in cities like Burien with the results that we saw as they are in Seattle. What do you think we are going to see from the King County Council moving forward with the addition of Jorge Barón and Teresa Mosqueda? [00:25:20] Robert Cruickshank: I mean, I think that there's certainly an opportunity for some more progressive policy, certainly around housing. They're gonna have to solve, as Andrew mentioned, the revenue issue. And that becomes particularly important with King County Metro, which is making a comeback from certainly the pandemic lows, but with a still slightly smaller route network than it had going in. And so a little bit less ridership than it had going in. There's been recovery, I think, on a lot of routes that don't necessarily serve downtown Seattle - there's been recovery on those too. But the way people get around has shifted a little bit, and the system does need to catch up to that and then go ahead. Like Metro and transit are so essential to our ability to tackle the climate crisis. And King County is squarely in the middle of that. So one thing that I think Barón and Mosqueda are going to be confronted with immediately is a need to tackle that question. There's been talk that the county may put as much as a billion dollar ballot measure on the ballot in 2024 to tackle climate issues, potentially including transit. And I think that that's ambitious. That's, I think, correctly ambitious - we need to see what the actual details of the proposal look like. But that's something where Barón and Mosqueda are going to have to take a close look. And certainly they're going to have to advocate the Legislature because, as Andrew mentioned, the Legislature since the mid-2000s has really undermined the ability of local governments, including counties, to raise their own revenue and stay fiscally afloat. And that's catching up to King County real fast. And so they're going to need to lead on that. [00:26:56] Crystal Fincher: What are your thoughts, Andrew? [00:26:58] Andrew Villeneuve: I agree. I think we have to deal with the Metro issues, but we also have rural roads problems in King County that haven't been addressed. And the previous council of the last 20 years had kind of let these issues fester. My councilmember used to be Kathy Lambert and Kathy cared a lot about rural roads, or so she said, but then the rural roads just weren't getting funded. And I think, you know, here's part of the problem with being a Republican in today's environment - and this is setting aside a lot of the Trump cult stuff - but what we see from a lot of Republican elected officials is they're willing to spend money that's already there, but they want to spend it in ways that actually don't help anybody. So like, for example, just canceling certain taxes and sending the money back to taxpayers. Well, you can't fix the potholes over there on the road with your tax refund. So when rural residents, you know - and Skykomish comes to mind, that's a place that many people might think is not in King County, but it actually is. It's part of Kathy Lambert's old district, now represented by Sarah Perry, my councilmember. And, you know, you think about - okay, what's it going to take to repair some of these rural roads? And it's going to take money. And some of the roads are in terrible shape 'cause they haven't been maintained. And when you don't maintain your roads, you know, they fall apart. It's the same thing with bus service. Like if you're not investing in your bus service and, you know, you're not providing like really reliable, consistently good experience for people, people are going to stop riding. They're going to go back to their car if they have one, because they're, you know, those choice riders can choose not to take the bus. And we don't want choice riders to go back to driving their car because that makes traffic congestion a lot worse. So we need to both address the rural roads, we need to address Metro. There's other public services as well that people don't even know the county does that we need to have elevated. What I'm really excited about though is in the next few years, King County Elections, thanks to the work of the Northwest Progressive Institute and all of our partners and allies - we're moving county elections to even years. So that means that starting in 2026, we're going to elect Teresa Mosqueda and Councilmember Balducci and Councilmember Zahilay and of course, new Councilmember Barón - they're all going to be coming up in 2026. That's their next election - that's three years from now, not four years. And of course, that's also when Julie Wise and John Arthur Wilson's seats come up as well. And then in 2025, we elect the executive and five other council positions for three-year terms - that's the last odd-year election for those. And then those come up in a presidential year. And I just can't wait to see how much higher the turnout is and how many more people discover that county government is a thing - and it does things that are really important and meaningful to their lives. And I hope that they start to realize - okay, now I get to help pick these people - because they are even-year voters, and now they're going to have a say in how King County is run and who represents it. So I just think that that is a tremendously positive change that we're doing for King County. We also now need to do that for our cities. [00:29:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. And I hope that we see legislation at the state level. I know Representative Mia Gregerson had a bill there to bring even-year elections, which just increased turnout and participation, which is good for everyone. And would love to see it in all of our elections here. Other cities are doing it and we should also do it here in Washington State. I want to, with a little bit of time that we have left, move out a little bit - and I'll go to Katie to start out with. Looking wider in the region, wider across the state - thinking Tacoma, Spokane, Bellingham - there was actually a lot to be excited about and a lot of progressive victories. What did you see around the state that you found encouraging or exciting? [00:30:44] Katie Wilson: Well, the Spokane mayor race, obviously the outcome was encouraging. But the thing that I've paid the closest attention to and that I think is just very, very heartening is the result of a few initiatives on issues. So down in Tacoma, there was a very ambitious renter protections initiative, which will bring Tacoma's renter protections up to, and in some cases beyond, what we have here in Seattle. And that initiative was outspent massively. I think it was like three to one and the opposition - very, very well funded by real estate and landlord interests - with TV ads, mailers, just like everything. They just went balls to the walls on that. And the initiative is winning. And I think that's just like - really, really speaks to the way that the rent increases of the last few years have shifted public opinion and to just the popularity of renter protections. This is something that the Transit Riders Union and lots of other organizations in King County have been working a lot on over the last few years here. And the other couple initiatives were up in Bellingham. There's a renter protections initiative up there that would also do basically landlord-paid relocation assistance for rent increases greater than 8% and more, requirements for more notice of rent increases. And then also a minimum wage initiative that will raise Bellingham's minimum wage to $2 above the state minimum wage. And those both passed by large margins - I believe somewhere around 60% or even more. And I don't think those face any opposition. So that again, just gives you the sense of this kind of like native support for kind of cost of living kind of issues. So that's super heartening. And then one thing I wanted to point out, which is - and I think that also, we're gonna see next February - it looks like we're gonna have in Renton, the Raise the Wage Renton will be on the ballot for people to vote on. So hopefully that also passes with flying colors, although obviously February election is a little bit more challenging. And the one thing I wanted to say in connection to what Andrew brought up about even-year elections, just 'cause it's been on my mind - at least for Seattle and King County, this isn't, it's not the same for code cities, but for Seattle and King County, one unintended consequence of moving to even-year elections will be that it will become harder to run citizens' initiatives because the number of signatures that you need to gather depends on the number of votes cast in the last election for mayor or county executive. And so if we're switching to even years, many more people are voting, which is great. Suddenly you're gonna need to gather a lot more signatures in Seattle or countywide in order to run an initiative. So I hope that alongside those changes, we can try to push for lowering the signature threshold for ballot initiatives in those jurisdictions. Yeah, I'll stop there. [00:33:46] Crystal Fincher: I think that's an excellent point. I will also throw in as we're talking about elections and when they are being so important, we have a King Conservation District election coming up in January, I believe. It would be great to get that onto a regular ballot - that's going to take some legislative action. That would be great to push for, but in the meantime, make sure that you engage in that election, which will be coming up also. Robert, what did you see that excited you throughout this? [00:34:16] Robert Cruickshank: You know, I think that we saw on the Eastside of Lake Washington, a lot of victories for more progressive candidates. In Bellevue, we certainly saw that. Big shout out to Bothell - Bothell elected a bunch of urbanists. They, Mason Thompson, who's the mayor of Bothell, won his election four years ago by five votes. He got 60% this year. So did the other folks running with him - Amanda Dodd and Carston Curd got around 60%. This is Bothell, which is a great city, and I think it's going to become even better, you know, now that they've got some really urbanist folks there. They also have one of the only Palestinian Americans on their city council. So Bothell, you look at - there's some good folks in Redmond. There's definitely some good folks in, I mentioned, bellevue. Tacoma - not only did Tacoma for all pass, but Jamika Scott won, Olgy Diaz is leading. So those are really great, great signs out there. And I think what that shows is that there are lessons that Seattle can learn from other parts of the region. There are also differences. Those races don't have sort of the obsessive Seattle Times, Brandi Kruse eye on them, which changes things. And those races in those more suburban communities also didn't have the avalanche of corporate money, although certainly the Tacoma for All initiative did. But I still think there may be things we can learn about how to turn out voters and how to win some persuadable voters from those. But overall, that's really positive signs to take from around the state, even as we who are in Seattle - we'll gnash our teeth a little bit about how some of these races turned out. [00:35:53] Crystal Fincher: And I'll give you the closing word, Andrew. [00:35:55] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you. It has been a pleasure to share this evening with all of you. I think this has been a great discussion. I want to encourage you to look at all the different election results from the different cities and other jurisdictions, because it is - in a local election cycle, you have this amazing patchwork quilt of elections. And some jurisdictions are dealing with issues that are specific to those jurisdictions, and that really causes their elections to go in a certain direction. But others, you know, don't have those. And what we saw this year in places like Spokane was a really progressive result. Not only did Lisa Brown win a convincing victory, and I hope folks will look at the amount of money that was spent against Lisa Brown - it was enormous. You know, we're talking about the Tacoma tenant rights initiative, which is a huge victory - kudos to those folks. But Lisa Brown also overcame an avalanche of money and of opposition money. And that was a really big deal that she was able to do that. And then of course, for Spokane City Council President, we have a woman of color winning that race. The council in Spokane is gonna stay progressive. You know, that is a really encouraging sign. There's been 12 years of Republican rule in Spokane, and that's coming to an end. And Lisa Brown is gonna be in a position to do some great things for Spokane, and people in Seattle should track what's happening over there. Spokane has fortunately a fairly vibrant media ecosystem - I've been reading all of the reports that their TV stations have been doing for this election. And it's just interesting to see how they covered the mayor's race over there. There were a lot of forums and debates and articles and the controversy over, you know, the Matt Shea appearance that Nadine Woodward, Lisa Brown's opponent had - that was very well covered. People definitely heard about that. So that gives me some confidence. You know, when we're looking at news deserts - and my hometown of Redmond is one - you know, there's not enough information for voters. And Spokane is big enough that it has that media ecosystem that really helps. For me, the most important race this year is the defeat of Adam Fortney. He is the former, soon-to-be former, Snohomish County Sheriff. And he was one of the most right-wing sheriffs this state has ever seen. He had Mark Lamb up here for a fundraiser recently - Mark Lamb is that really scary guy in Arizona who's also a sheriff, and he has some really horrible views that are extremely extreme. I mean, we're talking like more extreme, I think, than people in Washington have ever seen in a candidate around here, perhaps, with the exception maybe of folks like Matt Shea. But this was a guy who really speaks for a fringe, and he came here and he made, you know, merry with Adam Fortney. And that sort of speaks to who Adam Fortney is. He was becoming a favorite of the Washington State Republican Party - he was appearing at like every event they had, talking about rolling back police reform laws. He had done some really terrible things as sheriff, like taking the measuring devices out of police cars that were tracking police officers' driving. He rehired deputies who've been fired by his predecessor for misconduct. He lost the accreditation that had been so hard won under his predecessor. So he was really awful. And Susanna Johnson, who is his opponent, launched a campaign a year ago and just spent a whole year working, working, working, canvassing, canvassing, canvassing, doorbelling, doorbelling, doorbelling. And we did research in this race. And what we found is that, you know, if people knew about Fortney's bad record, they'd vote for Susanna Johnson. And that's what we saw in the election. So my hat is off to all the Stohomish County progressives who worked so hard to get that big victory. Congratulations to you - I think you set the tone for this election. [00:39:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And congratulations to all of the campaign staff that worked. It is a hard and often thankless job. And we appreciate that you were willing to put yourselves out there and support your candidates. And with that, the roundtable comes to a close. I wanna thank our panelists, Katie Wilson, Andrew Villeneuve, and Robert Cruickshank for their insight and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thanks so much for tuning in. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks Facebook page, YouTube channel, or on Twitter where we're @HacksWonks. Special thanks to essential member of the Hacks & Wonks team and coordinator for this evening, Dr. Shannon Cheng. And if you have not listened to the show that she guest hosted about the Seattle budget, you need to. If you missed voting in the election or know someone who did, make sure to register to vote, update your registration, or find information on the next election at MyVote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you've been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release, even if you are still under community supervision. Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our midweek shows and our Friday week-in-review shows, or at officialhacksandwonks.com. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher. See you next time.

Tonight on NJ Spotlight News: Business groups and some lawmakers push back against Senate President Nick Scutari's proposal to extend the corporate business tax surcharge to fund NJ Transit; GOP Senate candidate and Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner talks with Briana Vannozzi about her run to unseat embattled Senator Bob Menendez; NJ Spotlight News senior writer Colleen O'Dea discusses the role nepotism has played in the history of New Jersey politics; Palestinian-Americans in New Jersey call out the state's congressional delegation for what they say are callous statements about the Israel-Hamas war; Bergen New Bridge Medical Center opens an evidence-based treatment center to treat and support those with substance use disorder; Leaders in Camden announce the final stage of the cleanup of the dangerous large pile of debris, dirt and waste near Bergen Square; The DEP solidifies new regulations to require all new car sales be electric by 2035.

Since Oct. 7, Palestinian and Jewish Americans have been navigating work while enduring anxiety and heartache as the Israel-Hamas War plays out. We’ll discuss the pressure to perform professionally as the conflict continues. And there’s some hopeful climate news out of Portugal: The country ran on 100% renewable energy for six days. Plus, we’re settling the debate on the least-liked Thanksgiving side dish in a round of Half Full/Half Empty. Here’s everything we talked about: “If Gaza were in your city, how much would be destroyed? | Israel-Palestine conflict News” from Al Jazeera “Palestinian Americans on working while grieving: ‘How many days off do you take when Gaza's bombed daily?'” from The Guardian “Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row” from Canary Media “Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI” from The Verge “As streaming services search for ad revenue, expect more political ads — and minimal regulation” from Marketplace “Meta allows Facebook and Instagram ads saying 2020 election was rigged” from The Guardian “Have dating apps lost their spark?” from Marketplace “Martha Stewart Says She’s Canceled Her Thanksgiving Dinner: ‘Turkeyed Out!'” from People “The 3 Most-Hated Thanksgiving Side Dishes In America” from Huffpost Got a question for the hosts? Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Since Oct. 7, Palestinian and Jewish Americans have been navigating work while enduring anxiety and heartache as the Israel-Hamas War plays out. We’ll discuss the pressure to perform professionally as the conflict continues. And there’s some hopeful climate news out of Portugal: The country ran on 100% renewable energy for six days. Plus, we’re settling the debate on the least-liked Thanksgiving side dish in a round of Half Full/Half Empty. Here’s everything we talked about: “If Gaza were in your city, how much would be destroyed? | Israel-Palestine conflict News” from Al Jazeera “Palestinian Americans on working while grieving: ‘How many days off do you take when Gaza's bombed daily?'” from The Guardian “Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row” from Canary Media “Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI” from The Verge “As streaming services search for ad revenue, expect more political ads — and minimal regulation” from Marketplace “Meta allows Facebook and Instagram ads saying 2020 election was rigged” from The Guardian “Have dating apps lost their spark?” from Marketplace “Martha Stewart Says She’s Canceled Her Thanksgiving Dinner: ‘Turkeyed Out!'” from People “The 3 Most-Hated Thanksgiving Side Dishes In America” from Huffpost Got a question for the hosts? Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Yesterday we heard from two Palestinian Americans on how violence in Gaza has shaped their life. Today, we're hearing from an Israeli peace activist and academic, who supports an immediate ceasefire, and a longer term solution through an international democratic process.  GUEST: Shimri Zameret, lecturer and researcher in International & Comparative Studies at the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan ___ Looking for more conversations from Stateside? Right this way. If you like what you hear on the pod, consider supporting our work. Music from Blue Dot Sessions and Audio NetworkSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Part 2 of "War No More," Michael Moore takes his podcast to the streets of Brooklyn, where thousands of Palestinian-Americans and their allies march across the Brooklyn Bridge in protest, calling for an end to the occupation and slaughter in Palestine. For more of Michael's work, subscribe to his Substack at MichaelMoore.com. ******************** Music in today's episode: “Peace Train” — Cat Stevens ******************** Episode Underwriters: This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www./betterhelp.com/RUMBLE to get 10% off your first month, and get on your way to being your best self.  Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/rumble. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! ******************** Write to Mike: mike@michaelmoore.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rumble-with-michael-moore/message

Dozens of Palestinian Americans cross Rafah border out of Gaza as fighting continues; Eric and Donald Trump Jr. testify in former president's New York civil fraud trial; Fellow GOP Senators criticize Tuberville's hold on military officer confirmations; and more on tonight's broadcast.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. 74 Americans among hundreds to cross Egypt Gaza border, 1200 remain trapped. Family of Palestinian Americans stuck in Gaza file suit against State Department. Former Memphis police officer charged in beating death of Tyre Nichols changes plea. Ride hailing apps settle New York lawsuit alleging stolen wages. Hate crimes on the rise in US since start of Israel Hamas war.  The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – November 2, 2023 Former Memphis police officer charged in beating death of Tyre Nichols changes plea. appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. 74 Americans among hundreds to cross Egypt Gaza border, 1200 remain trapped. Family of Palestinian Americans stuck in Gaza file suit against State Department. Former Memphis police officer charged in beating death of Tyre Nichols changes plea. Ride hailing apps settle New York lawsuit alleging stolen wages. Hate crimes on the rise in US since start of Israel Hamas war.  The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – November 2, 2023 Former Memphis police officer charged in beating death of Tyre Nichols changes plea. appeared first on KPFA.

New Monument in King Park, Attacks on Palestinian-Americans, Teacher Shortages in Illinois, and "Tis the Sneezin'" Awareness CampaignHosted by Peter DerrahStories by Joy Quezada, Emily Huffman, Ethan Oskroba, and Nick RoachoMusic by Boxout

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Israel steps up air and ground attacks in Gaza and cuts off the territory's communications in advance of an expected ground assault. The UN General Assembly today approved a nonbinding resolution which calls for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza. Maine officials lift shelter-in-place order as search for mass shooting suspect continues. Donald Trump is set to testify Nov. 6 in civil fraud trial; Daughter Ivanka also will testify. The family members of six Palestinian-Americans trapped in Gaza put out a plea today, asking for the US government to help their loved ones out of the war zone. Residents of affordable housing communities in San Jose caravanned from the Bay Area to Orange County today, to protest rent increases in front of the house of the CEO of the company that owns the properties. Smoke rises from explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled) The post Israel steps up air and ground attacks in Gaza and cuts off the territory's communications in advance of an expected ground assault – Friday, October 27, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Israel steps up air and ground attacks in Gaza and cuts off the territory's communications in advance of an expected ground assault. The UN General Assembly today approved a nonbinding resolution which calls for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza. Maine officials lift shelter-in-place order as search for mass shooting suspect continues. Donald Trump is set to testify Nov. 6 in civil fraud trial; Daughter Ivanka also will testify. The family members of six Palestinian-Americans trapped in Gaza put out a plea today, asking for the US government to help their loved ones out of the war zone. Residents of affordable housing communities in San Jose caravanned from the Bay Area to Orange County today, to protest rent increases in front of the house of the CEO of the company that owns the properties. Smoke rises from explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled) The post Israel steps up air and ground attacks in Gaza and cuts off the territory's communications in advance of an expected ground assault – Friday, October 27, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

The health ministry in Gaza reports at least 3,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since October 7. How are Palestinian Americans processing the ongoing conflict?

Civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court last week asking the U.S. government to facilitate evacuations of Palestinian Americans from the Gaza Strip. Plus, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud posted on X Sunday night that he's ramping up security and police patrol in area neighborhoods. Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.

It's been more than a week of war in Israel and Gaza, following Hamas attacks in southern Israel that left more than 1,300 Israelis dead. In response, Israeli air strikes in Gaza have killed more than 2,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The intense violence — and the prospect of more to come — is having a deep emotional impact on people who care about both Israelis and Palestinians.NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Aziza Hasan, executive director of NewGround: A Muslim Jewish Partnership for Change, and Alyson Freedman, a member of Sisterhood Salaam Shalom. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Israel pounds Gaza with airstrikes ahead of an expected ground invasion of the Palestinian territory. Jewish and Palestinian-Americans watch the developments in the Middle East nervously. House Republicans meet till late in the evening on the chamber's leadership vacuum, hoping to vote on a speaker as soon as tomorrow. Correspondent Peter King has the CBS World News Roundup for Tuesday, October 10, 2023:See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our five hundredth episode features long time labor organizer, Chris Townsend, who talks to Ralph about labor law reform, the Biden administration's attitude toward the labor movement, the UAW strike, the threat of automation, and much more. Plus, Ralph clarifies his position re the Washington Post article where he said he preferred “autocracy over fascism,” and we briefly discuss the chaos in the Republican caucus.Chris Townsend is a 44-year trade union worker and organizer. He is the retired Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union and was the International Union organizing and field director for the Amalgamated Transit Union.The workplace in the United States is a dictatorship. And if you're willing to challenge that dictatorship— create a rebellion against it—you might be able to build a union. If you look at the statistics, the number of elections— the number of those campaigns that actually get that far, which is only a small number, most of them are incinerated, liquidated, poison gassed, fired, terminated out of existence before you ever get that election— but if you get that election, the labor movement is winning.Chris TownsendWhen you have a labor leadership that is lazy, unimaginative, unimaginative, rarely challenged, has a very timid view, a very limited worldview, and they see their role more as administrator as opposed to leaders— this is the modern situation that we face. We don't have much of a leadership, sadly. We have an administrator group, and they have administered the decline.Chris TownsendLet's be very, very realistic here. I don't think there can be a labor union movement in the United States under present federal laws. There are just too many hurdles, too many delays, too many licenses for these corporations to bust up the situation… And I'm amazed that you can listen to what the AFL puts out, what labor union leaders put out—they almost never mention card checks, they never mention repealing Taft -Hartley. They don't force the Democrats— who get elected in no small part because of union support— to put these labor law reforms in place.Ralph NaderIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantis1. October 1st marked the first day of Fiscal Year 2024 in Washington DC, and with it, DC's Cashless Ban finally goes into effect, per Axios. Now, district residents will be able to report businesses that do not accept cash and/or those who post signage saying they will not accept cash. If any listeners out there are based in Washington and wish to report any such businesses, feel free to submit them to me at francesco.desantis@csrl.org. And remember, if you see something, say something.2. Democracy Now! reports that Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has gone on record saying she plans to restore Net Neutrality rules – which would “bar internet providers from blocking access or throttling customers' connections based on how much they pay or which websites they visit” – which were repealed under the Trump administration. This follows Democrats finally taking majority control of the commission. Common Cause remarked, “To allow a handful of monopoly-aspiring gate-keepers to control access to the internet is a direct threat to our democracy.”3. Brazilian President Lula has issued a statement in support of the United Auto Workers strike. Lula, who himself worked as a union organizer at the Brazilian automobile manufacturing facilities of auto giants like Ford, Volkwagon, and Toyota, made this statement after meeting with President Biden and seeing him take to the picketline in support of the striking workers. Lula added “It is crucial that presidents all around the world show concern for labor." More about Lula's history with automobile labor unions is available at the Multinational Monitor.4. Despite concerns raised by high-ranking Democrats in Congress, the Biden administration has approved Israel's entry into the visa waiver program, meaning Israelis can now visit the US for up to 90 days without a visa, and Americans can do the same. However, the Middle East Eye reports that Arab-American Nondiscrimination Committee plans to challenge this decision in court, as Israel may not meet the legal criteria for the program due to their discrimination against Palestinian Americans. Huwaida Arraf, a lawyer representing the ADC, added “This is all so unnecessary, all the US government had to do was maintain the standard it has with every other country in the Visa Waiver Programme. This lawsuit could have been avoided, but the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department resurrected the debunked notion that separate is somehow equal. As these plaintiffs show, that notion is a farce.”5. The Sacramento Bee reports California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed two major pro-labor bills that emerged late in this session of the state legislature. One would have granted unemployment insurance to striking workers, a push which emerged in the face of the extended entertainment industry strikes. The other would have brought domestic workers under “the umbrella of OSHA protections.” These vetoes were handed down along with Newsom's decision to appoint LaPhonza Butler, head of EMILY's List and a Maryland resident, to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Dianne Feinstein's passing.6. On October 1st, The State Department issued a statement decrying “Anti-Democratic Actions in Guatemala,” directed at President-elect Bernardo Arevalo and his Semilla Party. The statement expresses that “The United States is gravely concerned with continued efforts to undermine Guatemala's peaceful transition of power…Most recently, the Guatemalan Public Ministry seiz[ing] electoral materials under the custody of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal,” and goes on to add that “The United States…[is] actively taking steps to impose visa restrictions on individuals who continue to undermine Guatemala's democracy, including current and former members of Congress, judicial actors, and any others engaging in such behavior…The Guatemalan people have spoken. Their voice must be respected.”7. PBS reports that during a recent meeting between American officials and Mexican President AMLO, the latter levied scathing criticisms of US foreign policy, including the mammoth aid packages for Ukraine and economic sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and other Latin American nations. President López Obrador said the United States “should spend some of the money sent to Ukraine on economic development in Latin America…[and]…called for a U.S. program “to remove blockades and stop harassing independent and free countries, an integrated plan for cooperation so the Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Ecuadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans wouldn't be forced to emigrate.”8. The Japan Times reports that “The Japanese government plans to seek a court order to disband the Unification Church…after a monthslong probe into the religious group over allegations of soliciting financially ruinous donations from members and other questionable practices.” The report goes on to say “Scrutiny of the group intensified after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot during an election campaign speech last year over his perceived links to the entity, an incident which also brought to light its connections with many ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers.”9. Finally, Disney World is being hit with a substantial tort lawsuit. A woman visiting the park for her 30th birthday suffered “serious ‘gynecologic injuries'” while on the “Humunga Kowabunga” ride. I will spare listeners the grisly details, but suffice it to say she experienced “severe and permanent bodily injury,” which required surgery, per Law & Crime. Yet, in typical fashion of corporate media reportage on tortious injury, this story is being presented primarily as nothing more than a “wedgie,” just as the McDonald's lawsuit was reported as merely being about hot coffee. A deep dive into that case is available at the Tort Museum website.  Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab-American Institute, discusses Arab-Americans' outrage at the Biden administration's announcement Sept. 27th that it is accepting Israel into the U.S. visa waiver program, a program which allows citizens from select countries to travel to the United States without a visa. Arab-American, Palestinian-American and U.S. Muslim civil rights groups say Israel doesn't meet the United States' own established criteria for admission to the program and violates Arab-Americans' rights as U.S. citizens to equal protection under the law. The visa waiver program requires reciprocity in how citizens enrolled in the program are treated, but as 15 U.S. senators noted in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken dated Sept. 8, Israel does not yet meet the standards for admittances, and Israel continues to discriminate against Arab-Americans, particularly Palestinian-Americans, seeking to travel to and inside Israel and the Occupied Territories. Berry says her own country is now facilitating Israeli discrimination against her and other U.S. citizens, not only Arab-Americans but all U.S. advocates of Palestinian human rights, who also face discrimination at Israel's borders.

Professor David Hemenway, the author of “Private Guns, Public Health” joins us to explain how we can reduce gun deaths if we treat the problem more like a public health issue, just like Ralph proved when dealing with the auto industry. Plus, Ralph weighs in on the repeal of the child tax credit, and Francesco DeSantis reports news items that tend to get ignored in the corporate media in our segment “In Case You Haven't Heard.”David Hemenway is an economist, Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University, and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. He is a former Nader's Raider, and he is the author of Private Guns, Public Health,  and While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention.Just by making it harder for criminals to get those guns, we have fewer criminals using those guns. That's a fundamental law of economics and of psychology— if you don't want people to do something, make it harder. If you want them to do it more, make it easier.David HemenwayThe key about public health is: what we're trying to do is prevent. Prevent. Prevent. Prevent. And too often, in the United States, what we try to do is blame. And often, blaming, all it does is say “Oh I don't have to do anything. It's somebody else's fault.”David Hemenway[Reinstituting the Child Tax Credit] is something so simple, it's something that helps so many families, it increases consumer demand because most of this money is spent on the necessities of life… and the Republicans are blocking it in Congress and not paying a political price. And that's the story of the Democratic Party— they don't make the Republicans, who are as cruel as any Republicans in history, pay a price.Ralph NaderIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantis1. A Princeton University study, published at the end of August, traces the effects of unconditional cash transfers on homelessness. Focusing on Vancouver, Canada, researchers gave homeless people $7,500 Canadian. Conforming to the results of previous studies, the subjects used this money to get into housing – yet, what was remarkable about this study is it showed this program actually saved taxpayers money overall by relieving $8,277 per subject by removing them from the shelter system.2. From Axios: 15 Senators have penned a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urging him to stop the planned admission of Israel into the Visa Waiver program. This program allows a country's citizens to travel within the United States for 90 days without a visa. Built into this program is a provision demanding US citizens in a given country are treated equally – which is not the case for Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank. Israel claims that they are working to achieve compliance with this section of the law; however, this group of Senators argue that “There is no provision in law that provides that a visa waiver country can discriminate against certain groups of U.S. citizens for the first seven months of the program simply because a country claims they will treat all U.S. citizens equally for the last five months."3. California Democrat Ro Khanna is making his pitch that President Biden should campaign on reelection on an anti-corruption platform, per the Huffington Post. Khanna, who previously chaired the Bernie Sanders campaign in California, has authored a five-point plan, consisting of “banning candidates for federal office from receiving donations from lobbyists or political action committees of any kind, banning members of Congress from trading stocks, limiting Supreme Court appointees to 18-year terms, imposing 12-year term limits on members of Congress, and requiring federal judges and Supreme Court justices to adhere to a new and more robust code of ethics.” Beyond the hard policy though, is a political point – Khanna argues “What we cannot allow to happen is for a former president ― twice impeached and four times indicted ― to position himself as the outsider in the race.”4. On September 7th, General Motors submitted a proposal to the United Autoworkers in a near last ditch attempt to stave off a strike from the newly re-energized union. In response, UAW president Shawn Fain released the following statement, “After refusing to bargain in good faith for the past six weeks, only after having federal labor board charges filed against them, GM has come to the table with an insulting proposal that doesn't come close to an equitable agreement for America's autoworkers. GM either doesn't care or isn't listening when we say we need economic justice at GM by 11:59pm on September 14th. The clock is ticking. Stop wasting our members' time. Tick tock.”5. On September 10th, Senator Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to the Chair of the Federal Election Commission urging her to crackdown on “telemarketing calls and online scams that prey on [Americans'] goodwill and civic engagement,” noting that a recent charity scam defrauded consumers of over $150 million dollars, while a recent “network of scam…(PACs) took in $140 million.” Many speculate that Senator Blumenthal was spurred to act on this issue following the release of a documentary series on telemarketing scams focusing on the Civic Development Group, which raised vast sums for charities, which only received between 10 and 15% of that money. The Civic Development Group has itself been shut down by the FTC.         6. Labor journalist Michael Sainato reports that last week, the NLRB ruled in favor of the United Mine Workers of America, blocking Warrior Met Coal's attempt to stage a decertification election at their Brookwood, Alabama facility. UMWA President Cecil E. Roberts is quoted saying the NLRB “based [its] decision on a ruling…that determined Warrior Met Coal...violated the law before the strike began, continue to violate the law today, and intend to keep violating it in the future.” The UMWA strike against Warrior Met is the longest coal strike in Alabama history.7. The Intercept reports Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican of Tennessee has introduced a new amendment to the NDAA which would bar the Pentagon from providing assistance to Pakistan amid the “ongoing crackdown by the military establishment and its civilian allies.” Pakistan has been experiencing political turmoil since the ouster of popular president Imran Khan on dubious legal grounds. Pakistan is a major recipient of US military assistance and the Biden administration has resisted attempts to reign in the ruling regime since Khan was deposed.8. A new piece in Insider covers the clash of conservative and liberal populist Senators JD Vance of Ohio and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. The two have been collaborating on rail safety legislation following the East Palestine derailment, and we have covered the degeneration of this legislation on the show before. Now, Vance is turning his attention to banning mask mandates, which Fetterman calls  “silly performance art” which is taking time and attention away from the stalled rail safety bill.9. Finally, a cover story in the Nation chronicles the “Confessions of a McKinsey Whistleblower.” The author was assigned to the McKinsey teams advising ICE and the Rikers Island prison, and he lays out how he tried and failed to resist the brutal and insidious nature of these institutions from inside the firm. The story is worth reading in its entirety to see behind the curtain of a firm which tries to wrap itself in platitudes like “Change the world. Improve lives.” Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Three weeks ago, settlers shot a Palestinian man dead when they attacked an occupied West Bank village made up of mostly American citizens. The residents are now calling for US protection.

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 15-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday. US bureau chief Jacob Magid and diplomatic correspondent Lazar Bermanjoin host Jessica Steinberg for today's podcast. Magid and Berman discuss the details of President Isaac Herzog's speech to the US Congress, including the focus on the judicial overhaul and the protests against it -- and whether or not they mark the strength of Israel's democracy. They note Herzog's skill in walking a diplomatic tightrope, bridging the gaps between US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They also look at Herzog's meeting with Biden prior to the speech, and why the Israeli president came to the US to speak to the US president at this point in time. Magid discusses a long-awaited pilot of the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP) which will begin easing travel restrictions for Palestinian Americans to travel through Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport and at Israeli border crossings. Discussed articles include: In speech to Congress, Herzog lauds strong judiciary, says democracy in Israel's DNA Herzog tells Biden Israel's democracy ‘resilient,' as overhaul protests rage at home Herzog's ‘important' speech to Congress wins plaudits from across political spectrum Israel launches pilot for US visa waiver, easing travel for Palestinian-Americans IMAGE: Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrives to speak to a joint meeting of Congress, July 19, 2023, at the Capitol in Washington, as Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, look on. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Knesset is moving forward in its effort to eradicate the reasonableness bill from the judicial process by Tuesday; Israel is set to allow Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank or Gaza Strip to enter Israel legally & Big win for Women of the Wall: The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court rules guards cannot search for Torah scrolls or books in visitors' belongings. Support the show here: https://linktr.ee/israeldailynews Israel Daily News Roundtable: http://patreon.com/shannafuld Music: Ve'eem Tavo'ee Elay (And If You Will Come to Me) Idan Raichel & TripL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhrsKe1c_20 Purchase Judaica from the Jerusalem Art Project: http://shrsl.com/298r5-2ze1-1d847 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/israeldailynews/support

This week Lara and Michael sit down to talk about the recent zionist pogroms in Turumusaya, a town in the occupied West Bank. We share accounts of some of the victims of the pogrom, some of them Palestinian-Americans visiting home for the first time in twenty years. Lara recaps her family reunion and gives a fiery speech. Finally, Lara and Michael cover the recent Haaretz article “Zionist Militia's Efforts to Recruit Nazis in Fight Against the British Are Revealed” further to release to the public of documents last month by the Israeli State Archives proving the coordination between Zionists and Nazi Germany. Michael reads excerpts from a book called, The Secret Contacts, which elaborates on this sinister relationship.

May 15 marks the 75th aniversaryof the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” when 3/4 of the indigenous population of Palestine lost their homeland in the establishment of the state of Israel. Commemorations of the anniversary are taking place across the United States, including in Kansas City where Palestinian- Americans and their friends will gather Saturday, May 20, at 6 p.m. at the Islamc Center of Greater Kansas City both to recognize the Nakba and to celebrate the survival of Palestinian culture. In this episode members of the local Palestinian community in Kansasa City share their recollections of the Nakba, their reflections on its continuance and why they are commemorating it. 

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 15-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday. US bureau chief Jacob Magid and Diaspora affairs reporter Canaan Lidor join host Jessica Steinberg for today's podcast. Lidor offers color and perspectives from March of the Living in Poland, as some 9,000 people made the trek between two former Nazi-run death camps, in Oswiecim, Poland, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Magid discusses what US Senator Lindsey Graham told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the possibility of a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, following his recent visit in the region. Magid also dives into his analysis of the US visa waiver program, pushed by US Ambassador Tom Nides who wants Israel in the program, but has conditioned it upon allowing Palestinian-Americans to travel freely through Ben Gurion Airport. Steinberg mentions a new album of 13 songs, “Paskol Shlishi” (Third Soundtrack), written by headlining Israeli musicians, the latest endeavor that aims to connect the third and fourth generations to the tragedies and lessons of the Holocaust. Discussed articles include: At Auschwitz March of the Living, displays of Jewish unity in a sea of Israeli flags Halina Birenbaum survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She saw heroism elsewhere GOP senator: Window for Israel-Saudi normalization deal could close within a year Senior Hamas delegation seen in Saudi Arabia ahead of expected rapprochement talks Despite baggage, some Palestinians rooting for Israel to secure US visa waiver Mainstream Israeli artists make an album of new music to connect youth to Holocaust Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on iTunes, Spotify, PlayerFM, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: People participate in the annual 'March of the Living', a trek between two former Nazi-run death camps, in Oswiecim, Poland, on April 18, 2023 to mourn victims of the Holocaust and celebrate the existence of the Jewish state. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week Lara and Michael discuss the case of Khalil Awawdeh who has been on hunger strike for upwards of 180 days, and the disgusting psychology of the zionists smiling as they return the body of Palestinian martyr Mai Afaneh over a year after murdering her. We cover police brutality against Palestinian-Americans in Chicago, and across the United States. We confront the failure to find any evidence to support the claim that Palestinian NGOs are a front for terrorism, and we discuss some of the aspects of normalization that appear in the new Netflix tv show, Mo. 

The governments of the US and Israel are negotiating terms for including Israel in the US Visa Waiver Program. Will these terms address Israel's restrictions on travel into and through Israel for Palestinian Americans, and Israel's harsh treatment of Palestinian and other Arab Americans who enter Israel?  Discussing these restrictions are two prominent Palestinian Americans, performing artist Maysoon Zayid and Hanna Hanania, a dentist and Palestinian rights activist.  Contact us: onir@peacenow.org Donate: https://peacenow.org/donate  

Jillian C. York, Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Director for International Freedom of Expression, discusses the rights group's campaign: “Tell Facebook: Stop Silencing Palestine” https://stopsilencingpalestine.com/ Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison, a Palestinian-American activist and DNC delegate from Virginia, discusses why more than 500 Palestinian Americans opposed meeting with Secretary of State Blinken. https://bit.ly/3gggxOV

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, Lara Friedman asks Omar Baddar what it is like to be Palestinian American in U.S. politics, government, and media. They also discuss to what extent the issue of Palestine is undergoing a transformation across these fields, and how the Biden Administration is choosing to navigate these changes. For bios and more info, visit: https://fmep.org/resource/the-alienation-of-palestinian-americans-in-u-s-politics-media/ Original Music by Jalal Yaqoub

The violence of Israeli occupation and apartheid has been happening for many years with unceasing support from the U.S. government. This is why many are rightly skeptical that anything will fundamentally change, even with the recent international outcry over Israeli forces' attack on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, renewed airstrikes on Gaza, and the forced removal of Palestinian residents from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. However, Palestinian resistance in Israel and the occupied territories, coupled with a growing international wave of resistance to the occupation, and solidarity with the people of Palestine, is reaching unprecedented levels, prompting many to wonder if the tide may actually be turning.In this urgent episode of “The Marc Steiner Show,” we bring you on-the-ground reports from Palestine and from the U.S. and Canada, where Jewish and Palestinian-American activists are fighting to end the occupation. In the first segment, Marc speaks with Palestine correspondent for Mondoweiss Yumna Patel, who's been reporting on the ground in the West Bank for five years, about what she's been seeing and reporting on these past two weeks. Then, we discuss the efforts of Palestinian-Americans in the U.S. to resist the occupation with Sammy Alqasem, Palestinian-American organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in North America, and Laura Albast, Palestinian-American journalist, translator, digital content editor, and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in North America.Lastly, we kick off our ongoing series “Not in Our Name,” which will highlight the diverse voices of Jewish activists, artists, intellectuals, and others who are speaking out against the Israeli occupation. In the first installment of this series, Marc chats with Israeli-Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former TRNN Israel/Palestine correspondent Lia Tarachansky, as well as artist, author, and author of “Drawing Blood” and "Brothers of the Gun" (co-authored with Marwan Hisham), Molly Crabapple. Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.

The violence of Israeli occupation and apartheid has been happening for many years with unceasing support from the U.S. government. This is why many are rightly skeptical that anything will fundamentally change, even with the recent international outcry over Israeli forces' attack on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, renewed airstrikes on Gaza, and the forced removal of Palestinian residents from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. However, Palestinian resistance in Israel and the occupied territories, coupled with a growing international wave of resistance to the occupation, and solidarity with the people of Palestine, is reaching unprecedented levels, prompting many to wonder if the tide may actually be turning.In this urgent episode of “The Marc Steiner Show,” we bring you on-the-ground reports from Palestine and from the U.S. and Canada, where Jewish and Palestinian-American activists are fighting to end the occupation. In the first segment, Marc speaks with Palestine correspondent for Mondoweiss Yumna Patel, who's been reporting on the ground in the West Bank for five years, about what she's been seeing and reporting on these past two weeks. Then, we discuss the efforts of Palestinian-Americans in the U.S. to resist the occupation with Sammy Alqasem, Palestinian-American organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in North America, and Laura Albast, Palestinian-American journalist, translator, digital content editor, and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in North America.Lastly, we kick off our ongoing series “Not in Our Name,” which will highlight the diverse voices of Jewish activists, artists, intellectuals, and others who are speaking out against the Israeli occupation. In the first installment of this series, Marc chats with Israeli-Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former TRNN Israel/Palestine correspondent Lia Tarachansky, as well as artist, author, and author of “Drawing Blood” and "Brothers of the Gun" (co-authored with Marwan Hisham), Molly Crabapple. Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.

An amazing linking-together of scholarly texts, close-readings of The Sopranos, and visions of a Chicago-based work of street theatre that centers the day-to-day experience of Palestinian Americans. Will thinks here with activist and artist Gloria Imseih Petrelli.

Faisel Saleh was born the 11th of 11 children in the West Bank town of El Bireh after his parents fled from their home near Jaffa (near Tel Aviv) during the 1948 war. Those events created the state of Israel and what 700,000 Palestinians and their millions of descendants refer to as “The Nakba”, or the catastrophe. Faisal come to the US in 1969 to pursue his education, later becoming a successful entrepreneur. Last year he founded the Palestine Museum US, in Woodbridge, Connecticut, the first museum of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to providing a space to share and preserve the culture for Palestinian Americans, Palestinians of the global diaspora, and for Palestinians in Palestine, it’s also a space for non-Palestinians who create art or commentary about the community and its history. But to talk about the art, culture, and history of Palestine and its people opens the door to a much wider conversation about the current conditions of the community, and in particular the circumstances of Palestinian refugees, and of those who have been enduring more than a decade of life under siege in the Gaza Strip. Please support Latitude Adjustment podcast by signing up for a modest monthly donation on our Patreon page. Thanks!

Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. Public attention focused on a profanity that Tlaib used in reference to President Trump shortly after being sworn in to the 116th Congress.  This episode, instead, focuses on the significance of Tlaib’s coming to Washington for the Palestinian-American community, a community that has never enjoyed much political clout in the U.S.  Hanna Hanania, a prominent leader of the community, talks about what it means for Palestinian-American to have a progressive young woman in Congress who proudly asserts her Palestinian identity.  With any feedback, please email me at onir@peacenow.org  

In this episode of Palestinians Podcast we hear from three members of the Dubbaneh Family (Issa and two of his sons: Danny, and Johnny). The Dubbaneh's are a close and tight-knit family who run a business together, Z&Z. They not only sell zaatar but they also create memories at their farm stand for everyone who visits. In this episode you'll hear about Issa's transition to the U.S. when he immigrated from Palestine and about what it was like to raise a family while owning restaurants. Danny and Johnny discuss their experiences as Palestinian Americans and describe the reasons for starting their zaatar company. Grab yourself a manouche and enjoy this family-centered episode of Palestinians Podcast! Please take a moment to provide a written review and give us a star rating on Apple Podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Palestinians Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and our website. Thank you for supporting Palestinian storytelling! You can buy your own jar of Z&Z zaatar on Amazon!

In episode 56, the girls get into the history of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nassar and how he started the coup d'état trend in the Middle East, then the stories of Reza Aslan and Peter Beinart's interrogations by Shin Bet while trying to enter Israel. Plus they call Shereen's mama and hear some fascinating stories about her experience coming to America, meeting her husband, and trying to find where she belonged in this country. FOOTNOTES: 1. Reza Aslan Tells Haaretz His Interrogation Was Political; Israel Denies, Says He 'Behaved Suspiciously' 2. (THREAD) Peter’s experience has spurred me to share mine. 2 weeks ago, as I was crossing back into Israel from Jordan, I was separated from my family and detained by Shin Bet. “We can make it so you don’t see your kids for a long time” I was warned. This is what happened next 3. Israel's Shin Bet Detains Peter Beinart at Ben-Gurion Airport Over Political Activity 4. Benjamin Netanyahu has half-apologized for my detention yesterday at Ben Gurion airport. I'll accept when he apologizes to all the Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans who every day endure far worse 5. Peter Beinart: I Was Detained At Ben Gurion Airport Because Of My Beliefs 6. Gamal Abdel Nasser 7. Gamal Abdel Nasser: PRESIDENT OF EGYPT 8. Six-Day War 9. Suez Crisis Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Jamal Dajani interviews photojournalist and artist Najib Joe Hakim about his latest project, Home Away from Home, in which he juxtaposes recorded oral histories with black-and-white portraits of Palestinian Americans. View Najib's photos online https://www.lensculture.com/projects/50783-home-away-from-home-little-pal

219West reports on OWS protesters angry about the economy and some small business entrepreneurs finding success during these hard times. We hear from Palestinian-Americans about Palestinian statehood and some satirists about comedy post 9/11.