One Year of Anguish and Grief

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence, Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the ascent of authoritarianism while building the influence of a genuinely progressive trend in the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:31] Before we get started here today, I do want to invite you to join our subscriber program. Convergence Magazine is an independent publication that relies on the generosity of our readers and listeners to create the rigorous, thoughtful takes you’ve come to expect from us week in and week out. You can become a subscriber at ConvergenceMag.

[00:00:47] com slash donate. Any amount helps either as a one time donation or as a recurring monthly or annual subscription. Folks, this has been a difficult week for a lot of us. Looking back on the past year, it’s hard not to feel the deep frustration, grief, and anguish over the way that the U. S. has enabled Israel’s genocide in Gaza and further intensification of violence and expansion beyond Gaza to include the West Bank and Lebanon.

[00:01:14] It’s impossible to ignore the ways that Both Israel’s campaign and movement organizing has shifted the political landscape in this country in indelible ways. More people in the U S have been galvanized to act in solidarity with Palestinians and started asking pointed questions about our government’s blank check support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s authoritarian government.

[00:01:34] Foreign policy, war, and peace have become more important in this year’s presidential election in a way that simply has not been the case in recent memory. Since we started this podcast in April, I’ve also covered many of the seismic shifts in US politics necessitated by the response to a livestream genocide.

[00:01:51] We’ve covered both electoral interventions from primary election fights to protect the squad, the influence and fallibility of AIPAC’s strategy, and the strength of the uncommitted movement, both in the primaries and at the DNC. We’ve also looked at non electoral efforts, like the way the Adala Justice Project and ACRE revealed the connections between, that the weapons industry has in many aspects of our cultural and academic life, to campus protests, and also labor’s historic interventions in the fight against genocide.

[00:02:19] There are even more currents that we haven’t covered because almost everything is in play. Direct action, cultural interventions, mutual aid, and more have been leveraged by our movements to respond to this moment. To look back at the past year, both in the way that our movements have been responding to this moment and to look ahead at what we’re facing today, I’m honored to bring together a panel of folks who have been, each in their own ways, thinking very deeply and addressing these shifts over the past 12 months, and also longer than that.

[00:02:51] I’m going to introduce them now. Long time listeners will recognize Iman Abdel Hadi, a writer, scholar, and activist who last joined us to discuss her coverage of the DNC in Chicago. Welcome back, Iman. 

[00:03:06] Eman Abdelhadi: Great to be here. Thank you. 

[00:03:08] Cayden Mak: We are also joined by Rebecca Vilkomerson, who is a former executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, and author whose new book, Solidarity is the Political Version of Love.

[00:03:18] Co written with Rabbi Alyssa Wise, tells the story of JVP’s evolution as an organization and political home for anti Zionist Jewish organizing. Thank you so much for making the time, Rebecca. Thanks for having me. Samer Arabi of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center joins us from San Francisco, where he’s also been part of the team that puts together the weekly Center for Political Education Palestine Solidarity Announcement.

[00:03:43] Welcome, Samer. 

[00:03:44] Samer Araabi: Thanks, Caden. Great to be here. 

[00:03:46] Cayden Mak: And finally Shane Burley, filmmaker and a co author with Ben Lorber of the new book Safety Through Solidarity, a radical guide to fighting anti Semitism, as well as a sub author of a sub stack of the same name, who is examining the ways that anti Semitism shows up in US politics and what we on the left ought to do about it.

[00:04:04] Welcome, Shane. 

[00:04:05] Shane Burley: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. 

[00:04:07] Cayden Mak: I really appreciate you all making the time to chat today, especially this panel. I feel really honored that you all are here to make time to think through the wide ranging impacts of this past year in horror and hope. I’d like to start us off by getting a little insight from each of you when you think about the last 12 months and about what you think the biggest, what I want to hear from you, what you think the biggest or most surprising shifts have been in our sort of current conjuncture especially things beyond what I’ve already mentioned that you want to lift up in the organizing that you’ve seen and the dynamics that you and I have been responding to in your work in organizing Sommer, I don’t know if you, maybe you want to start us off.

[00:04:47] Samer Araabi: Oh, I was hoping I didn’t have to go first. I’m happy to. I think it’s hard. I, it’s been quite a year for a lot of reasons. I think like many people, I’m feeling this sense of whiplash about, How much has been done so much that felt totally impossible, even just a few years ago, like the analysis and conjecture around things like arms embargoes, the extent of popular support for Palestine, these encampment movements, the rate at which the sort of legitimacy of this sort of like Zionist colonial project has collapsed in real time has been remarkable.

[00:05:20] And I think holding that and holding how far we’ve come as a movement while also holding how little we’ve accomplished is a really hard thing to, to, carry in both respects. Like this, despite the fact that we’re now at a point that we’re, something like 90 percent of Democrats and most Americans of any political orientation oppose arms to Israel broadly support a ceasefire, like every other country almost at this point, even Germany and France, longtime stalwarts of the Israeli state are pulling arms and things.

[00:05:52] And we still have basically made almost no movement at the federal level, if any, there’s constant conflicting reports about, Biden being real mad. And also, a record number of shipments and weapons transfers and military aid continued cover for the new invasion on Lebanon. So I think thinking through what we have accomplished, there’s no shortage of things we have accomplished and what we haven’t and why we haven’t reached those kind of key milestones is a really Important thing for the broader movement to reflect on as we enter the second year of, I don’t know how long this fight will be.

[00:06:29] Cayden Mak: Absolutely. I just saw you unmute, Iman. I’m gonna, would you like to, would you like to build on that a little bit? 

[00:06:35] Eman Abdelhadi: Yeah, I guess to pick up I, I think that, we have very successfully deployed mobilization over the last year. Very successfully. We’ve brought millions of people into the streets.

[00:06:48] We did incredible creative direct actions. We really, put Palestine on the agenda. We made it the key topic. As it should be in the middle of a genocide. I think that, just to build on what Samer was saying, I think that now we need to, and maybe this gets ahead of your questions, forgive me.

[00:07:06] But I think that right now we’re thinking a lot about the limits of the strategies that we’ve been using. And I think the. This I think of the DNC as a turning point. I think that, given how the movement helped effectively remove Biden from office, the way that the history books will be written will always be about just his mental acuity and all of this, but we all know that his polling dropped With the genocide in Gaza and it became impossible for him to hold an event He you know, and so there was I think this moment of hope about the potential to influence the federal level Even acknowledging that the democrats are awful that the democrats are fully responsible for this genocide, but there you know, there was a substantial part of the left.

[00:07:47] And it’s allies that thought okay. This is a moment to push and I think that was the right strategy but it also You Revealed how little power we actually have on to influence policy at the top. And the limits of electoral politics, especially national level electoral politics. And I really want to emphasize that difference.

[00:08:07] There’s a big difference there, right? The, as a strategy for the movement. And so I think that right now we’re in a moment of having to pivot and have to having to reexamine, how do we move? Forward, right? If we’re not going to be able to get at this issue From the top.

[00:08:22] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah, I hear that for sure. I think that’s something a lot of folks are feeling rebecca, would you like to tap in on this one? 

[00:08:30] Rebecca Vilkomerson: Yeah, first of all, I just co sign everything betty man and summer was saying absolutely and you know The sort of jewish left is my wheelhouse. So I thought i’d throw in a couple of things about What’s been happening in the jewish community?

[00:08:40] I think the first thing is that The whole idea of progressive, except Palestine, which was a specious idea to begin with, but it was like very popular for a long time. I think that’s pretty much over or at least dying. And so people are either moving full fascist or becoming anti Zionist or something close to it.

[00:08:58] And I think liberal Zionism is really just vanishing under the reality that we are all. Having to witness every day and I actually think that’s a really good thing. I think it’s very politically clarifying And I think that like by the same token that the sort of big jewish legacy institutions Have really lost all credibility by the fact that there have been apps They just I mean i’ve been working, I shouldn’t be shocked.

[00:09:20] I’m not a naive person I’ve been doing this work for 20 years But even I feel like I had a certain naivete to thinking that at some point there would be a red line And there are just none, and so I think that, not everyone needs to be worried about this, but for those of us in the Jewish community, I think there is an opportunity to build new Jewish institutions where people can bring their full selves and all their politics and can like where we can really speak with our full chests for an end to genocide and for liberation and as part of Jewish values.

[00:09:47] And then I just did also want to mention funding because that’s the, a lot of the work I’m doing right now is trying to organize within philanthropy in support of Palestinian liberation. And there have been a lot of cuts to left and progressive organizations. And especially, and I think that’s part of this thing about liberal Zionism because liberal Zionist funders have always been progressive except Palestine.

[00:10:07] And so for example, it has been. It’s happened to organizations that work on Palestine, but it’s more happened to groups like reproductive justice groups, feminist groups, climate justice groups who have spoken out, made strong statements about genocide, about the genocide, and then are finding out that their funders are creating new limits around Zionism and around how they talk about Israel and that sort of thing.

[00:10:27] And most of those groups are led by people of color. It’s really racist. And I, and yeah. And extremely problematic but, and again, clarifying but I also just think that it does show how real the cross movement solidarity that has been built over the last 10 to 15 years has become the fact that so many different groups who are like.

[00:10:47] Obstensively in other sectors, but all part of this larger movement, have felt obligated to speak out and that’s very beautiful. 

[00:10:53] Cayden Mak: Definitely. Yeah. Thanks, Rebecca. Shane what are the things that have surprised you in the past, 

[00:10:59] Shane Burley: past year? Yeah, that’s what’s great about coming last is I can just co sign everybody I agree.

[00:11:03] I think, when I was young and organizing around Palestine, it was a hard issue to talk to people about, and it was confusing, and I wouldn’t have bet my money that the largest mass movement of the last year was Would have been this. And so it’s like really impressive. There’s the scale of it, particularly with young folks.

[00:11:18] And so I think that’s really important. I think like folks have said the lack of movement that mass large, groundswell has led to. I think that also is clarifying that also talks about like where tactics are and like, what is actually going to be useful. I also, I think like Rebecca was saying, maybe it was naive, but I wouldn’t have guessed that saying the word genocide would have been something that would get people fired from their jobs and get people shut down at work and all that kinds of things, and that people be unwilling to call a genocide or that words like ceasefire would be the new BDS.

[00:11:49] They would be like this dividing line in communities. And then watching obviously Jewish institutions basically clear house of any dissent and really like moved to the right on all issues because of this and they understand and acknowledge implicitly the intersexual nature of arguing for Palestinian liberation.

[00:12:05] So they are seeing in a lot of ways that they don’t have allies on the border. Progressive a left if on this issue. So I think all of that has shown the movement, I think when it comes to the DNC and the election, I actually think this is just pushing the left further away from the party and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

[00:12:23] And so I think the reality of what this lesser of two evils voting strategy is giving us is starting to be questioned at a really mass scale. And so in that way, if that helps build a larger. independent left that’s built on international solidarity. That is a good thing. But then we still have the question of what do we do tactically?

[00:12:42] And I think that’s an open question. 

[00:12:44] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no that’s a really interesting observation. And to me seems very relevant to our project here, both on the pod and at Convergence thinking about What is independent political power in this sort of particularly fraught moment and, like, how do we relate to this very ossified structure around only two political parties, both of whom have a lot of alignment around particular things?

[00:13:09] Yeah, that feels very live to me as well. I’m also wondering, we talked a little bit about some of the adjustments folks have been making over this past year because it hasn’t been, I think one of the things that has been very satisfying for me as both like a participant and an observer is seeing the ways that folks in our movements are trying to adapt to new things.

[00:13:32] This environment where you know, stuff that is happening and organizational responses have sometimes been a little bit surprising. I’m curious what all of you have been seeing as the sort of essential experiments and adjustments that you’ve been seeing. The things that people have tried, and maybe they haven’t been successful experiments, but they’ve learned something from them.

[00:13:54] If you’ve seen some experiments that you’re like, yes, more of this, or we learned this essential lesson especially thinking about this question of like, how we relate to state power as a left right now. It’s It’s juicy. And I don’t think anybody has the complete answer.

[00:14:08] Eman Abdelhadi: I think that, one way to put it is to think about the distinction between mobilizing and organizing, that we have been really good at mobilizing and we’ve always also had organizing. But what really happened this year is that the mobilizing efforts, really exploded.

[00:14:24] And we have all these new people in the movement. Precisely because of the changes, the way that we were able to shift public opinion on this and bring so many more people into Palestine solidarity and Palestine liberation work. But the question is now like, where do we put those people, right?

[00:14:41] We have reached the limit of our protests are not as massive as they were before. There’s fewer and fewer direct actions. And I think that now is the time to commit to deep organizing. To building a power base to really thinking about what are our spears of influence, both as individuals and as organizations, and to have kind of systematic campaigns that look for the levers that we can push, and look for how we can, how can we can shift the environment. And I think that includes, I think that means strengthening our relationship with labor. I think that means thinking in terms of units that are beyond like people at the number of people at protests, but thinking about units like workplaces, thinking about units like cities and thinking about, local elections as a as a means, so not just elections, but really thinking through all of these different, all of these institutions that we have access to, and I think I’ve come to see that, the top of the federal level, the Democratic Party, these things are going to be the last to fall, right? First, we have to hold every sort of institution in our community accountable and create a groundswell of support.

[00:15:51] And I think as we pick our campaigns, as we pick our strategies, there needs to be a real eye towards power. I think, I think all of us. To add on to what Rebecca and Shane said, all of us discovered a little bit of naivete in ourselves this year that we didn’t know was still there to say oh, wow, I actually really thought that public opinion would be enough To shift some of this, right?

[00:16:13] Or that you couldn’t possibly get away with doing X and then lo and behold, they do X and then Y and then Z, and so I think really thinking in terms of power, thinking about how do we withhold labor? How do we impose costs? Rather than continuing to think that just by building our political education or just by having large numbers or just by having public opinion, that’s enough.

[00:16:35] That’s the first step. 

[00:16:39] Rebecca Vilkomerson: Could I add on to that a little bit? 

[00:16:40] Cayden Mak: Yeah, go for it, Rebecca. 

[00:16:42] Rebecca Vilkomerson: Yeah, because this is my obsessive worry right now also. I think because it’s organizing always has an ebb and a flow. And we’ve been in a Flow moment for a year, although like Amanda was saying, it’s not as much of the flow as it was a few months ago.

[00:16:56] And there’s this hard thing about holding like the both and of the urgency of the moment and wanting to do things that are for the immediate terms, but then also wanting to make sure we’re getting we’re getting all these people who have come into the streets in the last year and getting them to make a long term commitment.

[00:17:12] And so that and often like that, the ebb times of organizing, I think are often the most important. It’s that’s when you do your political education. That’s when you do your leadership development. These things also happen in these in these very big moments that we’re experiencing, but we have all these new people who have who are now organizing when it’s only been a time when it’s in the flow, and we have to somehow prepare them for the ebb because we need to, because I think we all know that this is like a long term Yeah.

[00:17:36] Yeah. Struggle and a long term commitment But holding that both end of like the urgency in the long term is hard and I do think like making sure people have political homes to go to And find community where they can do the leadership development where they can be plugged into campaigns those are the things we need to somehow be thinking about at the same time.

[00:17:55] We’re like planning next week’s action

[00:18:00] Cayden Mak: yeah, that’s so real and it is something that i’m like also personally a little stressed out about Here in the bay like looking at the way in which you have the direct actions that I was plugged into very early on like we were able to mobilize hundreds of people to shut things down and now it’s like a combination of the response from the like local DAs, and then also just like general exhaustion is very real.

[00:18:30] Shane Burley: I’ll jump in here. I swear I don’t mean to be negative in any way. But I think we should acknowledge that international solidarity organizing is exceptionally difficult. It is. It’s harder to find those leverage points. If I’m organizing against evictions, I can organize with My tenants that live near me and people could blockade, they could do go on rent strike.

[00:18:49] It’s like pretty tangible what we could do. And in these situations, those leverage points are more confusing. And we certainly have them. But a lot of times it happens like when we focus on this mobilizing is we focus on large things which are symbolically important and large. They raise the issue, but they don’t always find a leverage point.

[00:19:09] But in a lot of ways, we know what those leverage points are already. We have labor unions, we have tenants unions, we have organizations that have discovered leverage points. I think the question now is how do we mobilize those? For this, how do we use strikes? How do you use basically expansive port blockades?

[00:19:25] Like, how do you use disruptive functions that will actually intervene on that? So rather than just broad consumer boycotts and things like that, how are they really going to be targeted? Ways of using the organizations we already have and the ways of organizing we already know to really focus in on that.

[00:19:39] And I think that’s where I’m seeing people have that conversation now. But it’s, it is harder. As everyone has mentioned, when we leave this kind of peak moment of consciousness and activity, we have to give people a real tangible place to plug into where they can actually see cause and effect of it, or they can actually see their action resulting in something.

[00:19:59] Samer Araabi: Yeah, I think that’s spot on. And just to say that, I think one of the experiments that we’ve seen this year, or one of the things that has come out of this whole movement is the sort of evolution of Palestine organizing, which historically I feel like has been stuck in like a. Oh, look what’s happening to those people over there, as opposed to a thing that is grounded in the various struggles that are happening here in the ways that it intersects and overlaps with those things.

[00:20:23] And that has been key, right? I think that’s been absolutely key for getting where we’ve gotten at least, for a rocket, at least, speaking for folks that are organizing in the Bay Area being able to engage with, for example, the long shore union around blocking Israeli ships, or now I think A decade of blocking any Israeli ships from docking at the port of Oakland and just this past year, the local union there said that they refused to unload any Israeli cargo.

[00:20:50] That work doesn’t just come out of like the solidarity of the labor union with the Palestine struggle. It comes from, years and years of joint shared organizing, where people are working together on a set of shared objectives for a vision of society that we’re all collectively trying to build.

[00:21:05] So it means like Palestinians showing up for these other struggles, and that’s something that we’ve been seeing for the past few years in a way that has been really powerful. The way that Palestinians showed up, for example, in Ferguson to be like, oh, yeah, this kind of state repression is something that’s very familiar to us.

[00:21:20] Here are some like tools and strategies that we can help you deploy. So that’s like combining of movement forces I think has been really powerful. And then I think the question from there that everybody else spoke to very well is how do we convert that into real power? I like, I think organizing in the electoral sphere or building power within like the political systems in this country is extraordinarily difficult.

[00:21:42] It is, of course, extraordinarily difficult. It is, I think, particularly difficult on the left. I think it has been easier for the right, for example, to like. We lived so long in this period of these two ossified neoliberal parties that exist like barely apart from each other and that, that obviously is still true to a large extent, but also I think we’ve seen a very successful move from the right.

[00:22:06] Like the hard right to hollow out this husk of a party and turn it into something that actually isn’t super neoliberal anymore, right? It’s becoming something that is almost anti liberal, right? It’s becoming a sort of fascist party, like the only party now that’s against free trade is the Republican Party.

[00:22:22] That’s where we’ve got the left hasn’t managed to do that. We haven’t managed to turn the democratic party into something that isn’t the sort of corporate husk that it continues to be. And I do think agreeing with other folks here. A lot of that happens at the local level. And I think we as a movement have very different perspectives about how we engage in those sort of political processes and what it yields.

[00:22:41] And sorting that out I think is gonna be a really important task in the coming months. 

[00:22:45] Cayden Mak: Yeah, for sure. And I think that, like for us at Convergence, this also feels like what we want to contribute to in the kinds of conversations that we have here on the pod and in our publishing. That I, our analysis is certainly that we are at the, also at the apex of.

[00:22:59] almost six decades of right wing investment in that hollowing out and that capture by basically fascists of what was previously like a neoliberal right wing party. And trying to figure out how we hold that and also understand that new dynamic is really It feels like a huge challenge for the left, and it is a huge challenge for a left that I think is underinvested in a lot of ways, to do that kind of deep work.

[00:23:30] Eman Abdelhadi: Can I just add to what we were saying that I think part of pivoting and again, I’m so grateful to be with Cosign. I also add to the Cosigns. I’m grateful to be on this panel with such brilliant organizers and thinkers. I think part of pivoting is also thinking about what not to do, right? So we’ve been talking about what to do.

[00:23:51] And I think that what we’re seeing right now is also a moment that happens in these moments of, as Rebecca called it ebbs, where people are so frustrated. People are so hungry to feel like they have made any difference in the world. They have, feel like our enemies have not felt the impact of our work, right?

[00:24:14] And so they start trying to feel impactful by aiming closer, right? So basically attacking other leftists, other people in the movement. And that can feel really good, right? It can feel really good to have this. I think I was on a panel at socialism where I think one of my co panelists, we were talking about this kind of like desire for a public execution almost, right?

[00:24:36] And you see these on Twitter and social media, this like rage at a fellow leftist and fellow movement people and the kind of desire to paint it like, so I think part of this comes from a kind of psychological impulse, a desire to feel like you’re being impactful, to see someone actually suffer the consequences, right?

[00:24:57] And I think, but I think it also comes from bad theory, right? I think it’s, it’s a theory of change that it thinks that we need a homogenous movement, that we all need to have one. tactic or one strategy and we all need to have one set of tools and we need to be ideologically, even if we’re 99 percent aligned, we’re going to focus on that 1 percent that we have off.

[00:25:21] And frankly, that’s just not how politics work. That’s never how politics has worked. It’s a way to shoot ourselves in the foot. It’s not a surprise that it aligns with the strategies that the feds have literally used to destroy movements. And I’m not saying that to say, everyone who’s doing this.

[00:25:37] I think a lot of people are doing this who are not feds. But I don’t think that alignment is an accident, right? Yeah, use that strategy because it works. So I think that there’s a sort of bad theory of change there. But I think also there’s this need, so I, I think there’s this need to say, who are my actual enemies and how do I continue to keep my eyes on my enemies and not on my allies who have differences, who worded a tweet badly, who, are not quite there yet or whatever.

[00:26:08] And so that’s what not to do right now is to focus on each 

[00:26:12] Cayden Mak: other. Thank you so much for that. I think that This thing that we all also need to hold about the fact that we are all messy humans doing the messy work of politics. It’s something that I think, especially when we spend a lot of time online, can be really hard to hold.

[00:26:30] I would also be interested in hearing from Rebecca and also Shane on this, especially because I think that there are so many ways that also identity gets weaponized. around this stuff. I’m curious to hear from both of you what your experience has been. 

[00:26:45] Rebecca Vilkomerson: The first thing is, I was at that panel at Socialism that was, I think, organized around the concept of grief, and I just found it to be the most moving and needed catharsis, honestly because it was the first real conversation that I’ve heard that combined just the emotions that, Everyone is feeling and obviously we’re feeling them and experiencing this in a very different ways.

[00:27:05] Some of us are Palestinian or Lebanese. Some of us are not. But we’re all still feeling it and witnessing a genocide live day after day, I think isn’t making anyone like more patient or more compassionate or more strategic or more, it’s It’s not good. Like it’s just, it makes it harder to do smart political work.

[00:27:23] And I think especially after a year when actually the movement has been quite disciplined, quite strategic, quite effective, yet it hasn’t worked. That just makes it very hard to know what to do next. I just don’t think anybody really knows. And so I just think The one thing I would add to what Iman was saying is that I do wish there was a way to have a conversation about the fact that nobody really knows what’s going to work and that if we hold some principles in common, that it’s okay that we’re trying different things.

[00:27:54] And that doesn’t make us each other the enemy or doesn’t make us wrong. Does it make us genocide supporters? You don’t, it just means that we’re trying different things and that we have different lanes. I think there’s different things that Jewish anti Zionist should be doing another anti Zionist because we can do specific work in our community.

[00:28:08] But I it’s, I think except in very limited circumstances, unfortunately, very difficult to have those conversations. And I think those are the conversations like, which are like the correct, there are conversations that have to be brave and courageous and also engage. Like I think only work when there’s already some level of trust and relationship involved definitely not online

[00:28:30] Shane Burley: Yeah, I will Co sign that I don’t think anything has been made better by debating things on the internet. I think you know getting back to the question too of like weaponization of identity obviously the last year has been a ramping up of trends that we’ve already had, whether it’s weaponizing Jewish suffering or weaponizing Jewish fear, highlighting certain things creating a very homogenous, like single narrative of Jewish life.

[00:28:52] I’m saying like, this is actually a Jewish interest. This is what Jewish flourishing looks like. And these are the people who are enemies of it. It just escalated. I don’t think anything was foundationally different. I think the volume has been turned up. And also our enemies in that realm got really well organized and they are very prepared for how to use institutions in their favor, how to use, lawfare tactics, how to do the things that they need to do to meet their goals.

[00:29:15] And so I think that has been really tough. But also the flip side, like Rebecca talked about, there’s been a giant resurgence of the Jewish left, which I think is, impart a part of this break and saying, actually, we’re reinventing Jewish identity and it’s happening in tandem. And I think that’s one of the things that’s really great about that is that it’s also about finding yourself in the struggle.

[00:29:35] It’s not just I’m here representing like a moral cause. No, this is my cause. Like I am now, I have now found my place in it. And we’re finding lots of people finding their place in it. And I think that’s actually what gives Though it doesn’t give us maybe like the strategic point of this is the right choice.

[00:29:50] It starts to change the way you think about it and say okay, how does this affect us here? How are we related to this? And therefore, then what role do we have in this struggle? And that’s a really think a smart change to start happening. And it, and that I don’t think is one that really happened at a large scale before the last, 12 months or 18 months before that. So I think like that process is happening now as people put themselves into that. So I’m hoping that gives us the future of the next five to 10 years of okay, we’re having this dramatic shift. We’ve created this base, we’re putting ourselves into the struggle and now we’re looking at what can we actually do there?

[00:30:25] Cayden Mak: Yeah, that’s that, that seems like a really important thing that I’ve seen too, that a lot of the folks that I have known growing up who have had quietly anti Zionist politics have become more full throated because they see themselves in the struggle in that way. I think another, I guess I do want to pick a little bit, because I obviously am very online professionally pick a little bit at this question of there’s a way in which And this is my axe that I love to grind is that the political economy of social media makes us worse people at being with each other and being in solidarity with each other.

[00:31:03] And so that’s like a big thing for us to be struggling against as a movement. I’m also interested in thinking with the four of you a little bit about what do we do when We’re simultaneously also very people may find themselves isolated by identity and geography and like leaning on the internet for some of this connection and belonging.

[00:31:24] That’s also very essential. I think that to me, that this question is also very tied up in what are the conditions of our society that are also giving rise to fascist that the alienation that people are experiencing and. Being inundated with this kind of bad news that are there places and ways that you’re seeing people use the internet and smart ways that combat some of this?

[00:31:50] That’s a big question. 

[00:31:52] Samer Araabi: Yeah, it’s a big one. There’s a lot there and I feel like there’s different layers that all need to be unpacked a little bit. Firstly, I think we need to recognize that using these sort of, giant social media tech company tools is never going to be like the straightforward path or liberation.

[00:32:08] And as we build power, some part of that is also building systems, that allow us to. Communicate with one another to create spaces of community that aren’t driven by the sort of antagonizing motive of the social media companies holding that. We also, I think, need to recognize that social media is a tool like any other tool and it exacerbates dynamics that otherwise already exist.

[00:32:29] And I think the division and the alienation that we feel through social media is partly a by product of its nature as a sort of capitalist enterprise that’s trying to engage attention and engage. Like enrage people but also it’s just a byproduct of the fact that you have, these millions of people that are out here organizing on Palestine work from a place of really deep trauma, right?

[00:32:50] Like to build on what Eman was saying earlier. All of us having worked on this for a year now are in a space of like very deep, very unprocessed trauma, and it’s hard for that to come out in really healthy ways, right? Everyone is looking for a way to feel like they’re doing the next thing and it doesn’t create a lot of space for taking a step back, reflecting learning, right?

[00:33:12] And building how we do that online is hard, right? Like even through these sort of video calls and podcasts and things, I think are a really good way of getting a message out and building a sort of shared sense of messaging. But to build that sense of community without being on the ground is really hard.

[00:33:29] I don’t know that I have a great answer for that other than I think we do need to continue to invest in doing that a little bit better. Like one thing that, we try to do one thing AROC has done as of, I think, last November, or maybe even at the end of October was Centralized, like one, there’s like a for folks in the Bay Area, Iraq has a calendar about every event that’s happening that’s related to Palestine in the Bay Area.

[00:33:51] So it’s condensing and consolidating a way for people to find out things like that. That doesn’t require them getting on Instagram. It’s not nothing, right? I don’t think it’s where we need to get, but it does reduce the barriers to people being in community together. That isn’t mediated through these sorts of online systems, 

[00:34:06] Eman Abdelhadi: forth on this a lot because I think, I think like Twitter, for example, where I constantly rag on Twitter, but it’s a place that’s been very helpful for me to process to spread the word about Palestine. And I think it’s an important place where people go and, figure out what’s happening and also develop talking points and and it’s the place where I get to know what Zionists are saying so that I know how to respond to it. I think that there’s ways that we need to distinguish between how the problem I think with online discourse is that we don’t, that we decontextualize.

[00:34:44] Messaging. So there’s this question, there’s this kind of lack of accountability in both directions, right? For example, I had a friend recently who wrote a tweet that people assumed was a critique of Palestinian, activists and whatever. And I thought it was the tweet.

[00:35:03] could have been better. I think I could see how people read it that way. She quickly clarified, but people just piled onto her. And there’s this way that there’s, you’re not able to say, Hey, this person is a woman of color who has worked on this issue for decades. Can we take that into account, right?

[00:35:20] In this conversation about what she’s just said. There’s also this way that, we’ve seen these people, anonymous Instagram accounts, post these like manifestos of what is and isn’t acceptable at an action. And I’m like, who are you? Are you accountable to the results of this?

[00:35:35] Are you accountable to the arrests, to the jail support, to the, beatings by the cops, right? Sometimes I agree with them and sometimes I don’t, right? But there’s this, I think that there needs to be a sort of accountability, right? There needs to be a, we need to develop a healthy suspicion of these of both the pylons, right?

[00:35:56] And the kind of anonymous, just like direction, people posting these directions to our movement and these kind of disciplinary, very policing type documents without any accountability, to say who are you, right? Are you a person in my movement or are you just someone on the internet who saw a video and didn’t like how it went down, right?

[00:36:16] So I think we need to be better consumers of information and yes, aware that. Like we my friends who have worked in like social media know that a negative tweet will actually get you more attention than a positive one, right? If there’s a thing about your tweet, you actually get more followers, right?

[00:36:31] Like it’s it there’s a name for it so we need to be I think smarter consumers. I don’t know that’s going to solve the problem but I agree about thinking about it as a tool for sure 

[00:36:42] Shane Burley: Jump in here to and it’s that it is a bit of a dialectic to I think about the recent mutual aid responses to the hurricanes and the scale that very direct action focused mutual aid groups could have is only facilitated by having things like social media, easy payment transfers.

[00:37:00] First messaging functions like easy documentary, just all these like tech tools that are a part of this, that are, part of the kind of problematic conversation as well have been able to scale those things up. And so I think there, I, it’s easier said than done because it becomes very emotionally involving, but having the ability to like, Take a step back and say what is this actually good for?

[00:37:20] And what can we keep it in that I think is useful because it does give us the ability to scale up. I spent a lot of my time organizing, convincing people to use these tools and then not really wanting them to use them myself for the same reason. But it ends up being there is reasons for it.

[00:37:35] But I think also, like folks are saying, it does reflect the dynamics we have elsewhere, and I remember a friend of mine who was part of a movement for a new society many decades ago, made the point that any time that they were unable to take power, they would just take power over each other. And I think like we hit this moment in which we do want to see our behavior affect something somewhere.

[00:37:58] And so it can become that really toxic element. And so I think addressing that on its own terms, I think is important. There’s ways of doing that. I think, sometimes being a part of formal organizations, Is the way that you do that because you actually have a structure for getting into relationship.

[00:38:12] It takes you on both online and offline. You have this assumption that you’re going to engage with people at a certain level. But having that ability to actually reach out and develop like a more thorough relationship and having that be the goal, I think that. Is what all are. All forms of organizing should focus themselves on.

[00:38:29] And then in doing so, I think we just have to highlight that some communities and some geographies and some demographics are having a tougher time meeting those connections and others. And we should think about what does it take to reach out to rural communities better or reach out to folks that haven’t been a part of movements and make that connection in a really intentional way.

[00:38:46] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Thank you so much, Shane. I do want to move us towards this last question, and I actually feel like it’s a good segue, is that I’m curious what you all see as our task now. Are there emerging levers that we have yet to pull? And also, how are you orienting towards this extremely fraught political moment, now that we are What, less than four weeks away from a major presidential election that’s likely going to be contested and likely also going to include political violence and a lot of strife that this question will continue to be at the center of.

[00:39:27] I know it’s a big, it’s a big question. It’s a big question.

[00:39:35] Eman Abdelhadi: I honestly think that, our fight, I think the election I’m done with the national election. I just feel like we’ve pushed. what we could. It’s clear that, the Harris campaign has decided to recruit from the right. And not just on Palestine, on literally pretty much everything.

[00:39:53] And I just don’t, I don’t see, I think I’m done talking about this election. I don’t, I think that we are going to, yeah, so I think that we need to think about local spheres. I think I think that a lot of the levers, so I’ll speak more locally since I’m pushing for local advocacy.

[00:40:12] For me, what I’m really excited about is that the camp, that campus politics have finally moved from just students to faculty and staff. And for example, here in Chicago. At the University of Chicago, where I work we have an enormous faculty and staff for justice in Palestine that, that was formed over the last year.

[00:40:32] It’s super active. There’s enormous hunger for political work. And similarly, there have, these institutions have these F. S. J. P. s have popped up at a number, at every other Chicago University. And so what that means is that we have the potential to organize these huge workplaces, right?

[00:40:50] If we think of these universities as not just the hub of student life, but also as enormous workplaces, right? That are extremely significant in the city. Then we really open up the potential of what we could do by organizing faculty and staff within them. We have long term ties to the institution.

[00:41:08] We are, the institution doesn’t function without our labor. So we have these lovers that we can push that I think weren’t possible a year ago. And So I think that’s the kind of thinking that I’m doing right now and that I’m hoping that more folks in the movement do, even with the recognition, like Rebecca said that, we’re all just trying things here and we’ll see what works and what doesn’t.

[00:41:31] Samer Araabi: Yeah, I would also up that being exhausted with the national election discourse. God, especially given that there are no answers there. I do think it’s important that we don’t let that translate into apathy for down ballot. Like I think engagement at the local level is important. Absolutely critical right now.

[00:41:46] It cannot be more important. And particularly in these moments where APEC is continuing, even now, right now, the primaries or in general, they’re throwing millions of dollars behind particular candidates. And the long term chilling effect of the success of that campaign is going to be one that we’re feeling for a while.

[00:42:03] I think it’s really important that people are engaged enough to engage, like to meaningfully participate at the local level to make sure that pro ceasefire, pro arms embargo sort of folks are getting pushed through. In addition to that, like my one other thought after echoing Iman that like local engagement on organizing and stuff is obviously a key piece.

[00:42:19] This also feels like a really critical moment for more political education. Not that we need to stop the mobilizations, but We need to move out of the rapid response thinking where everything is an emergency all the time. We can’t sustain it. We we can’t keep the level of popular support for it.

[00:42:37] And to do that, I think a key piece of it is creating the space and time for people to agree on a shared understanding of what’s happening, which, obviously exists on some level, but could exist in a much deeper one. And how it connects not only to the other struggles that are happening now and how Palestine intersects with those, but also what do, what can we learn from what has happened before is another thing that I think we don’t spend enough time thinking about, there’s nothing new under the sun here, as horrific as the genocide in Gaza has been, it’s obviously a different thing in scale, but it’s not a different thing in type.

[00:43:09] And there’s a lot, I think we as organizers can learn from what has worked before. Previously and how things generally go and what the trajectory of some of this like sort of colonial violence looks like, literally, I think the exact same Israeli armed division is now in Lebanon as was there in 2006.

[00:43:25] It also seems like the same things that were happening to them in 2006 are happening now. There’s a lot we can learn from looking back on the way things played out and how we can build a better, more informed strategy around those things.

[00:43:39] Rebecca Vilkomerson: Yeah, I am. I co sign again, I think Summer said. I just it’s a hard moment. This is the hardest question I think to think about because there’s just so much grief and exhaustion. And I still think a lot of commitment also, and I have more like questions than answers about this.

[00:43:55] I think my main thing is that I really want us, the big us, to I 1000 percent agree with what you’re saying, Samer, about thinking about learning the lessons of the past and looking really like having a strong analysis and understanding that none of this is new, but I also do want us to be able to think about new tactics and new approaches and not just rely on what we already know.

[00:44:14] You know what I mean? Just ask ourselves the hard questions about and about why what we’ve done so far isn’t working. And a big part of the answer is obviously because they have overwhelming amounts of money and Weapons and power. But still, I think there’s things that we can, I think like we have to try our best to be as creative as we can be in this moment.

[00:44:34] And not like go back to the, just not to go rotely through like the things that we’ve always done, and then I also just feel like we need to like, Really just be with our people and gather our people and take moments of for like music and art and theater and poetry and things like that like often I feel like Those nurture us much more than these other than then even though you know i’m a very political person But even so I just feel like sometimes that touches a part of us and helps us to keep going In a way that some other work doesn’t But, at the end of the day, I just think the most important thing is not to stop just, we have to just keep going and keep trying things and keep showing up for each other.

[00:45:18] Shane Burley: Yeah, I, I 100 percent agree obviously with everyone. And I think the last two things Rebecca said are really intertwined. I think like making that space for community and healing and care is essential for actually keeping going. That is part of the essential piece. I’m here just hours before starting Yom Kippur.

[00:45:35] That’s an important time that like everything in my life will stop. And I need it to stop, right? Like I need it to stop so that the day after I can keep going in a way. So I think making that space is really important. I see the last year of large mobilizations at a time when people experiment tactically and thinking through the changing nature of what’s going on.

[00:45:53] And so I’m hoping that what the next, Five years happens as a moving to a long term organizing strategy where people are looking at these new levers ideas. We’ve discovered things we want to try and looking at like very material things we can do here, like in a way, bring the war home. How does this deal with Israel bonds campaigns?

[00:46:10] How does it? To confront, public employee pensions. I think campuses are super important. I think all the places where we have a sense of how to organize around systems of power and then to shift them here. And I think if we start thinking it that way, I think a lot of people have a lot of smart ideas and are trying some of those things.

[00:46:25] I think some of them still have to be discovered. But making it this fight one that’s our own here at home, I think is what the real essential piece of it is, like when we’re talking about like a, basically a military kinsmen program where, American weapons manufacturers are making huge profits off this, that makes that an American problem that like makes it something that’s happening at home in most States.

[00:46:46] So I think bringing that back tactically is going to be really important. 

[00:46:51] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Thanks so much for that. That sounds, that also resonates with me deeply in thinking about, the way that like this is also connected to things like brinksmanship with china a different thing like there’s a spectrum of american foreign policy bad foreign policy that we’re really stacked up against here and bringing it home makes a lot of sense to me Thank you all so much for sharing your insight today.

[00:47:13] This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. And it’s really heartening to know that we are in movement together. And it’s really a pleasure to talk to you all. I did want to give you each a little bit of time to let our listeners know where they can find more of your work. If they’re interested in learning more about what you’re working on and seeing more of your great insight.

[00:47:34] Shane, let’s start with you and just go backward from our first round. 

[00:47:37] Shane Burley: Yeah. So after talking about social media, I invite you to follow me on social media on Instagram at Shane Burley or on Twitter at Shane underscore Burley one. And I’ve been doing a lot of events from recent books, safety through solidarity, and we’ll probably continue those.

[00:47:50] And yeah, keep an eye out for that stuff.

[00:47:56] Cayden Mak: Excellent. 

[00:47:56] Rebecca Vilkomerson: Rebecca? Yeah, I think the main thing I would love people to check out is the book that I just wrote with Alyssa. We actually finished writing it in September of 2023. Solidarity is the Political Version of Love, and it really looked at, 10 years of organizing lessons from JVP, and I think they’re, more relevant than ever.

[00:48:12] So you can find out more about the book at solidaritylovebook. org. 

[00:48:17] Cayden Mak: Excellent. Iman? 

[00:48:19] Eman Abdelhadi: Yeah I invite you to also follow me on social media. I try to be nice until I’m not. So I’m on Twitter at Iman Abdelhadi, which is my name, and I’m on Instagram where I’m much nicer than I am on Twitter at E.

[00:48:34] Abdelhadi. 

[00:48:36] Samer Araabi: You should be less nice. You’ll get much more engagement. I’ve learned some things today. I don’t have much of a online presence personally, but I would definitely recommend that you follow the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. Check out the website at araborganizing. org. And then the one like action or activity that I would definitely recommend people check out is AROC along with the Center for Political Education and a couple other orgs host a weekly zoom call called Palestine Solidarity Announcements where we talk about events on the ground in Palestine, political developments, both there and here, and calls to action and how we can move things forward.

[00:49:12] It’s a great space to think about. consolidate everything that happened that week and turn that overwhelm and despair into something a little bit more productive. I think the link is like bit. ly slash Friday PSAs and that’s capital F Friday and then capital PSA. 

[00:49:25] Cayden Mak: Great. Yeah.

[00:49:26] We’ll stick links to all this stuff in the show notes for our listeners. Again, thank you all so much for making the time to join us today in this very sort of somber anniversary and taking a look at how far we’ve come. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. I’m Caden Mock, and our producer is Josh Elstro.

[00:49:45] If you have something to say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming Mailbag episode at mailbag at convergencemag. com. If you’d like to support the work that we do at Convergence, Bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a member at ConvergenceMag.

[00:50:03] com slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this helps.