Podcasts about Pinkwashing

Explore the timely insights from activist Dean Spade on how reshaping our personal connections can bolster our fight for justice, as featured in his latest book, "Love in a F*cked Up World."This show is made possible thanks our members! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate   Thank you for your continued support!Description:  In a time of climate catastrophe, genocide, mass incarceration and political turmoil, people need to work together – better! That's why lifelong activist Dean Spade has written “Love in a F*ed Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together”. Which tools can help people and social justice movements face conflict and emerge stronger (rather than weaker)? Which stories do we tell ourselves that aren't helping us think — or act — in our best interest? In this timely conversation, Spade shares tips on how we might get our interpersonal houses in order so that we're better equipped to show up for others and the causes we care about. Spade is a lawyer, educator, and author of “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)”, and “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law”. He's the director of “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!”, and in 2002 he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, a law collective that provides free legal services to trans and gender non-conforming people who are low income and/or people of color. He has useful things to say about romance too, which are worth bearing in mind, as the Valentine's marketing crush hits, as Laura reflects in her commentary.“. . . Most of us are taking in all the bad news by ourselves through a screen . . . One of the best things we can do to support our own wellbeing through the overwhelm is be with others, joining any kind of project in our communities, a creative project, a mutual aid project . . .” - Dean Spade“The typical self-help genre is very focused on the individual. It doesn't contextualize the kinds of suffering that everyone's going through in a broader feminist analysis, anti-capitalist analysis, anti-racist analysis . . . If we understand that our individual suffering is a bunch of bigger scripts, . . . it can be a little bit freeing.” - Dean Spade Guest:  Dean Spade: Author, Love In A F*ed-Up World: How To Build Relationships, Hook Up, And Raise Hell Together & Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) This show is made possible thanks our members! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate   Thank you for your continued support!Watch the broadcast episode cut for time at our YouTube channel and airing on PBS stations across the country Subscribe to episode notes via Patreon Music In the Middle:  “We are Rising” by activist, singer and songwriter, Taína Asili.  She created the song for One Billion Rising's 2020 global campaign..  And additional music included- "Steppin"  and "All The Ways" by Podington Bear. Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:• The New Transgender Movement: Race, Poverty, Gender, Policing, and Pinkwashing, Watch​​•  Emergent Strategies for Abolition: Andrea J. Ritchie's Toolkit for Activists: Watch / Download Podcast•  Mariame Kaba: Rooting Out Our Culture of Harm: Watch / Download Podcast: Episode & Full Uncut Conversation•  adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism and Black Women's Legacy of Joy, Watch (06:58) / Download Podcast:  Full Uncut Conversation (37:20) Related Articles and Resources:•  Our Best Option for Defending Ourselves From Trump's Second Term Is Each Other, by Dean Spade, November 12, 2024, TruthOut• Checking in with Dean Spade (ep181), December 9, 2024, Gender Reveal Podcast•. “The Mask Is Off:”  Dean Spade and Susan Stryker on Trans Resistance in Trump's America, by Them, December 18, 2024, Them.us Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, along with Sabrina Artel, Jeremiah Cothren, Veronica Delgado, Janet Hernandez, Jeannie Hopper, Sarah Miller, Nat Needham, David Neuman, and Rory O'Conner. FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Blueky: https://bsky.app/profile/lfandfriends.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

Explore the timely insights from activist Dean Spade on how reshaping our personal connections can bolster our fight for justice, as featured in his latest book, "Love in a F*cked Up World."This show is made possible by you! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Thank you for your continued support!Description: In a time of climate catastrophe, genocide, mass incarceration and political turmoil, people need to work together – better! That's why lifelong activist Dean Spade has written “Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together”. Which tools can help people and social justice movements face conflict and emerge stronger (rather than weaker)? Which stories do we tell ourselves that aren't helping us think — or act — in our best interest? In this timely conversation, Spade shares tips on how we might get our interpersonal houses in order so that we're better equipped to show up for others and the causes we care about. Spade is a lawyer, educator, and author of “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)”, and “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law”. He's the director of “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!”, and in 2002 he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, a law collective that provides free legal services to trans and gender non-conforming people who are low income and/or people of color. He has useful things to say about romance too, which are worth bearing in mind, as the Valentine's marketing crush hits, as Laura reflects in her commentary.“. . . Most of us are taking in all the bad news by ourselves through a screen . . . One of the best things we can do to support our own wellbeing through the overwhelm is be with others, joining any kind of project in our communities, a creative project, a mutual aid project . . .” - Dean Spade“The typical self-help genre is very focused on the individual. It doesn't contextualize the kinds of suffering that everyone's going through in a broader feminist analysis, anti-capitalist analysis, anti-racist analysis . . . If we understand that our individual suffering is a bunch of bigger scripts, . . . it can be a little bit freeing.” - Dean SpadeGuest: Dean Spade, Author, “Love In A F*cked-Up World: How To Build Relationships, Hook Up, And Raise Hell Together”, “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)” and more. Watch the episode cut airing on PBS stations across the country at our YouTube channelSubscribe to episode notes via Patreon Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:• The New Transgender Movement: Race, Poverty, Gender, Policing, and Pinkwashing, Watch​​•  Emergent Strategies for Abolition: Andrea J. Ritchie's Toolkit for Activists: Watch / Download Podcast•  Mariame Kaba: Rooting Out Our Culture of Harm: Watch / Download Podcast: Episode & Full Uncut Conversation•  adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism and Black Women's Legacy of Joy, Watch (06:58) / Download Podcast:  Full Uncut Conversation (37:20)Related Articles and Resources:•  Our Best Option for Defending Ourselves From Trump's Second Term Is Each Other, by Dean Spade, November 12, 2024, TruthOut• Checking in with Dean Spade (ep181), December 9, 2024, Gender Reveal Podcast•. “The Mask Is Off:”  Dean Spade and Susan Stryker on Trans Resistance in Trump's America, by Them, December 18, 2024, Them.us Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, along with Sabrina Artel, Jeremiah Cothren, Veronica Delgado, Janet Hernandez, Jeannie Hopper, Sarah Miller, Nat Needham, David Neuman, and Rory O'Conner. FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Blueky: https://bsky.app/profile/lfandfriends.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

In dieser Folge von Access All Areas sprechen Nina und Livia mit Isa Gardt, Initiatorin von 5050, Geschäftsführerin und CMO von OMR. Isa ist mit großer Leidenschaft für die Gleichstellung der Geschlechter aktiv. Isa spricht über ihre Entscheidung, Kapitel in ihrem Leben zu beenden, wie den 5050 Podcast, und betont, wie wichtig es ist, sich weiterzuentwickeln und auch Dinge loszulassen. Vor allem wenn sich dafür neue Türen öffnen - spoiler alert ;)Ein zentrales Thema der Diskussion ist der Weltfrauentag. Isa betont die Wichtigkeit des Tages, um auf Missstände aufmerksam zu machen und Sensibilisierung zu fördern, warnt aber vor "Pinkwashing". Isa, Livia und Nina erörtern die Notwendigkeit von Gleichberechtigung in Deutschland und die Dringlichkeit, das Thema weiter voranzutreiben. Isa hebt den Zusammenhang zwischen Fachkräftemangel und fehlenden Kinderbetreuungsplätzen hervor und kritisiert die mangelhafte Umsetzung der Quotenregelung. Sie äußert sich besorgt über Gewalt gegen Frauen und Femizide und betont, wie wenig Aufmerksamkeit diesen Themen geschenkt wird. Sie betont ebenfalls den dringenden Handlungsbedarf im Bereich der Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie. Isa plädiert für flexible Arbeitsmodelle und bessere Kinderbetreuungsangebote, um Frauen den Weg in Führungspositionen zu erleichtern. Alle 3 sind sich einig: Solidarität unter Frauen ist extrem wichtig und sie fordern dazu auf, jedes Lebensmodell zu respektieren. Isa gibt praktische Tipps, wie jeder zur Gleichstellung beitragen kann, Stichwort: Microfeminism. Sie ermutigt dazu, im Kleinen anzufangen, sei es durch das Ansprechen von Missständen im Meeting oder das Hinterfragen von Geschlechterklischees in der Erziehung. Sie betont, wie wichtig es ist, sich gegenseitig zu unterstützen und nicht als Konkurrentinnen zu sehen. In Bezug auf Future Skills hebt Isa die Bedeutung von Empathie hervor, die im Unternehmenskontext oft noch zu kurz kommt. Sie diskutiert den Unterschied zwischen Empathie bei Männern und Frauen und die Rolle von Sozialisierung und Konditionierung. Isa äußert sich zu den Herausforderungen der aktuellen Zeit und betont, wie wichtig es ist, sich auf den eigenen Wirkungskreis zu konzentrieren und aktiv zu werden, auch wenn die Themen groß und komplex erscheinen. Was können wir aus dem Gespräch mit Isa lernen?Gleichstellung ist ein Thema, das uns alle betrifft und für das wir uns alle einsetzen müssen. Jeder kann im Kleinen dazu beitragen, sei es durch das Hinterfragen von Klischees oder das Ansprechen von Missständen. Solidarität unter Frauen ist entscheidend, um gemeinsam mehr zu erreichen. Empathie ist eine wichtige Fähigkeit, die in der Arbeitswelt mehr Wertschätzung erfahren sollte. Es ist wichtig, dranzubleiben und sich nicht von Rückschlägen entmutigen zu lassen. Isas Engagement inspiriert und hilft euch, neue Handlungswege zu finden! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

בפרק הזה אנו צוללים אל תופעת הנסיגה הדמוקרטית ודיון על אחת התופעות הפחות מוכרות אך משמעותיות המלוות אותה: "Pinkwashing" – השימוש בייצוג קבוצות מיעוט, בעיקר נשים, כדי להעניק לגיטימציה למדיניות או למפלגות אנטי-דמוקרטיות. יחד עם פרופ' סיון הירש-הופלר, נבחן כיצד ייצוג נשי במפלגות ימין רדיקלי משפיע על קבלת הציבור, מה ההשלכות הרחבות של השימוש האסטרטגי במגדר בפוליטיקה, ואיך ניתן לשלב נשים בצורה שמחזקת את הדמוקרטיה ולא שוחקת אותה.

Explore the timely insights from activist Dean Spade on how reshaping our personal connections can bolster our fight for justice, as featured in his latest book, "Love in a F*cked Up World."This show is made possible thanks our members! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate   Thank you for your continued support!Description:  In a time of climate catastrophe, genocide, mass incarceration and political turmoil, people need to work together – better! That's why lifelong activist Dean Spade has written “Love in a F*ed Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together”. Which tools can help people and social justice movements face conflict and emerge stronger (rather than weaker)? Which stories do we tell ourselves that aren't helping us think — or act — in our best interest? In this timely conversation, Spade shares tips on how we might get our interpersonal houses in order so that we're better equipped to show up for others and the causes we care about. Spade is a lawyer, educator, and author of “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)”, and “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law”. He's the director of “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!”, and in 2002 he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, a law collective that provides free legal services to trans and gender non-conforming people who are low income and/or people of color. He has useful things to say about romance too, which are worth bearing in mind, as the Valentine's marketing crush hits, as Laura reflects in her commentary.“. . . Most of us are taking in all the bad news by ourselves through a screen . . . One of the best things we can do to support our own wellbeing through the overwhelm is be with others, joining any kind of project in our communities, a creative project, a mutual aid project . . .” - Dean Spade“The typical self-help genre is very focused on the individual. It doesn't contextualize the kinds of suffering that everyone's going through in a broader feminist analysis, anti-capitalist analysis, anti-racist analysis . . . If we understand that our individual suffering is a bunch of bigger scripts, . . . it can be a little bit freeing.” - Dean Spade Guest:  Dean Spade: Author, Love In A F*ed-Up World: How To Build Relationships, Hook Up, And Raise Hell Together & Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) This show is made possible thanks our members! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate   Thank you for your continued support!Watch the broadcast episode cut for time at our YouTube channel and airing on PBS stations across the country Subscribe to episode notes via Patreon Music In the Middle:  “We are Rising” by activist, singer and songwriter, Taína Asili.  She created the song for One Billion Rising's 2020 global campaign..  And additional music included- "Steppin"  and "All The Ways" by Podington Bear. Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:• The New Transgender Movement: Race, Poverty, Gender, Policing, and Pinkwashing, Watch​​•  Emergent Strategies for Abolition: Andrea J. Ritchie's Toolkit for Activists: Watch / Download Podcast•  Mariame Kaba: Rooting Out Our Culture of Harm: Watch / Download Podcast: Episode & Full Uncut Conversation•  adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism and Black Women's Legacy of Joy, Watch (06:58) / Download Podcast:  Full Uncut Conversation (37:20) Related Articles and Resources:•  Our Best Option for Defending Ourselves From Trump's Second Term Is Each Other, by Dean Spade, November 12, 2024, TruthOut• Checking in with Dean Spade (ep181), December 9, 2024, Gender Reveal Podcast•. “The Mask Is Off:”  Dean Spade and Susan Stryker on Trans Resistance in Trump's America, by Them, December 18, 2024, Them.us   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, along with Sabrina Artel, Jeremiah Cothren, Veronica Delgado, Janet Hernandez, Jeannie Hopper, Sarah Miller, Nat Needham, David Neuman, and Rory O'Conner. FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Blueky: https://bsky.app/profile/lfandfriends.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

In "Love in a F*cked Up World," Dean Spade shares insights on fostering relationships and activism in the face of global crises—find out more about his approach to solidarity now!This show is made possible by you! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Thank you for your continued support! Description: In a time of climate catastrophe, genocide, mass incarceration and political turmoil, people need to work together – better! That's why lifelong activist Dean Spade has written “Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together”. Which tools can help people and social justice movements face conflict and emerge stronger (rather than weaker)? Which stories do we tell ourselves that aren't helping us think — or act — in our best interest? In this timely conversation, Spade shares tips on how we might get our interpersonal houses in order so that we're better equipped to show up for others and the causes we care about. Spade is a lawyer, educator, and author of “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)”, and “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law”. He's the director of “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!”, and in 2002 he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, a law collective that provides free legal services to trans and gender non-conforming people who are low income and/or people of color. He has useful things to say about romance too, which are worth bearing in mind, as the Valentine's marketing crush hits, as Laura reflects in her commentary.“. . . Most of us are taking in all the bad news by ourselves through a screen . . . One of the best things we can do to support our own wellbeing through the overwhelm is be with others, joining any kind of project in our communities, a creative project, a mutual aid project . . .” - Dean Spade“The typical self-help genre is very focused on the individual. It doesn't contextualize the kinds of suffering that everyone's going through in a broader feminist analysis, anti-capitalist analysis, anti-racist analysis . . . If we understand that our individual suffering is a bunch of bigger scripts, . . . it can be a little bit freeing.” - Dean SpadeGuest: Dean Spade, Author, “Love In A F*cked-Up World: How To Build Relationships, Hook Up, And Raise Hell Together”, “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)” and more. Watch the episode cut airing on PBS stations across the country at our YouTube channelSubscribe to episode notes via Patreon Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:• The New Transgender Movement: Race, Poverty, Gender, Policing, and Pinkwashing, Watch​​•  Emergent Strategies for Abolition: Andrea J. Ritchie's Toolkit for Activists: Watch / Download Podcast•  Mariame Kaba: Rooting Out Our Culture of Harm: Watch / Download Podcast: Episode & Full Uncut Conversation•  adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism and Black Women's Legacy of Joy, Watch (06:58) / Download Podcast:  Full Uncut Conversation (37:20)Related Articles and Resources:•  Our Best Option for Defending Ourselves From Trump's Second Term Is Each Other, by Dean Spade, November 12, 2024, TruthOut• Checking in with Dean Spade (ep181), December 9, 2024, Gender Reveal Podcast•. “The Mask Is Off:”  Dean Spade and Susan Stryker on Trans Resistance in Trump's America, by Them, December 18, 2024, Them.us   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, along with Sabrina Artel, Jeremiah Cothren, Veronica Delgado, Janet Hernandez, Jeannie Hopper, Sarah Miller, Nat Needham, David Neuman, and Rory O'Conner. FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Blueky: https://bsky.app/profile/lfandfriends.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

Torniamo alla nostra forma convenzionale con un saggio femminista scritto da un'autrice che qui a TLUF apprezziamo molto: Jennifer Guerra. In questa puntata, che è stata scritta da Beatrice Bragato e Annalisa Sirignano, analizziamo le critiche che la giornalista e scrittrice muove al movimento femminista rispetto ad una strumentalizzazione mainstream che sta avvenendo per via del capitalismo, modello sociale ed economico su cui si fonda la nostra società contemporanea. Vi ricordiamo che la sigla è opera di Tamara Basile che vi invitiamo a consocere perchè è una talentuosa musicista.Seguici su Instagram digitando @tileggiamounafemministaPuoi fare una donazione al progetto visitando il nostro account KO-FI o con paypal alla mail tileggiamounafemminista@gmail.com

Social media ban pinkwashing

Lessons from Stonewall: Alison Thorne discusses Queer Liberation in an era of pinkwashing and rainbow capitalism.  First broadcast 7 June 2024 and edited for today's episode.  

Hablamos con Remei Saez, la directora de la Plataforma Unitària Contra les Violències de Gènere y está junto a Emma Rovira, responsable de comunicació de la plataforma y amiga. La Plataforma lucha por la erradicación de las violencias machistas a través de la incidencia social, política e internacional. Los días 7, 8 i 9 de noviembre se celebrará la 20a edició del Fòrum Contra les Violències de Gènere, en el espacio Francesca Bonnemaison de Barcelona.Femiqueja Isabel Franc. El cáncer no es rosa19 octubre. Día Mundial Cáncer de Mama. Para concienciar. Más rosa = más conciencia. Pero, una serie de personajes rebeldes cuestionamos el PinkWashing (lavado de imagen con falsas estrategias de comunicación y marketing)Para cerrar hablamos con María de Los Ángeles Oliver del grupo de Teatro de rosario El rayo misterioso, que vinieron a Barcelona para hacer funciones de Buenos días señorita Lelia.Sexta temporada. Seguimos en pie por las tardes. Desde El Prat Radio en directo martes de 15 a 16h  en 91.6. Y también  en Radio Universidad en Argentina 103.3. Los Domingos de 19 a 20h. Con Javiera Tapia Torra  y Flor Coll. Produce Chamana Comunicación.Por supuesto en todas las plataformas de audio pueden buscar nuestro PODCAST femiñetas radio.La imagen de esta temporada es de @manue.colomba

Echte Diversity vs. Pinkwashing: Warum Kommunikation der Schlüssel ist In dieser Episode spricht Stella Henn, Account Executive bei Edelman, mit Prof. Dr. Annika Schach (segmenta futurist:a) und Fabienne Mainz (Covestro Deutschland) darüber, wie richtige Kommunikation Unternehmen helfen kann, eine authentische, diverse Firmenkultur aufzubauen. Besonders um den Juni, den Pride-Month, werden einige Unternehmen kritisiert, die Regenbogen-Farben lediglich als PR- und Marketing-Strategie einzusetzen und so des „Pinkwashings” bezichtigt. Die drei beleuchten, wie Unternehmen durch die richtige Kommunikationsstrategie Vertrauen schaffen und Diversity glaubhaft leben können. Hör rein und erfahre, wie echte Kommunikation den Unterschied macht.

For episode 173, Elias Jahshan joins Elia Ayoub, israa abd elfattah and Leila Al-Shami to talk about "This Arab Is Queer" anthology, which he edited and was published by Saqi Books in 2022. The Fire These Times is a proud member of ⁠From The Periphery (FTP) Media Collective⁠. How to Support: on ⁠Patreon⁠ or on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠. You'll get early access to all podcasts, exclusive audio and video episodes, an invitation to join ⁠our monthly hangouts⁠, and more. Episode Links: Elias' articles at Gay Times TIMEP Q&A with Elias What is Pinkwashing? co-authored by Elias Jahshan and Hayfaa Chalabi for Shado Mag Elias' articles at Star Observer Elias' articles at The New Arab Check out Our first video essay on YouTube by Ayman Makarem: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims and subscribe to our channel Elia Ayoub's newsletter Hauntologies.net Transcriptions: Transcriptions will be by Antidotezine and published on The Fire These Times. Pluggables: The Fire These Times has a ⁠website⁠ ⁠ From The Periphery is on ⁠Patreon⁠, ⁠YouTube⁠, Instagram, Twitter and has a website⁠ Elia Ayoub is on ⁠Mastodon⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠, ⁠and ⁠Bluesky⁠, and he has a newsletter. Elias Jahshan is on Instagram, Twitter and Bluesky Leila Al-Shami is on Mastodon, Twitter and has a blog Credits: Host(s): israa abd elfattah, Leila Al-Shami and Elia Ayoub | Guest(s): Elias Jahshan | Producer(s): Elia Ayoub and Leila Al-Shami | Music: ⁠⁠Rap and Revenge⁠⁠ | TFTT theme design: ⁠⁠Wenyi Geng⁠⁠ | FTP theme design: Hisham Rifai | Sound editor: Elliott Miskovicz | Team profile pics: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Molly Crabapple⁠⁠⁠ | Episode design: Elia Ayoub From The Periphery is built by Elia Ayoub, Leila Al-Shami, Ayman Makarem, Dana El Kurd, Karena Avedissian, Daniel Voskoboynik, Anna M, Aydın Yıldız, Ed S, Alice Bonfatti, israa abd elfattah, with more joining soon! The Fire These Times by Elia Ayoub is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

It's time for another solo episode. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer is probably the most widely known form of cancer and we all know breast cancer is associated with the pink ribbon.Unfortunately, pinkwashing also occurs in October. What is pinkwashing? It's when a company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products containing chemicals that are linked to the disease.This episode talks about what four questions to ask any company or organization before purchasing their products, as well as what you can do instead to support breast cancer awareness and action during October.Great resources: www.bcaction.orgwww.komen.orgwww.breastcancer.orgLet me know what takeaways you got from this episode and if you'll be more aware of possible "pinkwashing" this October. I want to hear from you! You can reach me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/melissagrosboll/, email me at drmelissagrosboll@gmail.com, or text me at 720-201-4292.

#238 Lamborghini | Drive the Future | Tim Bravo | Head of CommunicationAuthentizität, Innovation und Gleichberechtigung: Wie Lamborghini die Zukunft gestaltet.In dieser dynamischen Episode des Startcast-Podcasts spricht Max mit Tim Bravo, Head of Communication bei Lamborghini, über die faszinierenden Entwicklungen und Herausforderungen der ikonischen Marke. Tim gibt exklusive Einblicke, wie Lamborghini es schafft, sich stetig weiterzuentwickeln, ohne dabei seine legendäre Identität und Performance zu verlieren.Ein zentrales Thema ist die Einführung von Hybridfahrzeugen und der durchschlagende Erfolg des Urus-SUVs, der neue Kundengruppen, darunter viele Frauen, zur Marke gebracht hat. Tim erklärt, wie Lamborghini mit dem Spagat zwischen Tradition und Innovation umgeht, insbesondere in einer Zeit, in der Nachhaltigkeit, Diversität und Integrität in der Markenkommunikation eine immer größere Rolle spielen.In einem offenen Gespräch teilt Tim seine Gedanken zur wachsenden Komplexität der Kommunikation bei Lamborghini und betont die Bedeutung von Authentizität in einer Welt, die zunehmend auf Greenwashing und Pinkwashing sensibilisiert ist. Er spricht über die Notwendigkeit, als Unternehmen mutig zu sein und sich den gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen anzupassen.Besonders spannend wird es, wenn Tim über die Rolle von Frauen in der Automobilindustrie spricht und wie Lamborghini dazu beiträgt, Gleichberechtigung in einer traditionell männlich dominierten Branche voranzutreiben. Er teilt auch persönliche Erfahrungen und gibt wertvolle Tipps, wie man Herausforderungen im Leben meistert und daran wächst.Diese Episode ist ein Muss für alle, die sich für die Zukunft der Automobilindustrie, innovative Kommunikation und die Kraft der Authentizität interessieren. Mit Tim Bravo's Einblicken wird klar, wie Lamborghini nicht nur auf der Straße, sondern auch in der Kommunikation neue Wege geht.Keywords: Lamborghini, Hybridfahrzeuge, Urus, SUV, Markenerweiterung, Design, Performance, Kommunikation, Nachhaltigkeit, Diversität, Authentizität, Frauen in der Automobilindustrie, Gleichberechtigung, persönliche Herausforderungen.Sound Bites:„Lamborghini zeigt, wie man sich weiterentwickelt und gleichzeitig seinen Wurzeln treu bleibt.“„Der Urus hat 70 bis 80 Prozent Neukunden an die Marke gebracht.“„Authentizität ist der Schlüssel in einer Welt voller Greenwashing.“„Gleichberechtigung ist die Verantwortung jedes Einzelnen – in der Gesellschaft und in der Automobilindustrie.“ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mutual aid and relationships with people we trust are gonna be key to surviving the political and climate apocalypses ahead. Brooke, Lauren and Mama Ganuush  on Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid, and how to sustain connections with people living through the genocide in Palestine, as the US and Israel do everything they can to repress signals of solidarity. Bay2Gaza Benefit is 9/20 at Oakland Secret https://www.instagram.com/p/C_ggDqUyDoj/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==  https://www.Bay2Gaza.org  Thank you to LoCura for this episode's outro track “Guerriller@s (Bang Data remix)  https://www.locuramusica.org Past Sad Francisco episodes mentioned: Pinkwashing, with Brooke, Mama Ganuush and Deeg https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-genocide-f-108029780 Trans Black Palestinian Solidarities with Jemma Decristo, Lavelle Ridley and Mama Ganuush https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-trans-f-105794127  Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco  

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 22:23:00 +0000 https://hr-ungeschminkt.podigee.io/23-s02-auftakt-ask-us-anything-about-hr 9793d7a5fe3d1b3f7dcc36e3538301bd (mit den HR ROOKIES)

Schickt uns euer Feedback zur EpisodeIn Episode 114 versuchen wir einem Hörerhinweis nachzugehen: Wie können wir mit dem Paradox umgehen, dass Marketing einerseits notwendig ist, um über Neues zu informieren, andererseits aber unsere Begehren weckt und uns somit manipuliert? Wolfgang M. Schmitt diskutiert dazu mit uns Kapitalismus, Konsumgesellschaft, Kunst - und vor allem das Gefühl des Mangels. Wir sprechen über Suchtstoff, Green- und Pinkwashing, Emotionen und Selsbtironisierung zur Immunisierung gegen Kritik.Shownotes:Ole Nymoen, Wolfgang M. Schmitt, Die kleinen Holzdiebe und das Rätsel des Juggernaut, BuchArthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, BuchJib Fowles, ADVERTISING'S FIFTEEN BASIC APPEALS, AufsatzPeter Sloterdijk, Kritik der zynistischen Vernunft, BuchKarl Kraus, Die Welt der Plakate, AufsatzJean Baudrillard, Kool Killer oder Der Aufstand der Zeichen, Buch

Hur tar man vara på lyckan under sommaren när det inte känns moralikst rätt att må bra? Vilket Riksdagspartierna är vilken dokusåpa? Varför är kultur förknippat med vithet? Hur ska man göra för att inte skriva till sitt ex? Vad innebär begreppet aktivist? Hur engagerar man sig politiskt på ett aktivt sätt? Vilka framtidsspaningar finns?  Sommarlov = frågeavsnitt och alla svar (som man inte kan överklaga eller stämma oss för) får ni i Sveriges gulligaste antifascistiska podd!  Klippare är Joel Zettergren och jinglarna är gjorda av Kontext! Lyssna! Likea! Dela!

Sad Francisco fam Brooke Lober (Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area), Deeg (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism), and Mama Ganuush on why Zionists started putting rainbow flags on tanks destroying Gaza, and the Bay Area roots of Brand Israel's gay hasbara campaign.  Recorded June 27, 2024 at the Queer & Trans Artists for a Free Palestine closing at SOMArts, hosted by the BLOOM Collective. Palestinian queer group alQaws: “Reflecting on Queerness in Times of Genocide” Mama Ganuush on queers for Palestine, and Trans Black Palestinian Solidarities Deeg on the Manny's in the Mission boycott, and LAGAI - Queer Insurrection Brooke Lober on Urban Alchemy Toshio's reporting on pinkwashing at Truthout, Waging Nonviolence, and Bitch magazine Toshio Meronek and Tofu Estolas make Sad Francisco. Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

ÁhLAN, queridísima fauna que comparte nuestro viaje en esta roca lanzada por el espacio, o en esta tortilla, en cualquier bando en el que te encuentres, esto es ahora RADIO PALESTINA SONORA, El Comité Sonorense de lucha por la Liberación de palestina y El Ritual de lo VIRTUAL iniciamos nuestro camino de apoyo a nuestras hermanas y hermanos del estado Palestino EN ESTE ESPACIO. Resumen semanal Palestina, Pinkwashing, Niñez en Palestina, Julian Assange Libre, etc. acá en RADIO PALESTINA SONORA por Política y Rock n Roll Radio 106.7 FM desde Hermosillo Sonora hasta el Ajusco en Ciudad de México por Radio Común 103.1 FM

Alt episode titles: Somewhere Over the Chase Bank, There is Community and Solidarity They Just Want Our Money, Not Our Pride: The Rainbow Capitalism Episode Intro Audio Excerpt: Sylvia Rivera (Rest in Power) interview from NYC Pride 2001 https://x.com/ben_0207/status/1800675695661842651 Who does rainbow capitalism benefit most? Who does it protect? What it is and what it is not Who gets seen in rainbow capitalism and who gets left out? What do we do without white cis het corporate crumbs? Will we be forced to rely and lean on each other, community, village and return pride to its roots as a riot, a protest? Rainbow capitalism is racism, facism, the anti-thesis to queer. It's not the queer celebrities making millions from marketing to and profiting from Black and Brown queer and trans folks on the margins that are going to save us, just US. If we are fighting for us to take back our resistance and liberation from the very apolitical, corporate, white pride structure. And we're fighting to liberate ourselves and to liberate one another, and we're doing so with a strong framework of solidarity, the question is not necessarily what's our responsibility, what's our response to anti-blackness, transphobia, cisheteronormativity, imperialist capitalism that attempts, with gusto, to pervade our movement and end our lives? The Origins of Pinkwashing and its connection to the apartheid state of Israel For a free list of recommended readings, materials and resources, visit www.patreon.com/ihartericka.com To purchase merch: https://ihartericka.com/shop/ Portion of the proceeds go to Celebration of Black Transwomen Cookout, Within Our Lifetime, Friends of the Congo and Hometax Sudan. Let's run it up for them. This episode is sponsored by Bookshop.org Find a local Black queer and/or trans owned bookstore near you: https://bookshop.org/pages/bookstores Editors note: the podcast about the genocide in Sudan I referenced is called, Society of Strife, NOT Society of Destruction.

What is pinkwashing? Friend of the show Joey joins us to explain and breaks down corporate and political examples. Links: Protest at the GLAAD awards: https://www.them.us/story/glaad-awards-palestine-protest-act-up-new-york-city  Sarah Schulman on Pinkwashing: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html  More from Sarah Schulman: https://www.them.us/story/sarah-schulman-palestine-interview  More on Pinkwashing from alQaws: https://www.alqaws.org/articles/Beyond-Propaganda-Pinkwashing-as-Colonial-Violence  Matt Bernstein Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsgdk-DDSXc&ab_channel=mattbernstein  IDF Blackmails Queer Palestinians: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-reservists-refuse-serve-palestinian-territories  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of CODEPINK Radio, CODEPINK's West Coast Organizer Ryan Wentz is joined by Rami Kablawi, a Palestinian organizer and writer. Listen to the two discuss how Israel's PR campaigns target Westerners and how the campaigns create an idea of Israel that flies in the face of reality.

Get to know the gay Zionist Burner Manny Yekutiel, of Manny's cafe in the Mission, and why groups like Gay Shame and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) have been boycotting Manny's since 2018. HALA Collective  BAD (Bay Area Drag) Fund  "Progressive coalition boycotts ‘woke-washing' of San Francisco event space" (Toshio at Waging Nonviolence) "What boycott of Manny's in the Mission is about" (Margot Goldstein and Rachel Lederman at SF Chronicle)

There are queer Palestinians. The Israeli army boasting that the first time the Pride flag being flown in Gaza was by them in 2023's invasion is ignorant at best and a dangerous narrative at worst, assuming that queer people inside Palestine are only at risk from their own.

Send us a Text Message.Hazem Jamal breaks down the aftermath of the Israeli strike on the Rafah refugee camp that decapitated a baby, the mental health struggles we feel at the images. Have we lost our humanity, our minds, or both? Hear the story of Hesen Jabr, a nurse at NYU honored for her compassion in working with women who experience perinatal loss, who was then fired after accepting the award because she mentioned in her acceptance her personal connection and compassion for the women experiencing the same thing in the Gaza genocide. What?!!Plus how do Jill Stein and Dearborn's Mayor Abdullah Hammoud have a connection?Pinkwashing, what is it and how to spot it in Pride Month, politicians and their Blah Blah Blah response to Rafah, and knowing Ahmed Al Najjar.Hazem Jamal is a first-generation Iraqi-American who worked in as a programming executive in American radio for many years. After years of shrinking consumption and influence of old-media blowhards, Arabs in Media offers a platform for fresh stories, information, and entertainment. To join the Arabs in Media community, sign up at the free Arabs in Media Substack for more multi-media content, and email notifications for new episodes dropping. https://arabsinmedia.substack.com/

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists.   A teach-in by Queer Crescent in collaboration with Palestinian Feminist Collective – Palestine is a Queer Issue: Resisting Pinkwashing Now and Until Liberation. Featuring guest speakers Rabab Abdulhadi from Palestinian Feminist Collective, Ghadir Shafie of ASWAT, Shivani Chanillo from Lavender Phoenix, poetry by Mx Yaffa from Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD). Moderator by Shenaaz Janmohamed of Queer Crescent. Important Links and Resources: Sign on to Queer Crescent's Ceasefire Campaign for LGBTQI+ organizations and leaders Queer Crescent's Pinkwashing Resources  Queer Crescent Website Palestinian Feminist Collective Website ASWAT Instagram (@aswatfreedoms) Lavender Phoenix Website Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) Website Purchase Blood Orange by Mx. Yaffa Transcript Shenaaz Janmohamed: Thank you all so much for being here today. Welcome to the “Resisting Pinkwashing Now Until Liberation” teach-in. Queer Crescent is honored to host this teach in in partnership with the Palestinian Feminist Collective, Lavender Phoenix, The Muslim Alliance for Gender and Sexual Diversity or MASGD, Teaching Palestine, and Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies   Thank you all so much for joining us and for tuning in. My name is Shenaaz Janmohamed. I use she and they pronouns. I'm the executive director of Queer Crescent.  Queer Crescent is really thrilled to offer this Teach-in and to be in learning with you all for the next hour and a half on Pinkwashing in particular, as we hold grief and rage and mourn towards healing, towards resistance, towards a free Palestine. Joining the resounding people all across the world who have been calling for a permanent ceasefire. To not let the violence and the destruction of Gaza go without our clear and determined voice to say that this is not okay, that we, our tax dollars should not be paying for this, that we do not consent to genocide. And as queer people, as trans people, it is very much a queer issue to be in solidarity with Palestine. For the next hour and a half we will take time to learn from Palestinian organizers. in Palestine, in the U. S., around the ways in which this moment can be used to understand our relationship to pinkwashing in particular and to Palestinian solidarity in general. And so thank you again for being with us today. We're going to start our Teach in with poetry, because we deeply believe as a queer Muslim organization in the power of cultural work, cultural change, and imparting our shine as queer people into the culture. That is the way that our people have survived. That is the way that people share their histories their survivalship is through culture. And so, before I bring up Yaffa, who's a dear friend and comrade, and also the executive director of MASGD, the Muslim Alliance for Gender and Sexual Diversity, let me introduce Yaffa. Yaffa is a trans Muslim and displaced indigenous Palestinian. She is sharing poetry from her new book, Blood Orange, shout it out, please get a copy if you haven't already, which is an emotional, important, and timely poetry collection. Their writings probe the yearning for home, belonging, mental health, queerness, transness, and other dimensions of marginalization while nurturing dreams of utopia against the background of ongoing displacement and genocide of Indigenous people. Join me in giving some shine, energetic shine to Yaffa, and I'll pass to you. Mx Yaffa: Hi everyone. It's so nice to be here with you all. So excited to share space with all of you, with all the incredible panelists, with the entire Queer Crescent team, y'all are just incredible. Right before this, me and one of the other panelists realized we could potentially be related. So that's the beauty of having spaces like this, where you connect with people that you've kind of been missing your entire life, but you didn't even know that they were missing. I'm excited to recite some poetry for you all from my new collection. Just a little bit about the collection before I recite some poetry.  This collection was written for the most part, on the weekend of October 13th to the 15th. Some of y'all might remember that there was an eclipse during that weekend. And I really wanted to find something that would really center queer and trans Palestinian experience in particular, and also would just support me in navigating my own processing of everything that's going on.  I have family both in Gaza and the West Bank still. I'm originally from Jaffa and Jenin, but I've kind of lived in nine different countries. So when I say I'm displaced, it's displacement from various different wars, various genocides, various everything. And the result of that was Blood Orange.  I tried to get it out as quickly as possible and here we are. The first poem that I'll read is called “Healthy”. And I'll talk a little bit about each of these poems after I read them. It's called “Healthy”. We are not meant to be okay, when genocide is our neighbor that is funded by our labor. We are meant to be a mess, our sleep tearing into reality, anxiety brewing, wondering what is hope. We are meant to tear at the seams of reality, realizing a reality built on oppression is bullshit. We are meant to realize and demand all we are worth. Self actualization, wholeness. Things systems built off of genocide can never. Our response labeled by western capitalism as wrong is healthy. We move to wholeness always, they move to pain attempting to drag us with them. So this was actually the very first poem that I wrote for this collection and it was in that first week of the genocide immediately following October 7th when so many people were really struggling with what do we do with all of this, right? We're witnessing an entire genocide right before our eyes. And what do we do? There was a lot of hopelessness going around and a lot of narratives, at least in what's known as the United States and the global north that's always told us that all of that is wrong. That we're not supposed to be overwhelmed by things. But for me, with all the practices that I have, it's actually healthy to be overwhelmed right now. We're not supposed to know how to let genocide live in our bodies with ease. We still show up, we still do the things, and yet at the same time, we honor it. That it is a large experience. This is not normal. This is not something that should be happening all the time or ever. And so really wanted to honor that of the world that we live in is not what we deserve. For us to be overwhelmed right now is actually healthy, is where we should be. So the second poem I will read kind of goes into the conversation of today around pinkwashing.  This one's called “At Odds”.  My transness and a colonized perception of Palestine are at odds. They think it's because of lack of modernity. I say I have only received death threats targeting my transness from white people, Zionists, and other various political affiliations. I say only white people around me have ever disowned their own. Yet I do not talk to sisters who choose to buy into imperialist transphobia, claiming it as their own. My parents do not understand how some of their children could hate anything any of their children could be, why anyone would hate what they do not know. I won't talk much about pinkwashing because I know we'll get to that today. But in particular, most queer and trans Palestinians over these last eight weeks have been receiving such immense violence from the broader LGBTQ community telling us that our people are the ones who are going to kill us. I've been receiving death threats my entire life in particular as an organizer since I was 19, and I have literally never received a death threat from anyone from our region from any Muslim person. It has always been white people who have sent me death threats specifically for my queerness and my transness. Let alone everything else. And so that, that poem just kind of honors that experience.  I'll read one more, and I'll say just a few words before I read this last one. For me, the arts are so important. Not just as a tool for resistance, but also as a tool for world building. Often we think of the world is what creates art, rather than art is what creates the world. If you look at literature, even with Zionism, Zionism was in literature 100 years before it was ever named. I think about that of what is the world that we are building, what is the world of tomorrow that we get to write about and paint about and do all different kinds of art forms about today. And so this last poem kind of brings a little bit of that into it. The collection goes into the topic of utopia as we're exploring all of these other things. and as we're experiencing this genocide. So this last poem is called “Land Back”. I do not know names wiped from time in Gaza Like I do not remember the names Of great uncles and aunts Who have been reclaimed by our land To say they were murdered Is to claim loss that our land will never feel For we are made of her And regardless of how many layers of phosphor fill the air We return to her in our deaths They may exacerbate the process of our return, but return we shall. Standing thousands of miles away, I know even here she will take me back for distance is a creation that is buried with bodies that were never ours. We are not the ones who take land back, it is land that takes us. There will come a day when the sun sets on a world and rises in another, when indigenous sovereignty is honored. Where queerness no longer exists, where transness is no longer an identity, where humanity means something genuine. So I wanted to end with that, on a note of everything that we're doing right now, all of the resistance is world building. We're building the world that we have always deserved. So I'll leave you all with just one final thing about the book, like I mentioned, the reason I wrote this book in the first place and published it is to raise awareness about queer and trans Palestinians in particular and our experiences, and also to fundraise for queer and trans Palestinians both on the grounds in Gaza and in the diaspora. So 100 percent of all the proceeds from Blood Orange go directly towards that.   As we're getting deeper and deeper into this, the needs of the queer and trans Palestinian community is getting so immense, both on the ground in the region and in the diaspora. Over just the last few days, I've received over $20,000 worth of requests from individuals because people are being doxed, people are receiving death threats, people are losing their jobs. In one case, people are losing their children. There's a lot happening. And so just wanted to leave with that. I want to invite you all to pay attention to those needs and honor them, especially as we go into next year and into the elections. Thank you again for having me. It was such a pleasure to be here. And I'm so excited for the rest of this. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Thank you so much, Yaffa. It's so wonderful to have you here. And it feels so important to start our teaching with the ways in which poetry, culture, moves and inspires us. It opens our hearts in ways that feel both healing and necessary as part and parcel to our organizing and our deep learning. As my comrade and partner Saba says, to growing our empathy to be able to show up with more depth, more commitment, and more resolve towards these issues because we are deeply interconnected. So thank you again, Yaffa..  Before I turn to introduce our other panelists, I wanted to just ground us for a moment in why Queer Crescent, along with the many partners that I named at the beginning felt it was important to host this teach in. Back on November 3rd, Queer Crescent in collaboration with the Palestinian Feminist Collective drafted and released a letter calling upon LGBTQI organizations, leaders, and influencers to join Queer Crescent and Palestinians in calling for an immediate ceasefire. And in particularly to take up understanding and resisting pinkwashing as a queer issue. The frame ” Palestine is a queer issue” is very much an homage of Palestinian Feminist Collective who tirelessly make the links around gender justice, bodily autonomy, self determination, sovereignty to the project of Palestinian liberation. Seeing them as part and parcel of the same project of liberation, and we very much are inspired and in deep gratitude to PFC and all the tireless folks who make those links so clear and apparent to us. We are also in deep gratitude to organizations like Al-Qaws, based in Palestine, who have been telling us about pink- washing for a long, long time, and we are finally doing our part to answer the call as an organization as Queer Crescent. Since we shared this letter, over 350 individuals have signed on, over 65 organizations have joined us in a commitment to calling for permanent ceasefire. This teach in is part of our commitment to moving those who have signed, ourselves included, and the many others who have joined us today. To deepen our shared resolve to a free Palestine through learning about pink watching as a propaganda tool of Israel and settler colonial state violence, and to allow this moment to transform us so that the grief is not in vain, towards a more fierce committed and clear stance of solidarity with Palestinian liberation movement. As queer and trans people and within LGBTQI organizations, we have a distinct role to play to organize to undermine pinkwashing. Because pinkwashing works and functions on the backs of racist tropes of Palestinians, Arabs, SWANA, and Muslims more broadly. We cannot let our vulnerabilities as trans and queer people be exploited in the pursuit of colonial violence and the genocide against Palestinians and all indigenous people. It was not surprising that some of the first folks who signed on to our letter were trans led organizations like the Transgender Law Center, like El/La, and indigenous organizations. It's not surprising because I think for folks who are leading trans led organizations, Trans and indigenous organizations, the relationship of self determination of bodily autonomy and to state violence and colonization is clear, right? Because ultimately colonization uses gender injustice and creating these wedges within our communities as a way to dampen our resistance and to keep us apart. So, I don't want to say more because our amazing speakers will speak and illuminate so much more of these issues. But I wanted to just state why it was important for Queer Crescent to support advancing these conversations. So, our first speaker today is Ghadir Shafie ( she and her). She is a Palestinian queer activist and the co founder of ASWAT, Palestinian Feminist Queer Center for Sexual and Gender Freedoms. A passionate advocate for the intersectionality of the struggle of Palestinian queer women, fighting multiple forms of oppression as Palestinians in the context of Israel's system of apartheid, military occupation, and settler colonialism, as women in a militaristic and imperialistic male dominated society, and as queers in the context of pinkwashing and homophobia. Ghadir promotes active solidarity for Palestine through global feminism and with queers. Thank you, Ghadir. Pass it to you.  Ghadir Shafie: Thank you so much. Hello from Palestine. Thank you so much for organizing this teach-in on pinkwashing. I am grateful for your presence here with me, witnessing in this horrible, horrible time. I will speak today for about 15 minutes, and I want you to bear in mind that since October 7th, Israel has killed over 18, 000 Palestinians. That is one Palestinian every 15 minutes. Imagine how many queer people are being killed daily by Israel. The scenes from Gaza are beyond description. They defy comparison, even for Palestinians, jaded by decades of occupation and settler colonial violence. Devastated landscape filled with craters and the blackened ruins of what were once people's homes, dead bodies or pieces of them. Orphaned children screaming in terror and incomprehension. Desperate survivors crying for food and water. Doctors despairing at the ever growing influx of wounded people they know they cannot treat. As a queer Palestinian watching these images of horror, one stood out as particularly revolting in a rather different way. It shows an Israeli soldier in the middle of the rubble of one of the many residential neighborhoods in Gaza, flattened by the Israeli indiscriminate military strikes. In the distance, smoke from Israel's carpet bombings hang in the air. The soldier is surrounded by Israeli tanks and demolish everything in their way. It is a scene of death and destruction The soldier stands holding a bright new rainbow flag. and Described it as a message of hope.  What hope can there be for 2.3 million Palestinians trapped over 16 years in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Gaza has become a graveyard for Palestinians. They have no water. No food and no electricity as Israel has cut off what little it allowed in through its already suffocating siege. They seek shelter from Israeli bombings in hospital, UN schools, mosques, and churches, only to find these sites targeted by Israeli strikes. Those who can flee their homes along Israeli designated safe corridors only to have their vehicles shelved by the Israeli IDF soldiers. It seems incomprehensible that an Israeli soldier would pose a photo with a rainbow flag while participating in his army's mass slaughter of Palestinians and destruction of half of Gaza's homes. The truth is more sinister yet. This stunt, which was shared online by the Israeli state official social media accounts, is a textbook. example of obscene colonial pinkwashing. More than that, it is a pinkwashing on steroids. For years, Palestinian queers have denounced Israel's pinkwashing, a cynical strategy designed to use self proclaimed support for LGBTQIA plus rights as a pink smokescreen to conceal its 75 years regime of apartheid, which oppresses all Palestinians, no matter of our gender. or sexual orientation. All the while singling out queer Palestinians for persecution and blackmail. It is an attempt to falsely depict Israel as modern and a liberal country while diverting attention from its alignment with far right homophobic regimes and groups around the world and its current fundamentalist, racist, and homophobic government. In addition, Israel's pinkwashing agenda is a colonial tool that has the racist aim to misrepresent Palestinians as backwards, homophobic, and thus not deserving of human rights. It also tries to convince us, as queer and trans people, that we are somehow foreign in our society, and tries to turn us against our Palestinians brothers and sisters. I think there couldn't be any better example of Israeli pink washing than the photo that the Israeli soldier with the rainbow flag in the rubble. Israeli pink washing has always been dishonest and dangerous. It has always been racist and colonial. It has allowed Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing, besiege, imprisonment, and murder of Palestinians, queer and non queer alike, for decades. Now it's being used to cover up for genocide. In these dark times, Palestinians in besieged Gaza are bearing the brunt of Israel's full blown genocidal war and ethnic cleansing. Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories of West Bank, meanwhile, are also facing escalating waves of killing, torture by both Israeli military and illegal sectors. Apartheid, for Palestinians like myself inside Israel, is reaching new peaks as Israeli forces are targeting and suppressing any expression of sympathy with the oppressed. As hard as it is, we still maintain hope. We have no other choice. That hope comes from the grassroots mobilization that are forcing complicit governments and institutions to finally call for the bare minimum that is nevertheless the absolute priority: a ceasefire that will put a stop to Israel's carpet bombing and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Queer groups have been extremely instrumental in our struggle for liberation. Queer groups have been an important part of the mobilizations. Nearly 40 LGBT, QA plus groups across Southwest Asia and North Africa called for the immediate ceasefire stating ” we stand with justice, equality, progress, and liberty.” Throughout my life as a queer activist, I have proudly held the rainbow flag high as a symbol of queer inclusion, queer struggle, queer liberation, queer equality, and queer joy. The Israeli soldier participating in Israel's genocidal war on my people in Gaza has desecrated the flag, has disgraced the flag, and made it a mockery for all it stands for. Queer and trans people and groups are increasingly seeing through the pink smokescreen and rejecting Israel's pinkwashing and its war crimes and crimes against humanity. We will not stand by as our flag and our identities are co opted and used to justify a genocide. I call upon queer allies around the globe to remember none of us is free until we are all free. What can we do right now in these terrible times? Since 2005, Palestinians have proposed to you, our friends around the world, an entirely nonviolent method of ending Israel's power over our lives. An academic and cultural boycott of Israel. This strategy is known as BDS, Boycott, Digestment and Sanctions. BDS means boycotting all Israeli state sponsored institutions. This is not aimed at individuals, but at institutions financed by the state and that serve as extensions of the government that occupies us and keeps us under siege. We ask academics, staff and students not to speak at Israeli state funding organizations, including universities. We ask artists and cultural workers not to perform in apartheid Israel. Make sure that your universities are divested from Israeli money. Do not take israeli money for your conferences or film festivals. Do not accept deceptively free propaganda trips to Israel. End complicity with the government of Israel by among other things, cancelling all joint projects activities that are complicit with Israeli universities. Right now, the main demand is to stop the genocide. Stop the genocide and ask for ceasefire now.  So how can queer groups and queer people support queer liberation in Palestine?. One effort that is happening right now around the world is Queer Cinema for Palestine. Queer cinema for Palestine is a vibrant event that happens globally, established in 2021 to support queer art and queer cinema around the world. Today, there are more than 270 filmmakers and artists who signed our pledge to boycott Israeli film festival, to boycott Israeli institutions, and support queer liberation in Palestine. Queer Cinema for Palestine is happening online in more than 15 locations around the world from the 2nd until the 10th of December. Under the title, There's No Pride in Genocide, we gather together as artists to support, Queer Cinema for Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. There's not much to say. I think you've seen the image from Gaza. You've seen what is happening right now. This is not a regular panel on pinkwashing. It's happening during a genocide, where pinkwashing is also used to promote genocide. So, may I ask you as a Palestinian and as a queer Palestinian, please keep talking about Palestine. Palestine is a queer issue. Gaza is a queer issue, and there's no queer justice until we are all free. Thank you so much for organizing this and thank you so much for your work and activism on Palestine. You are saving lives right now. Thank you. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Thank you so much, Ghadir. Thank you so much for your passion, your commitment, reminding us that hope is an active choice that you're engaging in every day, despite all the odds, because that is the story of survival. Thank you for reminding and being so clear in the link to BDS boycott, divestment and sanction movement as tangible ways that we could be in solidarity with Palestine and to chip at the far reaching power of the Israeli state and settler colonial project. Thank you for showing the ways in which queer folks and queer organizations. use culture and art to tell different stories of survival with the Queer Cinema for Palestine. And thank you for showing up and being here with us. Thank you for all the ways that you hold communities, your fullness, and time to share and to lead us today. Wishing so much protection and safety to you and yours. Next we have Rabab Abdulhadi. Rabab Abdulhadi (she/her) is an internationally known scholar and distinguished professor and researcher. Her scholarship, pedagogy, and public activism focus on Palestine, Arab, and Muslim communities and their diasporas, transnational feminisms, and gender and sexuality studies. She is the Director and Senior Scholar in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies, and a Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Race and Resistance Studies at the Historic College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University. She is also a treasure, a beloved teacher, organizer here in the Bay. I feel really grateful that you're here with us today for all the work, all the times that you've taught me. It's really such an honor to be able to host you and invite you in, Rabab.  Rabab Abdulhadi: Thank you so much Shenaaz, and I begin by acknowledging that my own university, San Francisco State University, sits on stolen indigenous Ohlone people's land, and I'm now on the east coast of the United States, where I am also present on the Lenape people's land that has been stolen and people have been displaced, just like it is in Palestine. I also want to thank Queer Crescent for organizing this with the Palestinian Feminist Collective and actually joining with Palestinian Voices. I'm very happy that my colleague, my sister, my sibling, Ghadir, was able to join us and has actually taken a lot of the things that I was going to focus on, and thank you, Yaffa, for especially naming even the poetry, Blood Oranges, because we know what oranges mean and how they have been used. And many Palestinians can't even eat oranges because it reminds them of the orchards that they've lost back home. So I start, if you don't mind, just Putting the first slide on. Yeah. And this is a slide if people can see it. This is actually was done in 2013 and it was organized by a group of underground artists, called themselves cultural jammers, to remake all the campaign that was at the time by Pamela Geller and other Zionist groups doing all this smearing and buying sides on the buses and so on. And the reason I mentioned because there is a connection between the cultural jammers and also the whole naming of pink washing because pink washing, some people say, emerged in Palestine. Some people say it emerged in the U. S. Some people talk about the whole question of washing and then the question of pink and so on. And I think for me as a researcher, a scholar, it's very, very interesting because there are so many origins of every single way that we are having the struggles. And so the colonial boundaries and borders that the colonialists and settler colonists try to impose upon us don't really work because we cross these borders at least maybe imaginary, maybe in our networks and so on. But why is it that pinkwashing persists? Ghadir spoke a lot about it. I'm just going to just emphasize a couple of things. It is necessary, very important for Israel public relations. Public relations is a very important project for it. This is why Israel consistently demands of the Palestinians and the Arab countries and the world, not only to recognize Israel's right to exist, but to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which in itself a very racist notion. And this is very much connected with the genocide that we're seeing now in Gaza, that also we have seen for 75 years of Nakba and for over 100 years of colonization of Palestine, because , the slogan by the Zionist movement was “a land without people, for a people without the land.” We can talk about “for people without the land” a little bit later, but let's talk about “a land without people”. In order to accomplish that and legitimize it, you have to arrest the people. You have to erase them. You have to erase their presence. You have to also discredit their discourse, their work, their culture, their interaction, their social relations, in order for you to present yourself as Israel does. And as Ghadir mentioned, as a modern state that is making the desert blue, which we know is not true, and by contrast, is the best friend of women and queer people, as a gay haven, as opposed to quote unquote the backward, savage. excessively homophobic, excessively misogynist, Arab world, Arab and Muslim world, and in which Arab men and Arab and Muslim and Palestinian men are presented as irrational, bloodthirsty, misogynist, haters of women and Queer people, and as women as being docile, as being only oppressed constantly, and need to be rescued by the colonists who will come in and basically realize what Gayatri Spivak spoke about I don't know, 30 years ago, the colonist project of trying to save brown people from brown communities and queer people from their own queer communities. And so in order for this to work, it has to be presented in all of these things that it is necessary. And it's very important for Israel to focus on its public relations. And this is something that has been actually very part and parcel of since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, a task that was assigned to the military, to the security of interior affairs to the Mossad, which is the CIA, outside intelligence, Shambit, the internal intelligence to everybody. And now we see more and more the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and other is, and the whole question of quote unquote branding, which I put it in parentheses because branding also refers to the ways in which people engage in slavery actually used to quote brand people whose lives they owned. So I put it in parentheses. I question it. But Israel is very big on that to brand Israel as a gay haven. Israel as a best liberator of women and so on.  This is also what we see today in the sense of Israel actually making a very public relation campaign and a very, very intensive campaign to claim that Palestinians have chopped off the head of children, which was even reiterated by the president of the United States without even thinking about it because he was quoting Israeli Officials who we know are not really known for telling the truth and then they had to retract it the second day but yesterday he repeated the same thing again and said there is the rape of women and so on which we do not have any evidence until now. We know that a lot of Israeli groups and Zionist groups like this group Bonat Alternativa and others are alleging, but we haven't seen any evidence of that. If there is any evidence of that, we will not stand for it. We condemn any kind of violations of gender and sexual, justice because we believe that gender and sexual justice is part and parcel with indivisibility of justice. So this is not something we are trying to cover, but this is very much part and parcel of the Israeli propaganda and it's churning machine, the Hasbara machine is everywhere and they keep changing their stories. And if we have time we can actually go over how each story has developed and moved from one place to the other. I'm also talking about the ways in which colonial feminisms or colonial quote unquote feminism, because feminism is supposed to be about the liberation of women as part of liberation of everybody, have been very much engaged in. But within that, there is also notion of blaming the victim. It is a very important aspect of it. So in order for the Israeli and the Zionist narrative to work, you have to blame people. And one of the very well known cases, for example, was the case of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the young Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped from in front of his house on July 2nd, 2014, right around the big, big 2014 war on Gaza we talked about, and kidnapped by Israeli settlers who took him to a forest in Jerusalem that was built on the ruins of the village of Deir Yassin, where the massacre on April 8th, 1948 happened in order to facilitate the creation of the Israeli state. And they made him drink kerosene and set him on fire and burned him alive, which was a clear case of lynching. Now, what Israeli police tried to do was to actually say that Mohammed Abu Khdeir was killed by his own family to quote unquote salvage family honor. And they killed him because he was queer. And now if it wasn't for his father who had videotapes of the security cameras outside of the house and showed it– the Israeli police tried to confiscate it and basically destroy it– showed that these people came and kidnapped him. The relative would still be among colonists, among racists, among white supremacists, Zionists, that Palestinians are killing Palestinians and they are doing this all the time. So it's not only blaming the victim, but it also instilling and reinforcing the narrative of people, not only Palestinians, this happens with all indigenous and all colonized communities and all communities of color from time immemorial. You look at the history of the United States, this is something, this is a trope that keeps getting repeated again and again and again. And it's not an easy trope because It is not something that's only being said. It's not only a discursive issue. It's not a discursive issue that we need to deconstruct in the classroom because we know the history, including that. But recently, many people started learning more about the case of Emmett Till, the young Boy who was killed and the woman who actually accused him came out and said that she lied, but he was killed and he was lynched. And then his mom insisted on having open casket so everybody could see the crime. And there's so many more examples that we don't have time to get into all of them now, but this is part of the colonial narrative, the colonial strategy in order to discredit the people who are colonized and discredit their struggle.  And this is definitely a part in Gaza and it is, but the other thing is that it depends on the narrative of saying that our communities in particular as exceptionally sensitive and exceptionally traditional. And this is something that we saw in Abu Ghraib for example.  When they were talking about, we're not going to show the images of iraqi men are particularly insensitive. But we were raising the question, which men are okay with it, which women, which anybody, which non gender binary person, who would be okay with being subjected to sexual and gender violence; to being displaced like this and so on. Nobody will be. But the imaginary that it is trying to instill that's built on Orientalist, Islamophobic, anti Arab, anti Palestinian, anti Muslim racism as part and parcel of all kinds of racism basically makes it possible to do a little dog whistle in order for you to enforce all of this. We saw this also at the US Social Forum when Zionist groups stand with us, which now everybody knows what it is, tried to do a workshop around queer communities in the Middle East, and many of us objected to it. And the reason that it got through because the organizers thought that this would be something that would be actually really wonderful, bringing everybody together. They did not really investigate who this group was and what it was doing and did not coordinate with the many organizations that were at the U. S. Social Forum in 2010 in Detroit from our own community to see what is happening, what's going on, are you part of this unparceled hat? Even though the Palestinian queer organizations have existed for a very long time, and I think it was by then, if I'm not mistaken, Ghadir you can correct me that we organize a national tour and for all calls throughout the U S in order for people to speak and you all came and spoke in my own classroom. This is part of the stuff that keeps going back. And this is also the same thing that we hear around this group that I've mentioned now, and this propaganda that's happening, and also in terms of the ways when we passed the resolution on BDS in the National Women's Studies Association 2015, many Zionist groups came out and basically came with the whole question is there a place for Zionism and feminism? Many of the feminist groups have been targeted, including the International Women's Strike and so on. This is a continuous, systemic, persistent thing. This is not something that is out of random or accidental. And so what do we do about this? In addition to what Ghadir said, I think it's really, really important for us to say, how do we fight back? We fight back with multiple ways. One of the ways we do for example, organizing this in the classroom. So one of the things that we do in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicity and Diaspora Studies program ever since we were founded in 2007 is every single year we were partnering with the Pride Month at San Francisco State to organize sessions on the whole question of queer justice, and this is one of them. Even after San Francisco State stopped funding pride month, we continue doing it again and again. We believe that it's really important to connect the knowledge within the classroom with the knowledge outside and with the activism and advocacy. We do not separate what happens in the classroom, what happens in the academy from outside. So the academy is not producing knowledge that is divorced from reality. The people who are organizing are part and parcel of that. And so we've been doing this again and again. The other thing that is really, really important to think about is how do we work here, and I'm talking here in the diaspora, with groups on the ground, Palestinian queer groups who are working? So one of the examples that I would like to cite from our own experiences is when Al-Qaws was attacked by Palestinian police in Nablus trying to hold an event. My hometown Nablus. We were going to rush and say something, but we waited and we coordinated with Al Qaws and we asked, what should we do? And we did not do anything until Al Qaws came out because we were objecting to the whole question of saving queer people from queer communities, saving brown people from brown communities, the whole question of the colonial notion. And we were also taking leadership from the people on the ground who are day in and day out struggling. Once Al-Qaws came out with it, what we did is we published in one of the newspapers in the Bay Area, along with Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, which is a group that has been doing a lot of work for a very long time, and whose founder actually was chosen to be the Grand Marshall at Gay Pride Parade at San Francisco. And she turned down this honor and said, because I am here in Palestine struggling with the International Solidarity Movement at the time to oppose the apartheid world to oppose the repression by Israel and so on. So we organized together. And that's when we said we endorse. We support. This is really important sometimes to think about how do we take a back road and when is it we go public with things. At this point, we really need to go public and we need to defy all this propaganda that is happening.  This is part of what the solidarity mean. But this is not free. When we do something like this, there is punishment. And these are some of the flyers I'm showing from the Queer Liberation March that took place in 2019. This was the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall, Uprising. The Queer Liberation March at that time actually decided to refuse any corporate funding, to refuse to allow the police to go march in their own uniforms and so on, rejected the policing, rejected the state apparatus that represses people, rejected the corporate money and so on. As a result, there was space for us to be there. So we were organizing, we organized a big contingent under the banner of QAIA, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, and also Queers A gainst Islamophobia.  So we participated and I took this banner and I put it on my Facebook page. This led to the another Zionist attack, which is trying to silence Palestine and were trying to criminalize Palestine in the curriculum, and especially targeting us and our program in particular. And they took it and didn't say what was on the banner. They just said that I'm spreading hate, and thus I should be– they had 86 organizations, some of them fake organizations– sign it, send it to the university, to the chancellor of California State University to the president of San Francisco State, saying that I'm spreading hate. This for them is hate. Palestine is a queer issue. BDS Zionism is racism. Silence means death. For them, this was something that was very problematic, and it was something that is undermining the Zionist propaganda, and Zionist project of colonizing Palestine and eliminating the Palestinian people like the genocide that we are seeing here, and trying to continue pushing the pink washing without having it exposed.  As a result, our program has been attacked again and again. The Lawfare Project executive director got on the TV, on Fox and friends, and made a lying statement. They sued me. And they sued San Francisco State and they sued California State University. But we defeated them. It was thrown out of court. It was dismissed with prejudice. But she lied about that. And she said that I'm spreading hate; that I'm one of the leading anti Semitic– Horowitz every single year pushes out a formula about the top anti-Semitic scholars, and they always give me number one. And I think they do it in May because this is the fundraising season for them. As a result, I started receiving death threats. However, and including to my own university and the threat voicemails on my office mail that said Muslims will die, which is the same phrase that the guy who killed Wadiah Al-Fayyumi in Chicago, stabbing him 26 times. He said Muslims will die. The university does not believe that this is actually a viable threat. And so they protect the right wing speech, which is white supremacist and Zionist is a protected speech protected that they can do whatever they want, put up hateful posters, do whatever they want against us, but we are not allowed to say so. And the university is not investigating death threat letters that actually came to me through the University President's office to my own office. However we refuse to be silenced. We refuse to lie down. And so we continued organizing. And one of the main events that we organize, and we do it every year, is this panel Queer Open Classroom that everybody can attend and come in. Queer justice against pink washing, exposing it, bringing scholars and activists, Ghadir was one of the people who spoke at that, in order for us to support liberation for Palestine as part of liberation of all, and to support gender and sexual justice as part and parcel of the indivisibility of justice. Thank you. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Oh, Rabab. I hope that you can feel all the tremendous. gratitude and love that you're getting in the chat. I think that there is such a clear longing to be hearing stories from elders, folks who have been in this fight for so long. Thank you for bringing in the long arc of queer Palestinian organizing. Thank you for bringing the long arc and history of queers being in solidarity for Palestine. It's so important that we understand that while this moment is so important for us to study, learn and act. It rests upon such a long arc and such a long history of organizing in solidarity with Palestine. Thank you for also speaking to Mohammed Abu Khdeir, thank you for speaking him into the space. Thank you for both of you reminding us to follow the lead of queer Palestinians. What we're trying to do with you all today with this teach-in is to really pull us together, circle around and invite us all to be following the lead of queer Palestinians so that we can take on this work as inextricably linked to our own liberation; to advance the work of undermining pinkwashing and Zionism as part and parcel to our queer liberation. So thank you so much, Rabab. Our last speaker, Shivani Chanillo with Lavender Phoenix. Shivani (they/them) is a trans non- binary second generation Indian American organizer. Shout out to the baddy Indian organizers out here, myself included. Their experience of active solidarity with Palestinian folks came in 2017 through exchanges they facilitated between their high school students in Baltimore, and students at Ramallah Friends School in the West Bank. These powerful exchanges stoked Shivani's passion for developing young people as critical thinkers grounded in revolutionary values and politics. As a leadership development coordinator at Lavender Phoenix, an organization that Queer Crescent deeply loves and feels deeply supported by and in deep siblingship with. Shivani continues this work by facilitating opportunities for trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders to practice values based organizing and contribute to intersectional movements. In particular, I just want to really say that we were so excited to invite Shivani and Lavender Phoenix in to our teach in as the final speaker, because Lavender Phoenix is one organization that really models, going back to the initial motivation of this teach in with our letter calling for a permanent ceasefire, calling on LGBTQ organizations and leaders to sign on to understanding pink washing and to support Palestinian liberation. Lavender Phoenix is one such organization that has really demonstrated such values align solidarity with Palestinian liberation. And so I'm really excited to bring you in Shivani to close us out to talk about how queer people, queer organizations can really double down on our solidarity.  Shivani Chanillo: Thank you so much Shenaaz for that introduction and to Queer Crescent for organizing this event. I just want to take a moment and just, I feel so deeply moved by the sharing from Rabab and Ghadir in this workshop and just sitting with the lineage within all of us as we take up Palestine as a queer issue. We have generations of lessons and decades of work and such powerful leaders here in this space, but all across the world to follow, and I feel so grateful and so excited to be joining in on this work and sharing a little bit about what Lavender Phoenix is doing in this moment. If you haven't heard of Lavender Phoenix, we build trans non binary and queer Asian and Pacific Islander power here in the Bay Area. We are a base building organization training grassroots leaders to build intersectional movements. As we witness an escalation of the ongoing genocide in Palestine I can say that our base is firmly grounded in the understanding that Palestinian liberation is part of our struggle and our responsibility as trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander people. And so I want to start by sharing a little bit about what we're doing in this moment, before sharing about how our members arrived to this point. Since October 7th we have shifted our work accordingly. We have dedicated time to mobilize our members and our broader communities to action. We have educated each other to stay politically grounded. We have and will continue to support each other to process the grief of this moment and to remember hope, optimism, and commitment. In so many facets of our work, we are stepping into deeper leadership and responsibility to support our Palestinian comrades to win. And more tangibly across our six member led committees, this looks like offering healing support, coordinating our members who are trained in protest and digital security to support our comrades, coordinating contingents at in person and online actions, moving financial resources and funder attention to our Palestinian partners, and uplifting pro Palestinian messaging and calls to actions using our social media reach. Responding to Palestine and challenging pinkwashing is not a shift in our priorities, but it's actually a sharpening of our focus as an organization. We've organized our base over the years to recognize our interconnected struggles, and across our membership, we so deeply understand that the Palestinian struggle is our struggle. And Palestinian futures are our futures. All of the actions we are taking right now to support Palestine, to challenge pinkwashing are the result of so many tests, experiments, and trials that have helped us deepen our political purpose and grow our power. Many of these experiments and trials that we've conducted over the years really informed our current theory of change. And this is really critical to how we're organizing in this moment. Our emergent responses to sharpen contradictions in our world like we are witnessing with Palestine, are only possible because we organize within a consistent theory of change. A key part of our theory of change and a key part of my role as Leadership Development coordinator, is that we are committed to developing leaders who are rooted in our values, in our history, in emotional intelligence, and compassion, because we know that is how our movement will be sustained and will be effective. So we're not just developing members and masses who care about single issues, we're developing holistic, critical thinkers who care about solidarity with all oppressed people so that in moments like this, solidarity with Palestine is a natural choice in our larger fight for liberation. One of the really important ways we do this, and this workshop is a critical example, is we educate our base, our trans and queer API base, on our history. We dig into how systems of white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy impact all of us across our identities in the past and in the present. Right now, the tools and tactics being wielded by fascist leaders to criminalize and punish trans people here in the U. S. are rooted in the same white supremacist, colonial, and imperialist ideologies used to justify the dehumanization and murder of Palestinians, particularly trans and queer Palestinians. As part of our theory of change, we've also spent intentional time educating our base about revolutionary politics like abolition and healing justice, and developing our skills for safety, for healing and resource mobilization that are applicable in moments all across our movement. We spent so much time since we implemented this theory of change in 2021 to build our base and grow our power so we can show up for our partners who are organizing for Palestinian liberation in this moment. We have spent so much time cultivating our skills and knowledges so we can support our movements beyond just trans liberation.  I want to end just by sharing a little bit of a story. A few weeks ago, our members participated in a direct action that asked many of them to step into higher risk than they had before. Prior to the action, we met to get grounded together. Folks shared their fears, but they also countered those fears with a really rooted sense of purpose. So many of our members talked about how they wanted to look back on this moment and know that they and we as an organization did everything in our power to support Palestinian liberation. And they spoke about the sacred responsibility and duty we have in this moment to show up in solidarity. I feel so moved, even now, just thinking back to that moment and feel so much gratitude to our members for taking new risks, to the generations of leaders in our organization and our movement who have led us to this point, and I feel immense admiration and gratitude to the long lineage of Palestinian queer and trans resistance, and current day organizers who are guiding us right now. For Lavender Phoenix, this moment is really helping us clarify our power, and for many of our members, this moment is helping them clarify their political purpose. The things all of our Palestinian siblings are fighting for, self determination, safety, healing, community, decolonization, these are the things that we as trans and queer API people here in the Bay Area so desire for ourselves as well. We refuse to let our transness and our queerness be co opted for violence and displacement and genocide, and we know that our struggles and our futures are united, and we're committed to fighting alongside our Palestinian comrades until we are all free. Thank you so much for letting me share. I'll pass it back to Shenaaz. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Shivani, thank you so much for bringing all of it. Lavender Phoenix, I just can't swoon on y'all enough. You model that clarity of purpose and power and grace. There's also such deep humility and grace to be in constant learning. As an emerging organization, an emerging queer organization, I just have to say Queer Crescent feels so deeply held by y'all and really inspired with the path that you are leading and inviting us all towards.  This piece around letting this moment sharpen the focus. It's not a pivot. I think I've even said, we're pivoting, we're in rapid response. Part of our political principles as an organization is understanding anti Zionism as part and parcel of the white supremacist project. And so this is not a pivot, it's not a rapid response, but to your point, it's a sharpening and it's a double down of our commitments, principles and priorities. So thank you for naming that.  Cheryl Truong: And that's the end of our show. Tonight's show was a broadcast of the Resisting Pinkwashing teach-in co-led by Queer Crescent and the Palestinian Feminist Collective. It was moderated by Shenaaz Janmohamed, executive director of Queer Crescent and featured poetry by Mx. Yaffa of MASGD, and guest speakers, Rabab Abdulhadie from the Palestinian feminist collective, Ghadir Shafie of ASWAT, and and Shivani Chanillo from AACRE Group Lavender Phoenix. Learn more about the incredible work of these incredible organizations and sign on to Queer Crescent's cease fire campaign through the links in our show notes.  Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong   Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening! The post APEX Express – 05.30.24 – Resisting Pinkwashing appeared first on KPFA.

Are you an entrepreneur in women's health looking for inspiration and guidance? Dive into this enlightening episode of Brandstock with Bridie Houlihan, founder and CEO of Female Health Founders. Discover the innovative platform bridging gaps and fostering a global community of change-makers in women's health.  Key Highlights: - The origin story of Female Health Founders and the gap it fills in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. - How gamification, hackathons, and community-focused tools are revolutionizing women's health initiatives. - The unique challenges female entrepreneurs face, and innovative solutions fostering global collaboration. - Insights into inclusive branding beyond the conventional, exploring the conscious choice behind Female Health Founders' visual identity. - An exploration of 'Pinkwashing' in women's health, advocating for genuine support over superficial awareness. Join us as we unravel the journey of empowering women's health entrepreneurs worldwide, and how Bridie's vision is cultivating a trailblazing community for impactful change.  Time Markers:00:00 Introduction to Bridie Houlihan and Female Health Founders06:02 Innovative Tools and Community Engagement13:20 Challenges and Global Impact29:41 Inclusive Branding and Choosing Distinct Colors34:24 Addressing PinkwashingBridie Houlihan, a trailblazer in the field of women's health, serves as the passionate founder and CEO of Female Health Founders. This visionary platform serves as an inclusive hub for empowering female entrepreneurs and innovators worldwide. With over 15 years of dedicated experience in product and business development management, Bridie has made indelible contributions to public health and women's wellness sectors. Her passion for innovation is evident in her utilization of cutting-edge methods such as gamification, hackathons, and patient advisory groups to drive transformative change. One of her proudest achievements to date is sponsoring Facebook UK's first-ever all-female hackathon. Through her leadership, Bridie strives to create an open-access environment where game-changing ideas can flourish, ultimately increasing access to healthcare for women globally.Get in touch with Bridie Houlihan:www.femalehealthfounders.comGet in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky: Website BridgetBrands: https://www.bridgetbrands.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bojkowszkyb/ Book Significant Women: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0927YG1FH Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BridgetBrands Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brigitte.bojkowszky Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bridgetbrands X: https://twitter.com/BridgetBrands YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bridgetbrands

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! Emma speaks with César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University, to discuss his recent book Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien”. Then, she speaks with Schuyler Mitchell, writer and fact checker based in Brooklyn, to discuss her recent piece in The Baffler entitled "Pinkwashing the Timeline". First, Emma runs through updates on the violent crackdown by police (and Zionist mobs) on UCLA's anti-war encampment, Blinken's visit to Israel ahead of a likely invasion of Rafah, Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian aid, the House's bogus antisemitism bill, South Dakota abortion rights, Trump's response to encampment raids, the death of a SECOND Boeing whistleblower, Amazon labor violations, and devastating floods in Kenya, before parsing through the rage-inducing coverage of the violent attacks on anti-war peaceful demonstrations on college campuses, with some help from the poorly-executed propaganda of the NYPD. César García Hernández then joins, diving right into the evolution of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the US, with the Reagan administration's campaign for the War on Drugs recentering the narrative around crime, a position that mainstream Democrats like Bill Clinton and then-Senator Joe Biden would quickly assimilate to. Expanding on this, Hernández looks to the Obama Administration's continuation of this narrative, with a regime of deportation framed around ideas like “Felons not Families” as he and Emma tackle the Democrats' constant race to the right on immigration in a supposed (but never successful) pitch to GOP voters. After parsing through the central role that migrant labor plays in this political battle, they step back to assess the era of anti-immigrant rhetoric that came before the War on Drugs, with serious penalties for illegal entry and reentry stemming from the racist immigration laws on the books from the start of the 20th Century. Schuyler Mitchell then walks Emma through the concept of “pinkwashing,” or the dressing up of violent ideology in socially accepted liberal values, looking at Israel's insistence on presenting itself as a progressive haven – in juxtaposition to their narrative of the “savage” Palestinians. Mitchell and Emma then look at a little classic Israeli liberal TV as they parse through the obvious homophobia and transphobia of Eretz Nehederet's parody of Columbia students as a pitch-perfect example of Israel's hypocrisy, before wrapping up with the role pinkwashing plays in Israel's simultaneous self-victimization and self-valorization. And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Matt Binder and Brandon Sutton as they discuss the typical “savages” arguments being made against Gazans, the NYPD's propaganda launch in the wake of their violent raid on Columbia students, and watch JD Vance fall for the most obvious bait from Kaitlan Collins. Krystal Ball unpacks her cohost's obvious fascism, Pete Cresswell reflects on the tradition of campus occupations, and America from México discusses transphobia on the left. Josh from Virginia breaks down the crackdown on UNC's anti-war protests, the MR Team breaks down the outrageous “outside agitators” narrative with some help from the GOP's big guns, and Kristi Noam struggles to come back from boasting about the murder of a 14-month-old dog, plus, your calls and IMs! Check out Cesar's book here: https://thenewpress.com/books/welcome-wretched Check out Schuyler's piece here: https://thebaffler.com/latest/pinkwashing-the-timeline-mitchell Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Check out Seder's Seeds here!: https://www.sedersseeds.com/ ALSO, if you have pictures of your Seder's Seeds, send them here!: hello@sedersseeds.com Check out this GoFundMe in support of Mohammed Nasrallah, whose family is trying to leave Gaza for Egypt: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mohammed-nasserallah-and-family-go-to-egypt Check out this GoFundMe in support of Mohammad Aldaghma's niece in Gaza, who has Down Syndrome: http://tinyurl.com/7zb4hujt Check out the "Repair Gaza" campaign courtesy of the Glia Project here: https://www.launchgood.com/campaign/rebuild_gaza_help_repair_and_rebuild_the_lives_and_work_of_our_glia_team#!/ Get emails on the IRS pilot program for tax filing here!: https://service.govdelivery.com/accounts/USIRS/subscriber/new 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 Check out today's sponsors: Nuts.com: Right now, https://Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at https://Nuts.com/majority. So, go check out all of the delicious options at https://Nuts.com/majority. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more!  That's https://Nuts.com/majority. Fast Growing Trees: This Spring Fast Growing Trees has the best deals online, up to half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get an ADDITIONAL 15% OFF their first purchase when using the code MAJORITY at checkout. That's an ADDITIONAL 15% OFF at https://FastGrowingTrees.com using the code MAJORITY at checkout. https://FastGrowingTrees.com com code MAJORITY. Offer is valid for a limited time, terms and conditions may apply Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

82% of consumers say they want to buy from brands with values that align with their own (RetailBrew, 2022). I discuss what makes purpose-driven marketing work or fall flat.(00:00) Introduction to Purpose-Driven Marketing(1:22) Success of Nike's 30th anniversary "Just Do It" campaign, ft Colin Kaepernick, boldly aligned with Black Lives Matter movement-“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” re: national anthem protest against police brutality arguably cost him his NFL career." -Forbes-Impact on sales and cultural spotlight for Nike ($15 billion US market)-Related Masters in Business podcast: Scott Galloway called Kaepernick ad the best brand move of 2018.(3:30) Failure of Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad(05:12) Brands and Gender Activism-Pinkwashing-Importance of pay equity(06:15) Environmental and social alignment (Meatless Mondays)My podcast tools:Record: emilybinder.com/riversideEdit with AI: emilybinder.com/descriptMics: beetlemoment.com/gearHire me (marketing & speaking):ThinkersOne Videos: emilybinder.com/thinkersoneConsulting: emilybinder.com/callFollow & connect:This podcast | My website | Beetle Moment Marketing | LinkedIn | X | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Email updates Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recently, the term “pinkwashing” has garnered attention in the context of Israel's continuous genocide of the Palestinian people. Join us as we delve into the conceptual framework of “homonationalism” in order to understand the foundation behind how queers are utilized within nationalist agendas. This longer episode pulls from entire books, like Puar's influential 2007 work, “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times,” which has not yet been translated into Japanese. It is not a comprehensive overview but, offers Pirikara Queer's understanding of concepts like “homonormativity” and “homonationalism” to unpack the roots of queer politics!最近「ピンクウォッシング」という用語は、イスラエルによるパレスチナ人の虐殺という文脈の中で注目を集めています。このエピソードでは、「ホモナショナリズム」という概念を掘り下げて、クィアがどのように国家主義的な目的に利用されるのか、その背後にある基盤と政治性を取り上げます。このちょっと長めの回では、日本語訳がまだ出版されていないプアの重要な著書『Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times』（2007年）など、情報量が多い本から引用しています。なので決して包括的なものではなく、ピリ辛クィアの視点を共有し、クィア・ポリティクスの根源を理解するために、「ホモノーマティヴィティー」「ホモナショナリズム」といった概念を読み解いていくものです!----References and Links 参考文献とリンクEmily Karasawa Grabil, “Liberation>Peace” Zine in Solidarity with Palestine (March, 2024)エミリー・カラサワ・グレイビル『解放＞平和』パレスチナと連帯を示すジン（2024年3月）https://www.emilykgportfolio.com/zine/on-pressure-and-performance-anxiety-bpzz9Huffpost Articlehttps://www.huffingtonpost.jp/entry/story_jp_660a06d4e4b007c08f9dfb99Tokyo Rainbow Pridehttps://tokyorainbowpride.com/Duggan, Lisa. "The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism". Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, edited by Russ Castronovo, Dana D. Nelson and Donald E. Pease, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 175-194. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383901-008Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Duke University Press, 2007.Puar, Jasbir, and Shirin Deylami. "Forum on Rahul Rao's Out of Time, Part II: Rethinking Homonationalisms." Contexto Internacional 45 (2023): e20220007.Puar, Jasbir. “Rethinking Homonationalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2013, pp. 336–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43302999. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024.Puar, Jasbir, K. (2015). Homonationalism as assemblage: Viral travels, affective sexualities. Revista lusófona de estudos culturais, 3(1), 319-337.Novara Media, “What is Homonationalism?” by Shon Fayehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l3shYm6JaoFollow us @pkqueer on instagram ❤️

What drove Hannah and Marcelle to go to Disneyland? And what is with all the rainbow Mickey ears? And where does pinkwashing end and real change begin? Tune into this episode about the happiest place on earth to find out! In this episode, Marcelle leads Hannah through a history of the term pinkwashing. She then draws on an article by Karine Duplan called “Pinkwashing Policies or Insider Activism? Allyship in the LGBTIQ+ Governance–Activism Nexus,” to better understand what leads to making public spaces inclusive for queer and trans folks. Together, Hannah and Marcelle think through their own pleasure in experiencing Disneyland, while dissecting the tension between corporations' bottom lines and the value of representation and inclusivity. Ultimately, Marcelle and Hannah consider: if pinkwashing is by necessity surface-level public image campaigning that masks ongoing harm, is Disney doing something different? You can learn more about Material Girls at ohwitchplease.ca and on our instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Want more from us? Check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a bonus episode, but until then, we mean it — go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease!***Material Girls is a show that aims to make sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both. Materialist critique is really interested in the question of why a particular cultural work or practice emerged at a particular moment. Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What drove Hannah and Marcelle to go to Disneyland? And what is with all the rainbow Mickey ears? And where does pinkwashing end and real change begin? Tune into this episode about the happiest place on earth to find out! In this episode, Marcelle leads Hannah through a history of the term pinkwashing. She then draws on an article by Karine Duplan called “Pinkwashing Policies or Insider Activism? Allyship in the LGBTIQ+ Governance–Activism Nexus,” to better understand what leads to making public spaces inclusive for queer and trans folks. Together, Hannah and Marcelle think through their own pleasure in experiencing Disneyland, while dissecting the tension between corporations' bottom lines and the value of representation and inclusivity. Ultimately, Marcelle and Hannah consider: if pinkwashing is by necessity surface-level public image campaigning that masks ongoing harm, is Disney doing something different? You can learn more about Material Girls at ohwitchplease.ca and on our instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Want more from us? Check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a bonus episode, but until then, we mean it — go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease!***Material Girls is a show that aims to make sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both. Materialist critique is really interested in the question of why a particular cultural work or practice emerged at a particular moment. Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

LGBTQ+ workers want more than companies appearing to support causes at work. Dorian Rhea Debussy, lecturer of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Ohio State University, discusses what else should be done. Dorian Rhea Debussy, Ph.D. (she/her) is the inaugural Director of External Affairs at Equitas Health, which is one of the largest LGBTQ+ […]

Israel has, for years, painted itself as a defender of the LGBTQ community and portrayed Arabs and Palestinians as homophobic.

This week, we talk about what pinkwashing is and the toll it takes on the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Take Action Now: https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/join-a-bds-campaign https://inequality.org/action/ Sources https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/pinkwashing/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/9/against-the-pinkwashing-of-israel https://truthout.org/articles/in-praise-of-discomfort-learning-from-dr-king-and-confronting-pinkwashing-by-israel/ https://decolonizepalestine.com/rainbow-washing/pinkwashing/ https://dmexco.com/stories/pinkwashing-examples-that-you-need-to-know-about/ https://bdsmovement.net/pinkwashing https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/64285 https://elle.education/en/business/what-is-pink-washing-and-how-to-avoid-it-in-your-fashion-marketing-strategy/ https://femmagazine.com/feminism-101-what-is-pinkwashing/ https://inequality.org/great-divide/corporate-pride-pinkwashing/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/9/against-the-pinkwashing-of-israel https://apnews.com/article/target-pride-lgbtq-4bc9de6339f86748bcb8a453d7b9acf0

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists.   A teach-in by Queer Crescent in collaboration with Palestinian Feminist Collective – Palestine is a Queer Issue: Resisting Pinkwashing Now and Until Liberation. Featuring guest speakers Rabab Abdulhadi from Palestinian Feminist Collective, Ghadir Shafie of ASWAT, Shivani Chanillo from Lavender Phoenix, poetry by Mx Yaffa from Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD). Moderator by Shenaaz Janmohamed of Queer Crescent. Important Links and Resources: Sign on to Queer Crescent's Ceasefire Campaign for LGBTQI+ organizations and leaders Queer Crescent's Pinkwashing Resources  Queer Crescent Website Palestinian Feminist Collective Website ASWAT Instagram (@aswatfreedoms) Lavender Phoenix Website Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) Website Purchase Blood Orange by Mx. Yaffa Transcript Shenaaz Janmohamed: Thank you all so much for being here today. Welcome to the “Resisting Pinkwashing Now Until Liberation” teach-in. Queer Crescent is honored to host this teach in in partnership with the Palestinian Feminist Collective, Lavender Phoenix, The Muslim Alliance for Gender and Sexual Diversity or MASGD, Teaching Palestine, and Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies   Thank you all so much for joining us and for tuning in. My name is Shenaaz Janmohamed. I use she and they pronouns. I'm the executive director of Queer Crescent.  Queer Crescent is really thrilled to offer this Teach-in and to be in learning with you all for the next hour and a half on Pinkwashing in particular, as we hold grief and rage and mourn towards healing, towards resistance, towards a free Palestine. Joining the resounding people all across the world who have been calling for a permanent ceasefire. To not let the violence and the destruction of Gaza go without our clear and determined voice to say that this is not okay, that we, our tax dollars should not be paying for this, that we do not consent to genocide. And as queer people, as trans people, it is very much a queer issue to be in solidarity with Palestine. For the next hour and a half we will take time to learn from Palestinian organizers. in Palestine, in the U. S., around the ways in which this moment can be used to understand our relationship to pinkwashing in particular and to Palestinian solidarity in general. And so thank you again for being with us today. We're going to start our Teach in with poetry, because we deeply believe as a queer Muslim organization in the power of cultural work, cultural change, and imparting our shine as queer people into the culture. That is the way that our people have survived. That is the way that people share their histories their survivalship is through culture. And so, before I bring up Yaffa, who's a dear friend and comrade, and also the executive director of MASGD, the Muslim Alliance for Gender and Sexual Diversity, let me introduce Yaffa. Yaffa is a trans Muslim and displaced indigenous Palestinian. She is sharing poetry from her new book, Blood Orange, shout it out, please get a copy if you haven't already, which is an emotional, important, and timely poetry collection. Their writings probe the yearning for home, belonging, mental health, queerness, transness, and other dimensions of marginalization while nurturing dreams of utopia against the background of ongoing displacement and genocide of Indigenous people. Join me in giving some shine, energetic shine to Yaffa, and I'll pass to you. Mx Yaffa: Hi everyone. It's so nice to be here with you all. So excited to share space with all of you, with all the incredible panelists, with the entire Queer Crescent team, y'all are just incredible. Right before this, me and one of the other panelists realized we could potentially be related. So that's the beauty of having spaces like this, where you connect with people that you've kind of been missing your entire life, but you didn't even know that they were missing. I'm excited to recite some poetry for you all from my new collection. Just a little bit about the collection before I recite some poetry.  This collection was written for the most part, on the weekend of October 13th to the 15th. Some of y'all might remember that there was an eclipse during that weekend. And I really wanted to find something that would really center queer and trans Palestinian experience in particular, and also would just support me in navigating my own processing of everything that's going on.  I have family both in Gaza and the West Bank still. I'm originally from Jaffa and Jenin, but I've kind of lived in nine different countries. So when I say I'm displaced, it's displacement from various different wars, various genocides, various everything. And the result of that was Blood Orange.  I tried to get it out as quickly as possible and here we are. The first poem that I'll read is called “Healthy”. And I'll talk a little bit about each of these poems after I read them. It's called “Healthy”. We are not meant to be okay, when genocide is our neighbor that is funded by our labor. We are meant to be a mess, our sleep tearing into reality, anxiety brewing, wondering what is hope. We are meant to tear at the seams of reality, realizing a reality built on oppression is bullshit. We are meant to realize and demand all we are worth. Self actualization, wholeness. Things systems built off of genocide can never. Our response labeled by western capitalism as wrong is healthy. We move to wholeness always, they move to pain attempting to drag us with them. So this was actually the very first poem that I wrote for this collection and it was in that first week of the genocide immediately following October 7th when so many people were really struggling with what do we do with all of this, right? We're witnessing an entire genocide right before our eyes. And what do we do? There was a lot of hopelessness going around and a lot of narratives, at least in what's known as the United States and the global north that's always told us that all of that is wrong. That we're not supposed to be overwhelmed by things. But for me, with all the practices that I have, it's actually healthy to be overwhelmed right now. We're not supposed to know how to let genocide live in our bodies with ease. We still show up, we still do the things, and yet at the same time, we honor it. That it is a large experience. This is not normal. This is not something that should be happening all the time or ever. And so really wanted to honor that of the world that we live in is not what we deserve. For us to be overwhelmed right now is actually healthy, is where we should be. So the second poem I will read kind of goes into the conversation of today around pinkwashing.  This one's called “At Odds”.  My transness and a colonized perception of Palestine are at odds. They think it's because of lack of modernity. I say I have only received death threats targeting my transness from white people, Zionists, and other various political affiliations. I say only white people around me have ever disowned their own. Yet I do not talk to sisters who choose to buy into imperialist transphobia, claiming it as their own. My parents do not understand how some of their children could hate anything any of their children could be, why anyone would hate what they do not know. I won't talk much about pinkwashing because I know we'll get to that today. But in particular, most queer and trans Palestinians over these last eight weeks have been receiving such immense violence from the broader LGBTQ community telling us that our people are the ones who are going to kill us. I've been receiving death threats my entire life in particular as an organizer since I was 19, and I have literally never received a death threat from anyone from our region from any Muslim person. It has always been white people who have sent me death threats specifically for my queerness and my transness. Let alone everything else. And so that, that poem just kind of honors that experience.  I'll read one more, and I'll say just a few words before I read this last one. For me, the arts are so important. Not just as a tool for resistance, but also as a tool for world building. Often we think of the world is what creates art, rather than art is what creates the world. If you look at literature, even with Zionism, Zionism was in literature 100 years before it was ever named. I think about that of what is the world that we are building, what is the world of tomorrow that we get to write about and paint about and do all different kinds of art forms about today. And so this last poem kind of brings a little bit of that into it. The collection goes into the topic of utopia as we're exploring all of these other things. and as we're experiencing this genocide. So this last poem is called “Land Back”. I do not know names wiped from time in Gaza Like I do not remember the names Of great uncles and aunts Who have been reclaimed by our land To say they were murdered Is to claim loss that our land will never feel For we are made of her And regardless of how many layers of phosphor fill the air We return to her in our deaths They may exacerbate the process of our return, but return we shall. Standing thousands of miles away, I know even here she will take me back for distance is a creation that is buried with bodies that were never ours. We are not the ones who take land back, it is land that takes us. There will come a day when the sun sets on a world and rises in another, when indigenous sovereignty is honored. Where queerness no longer exists, where transness is no longer an identity, where humanity means something genuine. So I wanted to end with that, on a note of everything that we're doing right now, all of the resistance is world building. We're building the world that we have always deserved. So I'll leave you all with just one final thing about the book, like I mentioned, the reason I wrote this book in the first place and published it is to raise awareness about queer and trans Palestinians in particular and our experiences, and also to fundraise for queer and trans Palestinians both on the grounds in Gaza and in the diaspora. So 100 percent of all the proceeds from Blood Orange go directly towards that.   As we're getting deeper and deeper into this, the needs of the queer and trans Palestinian community is getting so immense, both on the ground in the region and in the diaspora. Over just the last few days, I've received over $20,000 worth of requests from individuals because people are being doxed, people are receiving death threats, people are losing their jobs. In one case, people are losing their children. There's a lot happening. And so just wanted to leave with that. I want to invite you all to pay attention to those needs and honor them, especially as we go into next year and into the elections. Thank you again for having me. It was such a pleasure to be here. And I'm so excited for the rest of this. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Thank you so much, Yaffa. It's so wonderful to have you here. And it feels so important to start our teaching with the ways in which poetry, culture, moves and inspires us. It opens our hearts in ways that feel both healing and necessary as part and parcel to our organizing and our deep learning. As my comrade and partner Saba says, to growing our empathy to be able to show up with more depth, more commitment, and more resolve towards these issues because we are deeply interconnected. So thank you again, Yaffa..  Before I turn to introduce our other panelists, I wanted to just ground us for a moment in why Queer Crescent, along with the many partners that I named at the beginning felt it was important to host this teach in. Back on November 3rd, Queer Crescent in collaboration with the Palestinian Feminist Collective drafted and released a letter calling upon LGBTQI organizations, leaders, and influencers to join Queer Crescent and Palestinians in calling for an immediate ceasefire. And in particularly to take up understanding and resisting pinkwashing as a queer issue. The frame ” Palestine is a queer issue” is very much an homage of Palestinian Feminist Collective who tirelessly make the links around gender justice, bodily autonomy, self determination, sovereignty to the project of Palestinian liberation. Seeing them as part and parcel of the same project of liberation, and we very much are inspired and in deep gratitude to PFC and all the tireless folks who make those links so clear and apparent to us. We are also in deep gratitude to organizations like Al-Qaws, based in Palestine, who have been telling us about pink- washing for a long, long time, and we are finally doing our part to answer the call as an organization as Queer Crescent. Since we shared this letter, over 350 individuals have signed on, over 65 organizations have joined us in a commitment to calling for permanent ceasefire. This teach in is part of our commitment to moving those who have signed, ourselves included, and the many others who have joined us today. To deepen our shared resolve to a free Palestine through learning about pink watching as a propaganda tool of Israel and settler colonial state violence, and to allow this moment to transform us so that the grief is not in vain, towards a more fierce committed and clear stance of solidarity with Palestinian liberation movement. As queer and trans people and within LGBTQI organizations, we have a distinct role to play to organize to undermine pinkwashing. Because pinkwashing works and functions on the backs of racist tropes of Palestinians, Arabs, SWANA, and Muslims more broadly. We cannot let our vulnerabilities as trans and queer people be exploited in the pursuit of colonial violence and the genocide against Palestinians and all indigenous people. It was not surprising that some of the first folks who signed on to our letter were trans led organizations like the Transgender Law Center, like El/La, and indigenous organizations. It's not surprising because I think for folks who are leading trans led organizations, Trans and indigenous organizations, the relationship of self determination of bodily autonomy and to state violence and colonization is clear, right? Because ultimately colonization uses gender injustice and creating these wedges within our communities as a way to dampen our resistance and to keep us apart. So, I don't want to say more because our amazing speakers will speak and illuminate so much more of these issues. But I wanted to just state why it was important for Queer Crescent to support advancing these conversations. So, our first speaker today is Ghadir Shafie ( she and her). She is a Palestinian queer activist and the co founder of ASWAT, Palestinian Feminist Queer Center for Sexual and Gender Freedoms. A passionate advocate for the intersectionality of the struggle of Palestinian queer women, fighting multiple forms of oppression as Palestinians in the context of Israel's system of apartheid, military occupation, and settler colonialism, as women in a militaristic and imperialistic male dominated society, and as queers in the context of pinkwashing and homophobia. Ghadir promotes active solidarity for Palestine through global feminism and with queers. Thank you, Ghadir. Pass it to you.  Ghadir Shafie: Thank you so much. Hello from Palestine. Thank you so much for organizing this teach-in on pinkwashing. I am grateful for your presence here with me, witnessing in this horrible, horrible time. I will speak today for about 15 minutes, and I want you to bear in mind that since October 7th, Israel has killed over 18, 000 Palestinians. That is one Palestinian every 15 minutes. Imagine how many queer people are being killed daily by Israel. The scenes from Gaza are beyond description. They defy comparison, even for Palestinians, jaded by decades of occupation and settler colonial violence. Devastated landscape filled with craters and the blackened ruins of what were once people's homes, dead bodies or pieces of them. Orphaned children screaming in terror and incomprehension. Desperate survivors crying for food and water. Doctors despairing at the ever growing influx of wounded people they know they cannot treat. As a queer Palestinian watching these images of horror, one stood out as particularly revolting in a rather different way. It shows an Israeli soldier in the middle of the rubble of one of the many residential neighborhoods in Gaza, flattened by the Israeli indiscriminate military strikes. In the distance, smoke from Israel's carpet bombings hang in the air. The soldier is surrounded by Israeli tanks and demolish everything in their way. It is a scene of death and destruction The soldier stands holding a bright new rainbow flag. and Described it as a message of hope.  What hope can there be for 2.3 million Palestinians trapped over 16 years in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Gaza has become a graveyard for Palestinians. They have no water. No food and no electricity as Israel has cut off what little it allowed in through its already suffocating siege. They seek shelter from Israeli bombings in hospital, UN schools, mosques, and churches, only to find these sites targeted by Israeli strikes. Those who can flee their homes along Israeli designated safe corridors only to have their vehicles shelved by the Israeli IDF soldiers. It seems incomprehensible that an Israeli soldier would pose a photo with a rainbow flag while participating in his army's mass slaughter of Palestinians and destruction of half of Gaza's homes. The truth is more sinister yet. This stunt, which was shared online by the Israeli state official social media accounts, is a textbook. example of obscene colonial pinkwashing. More than that, it is a pinkwashing on steroids. For years, Palestinian queers have denounced Israel's pinkwashing, a cynical strategy designed to use self proclaimed support for LGBTQIA plus rights as a pink smokescreen to conceal its 75 years regime of apartheid, which oppresses all Palestinians, no matter of our gender. or sexual orientation. All the while singling out queer Palestinians for persecution and blackmail. It is an attempt to falsely depict Israel as modern and a liberal country while diverting attention from its alignment with far right homophobic regimes and groups around the world and its current fundamentalist, racist, and homophobic government. In addition, Israel's pinkwashing agenda is a colonial tool that has the racist aim to misrepresent Palestinians as backwards, homophobic, and thus not deserving of human rights. It also tries to convince us, as queer and trans people, that we are somehow foreign in our society, and tries to turn us against our Palestinians brothers and sisters. I think there couldn't be any better example of Israeli pink washing than the photo that the Israeli soldier with the rainbow flag in the rubble. Israeli pink washing has always been dishonest and dangerous. It has always been racist and colonial. It has allowed Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing, besiege, imprisonment, and murder of Palestinians, queer and non queer alike, for decades. Now it's being used to cover up for genocide. In these dark times, Palestinians in besieged Gaza are bearing the brunt of Israel's full blown genocidal war and ethnic cleansing. Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories of West Bank, meanwhile, are also facing escalating waves of killing, torture by both Israeli military and illegal sectors. Apartheid, for Palestinians like myself inside Israel, is reaching new peaks as Israeli forces are targeting and suppressing any expression of sympathy with the oppressed. As hard as it is, we still maintain hope. We have no other choice. That hope comes from the grassroots mobilization that are forcing complicit governments and institutions to finally call for the bare minimum that is nevertheless the absolute priority: a ceasefire that will put a stop to Israel's carpet bombing and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Queer groups have been extremely instrumental in our struggle for liberation. Queer groups have been an important part of the mobilizations. Nearly 40 LGBT, QA plus groups across Southwest Asia and North Africa called for the immediate ceasefire stating ” we stand with justice, equality, progress, and liberty.” Throughout my life as a queer activist, I have proudly held the rainbow flag high as a symbol of queer inclusion, queer struggle, queer liberation, queer equality, and queer joy. The Israeli soldier participating in Israel's genocidal war on my people in Gaza has desecrated the flag, has disgraced the flag, and made it a mockery for all it stands for. Queer and trans people and groups are increasingly seeing through the pink smokescreen and rejecting Israel's pinkwashing and its war crimes and crimes against humanity. We will not stand by as our flag and our identities are co opted and used to justify a genocide. I call upon queer allies around the globe to remember none of us is free until we are all free. What can we do right now in these terrible times? Since 2005, Palestinians have proposed to you, our friends around the world, an entirely nonviolent method of ending Israel's power over our lives. An academic and cultural boycott of Israel. This strategy is known as BDS, Boycott, Digestment and Sanctions. BDS means boycotting all Israeli state sponsored institutions. This is not aimed at individuals, but at institutions financed by the state and that serve as extensions of the government that occupies us and keeps us under siege. We ask academics, staff and students not to speak at Israeli state funding organizations, including universities. We ask artists and cultural workers not to perform in apartheid Israel. Make sure that your universities are divested from Israeli money. Do not take israeli money for your conferences or film festivals. Do not accept deceptively free propaganda trips to Israel. End complicity with the government of Israel by among other things, cancelling all joint projects activities that are complicit with Israeli universities. Right now, the main demand is to stop the genocide. Stop the genocide and ask for ceasefire now.  So how can queer groups and queer people support queer liberation in Palestine?. One effort that is happening right now around the world is Queer Cinema for Palestine. Queer cinema for Palestine is a vibrant event that happens globally, established in 2021 to support queer art and queer cinema around the world. Today, there are more than 270 filmmakers and artists who signed our pledge to boycott Israeli film festival, to boycott Israeli institutions, and support queer liberation in Palestine. Queer Cinema for Palestine is happening online in more than 15 locations around the world from the 2nd until the 10th of December. Under the title, There's No Pride in Genocide, we gather together as artists to support, Queer Cinema for Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. There's not much to say. I think you've seen the image from Gaza. You've seen what is happening right now. This is not a regular panel on pinkwashing. It's happening during a genocide, where pinkwashing is also used to promote genocide. So, may I ask you as a Palestinian and as a queer Palestinian, please keep talking about Palestine. Palestine is a queer issue. Gaza is a queer issue, and there's no queer justice until we are all free. Thank you so much for organizing this and thank you so much for your work and activism on Palestine. You are saving lives right now. Thank you. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Thank you so much, Ghadir. Thank you so much for your passion, your commitment, reminding us that hope is an active choice that you're engaging in every day, despite all the odds, because that is the story of survival. Thank you for reminding and being so clear in the link to BDS boycott, divestment and sanction movement as tangible ways that we could be in solidarity with Palestine and to chip at the far reaching power of the Israeli state and settler colonial project. Thank you for showing the ways in which queer folks and queer organizations. use culture and art to tell different stories of survival with the Queer Cinema for Palestine. And thank you for showing up and being here with us. Thank you for all the ways that you hold communities, your fullness, and time to share and to lead us today. Wishing so much protection and safety to you and yours. Next we have Rabab Abdulhadi. Rabab Abdulhadi (she/her) is an internationally known scholar and distinguished professor and researcher. Her scholarship, pedagogy, and public activism focus on Palestine, Arab, and Muslim communities and their diasporas, transnational feminisms, and gender and sexuality studies. She is the Director and Senior Scholar in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies, and a Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Race and Resistance Studies at the Historic College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University. She is also a treasure, a beloved teacher, organizer here in the Bay. I feel really grateful that you're here with us today for all the work, all the times that you've taught me. It's really such an honor to be able to host you and invite you in, Rabab.  Rabab Abdulhadi: Thank you so much Shenaaz, and I begin by acknowledging that my own university, San Francisco State University, sits on stolen indigenous Ohlone people's land, and I'm now on the east coast of the United States, where I am also present on the Lenape people's land that has been stolen and people have been displaced, just like it is in Palestine. I also want to thank Queer Crescent for organizing this with the Palestinian Feminist Collective and actually joining with Palestinian Voices. I'm very happy that my colleague, my sister, my sibling, Ghadir, was able to join us and has actually taken a lot of the things that I was going to focus on, and thank you, Yaffa, for especially naming even the poetry, Blood Oranges, because we know what oranges mean and how they have been used. And many Palestinians can't even eat oranges because it reminds them of the orchards that they've lost back home. So I start, if you don't mind, just Putting the first slide on. Yeah. And this is a slide if people can see it. This is actually was done in 2013 and it was organized by a group of underground artists, called themselves cultural jammers, to remake all the campaign that was at the time by Pamela Geller and other Zionist groups doing all this smearing and buying sides on the buses and so on. And the reason I mentioned because there is a connection between the cultural jammers and also the whole naming of pink washing because pink washing, some people say, emerged in Palestine. Some people say it emerged in the U. S. Some people talk about the whole question of washing and then the question of pink and so on. And I think for me as a researcher, a scholar, it's very, very interesting because there are so many origins of every single way that we are having the struggles. And so the colonial boundaries and borders that the colonialists and settler colonists try to impose upon us don't really work because we cross these borders at least maybe imaginary, maybe in our networks and so on. But why is it that pinkwashing persists? Ghadir spoke a lot about it. I'm just going to just emphasize a couple of things. It is necessary, very important for Israel public relations. Public relations is a very important project for it. This is why Israel consistently demands of the Palestinians and the Arab countries and the world, not only to recognize Israel's right to exist, but to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which in itself a very racist notion. And this is very much connected with the genocide that we're seeing now in Gaza, that also we have seen for 75 years of Nakba and for over 100 years of colonization of Palestine, because , the slogan by the Zionist movement was “a land without people, for a people without the land.” We can talk about “for people without the land” a little bit later, but let's talk about “a land without people”. In order to accomplish that and legitimize it, you have to arrest the people. You have to erase them. You have to erase their presence. You have to also discredit their discourse, their work, their culture, their interaction, their social relations, in order for you to present yourself as Israel does. And as Ghadir mentioned, as a modern state that is making the desert blue, which we know is not true, and by contrast, is the best friend of women and queer people, as a gay haven, as opposed to quote unquote the backward, savage. excessively homophobic, excessively misogynist, Arab world, Arab and Muslim world, and in which Arab men and Arab and Muslim and Palestinian men are presented as irrational, bloodthirsty, misogynist, haters of women and Queer people, and as women as being docile, as being only oppressed constantly, and need to be rescued by the colonists who will come in and basically realize what Gayatri Spivak spoke about I don't know, 30 years ago, the colonist project of trying to save brown people from brown communities and queer people from their own queer communities. And so in order for this to work, it has to be presented in all of these things that it is necessary. And it's very important for Israel to focus on its public relations. And this is something that has been actually very part and parcel of since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, a task that was assigned to the military, to the security of interior affairs to the Mossad, which is the CIA, outside intelligence, Shambit, the internal intelligence to everybody. And now we see more and more the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and other is, and the whole question of quote unquote branding, which I put it in parentheses because branding also refers to the ways in which people engage in slavery actually used to quote brand people whose lives they owned. So I put it in parentheses. I question it. But Israel is very big on that to brand Israel as a gay haven. Israel as a best liberator of women and so on.  This is also what we see today in the sense of Israel actually making a very public relation campaign and a very, very intensive campaign to claim that Palestinians have chopped off the head of children, which was even reiterated by the president of the United States without even thinking about it because he was quoting Israeli Officials who we know are not really known for telling the truth and then they had to retract it the second day but yesterday he repeated the same thing again and said there is the rape of women and so on which we do not have any evidence until now. We know that a lot of Israeli groups and Zionist groups like this group Bonat Alternativa and others are alleging, but we haven't seen any evidence of that. If there is any evidence of that, we will not stand for it. We condemn any kind of violations of gender and sexual, justice because we believe that gender and sexual justice is part and parcel with indivisibility of justice. So this is not something we are trying to cover, but this is very much part and parcel of the Israeli propaganda and it's churning machine, the Hasbara machine is everywhere and they keep changing their stories. And if we have time we can actually go over how each story has developed and moved from one place to the other. I'm also talking about the ways in which colonial feminisms or colonial quote unquote feminism, because feminism is supposed to be about the liberation of women as part of liberation of everybody, have been very much engaged in. But within that, there is also notion of blaming the victim. It is a very important aspect of it. So in order for the Israeli and the Zionist narrative to work, you have to blame people. And one of the very well known cases, for example, was the case of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the young Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped from in front of his house on July 2nd, 2014, right around the big, big 2014 war on Gaza we talked about, and kidnapped by Israeli settlers who took him to a forest in Jerusalem that was built on the ruins of the village of Deir Yassin, where the massacre on April 8th, 1948 happened in order to facilitate the creation of the Israeli state. And they made him drink kerosene and set him on fire and burned him alive, which was a clear case of lynching. Now, what Israeli police tried to do was to actually say that Mohammed Abu Khdeir was killed by his own family to quote unquote salvage family honor. And they killed him because he was queer. And now if it wasn't for his father who had videotapes of the security cameras outside of the house and showed it– the Israeli police tried to confiscate it and basically destroy it– showed that these people came and kidnapped him. The relative would still be among colonists, among racists, among white supremacists, Zionists, that Palestinians are killing Palestinians and they are doing this all the time. So it's not only blaming the victim, but it also instilling and reinforcing the narrative of people, not only Palestinians, this happens with all indigenous and all colonized communities and all communities of color from time immemorial. You look at the history of the United States, this is something, this is a trope that keeps getting repeated again and again and again. And it's not an easy trope because It is not something that's only being said. It's not only a discursive issue. It's not a discursive issue that we need to deconstruct in the classroom because we know the history, including that. But recently, many people started learning more about the case of Emmett Till, the young Boy who was killed and the woman who actually accused him came out and said that she lied, but he was killed and he was lynched. And then his mom insisted on having open casket so everybody could see the crime. And there's so many more examples that we don't have time to get into all of them now, but this is part of the colonial narrative, the colonial strategy in order to discredit the people who are colonized and discredit their struggle.  And this is definitely a part in Gaza and it is, but the other thing is that it depends on the narrative of saying that our communities in particular as exceptionally sensitive and exceptionally traditional. And this is something that we saw in Abu Ghraib for example.  When they were talking about, we're not going to show the images of iraqi men are particularly insensitive. But we were raising the question, which men are okay with it, which women, which anybody, which non gender binary person, who would be okay with being subjected to sexual and gender violence; to being displaced like this and so on. Nobody will be. But the imaginary that it is trying to instill that's built on Orientalist, Islamophobic, anti Arab, anti Palestinian, anti Muslim racism as part and parcel of all kinds of racism basically makes it possible to do a little dog whistle in order for you to enforce all of this. We saw this also at the US Social Forum when Zionist groups stand with us, which now everybody knows what it is, tried to do a workshop around queer communities in the Middle East, and many of us objected to it. And the reason that it got through because the organizers thought that this would be something that would be actually really wonderful, bringing everybody together. They did not really investigate who this group was and what it was doing and did not coordinate with the many organizations that were at the U. S. Social Forum in 2010 in Detroit from our own community to see what is happening, what's going on, are you part of this unparceled hat? Even though the Palestinian queer organizations have existed for a very long time, and I think it was by then, if I'm not mistaken, Ghadir you can correct me that we organize a national tour and for all calls throughout the U S in order for people to speak and you all came and spoke in my own classroom. This is part of the stuff that keeps going back. And this is also the same thing that we hear around this group that I've mentioned now, and this propaganda that's happening, and also in terms of the ways when we passed the resolution on BDS in the National Women's Studies Association 2015, many Zionist groups came out and basically came with the whole question is there a place for Zionism and feminism? Many of the feminist groups have been targeted, including the International Women's Strike and so on. This is a continuous, systemic, persistent thing. This is not something that is out of random or accidental. And so what do we do about this? In addition to what Ghadir said, I think it's really, really important for us to say, how do we fight back? We fight back with multiple ways. One of the ways we do for example, organizing this in the classroom. So one of the things that we do in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicity and Diaspora Studies program ever since we were founded in 2007 is every single year we were partnering with the Pride Month at San Francisco State to organize sessions on the whole question of queer justice, and this is one of them. Even after San Francisco State stopped funding pride month, we continue doing it again and again. We believe that it's really important to connect the knowledge within the classroom with the knowledge outside and with the activism and advocacy. We do not separate what happens in the classroom, what happens in the academy from outside. So the academy is not producing knowledge that is divorced from reality. The people who are organizing are part and parcel of that. And so we've been doing this again and again. The other thing that is really, really important to think about is how do we work here, and I'm talking here in the diaspora, with groups on the ground, Palestinian queer groups who are working? So one of the examples that I would like to cite from our own experiences is when Al-Qaws was attacked by Palestinian police in Nablus trying to hold an event. My hometown Nablus. We were going to rush and say something, but we waited and we coordinated with Al Qaws and we asked, what should we do? And we did not do anything until Al Qaws came out because we were objecting to the whole question of saving queer people from queer communities, saving brown people from brown communities, the whole question of the colonial notion. And we were also taking leadership from the people on the ground who are day in and day out struggling. Once Al-Qaws came out with it, what we did is we published in one of the newspapers in the Bay Area, along with Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, which is a group that has been doing a lot of work for a very long time, and whose founder actually was chosen to be the Grand Marshall at Gay Pride Parade at San Francisco. And she turned down this honor and said, because I am here in Palestine struggling with the International Solidarity Movement at the time to oppose the apartheid world to oppose the repression by Israel and so on. So we organized together. And that's when we said we endorse. We support. This is really important sometimes to think about how do we take a back road and when is it we go public with things. At this point, we really need to go public and we need to defy all this propaganda that is happening.  This is part of what the solidarity mean. But this is not free. When we do something like this, there is punishment. And these are some of the flyers I'm showing from the Queer Liberation March that took place in 2019. This was the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall, Uprising. The Queer Liberation March at that time actually decided to refuse any corporate funding, to refuse to allow the police to go march in their own uniforms and so on, rejected the policing, rejected the state apparatus that represses people, rejected the corporate money and so on. As a result, there was space for us to be there. So we were organizing, we organized a big contingent under the banner of QAIA, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, and also Queers A gainst Islamophobia.  So we participated and I took this banner and I put it on my Facebook page. This led to the another Zionist attack, which is trying to silence Palestine and were trying to criminalize Palestine in the curriculum, and especially targeting us and our program in particular. And they took it and didn't say what was on the banner. They just said that I'm spreading hate, and thus I should be– they had 86 organizations, some of them fake organizations– sign it, send it to the university, to the chancellor of California State University to the president of San Francisco State, saying that I'm spreading hate. This for them is hate. Palestine is a queer issue. BDS Zionism is racism. Silence means death. For them, this was something that was very problematic, and it was something that is undermining the Zionist propaganda, and Zionist project of colonizing Palestine and eliminating the Palestinian people like the genocide that we are seeing here, and trying to continue pushing the pink washing without having it exposed.  As a result, our program has been attacked again and again. The Lawfare Project executive director got on the TV, on Fox and friends, and made a lying statement. They sued me. And they sued San Francisco State and they sued California State University. But we defeated them. It was thrown out of court. It was dismissed with prejudice. But she lied about that. And she said that I'm spreading hate; that I'm one of the leading anti Semitic– Horowitz every single year pushes out a formula about the top anti-Semitic scholars, and they always give me number one. And I think they do it in May because this is the fundraising season for them. As a result, I started receiving death threats. However, and including to my own university and the threat voicemails on my office mail that said Muslims will die, which is the same phrase that the guy who killed Wadiah Al-Fayyumi in Chicago, stabbing him 26 times. He said Muslims will die. The university does not believe that this is actually a viable threat. And so they protect the right wing speech, which is white supremacist and Zionist is a protected speech protected that they can do whatever they want, put up hateful posters, do whatever they want against us, but we are not allowed to say so. And the university is not investigating death threat letters that actually came to me through the University President's office to my own office. However we refuse to be silenced. We refuse to lie down. And so we continued organizing. And one of the main events that we organize, and we do it every year, is this panel Queer Open Classroom that everybody can attend and come in. Queer justice against pink washing, exposing it, bringing scholars and activists, Ghadir was one of the people who spoke at that, in order for us to support liberation for Palestine as part of liberation of all, and to support gender and sexual justice as part and parcel of the indivisibility of justice. Thank you. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Oh, Rabab. I hope that you can feel all the tremendous. gratitude and love that you're getting in the chat. I think that there is such a clear longing to be hearing stories from elders, folks who have been in this fight for so long. Thank you for bringing in the long arc of queer Palestinian organizing. Thank you for bringing the long arc and history of queers being in solidarity for Palestine. It's so important that we understand that while this moment is so important for us to study, learn and act. It rests upon such a long arc and such a long history of organizing in solidarity with Palestine. Thank you for also speaking to Mohammed Abu Khdeir, thank you for speaking him into the space. Thank you for both of you reminding us to follow the lead of queer Palestinians. What we're trying to do with you all today with this teach-in is to really pull us together, circle around and invite us all to be following the lead of queer Palestinians so that we can take on this work as inextricably linked to our own liberation; to advance the work of undermining pinkwashing and Zionism as part and parcel to our queer liberation. So thank you so much, Rabab. Our last speaker, Shivani Chanillo with Lavender Phoenix. Shivani (they/them) is a trans non- binary second generation Indian American organizer. Shout out to the baddy Indian organizers out here, myself included. Their experience of active solidarity with Palestinian folks came in 2017 through exchanges they facilitated between their high school students in Baltimore, and students at Ramallah Friends School in the West Bank. These powerful exchanges stoked Shivani's passion for developing young people as critical thinkers grounded in revolutionary values and politics. As a leadership development coordinator at Lavender Phoenix, an organization that Queer Crescent deeply loves and feels deeply supported by and in deep siblingship with. Shivani continues this work by facilitating opportunities for trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders to practice values based organizing and contribute to intersectional movements. In particular, I just want to really say that we were so excited to invite Shivani and Lavender Phoenix in to our teach in as the final speaker, because Lavender Phoenix is one organization that really models, going back to the initial motivation of this teach in with our letter calling for a permanent ceasefire, calling on LGBTQ organizations and leaders to sign on to understanding pink washing and to support Palestinian liberation. Lavender Phoenix is one such organization that has really demonstrated such values align solidarity with Palestinian liberation. And so I'm really excited to bring you in Shivani to close us out to talk about how queer people, queer organizations can really double down on our solidarity.  Shivani Chanillo: Thank you so much Shenaaz for that introduction and to Queer Crescent for organizing this event. I just want to take a moment and just, I feel so deeply moved by the sharing from Rabab and Ghadir in this workshop and just sitting with the lineage within all of us as we take up Palestine as a queer issue. We have generations of lessons and decades of work and such powerful leaders here in this space, but all across the world to follow, and I feel so grateful and so excited to be joining in on this work and sharing a little bit about what Lavender Phoenix is doing in this moment. If you haven't heard of Lavender Phoenix, we build trans non binary and queer Asian and Pacific Islander power here in the Bay Area. We are a base building organization training grassroots leaders to build intersectional movements. As we witness an escalation of the ongoing genocide in Palestine I can say that our base is firmly grounded in the understanding that Palestinian liberation is part of our struggle and our responsibility as trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander people. And so I want to start by sharing a little bit about what we're doing in this moment, before sharing about how our members arrived to this point. Since October 7th we have shifted our work accordingly. We have dedicated time to mobilize our members and our broader communities to action. We have educated each other to stay politically grounded. We have and will continue to support each other to process the grief of this moment and to remember hope, optimism, and commitment. In so many facets of our work, we are stepping into deeper leadership and responsibility to support our Palestinian comrades to win. And more tangibly across our six member led committees, this looks like offering healing support, coordinating our members who are trained in protest and digital security to support our comrades, coordinating contingents at in person and online actions, moving financial resources and funder attention to our Palestinian partners, and uplifting pro Palestinian messaging and calls to actions using our social media reach. Responding to Palestine and challenging pinkwashing is not a shift in our priorities, but it's actually a sharpening of our focus as an organization. We've organized our base over the years to recognize our interconnected struggles, and across our membership, we so deeply understand that the Palestinian struggle is our struggle. And Palestinian futures are our futures. All of the actions we are taking right now to support Palestine, to challenge pinkwashing are the result of so many tests, experiments, and trials that have helped us deepen our political purpose and grow our power. Many of these experiments and trials that we've conducted over the years really informed our current theory of change. And this is really critical to how we're organizing in this moment. Our emergent responses to sharpen contradictions in our world like we are witnessing with Palestine, are only possible because we organize within a consistent theory of change. A key part of our theory of change and a key part of my role as Leadership Development coordinator, is that we are committed to developing leaders who are rooted in our values, in our history, in emotional intelligence, and compassion, because we know that is how our movement will be sustained and will be effective. So we're not just developing members and masses who care about single issues, we're developing holistic, critical thinkers who care about solidarity with all oppressed people so that in moments like this, solidarity with Palestine is a natural choice in our larger fight for liberation. One of the really important ways we do this, and this workshop is a critical example, is we educate our base, our trans and queer API base, on our history. We dig into how systems of white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy impact all of us across our identities in the past and in the present. Right now, the tools and tactics being wielded by fascist leaders to criminalize and punish trans people here in the U. S. are rooted in the same white supremacist, colonial, and imperialist ideologies used to justify the dehumanization and murder of Palestinians, particularly trans and queer Palestinians. As part of our theory of change, we've also spent intentional time educating our base about revolutionary politics like abolition and healing justice, and developing our skills for safety, for healing and resource mobilization that are applicable in moments all across our movement. We spent so much time since we implemented this theory of change in 2021 to build our base and grow our power so we can show up for our partners who are organizing for Palestinian liberation in this moment. We have spent so much time cultivating our skills and knowledges so we can support our movements beyond just trans liberation.  I want to end just by sharing a little bit of a story. A few weeks ago, our members participated in a direct action that asked many of them to step into higher risk than they had before. Prior to the action, we met to get grounded together. Folks shared their fears, but they also countered those fears with a really rooted sense of purpose. So many of our members talked about how they wanted to look back on this moment and know that they and we as an organization did everything in our power to support Palestinian liberation. And they spoke about the sacred responsibility and duty we have in this moment to show up in solidarity. I feel so moved, even now, just thinking back to that moment and feel so much gratitude to our members for taking new risks, to the generations of leaders in our organization and our movement who have led us to this point, and I feel immense admiration and gratitude to the long lineage of Palestinian queer and trans resistance, and current day organizers who are guiding us right now. For Lavender Phoenix, this moment is really helping us clarify our power, and for many of our members, this moment is helping them clarify their political purpose. The things all of our Palestinian siblings are fighting for, self determination, safety, healing, community, decolonization, these are the things that we as trans and queer API people here in the Bay Area so desire for ourselves as well. We refuse to let our transness and our queerness be co opted for violence and displacement and genocide, and we know that our struggles and our futures are united, and we're committed to fighting alongside our Palestinian comrades until we are all free. Thank you so much for letting me share. I'll pass it back to Shenaaz. Shenaaz Janmohamed: Shivani, thank you so much for bringing all of it. Lavender Phoenix, I just can't swoon on y'all enough. You model that clarity of purpose and power and grace. There's also such deep humility and grace to be in constant learning. As an emerging organization, an emerging queer organization, I just have to say Queer Crescent feels so deeply held by y'all and really inspired with the path that you are leading and inviting us all towards.  This piece around letting this moment sharpen the focus. It's not a pivot. I think I've even said, we're pivoting, we're in rapid response. Part of our political principles as an organization is understanding anti Zionism as part and parcel of the white supremacist project. And so this is not a pivot, it's not a rapid response, but to your point, it's a sharpening and it's a double down of our commitments, principles and priorities. So thank you for naming that.  Cheryl Truong: And that's the end of our show. Tonight's show was a broadcast of the Resisting Pinkwashing teach-in co-led by Queer Crescent and the Palestinian Feminist Collective. It was moderated by Shenaaz Janmohamed, executive director of Queer Crescent and featured poetry by Mx. Yaffa of MASGD, and guest speakers, Rabab Abdulhadie from the Palestinian feminist collective, Ghadir Shafie of ASWAT, and and Shivani Chanillo from AACRE Group Lavender Phoenix. Learn more about the incredible work of these incredible organizations and sign on to Queer Crescent's cease fire campaign through the links in our show notes.  Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong   Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening! The post APEX Express – 01.25.24 Resisting Pinkwashing Teach-In appeared first on KPFA.

In this episode of #Sardeafterdinner, we're back at it with our good friend, singer, poet and writer Hamed Sinno to talk about how a new form White-supremacy has emerged to justify the g*n0c!de in G*z@: Pinkwashing. We also got the chance to have Hamed's on-ground testimony on what it really means to take the streets of New York & stand in solidarity with P@le$t!ne. The conversation doesn't hold its punches when discussing: -How is !$r@el pinkwashing its g*n0cide in G*z@? -Being Pro-P@le$t!ne in White America & Europe -The Media's most absurd articles since October 7 -The untold story about Hansel and Gretel & Anti-semitism -Can you be an artist without being an activist? في هذه الحلقة من #سردة، نتحدث مع صديقنا المغني والشاعر والكاتب حامد سنو عن نوع جديد من الفوقية البيضاء التي تبرر باستمرار الإب*دة في غ*ة: الغسيل الوردي. يخبرنا حامد أيضا ما يشهده في تظاهرات نيويورك الداعمة لفلسط*ن والمتضامنة معها. انضموا إلينا في حديثنا عن: -كيف تمارس اسر*يل الغسيل الوردي لكي تبرر الإب*دة في غ*ة؟ -التضامن مع فلسط*ن في العالم الأبيض: أميركا وأوروبا -أكثر المقالات سخافة في الإعلام منذ 7 أكتوبر -ما لا تعرفونه عن علاقة قصة هانسل وغريتيل بمعاداة السامية -هل يمكنك أن تكون فنانا دون أن تكون ناشطا؟ This Sarde is brought to you by our incredible patrons at  ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/sardeafterdinner⁠⁠⁠   Without you guys, there is no Sarde (after dinner). Thank you NEW Sarde. Every. Wednesday  9 PM

Pinkwashing and purplewashing are tools of Israeli propaganda that build a narrative around the Jewish state as a haven for women and queer people. The zionist arguments for these themes include statements like: Hamas would kill queer people or trans people, and that on the far opposite side Israel's legal system protects those groups. It's a framework that pits queer folks and women against Palestine, and in support of Israel. But activists say pink- and purple-washing are part of a false propaganda machine. Joining us to discuss Israel's pinkwashing and purplewashing campaigns, is Yaffa A.S., the Executive Director of the Muslim Alliance for Sexual & Gender Diversity. Yaffa is a trans Muslim and displaced Indigenous Palestinian. Check out the Muslim Alliance for Sexual & Gender Diversity's website: https://www.themasgd.org/ —- Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post Against Pink- and Purple-washing w/ Yaffa A.S. appeared first on KPFA.

We had the privilege of speaking with Jamil Fiorino-Habib  after hearing their talk at a Palestinian solidarity event hosted by RAFI (Raising Awareness and Funds Initiative) in Amsterdam on November 19th. We explore themes of pink-washing and homonationalism in relation to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.  Jamil provides an incredibly incisive, sensitive, personal, political and nuanced perspective on the way traditional media continues to be used to dispossess and dehumanize Palestinians, as well as the current ways in which social media platforms are being used to disseminate images and information. This is an incredibly urgent topic and an episode we highly recommend taking the time to listen to.  We encourage you to continue to educate yourself, listen, take action and demand human rights for those who have been stripped of them. Jamil is a lecturer in the Media & Culture BA program at University of Amsterdam, teaching courses on topics such as Media Aesthetics, Film Analysis, Philosophy of the Humanities, and Media Research. "RAFI (Raising Awareness and Funds Initiative) is an Amsterdam founded initiative that aims to raise awareness and funds in support of and in solidarity with dire global political currents. We aim to respond to different (yet intersecting) forms of oppression regionally and globally through local collectivization and collaboration...RAFI follows the initiative of radically deconstructing our thought patterns and putting our collaborative efforts to use for those politically oppressed."Cover image credit: Jamil Fiorino-HabibTo stay up to date with MFMM follow us on instagram @multifemalemegamixTo buy our merch DM us on insta xxxIntro track by Whiterose Don't Go We'll Fund Them is a trans-led subscription-based fundraiser to support trans people in the Netherlands.Subscribe here or follow them on instagram.

#02: Queer-o-Vision 18:36 - Gustaph (Eurovision Contestant, 2023, Representing Belgium) 35:18 Robin de Jesus (Three time Tony Nominated actor, Netflix's tick…tick..BOOM!, Hulu's Welcome to Chippendales) There's always been something a little queer about Eurovision. In our second episode, we explore the contest's history with the LGBTQ+ community– and how this “family show” has, at many points in its nearly 70 year existence, been way out front on LGBT rights issues. We also discuss the moments when the contest hasn't lived up to its image. We then talk to Gustaph, who, as a teen, left a promising career as a popstar in Belgium because of pressure to stay in the closet– only to emerge two decades later on the world's largest stage with a song that's unabashedly queer. The surprise hit of Eurovision this year, it catapulted to the top ten after being placed toward the bottom in the betting markets. We discuss how Gustaph's out and proud second act reflects a radically changed culture, and the ways in which homophobia, now subtler, seeps into both the fandom and supposedly “aesthetic” criticism.  Tony nominated American actor Robin de Jesus then stops by to play a game of “Gay or Eurovision.” As he guesses whether a number is performed by a queer artist, or if its queer aesthetics are just part of the Eurovision brand; we talk about the evolution of queer style and queer music in a time of expanding rights and mainstreaming of the community. And that conversation sounds gay to you— you have no idea how gay it gets.   Links: Dana International on Pinkwashing: https://www.ynetnews.com/culture/article/r1emcq8g2   Ping Pong: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/12/israel   Mango TV Scandal: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44078305   The Queer Politics of Eurovision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnjtzn7ZkCs   Charlie's Politico Article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/20/tricky-politics-of-eurovision-during-war-00097885   Gay or Eurovision:   Give That Wolf A Banana - Subwolfer - Norway, 2022 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJjo8s3fKUM   Lasha Tumbai - Verka Serduchka - Ukraine, 2007 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfjHJneVonE   Cezar - It's My Life - Russia, 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgHWFiavqjA    Mahmood and Blanco - Brividi - Italy, 2022 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MgMhzfUmiA   Minn Hintsi Dans -Paul Oscar - Iceland, 1997 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-D4AAkYpsk  

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists.   DESCRIPTION: Sheenaz and Saba of Queer Crescent and Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A of Lavender Phoenix join Cheryl for this week's episode of APEX Express! This first half of the episode dives into the insincerity of pinkwashing and the ways it has been utilized by the Israeli government to exploit LGBTQIA+ rights to distract from their oppressive policies towards Palestinians, both queer and non-queer. Sheenaz and Saba brilliantly expose the ways pinkwashing perpetuates Islamophobia and racist tropes about Palestinians, along with Arab, Muslim, and SWANA communities and shed light on the long history of trans and queer organizing within Palestine, uplifting work of Al Qaws, an organization at the forefront of Palestinian cultural and social change that builds LGBTQ communities and promotes new ideas about the role of gender and sexual diversity in political activism, civil society institutions, media, and everyday life. Queer Crescent urges queer organizations and leaders to speak up, take action, and demand a ceasefire, writing that “As trans, queer and non-binary people we understand too well what is at stake when our self-determination and sovereignty are removed. Palestine is a queer issue, and it is our duty to listen and learn from queer Palestinians who are living under Israeli occupation, and in the imposed Diaspora”. You can sign on to Queer Crescent's ceasefire campaign at bit.ly/PalestineisaQueerIssue. In the second half of the show we are joined by Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A of Lavender Phoenix who emphasize the importance of care within the Palestine Liberation movement, urging our listeners to not fall into feelings of inaction. They highlight the importance of grief routines and using grief and rage as tools for momentum, and ask the provoking difficult question: What could it look like for people to feel as safe at a protest as they feel at home? We also gain intimate insight into the ways Lavender Phoenix has been organizing, as Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A emphasize the interconnectedness of all of our struggles and the interconnectedness of all of our freedoms. IMPORTANT LINKS + RESOURCES: Queer Crescent's website Queer Crescent's Call for Ceasefire Sign-On Queer Crescent's Pinkwashing Resources Al Qaws's website Lavender Phoenix's website SHOW TRANSCRIPT: Cheryl: Good evening. You are tuned into apex express. We are bringing you an Asian American and Pacific Islander point of view from the bay and around the world. I'm your host, Cheryl and tonight is an acre night, which is short for Asian Americans for civil rights and equality. Apex express is proud to be one of the 11 API social justice groups within the acre network, working to advance positive social change. Tonight, we have two very spectacular guests here with us, Shenaaz and Saba from Queer Crescent. It is such an honor to have you both here with us today. Do you mind introducing yourselves? Who are you and who are your people? Saba: Hi, I'm Saba Taj. I am the communications coordinator for Queer Crescent. And, who are my people? Oh gosh, this is a beautiful question, and I think one that, changes at different moments. In large part, I really feel like I am on the side of humanity and Global dignity. As a queer Muslim from the South that struggle for our collective dignity often centers folks whom I share identities with and just more broadly, really thinking about individuals who are marginalized on multiple fronts. And so, yeah, that's a really kind of vague answer. There's a lot of different folks that are included, but, I hope that answers it for you. Shenaaz: Yeah, thanks Cheryl for inviting Saba and I on the show. Hi folks, I'm Shenaaz Janmohamed. I'm the founder and executive director of Queer Crescent. I've been asked this question ” who are my people” at different times and in the past would have this litany of folks that come to mind: parents, queers, misfits, etc. And I think what I'm feeling now and what I've noticed is that litany of folks can sometimes make the world feel smaller. What I'm pushing and striving towards is feeling a sense of home with more and more folks where there's political alignment. There's values alignment. We're struggling together. So this notion of who are my people feels like it's more of a question than it's an answer. And it keeps me hungry for finding more and more. Cheryl: Wow. Thank you both so much for your thoughtful answers and for setting the tone of our conversation in such a provocative and intentional way.. Do you mind telling us about Queer Crescent, the work that you do, and also about your current cease fire campaign? Shenaaz: Sure, yeah, I can kick us off and then Saba feel free to weigh in. So Queer Crescent, started really as a response to the ways in which many of us, I say queer Muslim and I really mean the range of LGBTQIA plus experiences, trans folks, non binary folks, intersex folks, et cetera. So Queer Crescent really started as a drop-in support group when the Muslim and African travel ban was imposed in 2017. At the time I was working as a mental health worker largely with high schoolers and I also had a private practice. As a queer Muslim recent parent at the time was really feeling like a sense of placelessness and lack of political home where all parts of me would be held whole. And so I put together a support group and it was an overwhelming response in the community. Over 30 people would show up every two weeks. I've lived in the bay for about eight nine years at the time and I was meeting so many different people. Really the seedling of that support group led to this more national organization stretching towards base building and power building with marginal Muslims, queer Muslims. It really was like trying to create a space where we could be held and seen and move from that place of the complexity and the entireties of our identities. In terms of the ceasefire campaign, I'll kind of foreground it and then kick it to Saba, over the last several years that Queer Crescent has grown we've been able to build really solid relationships with other movement partners and other queer organizations. And linking to Palestine solidarity around bodily autonomy has always been something that has been top of mind. The assaults on Gaza are consistent and they have been for many years so when October 7th happened and the assault on Gaza and this genocide has been so intense, it required all hands on deck. Many folks who are committed to the liberation of Palestine have been calling for ceasefire. And so I asked myself, what can Queer Crescent do to play a role in calling for ceasefire and what are the links that are possible to make. Pinkwashing was a natural connect because it is very much a queer issue. Queer organizations like Al Qaws in Palestine and so many others have been talking to us about pinkwashing and making those links. It felt like a good opportunity to call for ceasefire while also doing some political education around the importance of queer people understanding and interrupting and taking on pinkwashing as part of queer liberation. Saba: Shenaaz, I feel like you covered the grounding. That was, I think, perfect. But Cheryl, there's additional questions about the campaign. Cheryl: Yes! I have many questions. For starters, what is pink washing and Saba I'm taking this line directly from Queer Crescent's ceasefire campaign description, which you wrote. How is pinkwashing used as a strategy to advance Zionist colonial violence? Saba: Yeah. So pinkwashing is a form of propaganda that's used by Israel. The aim of it is ultimately to dehumanize the Palestinian people and use this racist trope that Arabs and Muslims and Middle Eastern SWANA people are anti queer and trans and are ultimately homophobic and backwards. It's part of a larger narrative of these groups of people not being with the times and trying to create some sort of image. Not trying to, but very actively pushing a story that Israel is the place of progress, of freedom, when in fact they are using these stories of Palestinians, Muslims, et cetera, being homophobic as an excuse to dehumanize them as cover for their own violent actions. So it's a distraction from their racist and violent policies, projecting an image of freedom and safety for queer people in Israel that is not in fact true. You can't be for queer liberation while also bombing these people and oppressing this entire group. There's no way for those things to happen at the same time, and I think it's part of a larger strategy that we see also play out in terms of feminism. That story is very familiar, where after 9 11, we have to go save Muslim women from these evil, savage Muslim men, and to do so, we're going to bomb all of these communities. It's a strategy you utilize to justify violence. It splits our communities in ways like a divide and conquer sort of tactic; this larger story of you can't be queer and Muslim at the same time, or you can't be a feminist and be Muslim at the same time. And that ultimately serves to split our movements and reinforce a racist stereotype that makes the larger public feel that it is justified to behave in violent and oppressive ways towards an entire people through some excuse that they actually don't care about one another. Shenaaz, if you want to jump in. Shenaaz: I appreciate the links you're making and ultimately I think pinkwashing strategies or the splitting that you're talking about requires a betrayal of the self. Only if you betray some part of yourself can you feel a sense of belonging. And as queer people in our queer bodies, we know that is just not the case. When your experience is being exploited, it's very evident. The work ahead is both combating the colonial violence, making the violence stop, demanding ceasefire now, and the continuous work of continuing to show up in our full selves as queer people, and affirm our sense of belonging within our communities despite both the state violence and the ways in which our belonging is interrupted, both from external forces and internal. Cheryl: Thank you both so much. I think that imagery of splitting. And the ways pink washing shows up, especially for queer Muslim people is really powerful, especially that line Shenaaz, pink washing requires a betrayal of the self. Could either of you talk a little bit more on the impact of this splitting internally within SWANA communities. Shenaaz: Well, I don't think that Saba and I could speak to experiences of SWANA folk because neither Saba and I are SWANA, we're both South Asian. I think the ways in which we come into this conversation, as folks who are Muslim who grew up in Muslim community and that adjacent experience, where Queer Crescent's central project is to blow breath into what it means to be a Muslim. And so Muslim multiplicity, nuance, contradictions, self determination around what your relationship to Muslim is, and a self determined Muslim identity. One of the many functions of Islamophobia and anti Muslim racism as an outgrowth of white supremacy is to dehumanize people. In the case of what Saba was saying earlier, it limits what can be possible of a people. There's this assertion that Muslim communities are inherently homophobic, inherently patriarchal. There were queer Muslim folks prior to colonization. It was the advent of colonization with it's imposed Christian, dogmatic, very strict notions of gender that actually interrupted what was otherwise a much more fluid sense of gender. So part of it is understanding those lineages and that history. And then it's also confronting the realities that are present today. Saba: Yeah. I think it also really obscures a lot of reality as well. One that there are queer Palestinians who are organizing and doing this work within their own communities, Al Qaws being folks that we really look to and want to amplify and follow their leadership. But even in the U. S., you can really see clearly this story of we are in the United States, the harbingers of progress, and yet anti trans laws and the oppression, the silencing of queer people and trans people in this country– we haven't solved these things. . It's a story that is used for a particular purpose and that purpose is just to justify war. That is the actual priority. It's not about queer liberation. It feels incredibly obvious that is not actually the priority of the United States or of Israel, especially when if they were actually to be for progress, for queer and trans liberation, by design, that means you would not be moving in these ways. Cheryl: That was perfectly said. There is the strange dissonance going on with pink washing that, just as you said Saba, has nothing to do with trans and queer liberation at all. I know queer Crescent has compiled a thorough pink washing resource list. How can our listeners access that? Saba: We put out a call to queer orgs to sign on to a letter that outlines that Palestine is a queer issue and is naming pinkwashing in particular as a framework that we need to be very familiar with because it's a copy paste situation. This pinkwashing strategy is used really clearly and blatantly by Israel but also more broadly applied in other circumstances as well. So really calling on queer folks to understand that we have stakes in this and as Organizations as individuals who are committed to that liberation. We must recognize and move in a way that centers Palestine also as a queer issue, connect to it in that way. It is our responsibility. So the letter is online. It's bit.ly/PalestineisaQueerIssue. It can also be found via our Instagram. It's one of the links in our bio as well as the pinkwashing resources, which can be further accessed via that letter. That's a great way to get connected with us. We are also planning some pinkwashing teach ins, so that we can help further this political education and make those connections so folks feel empowered to speak on this issue and bring more folks into calling for a ceasefire, understanding that this is in our broad interest as a community of LGBTQI plus organizations and individuals. Shenaaz: Yeah. The only piece that I would add is this is a really horrific. moment of witnessing genocide and the fight for a free Palestine is a long fight. And so this is also a moment to shore up deeper solidarity. And part of solidarity is supporting people with learning the ways in which they, our struggles are connected. And again really helping queer people understand pink washing, both as such a well oiled used tool of Israel and its settler colonial project and occupation of Palestine, but also the ways in which Israel is this. Model for other colonial powers to learn from through military, through cops and also pinkwashing. We see, for example, India adopting pinkwashing strategies as well to again blur its power and its own project of ethnic cleansing of Muslims, Dalits, Christians, and anyone who doesn't subscribe to the Hindu fascist notion Modi and his government is trying to push. And so it's also really important for queer people to understand this strategy of pinkwashing, to interrupt the Israeli propaganda, but also to notice and be on alert for other colonial and state forces that also use pinkwashing to further other political gains that are in direct opposition to us having safety and bodily autonomy and freedoms. Cheryl: All of these amazing resources will also be linked within our show notes. For maybe one of the final questions do you mind expanding more about this interconnectedness between all of our movements, how to quote from the ceasefire campaign “as a queer Muslim org we recognize that there is no queer trans non binary and femme Muslim liberation without Palestine. Could you expand on this a little bit more? Saba: Yeah. the interconnectedness of our struggles is just such a critical piece, that shows up in this moment and so many others. And I can track that and name as a queer Muslim person, the Black Lives Matter movement was also integral. When we think about our freedom, we must always be looking towards how we can disrupt, dismantle systems of oppression, of policing, of dehumanization that are perpetuated across so many different lines. And that connection I think is really critical because it becomes so easy to think about safety on an individual level. How can I personally be comfortable? How can I personally be safe? But oftentimes what that requires within a capitalist framework is somebody else not being safe. As long as our systems of safety are contingent on the oppression of one or many groups, none of us are actually safe. If you look deep into policy, just to further articulate this, the Patriot Act not only impacted Muslims in the U. S. and more broadly, but immigrants. We're not only Muslim, you see that police violence in the U. S. is not disconnected. Anti blackness that is so obvious and rife in our policing in the United States is also in relationship with Israel. Much of the police across the nation is trained by Israeli IDF. And if we're not actually seeing those connections, then ultimately we are not dismantling those larger systems that serve to direct their violence, their silencing towards different groups at different times, but ultimately all serve to uphold white supremacy. I think it can be very tempting when it feels like the target is not specifically on our own back to feel like maybe we can find some safety by being close have some proximity to whiteness in different moments. And we really need to resist that urge. Even when they're not looking directly at us, if there is a group of people who are being named as enemy, who are being actively dehumanized whether that is subtle or blatant, that is all of our business, and those are strategies that will be certainly used against us at a different time when it's in the interest of consolidating white supremacy. These strategies can be used to target so many of us. Also this notion that we are separate groups is also often not the case. There is overlap so we must, at all turns, be on the side of liberation, on the side of pushing for community care, as opposed to our money going towards violence, which is the root of so much of this. The interests of the S. and Israel is power at the expense of people, not actually about how to care for their own people. Shenaaz: Yeah, if I could just build on that as well. I think that's such an important point that you're making when there is one community that is facing assault in this case, Palestine and Palestinian liberation movement organizers. It also becomes a moment where harmful policies and decisions are made in rapid fire to your point around the Patriot Act. For example, right now there is the potential of a reauthorization of section 702, which is a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Queer Crescent is a part of many other Muslim progressive organizations that are trying to resist this. But this moment of increased violence against Palestinians that is being met by mass mobilization in the form of protest, of shutting things down, deep solidarity is being met from the elected official side and the state side with more more strategies for repression. We're seeing much more police force at protest. And then we're seeing things like the reauthorization and the expansion of the surveillance apparatus and the surveillance state. And so while that is Popping up in response to the swell of solidarity with Palestine, everyone will suffer under more expansion of surveillance, not just Palestinians, not just Muslims, right. So it is then both our responsibility to be in solidarity as people who are committed to liberation for a free Palestine, but is also tactically and strategic for us to be stronger together. And those that are the most vulnerable under increased suppression and surveillance are those that the most on the margins, be it poor working class, disabled, queer, trans, sex workers, incarcerated, et cetera. There's always so many things happening simultaneously and we need each other, you know, in short. Cheryl: We do need each other. Well, Shenaaz, Saba, thank you both so, so much for being on tonight's show. For all of our listeners out there, to stay in contact and to keep up with Queer Crescent's work, Shenaaz, do you mind reminding us one last time how our listeners can keep up with Queer Crescent? Shenaaz: Yeah you can follow us, our website is queercrescent.org. Thanks to Saba, we have a pretty active social media presence through Instagram, so it's @queercrescent. And then the amazing, resources and call for ceasefire, is at bit.ly/PalestineisaQueerIssue Thank you so much for having us on, Cheryl, and I think it's really important before we end to give a strong solidarity and love to Al Qaws, the Palestinian queer organization in Palestine, who have been talking to many of us about pinkwashing, about resisting colonialism, and about really centering liberation and queerness as two things that are not mutually exclusive, but part of the same liberation project. They've got great resources, really encourage folks to support them, learn from them and follow their lead in the ways that we are trying to do with this campaign. Cheryl: Thank you so much Shenaaz for ending us on such a great note, the link to Al Qaws' website and socials will be also linked in our show notes. Now before I introduced our next guests, we're going to do a quick music break. This song is “Anger (DPT)” by the Khamsa Music Project. Hope you enjoy. PT2: LAVENDER PHOENIX Welcome back to the show, everyone. You are tuned in to APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley and online at kpfa.org.. You were just listening to “Anger (H.T.P.)” by the Khamsa Music Project. We've reached the final half of our show where we're joined by Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A– three incredible organizers and members of Lavender Phoenix. Lavender Phoenix along with APEX Express are two of the eleven AAPI social justice groups within the AACRE network working to advance social change. It is such a great pleasure and honor to have the three of you here with us on the show. Do you mind introducing yourself for our listeners here tonight? Who are you and who are your people? Cynthia: Of course, thanks Cheryl for having us. I'll get us started. My name is Cynthia. I use they/them pronouns. I am the lead organizer at Lavender Phoenix. I'll pass it to Kaiyah. Kaiyah: Hello. Hello. I'm Kaiyah. I use they and he pronouns. I've been a Community Safety Committee member for a couple years and a volunteer for much longer. I'll pass it to A. A: Hi hi, my name is A. I use she/her pronouns, and I've been a Community Safety Committee member since 2021 and also a volunteer slash person who hung around before then. Cheryl: Thanks for indulging me in that quick Round Robin. Can you tell our listeners who is Lavender Phoenix, and what is the role that LavNix plays within the movement for Palestinian liberation? Cynthia: Yeah, of course. Here at Lavender Phoenix, we organize with trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders here in the Bay Area. We build power through our organizing, inspire and train grassroots leaders, transform our values from scarcity to abundance, and we also build vibrant intersectional movements. We work with our youth, but we also have a community of elders and our history has been a lot of intergenerational work and oral histories. And as trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders, I think it's important for us to know how deep in our legacy our relationship with state violence is. We have lessons from the AIDS epidemic, and we also need to stand on the lessons that we experience from our homelands. From all of this, we know that organizing in solidarity right now with Palestinians is actually the best way to make that argument for true healing and safety. All the money that's going into this war, violence, and the prison industrial complex, those are resources that could actually go towards healing our earth, feeding our people, housing people. They actually call Palestine an open air prison, and we know that we have better ways to spend our money, better things to do with our time, than to incarcerate and murder people. We want to mourn for our dead, and we fight like hell for the living. And we know that right now, it is not just an actual war, but there's a war in ideology. Are we going to go for weapons and corporate greed, or are we going to fight for a new world? Kaiyah: Yeah, I was gonna kind of go off what Cynthia said about how our struggles are connected. The money that is going to weapons, going to fuel the military, to take people's lives in Palestine. That money could be used instead to uplift life all around the world and also here in the US where people are houseless. People don't have enough food. People don't have their basic needs met. Safety could be realized in a very practical way instead of using it to take people's lives. And for me, I was thinking about how to become more human is to be aware that we're all connected. And this isn't just like a pretty thing to say, cause literally we're seeing money being sent over there could be used differently. A lot of different cultures and different organizations I've been a part of really hold this value that we're all connected. You hear people say things about Ubuntu and Kapwa– that I am because of who we are and I guess I've developed this sense of connectedness to other people across the world and people in Palestine– many of whom I've never met. I was thinking about why I felt so connected to it. I definitely had this sense that like. I'm seeing my siblings across the world suffering and in pain. What else can I do but try to stop that pain? I see my siblings across the world in Israel are harming others and causing pain. What can I do except to ask them and demand of them to do differently to stop hurting others. We wrote in our organization's plan that to support Palestine is to support our own liberation as well. Palestinian struggle is our struggle and Palestinian futures are our futures. So that's kind of how I've been thinking about it. I don't know if you want to add anything, A? A: That's so beautiful Kaiyah. Yeah, and absolutely resonate with all of that. I guess the last thing I'll add is that I think we also have a really unique opportunity as Asian Americans, as people living in the heart of empire. This is happening overseas, but it's very much a result of our government. The United States is ultimately the most culpable here. So I think as people living here, as people who are voting our representatives into office, who give that legitimacy to our government, I think we both have a responsibility, but also a unique power that most people in the world don't have. That is such a unique opportunity that we have as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Yeah, we're a marginalized group here, but we're still, relatively speaking, have so much strength in both our position and privilege and also in the ways that we connect to each other. Cheryl: Thank you all so much for speaking to that. From Cynthia and Kaiyah, we're hearing the interconnectedness of all of our struggles to Palestine, and also from A, the positionality and as a result responsibility we have as people within the global north who are complicit within this genocide. Before we continue this incredible conversation. We're going to take a short music break. Go ahead, grab some water and maybe a snack. And we'll be right back after we listened to “Power Struggle” by Kultural Worker And we're back. You were tuned into apex express on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley and online at kpfa.org.. I'm here in conversation with Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A from Lavender Phoenix, a grassroots organization, building trans and queer API power in the bay area. You were just listening to “Power Struggle” by Kultural Worker. Now let's get back to the show. The next question I have for you all revolves around how a lot of Asian Americans, by way of class privilege or otherwise, are decidedly apolitical even though our existences themselves, as you all have been saying, are extremely political and are extremely interconnected within the Palestinian struggle for liberation. How do we get our communities thinking and taking action on this? A: I can take a first pass, because this is something I truly think about all the time, you know, how do we collect our people? I feel like it really goes back to what Kaiyah was just saying about our humanity is all connected, and to care about other people is to also care about ourselves. It's really hard to do, but this key piece of how do you get people to see that systems of oppression, even if they ostensibly benefit you and guarantee you real material privilege, they also detract from your humanity, and they also make your lives actively materially worse in a lot of ways, or spiritually worse in a lot of ways. I really struggle with how to implement that. It's a hard thing to convey. In movement spaces, over time I, finally, like, you know, got it. But I think that is really what the work is, right? Even if you are not at the bottom of a hierarchy, even if you're at the top of a hierarchy, a system of oppression dehumanizes the oppressor too. Kaiyah: I really feel that. I, I really feel like in this time, there's been a lot of spiritual growth as people are seeing just what is truly important in life. I've been hearing so many people talk about how what's important has become crystal clear as they see people across the world having their lives taken and being like, wow, we really have to do something about this. I'm going to kind of take it a different direction. In general, I think something I often see is that people who care about what's happening to other people who are being oppressed become really overwhelmed with grief and the feelings that come with witnessing something terrible and either become stuck in that and become stuck in inaction because they're overwhelmed, or detach from it because they're not sure what else they can do. Maybe they attempt to take some action, but then it feels futile. Is this actually making an impact? I guess what I'm trying to talk about right now is what can give people hope so that they feel like mobilizing is worth it and mobilizing can be effective. How do we get to that and that? Those things I named around inaction definitely apply to me. In the past I would attempt to organize. I would be like, is this really working? How do I even know it's working? God. Or just feeling like I can't engage with this. I'm I'm going to cry my eyeballs out if I think about this for more than five seconds. So I want to share about two main things that have helped move me from hopelessness and overwhelm into action and to stay there. So the first one is a practice of welcoming and making space for grief in my life, grief and rage. Grief and rage is often trying to remind me of what I yearn for, what I'm missing, what I care for, and what I deeply love. People say grief is love with no place to go, right? So I try to spend time with this grief to give it a place to go and do things to help it flow through me. Not to distract from it, not to get rid of it, but to let it move; to let it be. So I might like scream in my car. I might say to myself okay I'm really feeling this grief and rage today, what do I want to do? Okay, maybe i'm gonna scream my car. I'm going to listen to loud music. I'm going to go by a walk by the water. I've also been making a lot of altars and just giving thanks in nature to feel connected to what's in the world and feel like nature's helping me hold all these feelings. I might go to the gym to run out my feelings or talk to a friend. And all these things help me feel the grief and rage and let it move through me instead of sitting there and overwhelming me and demobilizing me. So instead that grief and rage can take the form of love and the care that it's trying to express. It's like I'm able to take all this pain I feel for my siblings in Gaza so that it fuels me to act instead of preventing me from acting through that overwhelm. The second thing I want to share that kind of moves me from hopelessness into action is to hone my understanding of strategy. I feel like nothing feeds hopelessness for me like pointless action, or action where the outcome and purpose is so unclear or if I'm not sure how its impact is going to play out. So for my actions to feel purposeful, I need to know, one, what is the outcome of my action? And two, how does that outcome fit into a larger plan or strategy? How does it feed into an overall goal of Palestinian liberation, per se? For example, I might tell myself, okay, I know that some protests are meant to be a part of many protests internationally that together are meant to draw more media attention or put more pressure on representatives. Other protests might happen even when the goal seems futile because to stay silent and let it happen without a fight would be even more damaging to our spirits. Maybe it serves some other purposes. Some other protests might be to directly intervene on organizations that are sending weapons and supplies and resourcing oppressive systems across the globe. Some protests are meant to directly slow that down or grind that industry to a halt. There's much more, but those are just some examples of things I think about when I go to a protest to make it really clear to myself what the function is of each action I'm a part of so I'm clear about how my little bit adds to a much larger goal, and it doesn't feel futile. And I know what the risks are, what the outcomes could be and what I'm fighting for in really certain terms, so I can have faith in my own impact. So I just want to share that long chunk as a hope that it might give other people some insight of how they might want to move out of hopelessness and let that grief and rage take another form. Cheryl: Thank you so much, Kaiyah. I was giving myself a hug just listening to you speak. It's important that we feel more rather than just feel better. We can hold all of these nuances without looking away. Cynthia, is there anything you wanted to add to that? Cynthia: I think today we're recording the Trans Day of Remembrance, and I know that this week, there is a holiday. I would encourage us to actually be celebrating the Indigenous Peoples Day. This theme of grief, rage, what we do with it, how we not let it immobilize us. I think is so sharp. This question about strategy too, because it has been 75 years of occupation, I'm actually really grateful for the leadership of Palestinians in this moment. This question of what do we do with this energy and how I've seen them move hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people all across this world to stand in solidarity. That is because of that strategy. And really, let's just get sharp. It's not just the politicians, but the weapons; manufacturing; the tech. It's all connected. How do we put our pressure where power is and contest for that? . Cheryl: As I'm listening to all of you speak, I'm hearing so much about the importance of taking care of our spirits as important and integral part of our strategy. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the importance of care and collectiveness within the Lavender Phoenix's organization and structure, and how it aligns itself with Palestinian liberation? A: I think something that I noticed that was really interesting when this latest slate of intensified violence started is people in LavNix started with, I'm going to this protest, who's coming? Then, people were pulling together Signal chats, and we were all coming together, but it was, like everyone had this urge to do something, and LavNix provided that home to do that and resources to do that. I know if I go to a protest I will have a group of people to meet up with there, and be safe with there. LavNix provides this base that allows us to take strategic, powerful action, and that's only possible because of all of the building that we have been doing before this point, like the work of our Community Safety Committee training folks on de-escalation practice, and now that folks are trained, they can go volunteer as protest marshals and do community safety work in that way. Or our healing justice committee providing peer counseling support for folks and helping folks be emotionally grounded so then in a moment of really intense violence, there's like a higher baseline of stability that allows us to do more. I think it's especially helpful in this moment. because it creates an organized resource group of people that can then go take action that is risky and difficult sometimes. Kaiyah: Yeah, I have been really appreciating how I have an organization to organize with. I have a group of people to organize with in this moment that is Lavender Phoenix, because I see so many people asking right now, Oh, I want to do something. How do I help? And while I believe that everyone can get involved and everyone can mobilize themselves if they would like to, it also is really helpful that we've already had that sense of trust built. We know each other so we can ask each other to join up on higher risk actions because we know how to work together already , whereas we wouldn't be able to ask that to a completely new stranger. Something else I was thinking about in terms of caring for each other at protests was actually a conversation I was having with another Lavender Phoenix member the other day, so I'm stealing this from them. They were asking, “What could it look like for people to feel as safe as a protest as they feel at home?” Not that we were thinking that we're ever going to get there per se, but it was just something we want to think about because I want people who join protests and actions to take really informed risks and be trained in what to expect and how they can maybe react in those situations, especially in escalated situations if that happens. On a personal level, the way I feel healing and care is showing up is again, it's similar to those grief routines. I'll often set aside time to just be really silent after a protest and be by myself, make sure I have a meal prepped at home. Maybe take some time to listen to sad music, really do my thing to move through those feelings because I can often feel really disoriented and kind of discombobulated from all the adrenaline after a protest, or maybe even more sad because it's got me thinking about everything happening to my Palestinian siblings, so that's how healing and care is showing up. Did you want to add anything, Cynthia? Cynthia: I would say it has been special to see how our membership has kind of snowballed into this collective action Started with a few of us. And then there were maybe 10 of us, 20 of us, and then at one point there were 50 of us, and it was I think a testament to trans and queer APIs just feeling that connection, feeling that love, wanting to put that love into action and do that with our community, because we know we keep us safe and we have something to contribute to the broader movement around us. Like we know we can bring that and where we organize, we contribute a lot. And so it's something to be really grateful for. Kaiyah: Yes, I feel so grateful as well. Cheryl: I'm feeling so grateful for this conversation and I'm so grateful that organizations like Lavender Phoenix exist and can cultivate these strong senses of communities. And really y'all do such a great job. Cynthia, do you mind letting us know what are ways that people can follow and stay in touch with Lavender Phoenix and what y'all are up to? Cynthia: Yeah, of course. We are celebrating a new graduating class of Rise Up members. Our organization, we're doing things externally, but also building internally. You can find us on Instagram @lavphoenix. You Google us, you'll find our website as well. Keep in touch. We'd love to see you around. Kaiyah: Trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander people, come find us. . Cheryl: And that's the end of our show. Please check out our website, kpfa.org to learn more about Queer Crescent and Lavender Phoenix. We'd We'd like to thank all of our listeners out there. Keep dreaming folks. A better world is possible. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening! The post APEX Express – 12.07.2023: Re-Air of Queers for a FREE PALESTINE appeared first on KPFA.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists.   DESCRIPTION: Sheenaz and Saba of Queer Crescent and Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A of Lavender Phoenix join Cheryl for this week's episode of APEX Express! This first half of the episode dives into the insincerity of pinkwashing and the ways it has been utilized by the Israeli government to exploit LGBTQIA+ rights to distract from their oppressive policies towards Palestinians, both queer and non-queer. Sheenaz and Saba brilliantly expose the ways pinkwashing perpetuates Islamophobia and racist tropes about Palestinians, along with Arab, Muslim, and SWANA communities and shed light on the long history of trans and queer organizing within Palestine, uplifting work of Al Qaws, an organization at the forefront of Palestinian cultural and social change that builds LGBTQ communities and promotes new ideas about the role of gender and sexual diversity in political activism, civil society institutions, media, and everyday life. Queer Crescent urges queer organizations and leaders to speak up, take action, and demand a ceasefire, writing that “As trans, queer and non-binary people we understand too well what is at stake when our self-determination and sovereignty are removed. Palestine is a queer issue, and it is our duty to listen and learn from queer Palestinians who are living under Israeli occupation, and in the imposed Diaspora”. You can sign on to Queer Crescent's ceasefire campaign at bit.ly/PalestineisaQueerIssue. In the second half of the show we are joined by Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A of Lavender Phoenix who emphasize the importance of care within the Palestine Liberation movement, urging our listeners to not fall into feelings of inaction. They highlight the importance of grief routines and using grief and rage as tools for momentum, and ask the provoking difficult question: What could it look like for people to feel as safe at a protest as they feel at home? We also gain intimate insight into the ways Lavender Phoenix has been organizing, as Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A emphasize the interconnectedness of all of our struggles and the interconnectedness of all of our freedoms. IMPORTANT LINKS + RESOURCES: Queer Crescent's website Queer Crescent's Call for Ceasefire Sign-On Queer Crescent's Pinkwashing Resources Al Qaws's website Lavender Phoenix's website SHOW TRANSCRIPT: Cheryl: Good evening. You are tuned into apex express. We are bringing you an Asian American and Pacific Islander point of view from the bay and around the world. I'm your host, Cheryl and tonight is an acre night, which is short for Asian Americans for civil rights and equality. Apex express is proud to be one of the 11 API social justice groups within the acre network, working to advance positive social change. Tonight, we have two very spectacular guests here with us, Shenaaz and Saba from Queer Crescent. It is such an honor to have you both here with us today. Do you mind introducing yourselves? Who are you and who are your people? Saba: Hi, I'm Saba Taj. I am the communications coordinator for Queer Crescent. And, who are my people? Oh gosh, this is a beautiful question, and I think one that, changes at different moments. In large part, I really feel like I am on the side of humanity and Global dignity. As a queer Muslim from the South that struggle for our collective dignity often centers folks whom I share identities with and just more broadly, really thinking about individuals who are marginalized on multiple fronts. And so, yeah, that's a really kind of vague answer. There's a lot of different folks that are included, but, I hope that answers it for you. Shenaaz: Yeah, thanks Cheryl for inviting Saba and I on the show. Hi folks, I'm Shenaaz Janmohamed. I'm the founder and executive director of Queer Crescent. I've been asked this question ” who are my people” at different times and in the past would have this litany of folks that come to mind: parents, queers, misfits, etc. And I think what I'm feeling now and what I've noticed is that litany of folks can sometimes make the world feel smaller. What I'm pushing and striving towards is feeling a sense of home with more and more folks where there's political alignment. There's values alignment. We're struggling together. So this notion of who are my people feels like it's more of a question than it's an answer. And it keeps me hungry for finding more and more.  Cheryl: Wow. Thank you both so much for your thoughtful answers and for setting the tone of our conversation in such a provocative and intentional way.. Do you mind telling us about Queer Crescent, the work that you do, and also about your current cease fire campaign? Shenaaz: Sure, yeah, I can kick us off and then Saba feel free to weigh in. So Queer Crescent, started really as a response to the ways in which many of us, I say queer Muslim and I really mean the range of LGBTQIA plus experiences, trans folks, non binary folks, intersex folks, et cetera. So Queer Crescent really started as a drop-in support group when the Muslim and African travel ban was imposed in 2017. At the time I was working as a mental health worker largely with high schoolers and I also had a private practice. As a queer Muslim recent parent at the time was really feeling like a sense of placelessness and lack of political home where all parts of me would be held whole. And so I put together a support group and it was an overwhelming response in the community. Over 30 people would show up every two weeks. I've lived in the bay for about eight nine years at the time and I was meeting so many different people. Really the seedling of that support group led to this more national organization stretching towards base building and power building with marginal Muslims, queer Muslims. It really was like trying to create a space where we could be held and seen and move from that place of the complexity and the entireties of our identities. In terms of the ceasefire campaign, I'll kind of foreground it and then kick it to Saba, over the last several years that Queer Crescent has grown we've been able to build really solid relationships with other movement partners and other queer organizations. And linking to Palestine solidarity around bodily autonomy has always been something that has been top of mind. The assaults on Gaza are consistent and they have been for many years so when October 7th happened and the assault on Gaza and this genocide has been so intense, it required all hands on deck. Many folks who are committed to the liberation of Palestine have been calling for ceasefire. And so I asked myself, what can Queer Crescent do to play a role in calling for ceasefire and what are the links that are possible to make. Pinkwashing was a natural connect because it is very much a queer issue. Queer organizations like Al Qaws in Palestine and so many others have been talking to us about pinkwashing and making those links. It felt like a good opportunity to call for ceasefire while also doing some political education around the importance of queer people understanding and interrupting and taking on pinkwashing as part of queer liberation. Saba: Shenaaz, I feel like you covered the grounding. That was, I think, perfect. But Cheryl, there's additional questions about the campaign.  Cheryl: Yes! I have many questions. For starters, what is pink washing and Saba I'm taking this line directly from Queer Crescent's ceasefire campaign description, which you wrote. How is pinkwashing used as a strategy to advance Zionist colonial violence? Saba: Yeah. So pinkwashing is a form of propaganda that's used by Israel. The aim of it is ultimately to dehumanize the Palestinian people and use this racist trope that Arabs and Muslims and Middle Eastern SWANA people are anti queer and trans and are ultimately homophobic and backwards. It's part of a larger narrative of these groups of people not being with the times and trying to create some sort of image. Not trying to, but very actively pushing a story that Israel is the place of progress, of freedom, when in fact they are using these stories of Palestinians, Muslims, et cetera, being homophobic as an excuse to dehumanize them as cover for their own violent actions. So it's a distraction from their racist and violent policies, projecting an image of freedom and safety for queer people in Israel that is not in fact true. You can't be for queer liberation while also bombing these people and oppressing this entire group. There's no way for those things to happen at the same time, and I think it's part of a larger strategy that we see also play out in terms of feminism. That story is very familiar, where after 9 11, we have to go save Muslim women from these evil, savage Muslim men, and to do so, we're going to bomb all of these communities.  It's a strategy you utilize to justify violence. It splits our communities in ways like a divide and conquer sort of tactic; this larger story of you can't be queer and Muslim at the same time, or you can't be a feminist and be Muslim at the same time. And that ultimately serves to split our movements and reinforce a racist stereotype that makes the larger public feel that it is justified to behave in violent and oppressive ways towards an entire people through some excuse that they actually don't care about one another. Shenaaz, if you want to jump in. Shenaaz: I appreciate the links you're making and ultimately I think pinkwashing strategies or the splitting that you're talking about requires a betrayal of the self. Only if you betray some part of yourself can you feel a sense of belonging. And as queer people in our queer bodies, we know that is just not the case.  When your experience is being exploited, it's very evident. The work ahead is both combating the colonial violence, making the violence stop, demanding ceasefire now, and the continuous work of continuing to show up in our full selves as queer people, and affirm our sense of belonging within our communities despite both the state violence and the ways in which our belonging is interrupted, both from external forces and internal.  Cheryl: Thank you both so much. I think that imagery of splitting. And the ways pink washing shows up, especially for queer Muslim people is really powerful, especially that line Shenaaz, pink washing requires a betrayal of the self. Could either of you talk a little bit more on the impact of this splitting internally within SWANA communities.  Shenaaz: Well, I don't think that Saba and I could speak to experiences of SWANA folk because neither Saba and I are SWANA, we're both South Asian. I think the ways in which we come into this conversation, as folks who are Muslim who grew up in Muslim community and that adjacent experience, where Queer Crescent's central project is to blow breath into what it means to be a Muslim. And so Muslim multiplicity, nuance, contradictions, self determination around what your relationship to Muslim is, and a self determined Muslim identity. One of the many functions of Islamophobia and anti Muslim racism as an outgrowth of white supremacy is to dehumanize people.  In the case of what Saba was saying earlier, it limits what can be possible of a people. There's this assertion that Muslim communities are inherently homophobic, inherently patriarchal. There were queer Muslim folks prior to colonization. It was the advent of colonization with it's imposed Christian, dogmatic, very strict notions of gender that actually interrupted what was otherwise a much more fluid sense of gender. So part of it is understanding those lineages and that history. And then it's also confronting the realities that are present today.  Saba: Yeah. I think it also really obscures a lot of reality as well.  One that there are queer Palestinians who are organizing and doing this work within their own communities, Al Qaws being folks that we really look to and want to amplify and follow their leadership. But even in the U. S., you can really see clearly this story of we are in the United States, the harbingers of progress, and yet anti trans laws and the oppression, the silencing of queer people and trans people in this country– we haven't solved these things. . It's a story that is used for a particular purpose and that purpose is just to justify war. That is the actual priority. It's not about queer liberation. It feels incredibly obvious that is not actually the priority of the United States or of Israel, especially when if they were actually to be for progress, for queer and trans liberation, by design, that means you would not be moving in these ways. Cheryl: That was perfectly said.  There is the strange dissonance going on with pink washing that, just as you said Saba, has nothing to do with trans and queer liberation at all. I know queer Crescent has compiled a thorough pink washing resource list. How can our listeners access that? Saba: We put out a call to queer orgs to sign on to a letter that outlines that Palestine is a queer issue and is naming pinkwashing in particular as a framework that we need to be very familiar with because it's a copy paste situation. This pinkwashing strategy is used really clearly and blatantly by Israel but also more broadly applied in other circumstances as well. So really calling on queer folks to understand that we have stakes in this and as Organizations as individuals who are committed to that liberation. We must recognize and move in a way that centers Palestine also as a queer issue, connect to it in that way. It is our responsibility. So the letter is online. It's bit.ly/PalestineisaQueerIssue. It can also be found via our Instagram. It's one of the links in our bio as well as the pinkwashing resources, which can be further accessed via that letter. That's a great way to get connected with us. We are also planning some pinkwashing teach ins, so that we can help further this political education and make those connections so folks feel empowered to speak on this issue and bring more folks into calling for a ceasefire, understanding that this is in our broad interest as a community of LGBTQI plus organizations and individuals. Shenaaz: Yeah. The only piece that I would add is this is a really horrific. moment of witnessing genocide and the fight for a free Palestine is a long fight. And so this is also a moment to shore up deeper solidarity. And part of solidarity is supporting people with learning the ways in which they, our struggles are connected.  And again really helping queer people understand pink washing, both as such a well oiled used tool of Israel and its settler colonial project and occupation of Palestine, but also the ways in which Israel is this. Model for other colonial powers to learn from through military, through cops and also pinkwashing.  We see, for example, India adopting pinkwashing strategies as well to again blur its power and its own project of ethnic cleansing of Muslims, Dalits, Christians, and anyone who doesn't subscribe to the Hindu fascist notion Modi and his government is trying to push. And so it's also really important for queer people to understand this strategy of pinkwashing, to interrupt the Israeli propaganda, but also to notice and be on alert for other colonial and state forces that also use pinkwashing to further other political gains that are in direct opposition to us having safety and bodily autonomy and freedoms. Cheryl: All of these amazing resources will also be linked within our show notes. For maybe one of the final questions do you mind expanding more about this interconnectedness between all of our movements, how to quote from the ceasefire campaign “as a queer Muslim org we recognize that there is no queer trans non binary and femme Muslim liberation without Palestine. Could you expand on this a little bit more? Saba: Yeah. the interconnectedness of our struggles is just such a critical piece, that shows up in this moment and so many others. And I can track that and name as a queer Muslim person, the Black Lives Matter movement was also integral. When we think about our freedom, we must always be looking towards how we can disrupt, dismantle systems of oppression, of policing, of dehumanization that are perpetuated across so many different lines. And that connection I think is really critical because it becomes so easy to think about safety on an individual level. How can I personally be comfortable? How can I personally be safe? But oftentimes what that requires within a capitalist framework is somebody else not being safe.  As long as our systems of safety are contingent on the oppression of one or many groups, none of us are actually safe. If you look deep into policy, just to further articulate this, the Patriot Act not only impacted Muslims in the U. S. and more broadly, but immigrants. We're not only Muslim, you see that police violence in the U. S. is not disconnected. Anti blackness that is so obvious and rife in our policing in the United States is also in relationship with Israel. Much of the police across the nation is trained by Israeli IDF. And if we're not actually seeing those connections, then ultimately we are not dismantling those larger systems that serve to direct their violence, their silencing towards different groups at different times, but ultimately all serve to uphold white supremacy.  I think it can be very tempting when it feels like the target is not specifically on our own back to feel like maybe we can find some safety by being close have some proximity to whiteness in different moments. And we really need to resist that urge. Even when they're not looking directly at us, if there is a group of people who are being named as enemy, who are being actively dehumanized whether that is subtle or blatant, that is all of our business, and those are strategies that will be certainly used against us at a different time when it's in the interest of consolidating white supremacy.  These strategies can be used to target so many of us. Also this notion that we are separate groups is also often not the case. There is overlap so we must, at all turns, be on the side of liberation, on the side of pushing for community care, as opposed to our money going towards violence, which is the root of so much of this. The interests of the  S. and Israel is power at the expense of people, not actually about how to care for their own people.  Shenaaz: Yeah, if I could just build on that as well. I think that's such an important point that you're making when there is one community that is facing assault in this case, Palestine and Palestinian liberation movement organizers. It also becomes a moment where harmful policies and decisions are made in rapid fire to your point around the Patriot Act. For example, right now there is the potential of a reauthorization of section 702, which is a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Queer Crescent is a part of many other Muslim progressive organizations that are trying to resist this. But this moment of increased violence against Palestinians that is being met by mass mobilization in the form of protest, of shutting things down, deep solidarity is being met from the elected official side and the state side with more more strategies for repression. We're seeing much more police force at protest. And then we're seeing things like the reauthorization and the expansion of the surveillance apparatus and the surveillance state. And so while that is Popping up in response to the swell of solidarity with Palestine, everyone will suffer under more expansion of surveillance, not just Palestinians, not just Muslims, right. So it is then both our responsibility to be in solidarity as people who are committed to liberation for a free Palestine, but is also tactically and strategic for us to be stronger together. And those that are the most vulnerable under increased suppression and surveillance are those that the most on the margins, be it poor working class, disabled, queer, trans, sex workers, incarcerated, et cetera. There's always so many things happening simultaneously and we need each other, you know, in short. Cheryl: We do need each other. Well, Shenaaz, Saba, thank you both so, so much for being on tonight's show. For all of our listeners out there, to stay in contact and to keep up with Queer Crescent's work, Shenaaz, do you mind reminding us one last time how our listeners can keep up with Queer Crescent?  Shenaaz: Yeah you can follow us, our website is queercrescent.org. Thanks to Saba, we have a pretty active social media presence through Instagram, so it's @queercrescent. And then the amazing, resources and call for ceasefire, is at bit.ly/PalestineisaQueerIssue  Thank you so much for having us on, Cheryl, and I think it's really important before we end to give a strong solidarity and love to Al Qaws, the Palestinian queer organization in Palestine, who have been talking to many of us about pinkwashing, about resisting colonialism, and about really centering liberation and queerness as two things that are not mutually exclusive, but part of the same liberation project. They've got great resources, really encourage folks to support them, learn from them and follow their lead in the ways that we are trying to do with this campaign.  Cheryl: Thank you so much Shenaaz for ending us on such a great note, the link to Al Qaws' website and socials will be also linked in our show notes. Now before I introduced our next guests, we're going to do a quick music break. This song is “Anger (DPT)” by the Khamsa Music Project. Hope you enjoy.   PT2: LAVENDER PHOENIX   Welcome back to the show, everyone. You are tuned in to APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley and online at kpfa.org.. You were just listening to “Anger (H.T.P.)” by the Khamsa Music Project. We've reached the final half of our show where we're joined by Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A– three incredible organizers and members of Lavender Phoenix. Lavender Phoenix along with APEX Express are two of the eleven AAPI social justice groups within the AACRE network working to advance social change. It is such a great pleasure and honor to have the three of you here with us on the show. Do you mind introducing yourself for our listeners here tonight? Who are you and who are your people?  Cynthia: Of course, thanks Cheryl for having us. I'll get us started. My name is Cynthia. I use they/them pronouns. I am the lead organizer at Lavender Phoenix. I'll pass it to Kaiyah.  Kaiyah: Hello. Hello. I'm Kaiyah. I use they and he pronouns. I've been a Community Safety Committee member for a couple years and a volunteer for much longer. I'll pass it to A. A: Hi hi, my name is A. I use she/her pronouns, and I've been a Community Safety Committee member since 2021 and also a volunteer slash person who hung around before then. Cheryl: Thanks for indulging me in that quick Round Robin. Can you tell our listeners who is Lavender Phoenix, and what is the role that LavNix plays within the movement for Palestinian liberation?  Cynthia: Yeah, of course. Here at Lavender Phoenix, we organize with trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders here in the Bay Area. We build power through our organizing, inspire and train grassroots leaders, transform our values from scarcity to abundance, and we also build vibrant intersectional movements. We work with our youth, but we also have a community of elders and our history has been a lot of intergenerational work and oral histories. And as trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders, I think it's important for us to know how deep in our legacy our relationship with state violence is. We have lessons from the AIDS epidemic, and we also need to stand on the lessons that we experience from our homelands. From all of this, we know that organizing in solidarity right now with Palestinians is actually the best way to make that argument for true healing and safety. All the money that's going into this war, violence, and the prison industrial complex, those are resources that could actually go towards healing our earth, feeding our people, housing people. They actually call Palestine an open air prison, and we know that we have better ways to spend our money, better things to do with our time, than to incarcerate and murder people. We want to mourn for our dead, and we fight like hell for the living. And we know that right now, it is not just an actual war, but there's a war in ideology. Are we going to go for weapons and corporate greed, or are we going to fight for a new world? Kaiyah: Yeah, I was gonna kind of go off what Cynthia said about how our struggles are connected. The money that is going to weapons, going to fuel the military, to take people's lives in Palestine. That money could be used instead to uplift life all around the world and also here in the US where people are houseless. People don't have enough food. People don't have their basic needs met. Safety could be realized in a very practical way instead of using it to take people's lives. And for me, I was thinking about how to become more human is to be aware that we're all connected. And this isn't just like a pretty thing to say, cause literally we're seeing money being sent over there could be used differently. A lot of different cultures and different organizations I've been a part of really hold this value that we're all connected. You hear people say things about Ubuntu and Kapwa– that I am because of who we are and I guess I've developed this sense of connectedness to other people across the world and people in Palestine– many of whom I've never met. I was thinking about why I felt so connected to it. I definitely had this sense that like. I'm seeing my siblings across the world suffering and in pain. What else can I do but try to stop that pain? I see my siblings across the world in Israel are harming others and causing pain. What can I do except to ask them and demand of them to do differently to stop hurting others. We wrote in our organization's plan that to support Palestine is to support our own liberation as well.  Palestinian struggle is our struggle and Palestinian futures are our futures. So that's kind of how I've been thinking about it. I don't know if you want to add anything, A?  A: That's so beautiful Kaiyah.  Yeah, and absolutely resonate with all of that. I guess the last thing I'll add is that I think we also have a really unique opportunity as Asian Americans, as people living in the heart of empire. This is happening overseas, but it's very much a result of our government. The United States is ultimately the most culpable here. So I think as people living here, as people who are voting our representatives into office, who give that legitimacy to our government, I think we both have a responsibility, but also a unique power that most people in the world don't have. That is such a unique opportunity that we have as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Yeah, we're a marginalized group here, but we're still, relatively speaking, have so much strength in both our position and privilege and also in the ways that we connect to each other. Cheryl: Thank you all so much for speaking to that. From Cynthia and Kaiyah, we're hearing the interconnectedness of all of our struggles to Palestine, and also from A, the positionality and as a result responsibility we have as people within the global north who are complicit within this genocide.  Before we continue this incredible conversation. We're going to take a short music break. Go ahead, grab some water and maybe a snack. And we'll be right back after we listened to “Power Struggle” by Kultural Worker  And we're back. You were tuned into apex express on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley and online at kpfa.org.. I'm here in conversation with Cynthia, Kaiyah, and A from Lavender Phoenix, a grassroots organization, building trans and queer API power in the bay area. You were just listening to “Power Struggle” by Kultural Worker. Now let's get back to the show.  The next question I have for you all revolves around how a lot of Asian Americans, by way of class privilege or otherwise, are decidedly apolitical even though our existences themselves, as you all have been saying, are extremely political and are extremely interconnected within the Palestinian struggle for liberation. How do we get our communities thinking and taking action on this?  A: I can take a first pass, because this is something I truly think about all the time, you know, how do we collect our people? I feel like it really goes back to what Kaiyah was just saying about our humanity is all connected, and to care about other people is to also care about ourselves. It's really hard to do, but this key piece of how do you get people to see that systems of oppression, even if they ostensibly benefit you and guarantee you real material privilege, they also detract from your humanity, and they also make your lives actively materially worse in a lot of ways, or spiritually worse in a lot of ways. I really struggle with how to implement that. It's a hard thing to convey. In movement spaces, over time I, finally, like, you know, got it. But I think that is really what the work is, right? Even if you are not at the bottom of a hierarchy, even if you're at the top of a hierarchy, a system of oppression dehumanizes the oppressor too. Kaiyah: I really feel that. I, I really feel like in this time, there's been a lot of spiritual growth as people are seeing just what is truly important in life. I've been hearing so many people talk about how what's important has become crystal clear as they see people across the world having their lives taken and being like, wow, we really have to do something about this. I'm going to kind of take it a different direction. In general, I think something I often see is that people who care about what's happening to other people who are being oppressed become really overwhelmed with grief and the feelings that come with witnessing something terrible and either become stuck in that and become stuck in inaction because they're overwhelmed, or detach from it because they're not sure what else they can do. Maybe they attempt to take some action, but then it feels futile. Is this actually making an impact? I guess what I'm trying to talk about right now is what can give people hope so that they feel like mobilizing is worth it and mobilizing can be effective. How do we get to that and that? Those things I named around inaction definitely apply to me. In the past I would attempt to organize. I would be like, is this really working? How do I even know it's working? God. Or just feeling like I can't engage with this. I'm I'm going to cry my eyeballs out if I think about this for more than five seconds. So I want to share about two main things that have helped move me from hopelessness and overwhelm into action and to stay there. So the first one is a practice of welcoming and making space for grief in my life, grief and rage. Grief and rage is often trying to remind me of what I yearn for, what I'm missing, what I care for, and what I deeply love. People say grief is love with no place to go, right? So I try to spend time with this grief to give it a place to go and do things to help it flow through me. Not to distract from it, not to get rid of it, but to let it move; to let it be. So I might like scream in my car. I might say to myself okay I'm really feeling this grief and rage today, what do I want to do? Okay, maybe i'm gonna scream my car. I'm going to listen to loud music. I'm going to go by a walk by the water. I've also been making a lot of altars and just giving thanks in nature to feel connected to what's in the world and feel like nature's helping me hold all these feelings. I might go to the gym to run out my feelings or talk to a friend. And all these things help me feel the grief and rage and let it move through me instead of sitting there and overwhelming me and demobilizing me. So instead that grief and rage can take the form of love and the care that it's trying to express. It's like I'm able to take all this pain I feel for my siblings in Gaza so that it fuels me to act instead of preventing me from acting through that overwhelm. The second thing I want to share that kind of moves me from hopelessness into action is to hone my understanding of strategy. I feel like nothing feeds hopelessness for me like pointless action, or action where the outcome and purpose is so unclear or if I'm not sure how its impact is going to play out. So for my actions to feel purposeful, I need to know, one, what is the outcome of my action? And two, how does that outcome fit into a larger plan or strategy? How does it feed into an overall goal of Palestinian liberation, per se? For example, I might tell myself, okay, I know that some protests are meant to be a part of many protests internationally that together are meant to draw more media attention or put more pressure on representatives. Other protests might happen even when the goal seems futile because to stay silent and let it happen without a fight would be even more damaging to our spirits. Maybe it serves some other purposes. Some other protests might be to directly intervene on organizations that are sending weapons and supplies and resourcing oppressive systems across the globe. Some protests are meant to directly slow that down or grind that industry to a halt. There's much more, but those are just some examples of things I think about when I go to a protest to make it really clear to myself what the function is of each action I'm a part of so I'm clear about how my little bit adds to a much larger goal, and it doesn't feel futile. And I know what the risks are, what the outcomes could be and what I'm fighting for in really certain terms, so I can have faith in my own impact. So I just want to share that long chunk as a hope that it might give other people some insight of how they might want to move out of hopelessness and let that grief and rage take another form. Cheryl: Thank you so much, Kaiyah. I was giving myself a hug just listening to you speak. It's important that we feel more rather than just feel better. We can hold all of these nuances without looking away. Cynthia, is there anything you wanted to add to that? Cynthia: I think today we're recording the Trans Day of Remembrance, and I know that this week, there is a holiday. I would encourage us to actually be celebrating the Indigenous Peoples Day. This theme of grief, rage, what we do with it, how we not let it immobilize us. I think is so sharp. This question about strategy too, because it has been 75 years of occupation, I'm actually really grateful for the leadership of Palestinians in this moment. This question of what do we do with this energy and how I've seen them move hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people all across this world to stand in solidarity. That is because of that strategy. And really, let's just get sharp. It's not just the politicians, but the weapons; manufacturing; the tech. It's all connected. How do we put our pressure where power is and contest for that? .  Cheryl: As I'm listening to all of you speak, I'm hearing so much about the importance of taking care of our spirits as important and integral part of our strategy. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the importance of care and collectiveness within the Lavender Phoenix's organization and structure, and how it aligns itself with Palestinian liberation?  A: I think something that I noticed that was really interesting when this latest slate of intensified violence started is people in LavNix started with, I'm going to this protest, who's coming? Then, people were pulling together Signal chats, and we were all coming together, but it was, like everyone had this urge to do something, and LavNix provided that home to do that and resources to do that. I know if I go to a protest I will have a group of people to meet up with there, and be safe with there. LavNix provides this base that allows us to take strategic, powerful action, and that's only possible because of all of the building that we have been doing before this point, like the work of our Community Safety Committee training folks on de-escalation practice, and now that folks are trained, they can go volunteer as protest marshals and do community safety work in that way. Or our healing justice committee providing peer counseling support for folks and helping folks be emotionally grounded so then in a moment of really intense violence, there's like a higher baseline of stability that allows us to do more. I think it's especially helpful in this moment. because it creates an organized resource group of people that can then go take action that is risky and difficult sometimes.  Kaiyah: Yeah, I have been really appreciating how I have an organization to organize with. I have a group of people to organize with in this moment that is Lavender Phoenix, because I see so many people asking right now, Oh, I want to do something. How do I help? And while I believe that everyone can get involved and everyone can mobilize themselves if they would like to, it also is really helpful that we've already had that sense of trust built. We know each other so we can ask each other to join up on higher risk actions because we know how to work together already , whereas we wouldn't be able to ask that to a completely new stranger. Something else I was thinking about in terms of caring for each other at protests was actually a conversation I was having with another Lavender Phoenix member the other day, so I'm stealing this from them. They were asking, “What could it look like for people to feel as safe as a protest as they feel at home?” Not that we were thinking that we're ever going to get there per se, but it was just something we want to think about because I want people who join protests and actions to take really informed risks and be trained in what to expect and how they can maybe react in those situations, especially in escalated situations if that happens.  On a personal level, the way I feel healing and care is showing up is again, it's similar to those grief routines. I'll often set aside time to just be really silent after a protest and be by myself, make sure I have a meal prepped at home. Maybe take some time to listen to sad music, really do my thing to move through those feelings because I can often feel really disoriented and kind of discombobulated from all the adrenaline after a protest, or maybe even more sad because it's got me thinking about everything happening to my Palestinian siblings, so that's how healing and care is showing up. Did you want to add anything, Cynthia?  Cynthia: I would say it has been special to see how our membership has kind of snowballed into this collective action Started with a few of us. And then there were maybe 10 of us, 20 of us, and then at one point there were 50 of us, and it was I think a testament to trans and queer APIs just feeling that connection, feeling that love, wanting to put that love into action and do that with our community, because we know we keep us safe and we have something to contribute to the broader movement around us. Like we know we can bring that and where we organize, we contribute a lot. And so it's something to be really grateful for.  Kaiyah: Yes, I feel so grateful as well. Cheryl: I'm feeling so grateful for this conversation and I'm so grateful that organizations like Lavender Phoenix exist and can cultivate these strong senses of communities. And really y'all do such a great job. Cynthia, do you mind letting us know what are ways that people can follow and stay in touch with Lavender Phoenix and what y'all are up to?  Cynthia: Yeah, of course. We are celebrating a new graduating class of Rise Up members. Our organization, we're doing things externally, but also building internally. You can find us on Instagram @lavphoenix. You Google us, you'll find our website as well. Keep in touch. We'd love to see you around. Kaiyah: Trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander people, come find us. .  Cheryl: And that's the end of our show. Please check out our website, kpfa.org to learn more about Queer Crescent and Lavender Phoenix.   We'd We'd like to thank all of our listeners out there. Keep dreaming folks. A better world is possible.   Apex express is produced by Miko Lee, Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar. Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Nikki Chan, and Cheryl Truong   Tonight's show was produced by me, cheryl. Thanks to the team at KPFA for all of their support. And thank you for listening!    The post APEX Express – 11.23.23 Queers for a FREE PALESTINE appeared first on KPFA.

Are “Queers for Palestine” really like “Chickens for KFC”? No, but understanding intersectional justice can be hard, and sharing memes is easy. Joined by Moe Dabbagh, a gay Palestinian American with family currently in Gaza, we Venn diagram gay liberation and Palestinian liberation. They're less at odds with each other than you'd think. Gal Gadot makes a cameo.  Read Sarah Schulman's op-ed on pinkwashing here. Thank you to Moe Dabbagh for joining me. Find Moe here. Find more of A Bit Fruity. Find more of Matt. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube. Huge thanks to Blueland for sponsoring this episode. Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at www.Blueland.com/fruity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A GAY SHAME podcast. Emmanuel Yekutiel is a marketing associate for conservative causes and Israel who in 2018, opened a gentrification cafe in the Mission that he named after himself. Since then, Manny's has been a safe space for neoliberal figures to gather, including Dr. Jill Biden, Matt Yglesias, Nancy Pelosi, Sam Bankman-Fried, SFPD chief Bill Scott, and the trio of local politicians Manny dubbed the "Power Gays."  Deeg from Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) speaks on the boycott of Manny's, and the tradition of queers organizing against Israel's genocide of Palestinians. Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) BDS Movement "Alive in Limbo" documentary "Pinkwashing Exposed" documentary  Queer Cinema for Palestine "Progressive Coalition boycotts 'woke-washing' of San Francisco event space" "Mark Zuckerberg's Immigration Hustle"

Here's my warning, Today's podcast might make you a little angry. It's October. That means Pink Out and Breast Cancer month. I mean everywhere you look, there's pink and it's for a good cause, so let's all get behind it, right?? Maybe not! Have you heard of the term Pink Washing? This term refers to a marketing tactic. It is the exploitation of Breast Cancer for profit or for public relations. Pink Washing is the act of supposedly supporting breast cancer and producing, manufacturing or selling products that are actually linked to the disease itself. Breast Cancer is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is largely unregulated. Buckle up sis. Let's do some eye opening today on the Healthy Harmony podcast. You may not know this about me, I have years of Oncology experience. I've worked as an Oncology Dietitian in a hospital, worked for an Oncology pharmaceutical sales company and ran a cancer ministry and cancer support group for years. I've been on countless doctor visits as a patient advocate. All of that couldn't prepare me for the phone call when my mom told me that she had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. I lost my mom only 5 months after that call. So, you would think that I would be all over the pink! I mean it's breast cancer month. My mom died of breast cancer. Nope not at all! Every October I get so frustrated. The influx of pink, seeing companies profit off of people's pain. Knowing toxic products are being sold using the pink ribbon and those products could cause cancer. Seeing the focus on breast cancer just because it's boobs and sex sells. It's disgusting. Some of what I say today may make you mad. I really might offend some of you. My intent is simply to open your eyes. To shine a light on the deception. To get you to think for yourself. I'm curious your thoughts! Feel free to connect over social media @inspriehealthyharmony or email me jennifer@inspirehealthyharmony.com PS>>>> I'm all about empowerment and encouraging you to learn about your body. I'm working diligently on the comprehensive hormone program for midlife women. You can be the first to know by joining the first to know list! Simply go to https://bit.ly/firsttoknowlist --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inspirehealthyharmony/message

This week we talk about the alcohol industry and pink washing.Pinkwashing is a form of cause marketing that uses a pink ribbon logo. Alcohol companies display the pink ribbon logo on products that are known to cause different types of cancer. The Pink ribbon logo symbolizes support for breast cancer-related charities or foundations.Get Our 5 o'clock somewhere: Alcohol Free EditionGet $5 off your first Go Brewing order!Watch the podcast on YouTube here: Alcohol Free Marriage Podcast VideoOur Website: AFMPodcast.comSchedule your free discovery coaching call with Amy

To kick off breast cancer awareness month, Shauna and Rosalina sit with cancer survivor Trish Michelle. They ladies discuss Trish's impact as an advocate in the breast cancer community, her rise to Chief Community Officer with the Breasties, and her continued fight against pinkwashing through her initiative “Reclaim October.” which had raised thousands of dollars in funding for research and non-profit organizations. Together they touch on life after diagnosis, balancing being an advocate in the breast cancer space, and the importance of community throughout it all.You can find Trish on Instagram @trish_newyorkcity Resources:Pink Is Not The Problem CampaignReclaim October IG Click here to leave us a voicemail about what it is like to be a Stage 4 Thriver?If you enjoy this episode, please share it with your friends. Help us reach more women by subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube.You can follow us on Instagram @TYFTSpodcast and email us at tyftspodcast@gmail.comPlease consider donating to our “Buy Me A Coffee” page. Your generous support will greatly assist us in continuing to produce quality content for our listeners. Every donation will get a shoutout on our podcast, as well as a free TYFTS sticker..www.buymeacoffee.com/tyftspodcast If you want to submit a quote about your breast cancer journey, submit one here: Submit A Quote

In this Sunnaissance IRL (California edition!) episode, we're discussing post-modern gender theory and queer/feminist studies in response to a listener-submitted hot take about the counterrevolutionary nature of contemporary usage of 'nonbinary' identity. We talk about Judith Butler and other feminists theorizing around gendered oppression and its relevance and role in social discourse over the decades. We do get into whacking the she/they's who say inane shit like "my boyfriend (a cis het man btw) is fruity for dating me because i use they/them pronouns" and "i want to look like a boy in a dress" vs. the material reality of gender non-conformity and gender transition. Sunny brings up a bad tweet thread from a they/them lesbian speaking over a trans woman dunking on overly online trans discourse. In response to another emailed hot take, we talk about the ridiculousness of opposing Palestinian liberation in the name of the (nonexistent) LGBT rights granted by israel, and the occupation's supposed defense of 'human rights,' being 'the only democracy in the middle east' (lmao). Very unserious talking points that are deeply entrenched in the american political sphere. For shared media analysis we discuss the very fun movie Party Girl (1995), while lamenting the state of contemporary filmmaking (as we always do). Renaissance recommends the artist Remi Wolf, and Sunny recommends the deranged woman novel- set in Riverside, California! Where Renaissance recently graduated from if you missed that- Exalted by Anna Dorn. Thanks for joining us for this episode! You can find us on Twitter, YouTube, Substack, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Letterboxd if you want to connect! Send your hot takes to thelavendermenacepodcast@gmail.com and support us on Patreon for bonus content and early access: https://www.patreon.com/TheLavenderMenace