Episode 241 – Poetic Justice - Delete Your Account Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
DYA_241__Poetic_Justice
Thu, Nov 28, 2024 11:11AM • 1:52:29
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
poetic justice, long COVID, queer Palestinian, counter monuments, radicalization, southern identity, liberation struggles, poetry influence, genocide, COVID-19, organizing work, election impact, fascism, social movements, public health, COVID stress, safety practices, food contamination, Biden administration, dismissive attitude, disability accommodation, genocide acceptance, pandemic precautions, ableism analysis, vaccine inequity, fascist authoritarianism, public health, Palestine pandemic, over living, donate to Palestine
SPEAKERS
Rasha Abdulhadi , Kumars Salehi
Kumars Salehi
Welcome to the 241st episode of delete your account. I'm Kumars Salehi America's sweetheart. My co host Roqayah Chamseddine is okay, but was unable to join us at the last minute. Nevertheless, I wrote this intro assuming she would be here, and it doesn't make much sense now, but I'm just gonna roll with it for the sake of the bit. We are about to hit you with a vintage Dirty South collab that's been a long time in the making. So let's get crunk, guys, gals and non binary pals. We are joined today from the top of the show in an historic delete your account debut by the great and powerful MC Rasha Abdul Hadi. They are a writer, organizer, poet and queer Palestinian Southerner disabled by long COVID. Rasha is the author of the chap books who is owed springtime shell houses and most recently, the counter monuments. Their work has also appeared in many other publications from every poetry journal you can think of, to essential voices, COVID 19 anthology, and the Hugo nominated collection, luminescent threads, connections to Octavia Butler. Rasha, thank you so much for coming on. Welcome to the program
Rasha
Thank you. Kumars, as I was telling you before, I'm long time listener, long time fan of the show. So I am glad to be joining the archive, being a part of the Pantheon,
Kumars Salehi
precisely. And what a glorious Pantheon it is. You would surely be, you know, Athena, or one of the top three in our pantheon. Now, you have heard the show before, so you know, you know, in our house, organizers are superheroes, and that's why we like to introduce our delete your account debutantes with an origin story. So what radicalized you, if you will, and how did you come to be the Rasha you are today?
Rasha
Yeah, I can give two different answers to this, and I appreciate you me the option. So how did I become the Rasha that I am today? And I'm just going to leave the Easter egg there for folks who don't know the multiple meanings and interpretations of what my name might mean. I think that if you attend to that, the question might become more entertaining to you.
Kumars Salehi
an Easter egg for me as well. Yeah.
Rasha
did I become the Rasha I am today by witnessing many failed strategies, through many disappointments, through believing in defiance of both intergenerational skepticism and my own, through staying in relationship for as long as I can through self implicating, first, whenever I want to make criticisms, by moving through many spaces of family and friendship, community organizing and art in which people were so glad I was there, even as they ignored or conveniently forgot what I told them about myself, what I offered to do together, and what I invited them to do with me. I can tell you how I got radicalized, but I'll pause for a moment.
Kumars Salehi
I just looked it up, and I guess Rasha means a young Gazelle in Arabic.
Rasha
In Arabic, yes, and that is not the only language in which it has a meaning.
Kumars Salehi
Okay, all right, you got to help me out here.
Rasha

(00:31):
Let's see. I actually one of the poems in the counter monuments features this features the definition. So let me look at what I wrote there. I won't give it all away, but I'll give enough of a hint.
Kumars Salehi
You’re a regular Riddler, you!
Rasha
all right. So this is from an unpublished poem that is being published for the first time in the counter monuments. My name is in your collage tongue, the call of questioner, doubter, rebel whose teeth need blunting. So why today, of all days, does your party planner keeping his 11 Time list knowing the taste of Arabic on the lips and some of us cousins even call to me from across a crowded home? There we go.
Kumars Salehi
That's beautiful. I'm no closer to understanding the origin of this, but some mysteries are best left unsolved for the moment. Part of the reason that I initially hesitated to formulate it that way is, of course, you know, on one level, it's sort of on its face, politically correct, maybe to ask somebody with. of background in a Muslim majority country, how they were radicalized in this, you know, post 911 era. But also on some level, you sort of don't have to usually ask a Palestinian what radicalized them, because their very existence has been sort of politicizing. You know, you may not be interested in politics, but if you're Palestinian, politics is interested in you.
Rasha
Oh, yeah,
Kumars Salehi
that tends to have been the overwhelming response whenever we ask Palestinians this question. I appreciated you giving me both options, and I appreciate it now I recognized the intention and the thoughtfulness behind the shift in question. Yeah, I've definitely been asked before in political spaces, you know, how did I become politicized? And it's hard not to just stare at people. And you know, I think people for whom the answer like, Well, I grew up with a Palestinian parent isn't clear enough, and I don't know how to make it any clearer, clearer, but yeah, I don't know that I would define that as the thing that really shifted my understanding of political engagement and community work and transformative work and work around Power. I definitely had a lot of, as I mentioned, intergenerational skepticisms and analysis that I inherited and was sort of attuned to from both parents, but I but I think the answer to what radicalized me might surprise people, so I'll tell you a little story. One thing is that I feel we must always remember the meaning of this word when we talk about being radicalized. Right? To be radical is to be at the root or of the root. And if radical politics means anything at all, and maybe it doesn't, some words are very threadbare these days, I would say radical politics is about paying attention to and taking action to address the root causes of any problems or possibilities we might identify. Right? I was radicalized by farming in both rural and urban places. I was radicalized in Chicago, though in a very Southern way that doesn't at all resemble Alinsky models of organizing and campaigns. I was radicalized in community, working with close friends on a project that mattered to us, both personally and politically, and that we felt responsible for as students who had enrolled at a university with a colonial relationship to the south side of Chicago and to black folks, black communities and black cultural and political histories on the south side. I received such a comprehensive education over the course of just a few months in 2003 the whole spectrum of university, church, non profit and city betrayals, including the betrayals of very nice white liberal academics who care so much about their property values most of all, and what those shiny institutions did and didn't offer, especially to black folks in the neighborhood, and how justified folks were to be hesitant about getting involved and skeptical about how things might go, I talked a little bit about the story with Beatrice Adler Bolton on the death panel in April of 2024 so recount the whole thing, but I learned that the official project had to fail in order for the community led project that came after it to live and thrive and honestly, in every way, exceed the original. And I thought I had gone to Chicago to, quote, get away from what had been so hard for me about growing up in the deep south. But it was in Chicago that I learned just how much of a Southerner I was, and it is also why you won't hear me call myself Palestinian American. isnt always like that. Though, I didnt realize I was Midwestern untill i moved to the Big Apple. But I've still, you know, I moved to the south. For you might not consider Oklahoma the South, but there's a lot of it that I I actually appreciate, although I know that Oklahoma is atypical for other reasons, including, you know, the racial demographic and a lot of these struggles that are taking place in, you know, both in the sort of, you know, Black Belt areas of the southeast and in urban centers in in the north. Those struggles aren't, you know, even really allowed to take place on some level because of Oklahoma's history with with racial issues. But I'm curious, by the way. I suppose that was a tangent. But what do you think about the statement Oklahoma is the south? I think it's very
Rasha
interesting. The first thing I think of is all the displaced native peoples who were forcibly removed from the southeast and dispossessed of their lands and push into those territories, Oklahoma and Nebraska and other
Kumars Salehi
presence is still very strong there, the largest ethnic minority, if you lump them together. And then there's this whole discourse that I became privy to of the five Civilized Tribes, and you know the all of the implications that that has for even contemporary, you know, ways that they see themselves different from, for example, people who are Kiowa and not considered to be one of those, historically a civilized tribe, some of which themselves were slave owners. Honestly, we should probably talk a lot more about about your experiences in this.
Rasha
It sounds like at a different time, are more qualified to talk about Oklahoma, and probably know more people who are more qualified to talk about Oklahoma than I am. I will say that the expansive notion of what the South is has only becomes more powerful to me over time, because it's not just about American Settler political historiography and notion constructed notions of the South in this like romantic antebellum or postbellum notion, incredibly racist notion, but it's also the South, in terms of culture and migratory patterns that connect both with the Caribbean and the global South, that also connect with the up south aspects of cities outside of the South and regions outside of the South, people who migrated, whether during the Great Migration or other periods, and for other reasons of either push out or pull towards what they might have perceived as opportunity, safety community outside of the South, and that still goes on Today. There's a lot of push pull. I think that the South is an important aspect dynamic pattern to pay attention to what in whatever geography people are in. There are often people who have relationships to either through family or lineage or personal experiences of connections to the south, even if they do not currently live in the south, and their economic and extractive structures and flows related to immigration, related to capitalism, related to agriculture, related to mining and drilling and resource extraction that are still very much connected to the south, even for people who are not geographically in the south,
Kumars Salehi
that makes a lot of sense.
Rasha
The south is also really central to historic like liberation struggles, both on this continent and elsewhere. So I'll maybe leave it there. There are other people who have written and spoken more extensively, theorized more extensively and about it than me. But yeah, I would say it is. It has only become more important to me over time to pay attention to.

(00:52):
Yeah, that's more what I was thinking we would, you know, we could probably talk hours about it, even if you are kind of downplaying your credentials here, just that idea of what the south means ideologically, how expansive it is. I've only also become more fascinated with this as I've I've gotten older. But let's move on to hear a little bit more of your poetry, because we already got a little taste of it. And if you are in New York City and you're listening to this the day it comes out, just know that you can attend launch events for the counter monument, Rashas new book tomorrow, Thursday, the 21st and Friday the 22nd in New York City. We will be linking to those events as well as how to get the new book. I love Rasha. The breadth of your poetry, the subtlety and imagination with which you handle content that is not overtly political. Maybe I'm sort of showing my hand here in terms of what I'm interested in, but I think it's fair to say that people who say they want to politicize art have always struggled with content that isn't political. And frankly, you're funny. In fact, if you're listening at home and you are a leftist who writes poetry, or if you've ever made fun of leftists writing poetry, I want to read a couple of passages from Rasha's work and then get you to comment, just to show people how a Pro does it. So just to put my money where my mouth is right up front, Here's an excerpt from one of my favorites of yours, which is called your Oysters from Shell houses. This is the first four bars, if you will. And I know you will, they say the world is your oyster when they mean the world is your pearl to find. But really, the world is just oysters, and you're out here shucking in foul smelling Wellingtons and a shrug of the shoulders that says, I hope you like shellfish. Yeah, this was like a laugh out loud moment for me. I don't want to, I don't want to sort of play this up too much, but I read poetry and listen to again music, really good lyrics, all really advanced, kind of stylized word play for punchy bits of like wit that are also deeply sobering, just like this. I know you describe this as maybe one of your lighter poems, and I know asking an artist to describe their own work is a risky business to begin with, but how would you describe your influences and interests as a poet,
Rasha
you could go in so many directions. I told you that I found your choices of poems interesting, you know, and it's always lovely to have an experience of talking with an engaged reader like, what a treasure, what a prize. Like there's no there's nothing sweeter for a writer to feel like one, maybe people get what you're trying to communicate or do, and also that people get things that you couldn't have seen or imagined yourself, but that you may be offering them a mirror or a telescope lens or a kaleidoscope to view. So, yeah, you know, I don't know if your oysters is one of my lighter poems. That's maybe unfair for me to say, even if sometimes it feels like that, I definitely wanted to be funny. It was something that happened that was funny to me. It was a thought that occurred to me that was funny in response to something I had been told, and it was one of those poems that I really liked for a long time. It's one of those, like, private favorites that maybe isn't, doesn't always find its audience, but it's always fun when it does. I talked about this poem, actually, with a strange horizons. Poetry editor AJ odasso in Yeah, I
Kumars Salehi
read that. That's how that's that's where I got that, that talking point, yeah,
Rasha
I mean, I think that's the, in some ways, an artist poetica. It's a poem about what I care about in poetry, which is not just trying to make something dazzling or beautiful or award winning, but something that is about life and that is about nourishment or about survival or about holding an ecosystem together. And so, yeah, it's a short poem. It's a funny poem, and it's entirely sincerely meant. I mean every word of it, even if I'm even if I feel wry about the delivery,
Kumars Salehi
there's dimensions to it that I did not at all get when I first read it, because I don't know about how shellfish interact with their ecosystems, but there's like layers to this. So that I encourage anyone listening to, we will certainly link to all these poems, I encourage everyone to check that out in the detail that it deserves.
Rasha
Yeah, I think, I think one other thing I would say about this in terms of the layers to it, that in some ways I am a poet who is against metaphor. I don't want to be casual about appropriating other images or other contexts, events, situations, or even creatures in order to describe something that might feel convenient or sound right, but actually doesn't, doesn't really like line up all the way if you look at it carefully. And so for me, if I'm tempted to use a metaphor, I really want to pay attention to what the reality of that thing is, that thing, person, event, creature. And , I've seen too much. I'll say too This may seem tangential, but I've seen too much violence, and I know too many people who have either barely survived or not survived at all, for me to be casual about using words, even like stab or cut If I am speaking poetically about something I really I feel a responsibility as a poet to have a high fidelity to life and not just what sounds pretty.
Kumars Salehi
I think that that frankness really comes across. Have you ever read Bertolt Brecht's poetry a
Rasha
little bit in bits and pieces, but I haven't sat down with like
Kumars Salehi
a full one. I wasn't surprised to hear you in other contexts that we'll get to in a bit, talk about the importance of refusing catharsis, because, of course, that's a big watch word for Brecht, the Aristotelian narrative, etc, but your poetry reminds me more than anything else I've ever read of Brecht's. Poems, there's that certain refusal, I think, of metaphor. There's a sort of coincidence of world weary observation, and also a kind of, I hate to use this word again, but a kind of sober humility, like a cold splash of water to the face and just the faintest trace of a classical esthetic sensibility which I dare to think I detect in, for example, the sometimes very surprising rhyme scheme of the poem, advice on love from an astronaut with a failing memory, which is probably my favorite of yours, and just made me stop and like, count the lines, like, is this a sonnet? Like I was like, I really want people to pay attention to the form as pretentious as that might sound as they listen to this poem, which I will read, and then you'll have a chance, Rasha, to read us another poem of yours yourself, in case people are tired of hearing my voice. But I really connected with this, so I thought maybe I would share this with the audience. Again, this is advice on love from an astronaut with a failing memory. She said, I set my love out over an ocean of space in a ship made of recycled parts. And if I do and if I don't, miss his dear body, then is that a healthy love? When you feel a face so close that, it starts to be one feature in your hands that touch any body. How do you know if it fits like a glove? Then she said, you measure your pace. Keep time with quiet hands, not singing hearts. You will know when, when nobody can shove you off balance, then you found the place. Finn is a blade with an edge that smarts, where everybody can feel your face like a crucial lever, like a restless dove. The delicacy of this poem just I probably can't do it justice honestly just by reading it, which is why I hope folks will also take a look at it. But why did why did you do that? You don't often write poems that rhyme, but there is a weird sort of rhyme scheme here between the stanzas. I'm just wondering, like, what was your thinking there? Because to me, it reads classical. To you. Maybe it comes from a completely different place. You're such a generous reader. Kumars , its so kind of you to offer such a precice attention.
Rasha
I've been writing poetry since I was eight years old, and so one could say my early work rhymed a lot, but I think there are times where rhyme or form are interesting and push you as a writer, or can Push one as a writer to to like crack open something that might be hard to find or hard to say otherwise, you might be able to surprise yourself as a writer by getting out of whatever habits come most frequently or easily. I often resist rhyming because I am trying to be careful about precision, and sometimes rhyming tends it makes it feel a little too neat. So it was this poem came out mostly this way. This is one of the few poems that didn't, you know, I wrote it 20 years ago, honestly, and it, it came out all on one go, in one evening, late at night, and their personal contexts, and also, I was responding to a movie I had watched, really, what movie? Yeah, away from her, which is about Julie Christie losing her memory. So this poem came out that way, and it did receive some revision to sort of smooth it. I think the it was interesting to me to play with rhyme and to hide it by not putting it at the end of every line, by making it a little more internal. I think I do, you know, if I want to get super technical, if you want to talk about craft, I think a lot about how things read in the how they sound like if you read them to yourself, or in terms of how it flows across a page, if a reader is reading it quietly, without speaking it aloud, and the I think you can play with speed and density if you play with rhyme,,and so sometimes you can make things go faster. You can press the acceleration. If there's alliteration or rhyme or assonance, things become a little bit more musical. And I think that it was interesting for me to play with. There were a lot of tender meditations in this poem. There's personal aspects of it too, but yeah, so I wanted it to have. It had a whimsical, lyrical quality, but it also had a very, I don't know, melancholy feel to it that was a little bit ambiguous about both love and loss and the expectation that they are always co present with each other.
Kumars Salehi

(01:13):
You're right that it gives it a sort of a momentum. When I read that last line, you know, the last line rhymes with the last line of the first two stanzas, it just gave me chills. You're right that it takes a sort of formlessness and gives it just a hint of structure. And sometimes that's all you need. The next poem that I want to talk about is definitely heavier. Frankly, it's it's completely devastating, and I was devastated to read it, and I'm in awe of it. You offered to read this one yourself, and we will link to it as well. The dead Palestinian father published in anathema magazine. Whenever you're ready. Okay,
Rasha
I'll also offer permission that this is a little bit of a funny poem for me too, as much as it is devastating, I want to offer people permission that it isn't all a funeral urge, no,
Kumars Salehi
it's very clever, and I hope you will experience the full range of emotions. Wow. I was
Rasha
definitely not trying to. I was not fishing for any other response. You've already been so kind. All right,
the dead palestinian father takes up more space
than the living palestinian father whose poetry i miss—
his mix of southern idiom and the old jokes
about foolish kings and wise fillaheen.
the dead palestinian father hovers over every introduction
if i am not wearing the kufiya, i am not naming him, and
if someone then compliments this scarf, i am a liar if i smile.
talking about the dead palestinian father successfully
ends every conversation, like an autopsy.
the dead palestinian father's autopsy was a crime
in which the GBI dismantled his body looking for state secrets.
to have a dead palestinian father is to do what he taught me

and what he taught me not to do (01:29):
find peace, risk everything.
to have a dead palestinian father is to think
if not for palestine, i would not be here, autostraddling nations,
if not for the (k)not-ing of palestine, i would have a father
who was impossible along much of his topography,
a terrain so treacherous he sought comfort only.
the dead palestinian father hangs warning over every indulgence:
chasing comfort can kill, as surely as failure to care for wounds.
the dead palestinian father taught me to be flexible,
to survive a little longer, be less brittle than he.
the dead palestinian father no longer stands as lineage intercessor
between strangeness and the family, he is no longer
reassuring them in the absence of photographic evidence.
to have a dead palestinian father is to have a dead palestinian grandfather
whose passing dropped a bomb in the ocean of his son's life
and rearranged the shoreline of his choices in exile.
the long line of dead palestinian fathers,
each a falling monument against their own era.
to have a dead palestinian father is to have good company
when I eat hot sauce, make hot sauce, and choose between
eight different kinds of hot sauce.
the dead palestinian father reads the news and argues
with the organizers I know even though they know more than he does.
the living allegedly white mother sometimes argues with the dead palestinian father
when she talks to me because I am a sentence said by him in a three-decade-long conversation.
the dead palestinian father comes to life in our dreams.
sometimes he's jesus dad and it's a miracle.
sometimes he's zombie dad and it's just a matter of time
before he tries to bite someone.
the dead palestinian father makes more sense than the living father.
no longer bound by the boards of his body, his chapters read off into the horizon.

(01:50):
in death, the father becomes palestinian as he never was in life,
he flows over and under like an aquifer, polishing the landscape where he passes.
the dead palestinian father belongs to us more than the living father:
when he made devotion to the lottery every week,
when he choreographed disaster on a kuwaiti oil pier,
when he filled a bare apartment with a palmstalk of banana,
when he ate two roast chickens after work every night,
when he stashed beer behind the AC vent in the control room at british petroleum,
beyond his refusal to join an organization with a risky reputation,
beyond his refusal to kiss the king's boot,
beyond his decision never to audition for egyptian television,
though he was rated 10 for 10 in voice & looks—
the stories i don't know slide into the horizon of the man who was,
and who could have been, and could be in the end, known only to himself.
Kumars Salehi
it's an incredibly powerful poem, and there's so many lines from it that, you know, I wish I could pick apart, but it almost feels in bad taste and certainly wouldn't work with our schedule here. But I encourage people to take their time with this poem, just like the others, and they will be linked so that you can sort of appreciate them on your own time as well. Before we move on, I wanted to make a brief note, and I wonder what you thought about this, because this happened, I think a year ago. This is partially what reminded me of the astronaut poem that the US Poet Laureate ADA Limon revealed, a poem that went into space aboard the NASA Europa Clipper mission. It's going to the icy moon of Jupiter, known as Europa. And the project was called message in a bottle. She sent a poem called in praise of mystery, a poem for Europa. Did you see this? What do you think about sending poetry to space?
Rasha
I mean, Kumars. You must know that I've seen this poem. What have I said about this poem? At the time that it went out, I sent my condolences to the silent poets of empire, who send poems to space when they have no idea what good poetry is for to keep anyone on Earth alive. One could say more about the silence of poets enlisted to be the voice of empire, to write lyrics for saddle settler colonialism, to craft odes toward a more perfect union with genocide, even if they think their reticence doesn't speak for that. That's what the gig is. Yeah. One could be more. I don't know if you had another question, feel free to ask. I'm
Kumars Salehi
wondering if you do have a, at least a speculative answer to that question of what poetry can do to address real problems here on Earth?.
Rasha
Yeah. I mean, I think that there are roles for poetry in daily life. And even before I'd read Paulo Freire, and long before anyone ever quoted Roque Dalton to me, who said poetry like bread is for everyone. I thought for many years, decades even of poetry, music, visual art, storytelling in every media form to be a sort of nourishment that has to be renewed. It's not enough for us to make art once and think that it will feed people's spirits forever, and even if we return to some of the same very nourishing recipes and like nourishment. What I think what we consume of art affects us and becomes who we are, and shapes what we can imagine or practice. And so though I am not a rigid purist, I do not seek out things to hate, watch or hate read. I do think that attending to our tastes, our cravings, our desires, is a political practice as well as a spiritual or some might even say, psychological practice. I know that perhaps is unfashionable to talk about that in terms of poetry, to speak of spirituality or philosophy or psychology, I hear
Kumars Salehi
I hear it isn't,
Rasha
Yeah, cheers.I don't think we can be angels or saints, and I don't advise that we try. But I do invite. Everyone, whether you're reading or writing or creating other art, to have an honest confrontation with what feeds you. And I say that as both a farmer and a poet, and with both farming and poetry, there is a lot on offer that is poisonous and low in nutrient content. You know, a lack of meaning, masquerading as mystery, and sent to space made and distributed by people who have abandoned entire populations in pursuit of whether it's greed or power or to inflate or feed their own self exonerating, self congratulatory, self image, as we might see with, say, the winners of the Gilder prize. And it's okay for our taste to change if we want to change the world. And I think it's good, it's okay. It might even be necessary, or a prerequisite for us to lose our taste for blood and ashes. And I think art, all art, including poetry, has a role in that. And yeah, people who do not take that seriously are abdicating a responsibility, just as surely as if they, you know, didn't show up for their neighbors in a natural disaster. I am not speaking against a literature that tells the truth about our blood and the ashes that the world makes of us. I don't wish for something sanitized or cozy in that sense. I think we have a responsibility to name violences and sometimes the things that do violence dress themselves up in very pretty clothing and as very lovely, sweet, comforting works, those are actually some of the Most dangerous forms of art, I think so. I don't mean to say that just the surface level of of something is what I would encourage us to assess. But really, you know, where who's making it? Why are they making it? Is it as with the television show The Last of Us made by a game designer and storyteller who's very clear about their allegiances to settler colonial genocide of Palestinians in Palestine is very clear about the purpose of their art being to manipulate people into having a specific, violent, genocidal reaction to in to create in the viewers or players a lust for genocidal, eliminatory violence. I think we should take people seriously when artists tell us that that's what they intend, and then if they make heartwarming, heartwarming visions of queer survival, or, you know, chosen family survival, that then resonate with us that feel beautiful or sweet or poignant. I think we should really examine it how it is that we let fascist art appeal to us and who it is that we're not paying attention to when we allow ourselves to be recruited in that way.
Kumars Salehi
Yes, all very good points. I actually didn't know that about The Last of Us. I haven't seen it, but it was probably just because it didn't look scary enough, but I'm glad that I now have an ideological reason to boycott, but this is as good an opportunity as any to pivot to your organizing work and talk about what experiences you've had with the Palestine Solidarity movement in the US and just advocating for Palestine as a Palestinian?
Rasha
Yeah, I think my answer to this might actually be shorter than some of the other questions. And this question is actually what made me think of sharing the poem The Dead Palestinian father. I think there are probably others who could talk more and better about either Palestinian organizing meaning by for and with Palestinians themselves, wherever they are. And Palestine Solidarity work which is done I would think of, I think of it as work done primarily to engage non Palestinians, though, and it may sometimes be led by Palestinians, or sometimes there might not be a single Palestinian fault in Palestine Solidarity, that's true. So there are other people who have done that work for much longer, who have made that their life's work, who have even if they're younger than me, decades more experience doing that work directly, I can say that intergenerational. Skepticism about political engagement, at least the most obvious forms of political engagement being electoral or protest, I inherited a skepticism about that. A very Palestinian skepticism. And along with that, like, a lot of training and operational security and like situational awareness, just in a day to day life situation, not for anything more. Yeah, I remember being told at a really young age by my father that you will be photographed by the state if you go out to protests, and that was long before the publicly available version of the internet and social media we know today, or smartphones, where everyone has a camera and a listening device device in their pockets at all times, and a GPS tracking device almost all times. So even before that era, I was really trained with a lot of discipline to pay attention to not just what people are doing, but who is watching what people are doing and how they are responding to it. Yeah. I mean, my father was deeply Palestinian in every gesture, gesture, choice, attitude and instinct he had, and he lived a very Palestinian life as a child of the Nakba, and he never said the word Palestine in my presence, my whole life, even when we talked about Palestine. So wow, I came to being more open about aligning the organizing work I was already doing with Palestine after his death, in part because I couldn't put him at a higher risk for the surveillance and targeted criminalization he had experienced his whole life, in every place he'd ever lived and at every border crossing. So I think that there are other people who could speak more about the, you know, a history or lineage or a depth of experience than I can. I think that, um,
Kumars Salehi

(02:11):
sure, and we've had that on the show before. I'm really interested in what, in what your experiences have been. Yeah, this is our first show since the election. How are you thinking about the role of Palestine as an issue, as a fault line in the outcome of the US election, as well as the aftermath, in terms of the discourse the Monday morning quarterbacking, or whatever? Roqayah And I disagreed about this on the last episode that we did together, but I didn't trust that a democratic defeat would be attributed to their position on Palestine, even though, frankly, I think that might have been possible. For example, if the Green Party had adopted, I think, Noura Erakat suggestion to campaign exclusively in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and sort of offered to drop out in exchange for Harris committing to an arms embargo. Who knows how much that would have been worth, but it would have still been real leverage. And if the Harris campaign had refused, which they probably would have, we would have left a much less ambiguous impression, I guess, of the impact that Muslim communities and the left had in sort of sitting this one out or not supporting Harris as it stands. I don't know what your impression is or how closely you've been following this. I don't think the election changed anything for the Democrats in terms of their impression of the cost of their genocide, and frankly, I'm not sure it changed anything for them in any sphere fundamentally, except they're probably only running white guys for president for the next 50 years, they're probably going to keep moving right on so called social issues, but that's the acceleration of an existing trend that we've seen since 2021 at the latest. What if anything, has the election result changed for you?
Rasha
I can answer this in two modes, but before I give either of my answers, I'll say up front, and this is not a personal indictment to you, but this is to make clear to listeners, just to help people really hear, practice listening in the ways that Palestinians Listen and practice speaking in the way that Palestinians speak. So I always notice when Palestine is talked about as a noun for someone else's situation. So whether that's Palestine is an issue, Palestine is a fault line. Palestine is laboratory. Palestine is a concern. Palestine is no one's noun. Palestine is self evident. Palestine is a place that belongs to a people who are trying to keep each other alive and trying not to be themselves erased in the process of trying, as genocidal powers try to erase Palestine and Palestinians from physical reality, the geographical map and the historical record.
Kumars Salehi
Yeah, that makes sense. I can see how that that is a necessary intervention.
Rasha
So I offer that as a reflection back for people, because it's so easy a habit for people to fall into, and it is a lot of received language. It is part of subtle propaganda that even people who love Palestinians and wish for our aliveness and struggle, even for our aliveness, can internalize and imbibe without recognizing that they have Palestine is not a metaphor for anything else. So there I said, there are two ways I can answer this question. The first is that I can give an answer for non Palestinians. And these are maybe I think that it is important for people to recognize where they may have decided tacitly or openly that genocide wasn't the deal breaker for them in voting for or Even organizing for the re election of blue raspberry fascists at every level of local, state and federal offices. This is a party who campaigned through two incumbent candidates on a platform of genocide, abandonment and militarization, both here and in Palestine, anyone who voted blue also accepted fascism that campaign the entire party, from the National genocidal National Convention in Chicago's party platform on down to the local dog catcher, ran on a platform of fascist genocide, including at the border of this settler colony, And on COVID and Pandemic abandonment and forced infection. On eugenic policies, they ran on a policy of increased funding for police and cop cities and on climate abandonment and increased fracking and other extractive industries. They the blue wave fascists ran on racism, so they should not be surprised that they lost to more racism. They ran on fascism. So they should not be surprised that they lost to more fascism. They ran on nationalist race realism, this notion that we'll protect our own first we must secure an American future, a more perfect union, no matter how lethal that is for the rest of the world, or even for non citizens inside the bounds of the settler colony. So it's not surprising that a campaign that ran on race realism lost to race realism, genocidal Joe lost to original recipe, racism, and anyone who fears for the survival of their communities under red Maga, I would encourage them to look very closely at how the conditions for its return were made possible, even enhanced and accelerated over the last five years of blue Maga fascism escalating from the 2020 campaigns until now. And anyone who is just talking about red Maga as the threat is not going to be prepared to keep even their own people alive, much less people in Palestine.
Kumars Salehi
I think that's fair enough. I don't think a lot of people listening are going to be in that camp, though, right? A lot of people are still sort of wrestling with this, you know, idea of what, what is going to be different under a Republican administration? How do you wrestle with that?
Rasha
I think that there are, there may be a few things that I want to zoom out on. So I don't know if any of my answers will be satisfying to you, but I'll try a few versions. One thing that I'll I'll just bookmark, is that I want to encourage people to remember in 2016 and 2017 and even 2018 when folks were very worried about the specter of a more competent fascist candidate being run by red Maga, and I think the it might be really worth asking whether that's actually what this election was, an election between a more competent liberal fascist. And then I also want to encourage people to think about those conversations that maybe some folks had, maybe some folks weren't aware of in that same 2016 to 2018 period, where there were a lot of questions about whether this settler colony, this genocidal settler colony, was overdue for realignment of its settler political parties. You know, given that it's happened on sort of particular time cycles and that the perhaps the stability of this two party system was not guaranteed, and I think that it might be worth questioning whether that is happening, but in a different way than people expected. People were mostly talking about it at that point as a split between the red end of the political spectrum, with one becoming more extreme and the other becoming more centrist. And I think what we're maybe observing is. I don't think I'm alone in naming this would be a merging of what was the blue end, quote, on quote, of the very narrow spectrum of political possibilities in the settler colony, with the center right and a move towards the center right, you've named some of this. So I don't think that's wrong. I think that what I would say to people who are anticipating the next administration, which is not until January, 20, 2025, if things go by the electoral calendar, which is not a guarantee, but if they do, I would just encourage folks to not project all of their political analysis or action into that time and to pay attention to what is happening right now, the horrors that are happening right now, and what kinds of protection work, preparation, work, and latent capacity people can build between now and January,
Kumars Salehi
I think I want to zero in on that, actually. And you mentioned the period of 2016 to 2018 I think there's something very important that we should reflect on that is already, I think, happening again, even if, right now it's mostly anticipatory. You know, you facilitated a great workshop at the socialism 2024 conference, in collaboration with death panel, which is a great podcast, and I'm grateful to them for the platform that you have there for reaching out to even more people, because I think the reframing that you do on these issues is always really useful. That conference was before the election, but I think if anything, your advice to people wanting to become more vocal and even get involved in organizing is even more relevant right now. You don't have to sort of repeat what you said. Then just talk about, you know, how maybe we should approach the demands that this moment places on us. Because, you know, I do think that no matter how involved you already are in Palestine Solidarity activism, our communities are going to be under heightened threat, and I don't think that's an exaggeration, and we will feel our time and energy being siphoned off to other battles close to home. This is another one of the reasons that I didn't want the Democrats to lose, because liberals are now going to spend the next four years in a hysterical state of emergency, but half the time, they'll also be right, right like we will feel ourselves being pulled in the direction of other projects that are also legitimate and urgent and necessary. I remember this happening to me in 2017 when I was still active with Students for Justice in Palestine, and I'm older and wiser now, at least older, but I don't really know how to negotiate that. So you know, how should we invest our time in this bull market for fascism?
Rasha
There are a few ways that I can answer yes. People who wanted to vote for fascism. Were definitely spoiled for choice in this election. Accelerationists were spoiled for choice with what they wanted to choose. I will be clear. I said this to you when you invited me. I agreed with Roqayah . I didn't agree with your assessment about the election, but I don't know that it's so much matters, because none of us have a magic eight ball to project what will happen. The conditions now are different than they were in 2016 I recommend that folks who want to think about what what could happen next, what they could do next, including what they could do between now and January 20, as well as within the first 100 days of whatever the next administration might be and beyond that. Kali Akuno, with cooperation Jackson, out of Mississippi, did a great talk with millennials. Are killing capitalism.
Kumars Salehi
Another great podcast.
Rasha
Yes, I've listened to more than once. I've shared it with other folks, including folks who I wasn't sure if it would really resonate with them. I wasn't sure if it might be a little bit too out there and but it wasn't my the reflection I've gotten back, feedback I've gotten from people is that it was the most helpful resource I shared with them.
Kumars Salehi
They're very good friends of the show, absolutely, some of the hardest workers out there making any media. It's unbelievable how much content they put out and how good the quality is incredible.

(02:32):
Rasha
So glad to have so many people, including people from Palestine, in Palestine and connected to organizing across the geography of over there and over here, but I would say, Listen to Kali more than once. Share it with people you know. Talk with people you know, make plans, decide to take at least one new action as a result of listening to him on that podcast or maybe doing the 15 minute exercise in the September . A recording that I did with the death panel of the socialism conference. I I want to really encourage people to think beyond electoral politics and the form of busy work that it is and can be and so often, is that, you know, electoral politics is not the only form of power. Politicians are not the only people or avenue through which to wield power in politics, there are forms of material, economic, even cultural power that people have as individuals and groups at every scale and in every geography, in every age and in every class. And I really want to invite including organizers that I know to not assume the measure of the power and the effectiveness of their work is in the size of the action or the number of people involved, or how much media coverage it gets, or how appealing it is to funders, or How much proximity it wins you or folks in your organization to halls of power. I think that, you know, I always talk with other Palestinians before I make public speeches or join podcasts, and I often ask, you know, what are things that you want me to say? And one of the things I was asked to say was to talk about busy work and the many forms of busy work that could be offered. And I think maybe this speaks a little bit to your point in terms of like pulled attention. I don't see a contradiction or a competition between people addressing rising fascism here in the genocidal settler colony that is funding accelerating deploying troops and battleships to a genocidal Project, escalating its elimination of Palestinians in Palestine, I think that my work is always to try to show how they are intimately connected, that it's not even a matter of the Imperial boomerang that settler colonialism and genocide and eugenics and fascism have been here first so many, the classical examples, the much maligned or villainized governments, institutions, political parties, philosophies in history trace, very openly, trace their inspiration back to this settler colony, and this settler colony has re enlisted many of the worst villains of history back into its own scientific, political and economic projects. So I don't think that there's a contradiction, and I don't see Palestinians in Palestine claiming that there's a contradiction. I also feel it would be I also feel a responsibility to draw people's attention to you know, I mentioned how the groundwork of the last five years of blue wave fascism and border fascism, cop, city, militarization, COVID abandonment and eugenics, fascism, this idea that the vulnerable will just fall by the wayside and the rollback of a lot of the pandemic protections that made, I would argue, a lot of the 2020, uprisings possible that people had a lot more latent capacity in terms of flexibility around time, having more economic supports and having a different kind of relationship to people where they lived. I don't mean to idealize it, but I think that we would be missing something to not pay attention to the role that our resistance during that time played in the backlash or front lash, depending on how you want to talk about it, the retribution and the disciplinary project that has been this past administration, I think it would be a mistake for anyone wanting to quote resist under the next administration, to not pay attention to how the current administration has continued or Accelerated many of the worst policies of that administration, including food safety regulation and the rollback of testing. In some cases, it's gotten worse, and including on pandemic protections we don't have OSHA regulations were promised by this current administration. They were not delivered 100,000 healthcare workers trained to replace people who couldn't do. Do the work anymore because we're retired, we're so disabled by long COVID they can no longer be healthcare providers.
Kumars Salehi
Who needs RFK at this point.
Rasha
I think that you know, however odious potential future bureaucrats and administrators are, I think it is very important if we want to keep each other alive for us to not ignore the current horror. And this is, I think, that noticing this pattern in ourself and others around us, especially if we are organizers or popular educators or people who are communicating about politics and what is happening, to notice this tendency, this impulse to rush into the future, to rush towards fear of the future and the ways in which, whether it's here or in Palestine, that it causes people to neglect the current brutality, the current violence, The current genocide and the current abandonment, the current fascism, and it puts us in a position to delay infinitely when we will respond, and to put us in a position of already feeling helpless about a future that hasn't arrived when we are enduring a present that has Built the possibility for that future worse. I think the tendency to think about a worse future is something is a very dangerous tendency, and it's one of the most dangerous things that I think any organizer or communicator or analyst could do right now. I'm not, frankly, uninterested in autopsies of the Democratic Party, they are self provincializing, and I think anyone holding on to them as avenue for political power or political influence should really take a hard look and take some quiet time to reassess how they're being invited to spend their time, you know, their energy their life, because people die doing organizing. People kill themselves, burning out, pushing themselves too hard. People die just minding their own business. And I encourage us to refuse this kind of busy work, whether it's related to settler politics here or something that is just repeating the same kinds of special issues on Palestine or, you know, mass demonstrations, that there are values in that. But I think that if people are frustrated with some of those with not getting the response they wanted, I would really encourage people to deeply meditate on what they are willing to do differently and how they are willing to redirect their attention, maybe away from this busy work and distractions that we are offered by politicians, by the news, by our employers, by propaganda, including on social media, both obvious and subtle, and even By quote community organizations that we may love and be deeply embedded in or be committed to. I really if I had meditations to offer people about what to do in this time or how to reorient, it would really be about what are we willing to do to keep each other alive? What are we willing to try that we've never tried before, and what are we willing to learn or practice that we don't already know or do? I could say more, but I just want to pause like if there's something that you do want me to specifically respond to, feel free to ask me something again for our pushback.
Kumars Salehi
I guess I'm just thinking that the chances that we are able to convince people to do that is not I think better now that Trump has won the election, you know, to radically think how we need to live and our relationship to other people. I think this puts everybody on the defensive. It makes everyone, including the left, more conservative when the right is triumphant like this. And one thing I'm noticing that's very concrete. You know, I think before, I maybe was speaking a little too much in terms of my own personal feelings, but I'm organizing for BDS in German Studies organizations right now. And thankfully, the decision, the good decision, which I'll I'll share later in greater detail, is going to be made that makes my organization, women in German, the first German Studies organization probably anywhere in the world. I mean, I don't know about like Malaysia or whatever, but you know, in the Western world, where German Studies is a big thing, it'll be the first time that people who studied German language and culture have endorsed a robust BDS resolution, or any BDS resolution. I am so glad that we were able to finish that and get that over the line before the election, because I immediately see all of the sympathetic sort of people who might have gotten more involved now in our activities for Palestine Solidarity, collaborating with Palestinian. Academics, both Palestinians living in Germany and in Palestine itself. Now there's a million different events, again, this sort of state of emergency, you know, we need to organize and talk about our feelings, or we need to, you know, deal with the increased crisis in environmentalism, right? Whatever you care about, you can point to and say, well, that's probably going to get worse under Trump. And I don't think that that's like, wrong is the problem? Like, it probably will get worse. And so it's really hard to steer people back in this direction when they're already on alert for everything to be a huge deal. Maybe your answer? I might you can tell me if I'm right, would be Q Mars, just leave those organizations like if you have to deal with liberals who need a Trump administration or a Republican administration to become politicized, then, you know, build your own institution or whatever. Am I unfairly characterizing your view there?
Rasha
I don't have a particular set of shoulds and I don't have a universal set of them, I think any council or invitations or options that I would suggest to people are would be very particular, like if I were talking with specific organizers, it would Be more about what the really specific conditions are. I don't think that it's I wish I was more of a purist. Perhaps I should have always been more of one. I'm not now even I do think it's worth staying in relationship where there are real relationships to be had. I think maybe I'll go back to your earlier question about the election, because I didn't give you my second answer. Maybe this will clarify for you where I'm coming from on this, which is to answer this as a Palestinian. So you asked me, like, what changed for me after the election. Yeah, nothing, nothing. As a Palestinian, as a Southerner, as someone organizing on multiple fronts related to COVID abandonment. And you know, if we're being honest, we can call it eugenics and genocide here too, and it is connected to hundreds of years of genocide and eugenics against indigenous people, native nations, black people.
Kumars Salehi
Oh, yeah, talk to any West Coast urban liberal, and you'll hear fucking eliminationist rhetoric about homeless people, like it's the fucking third, right?
Rasha
Yeah,so I don’t refuse actually, to project into a future that none of us know or an alternative history that none of us have access to. I think this is busy work, if I am to speak frankly. I think that all of it is is an opportunity for us to leave the present and to leave reality, to either leave it, to imagine an alternative version of reality that we're not living in, or to imagine a future that we haven't gotten to yet and whose conditions may be vastly different than what we can imagine. I would encourage people who think they know what's going to happen in January, just to imagine every just to remember for a moment, just even like write down five things that happened between June of 2024, and November of 2024, just even three things. And I think you might discover there were things that happened that you not only couldn't have anticipated, but maybe thought could never happen. And and you might have also, you might also, if you do that, realize how easily you forgot those incredibly surprising and improbable things. So anyone who's tempted to think they know what's going to happen in January, I would, I'll repeat, come back to the present. And so if I were to say like my answer as a Palestinian, I would have been more disheartened by Americans. This is personally, this is not any like assessment of political possibilities, but I would have been more disheartened by settlers voters in the settler colony if they had re elected the party responsible for the genocide of Palestinians. Now either part of that equation could have changed. That party could have stopped being the party responsible for the genocide of Palestinians, but they didn't. So it's not a failure. Kumars I see the value in that. I do. I think it's important. I want to offer as a gift, maybe an option if people want to take it. Who are organizers in social movements? I don't see it as a failure of social movements that the party actively carrying out and enthusiastically promising to escalate multiple genocides, whether that's Palestine, policing, pandemic, the border, not even to enumerate direct and indirect involvement in Haiti, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan and anti indigenous struggles the world over that That party was not re elected for a second term in office, is not a failure of social movements. It would, I think, have been a failure of social movements if they had. And I know that truth may not feel good to many people. Many people may not agree with it, but I offer it if people are looking for opportunities, I think it is valuable to look for opportunities now, given that reality is what it is
Kumars Salehi
I think looking at the Silver Linings makes a lot of sense. Now,
Rasha
I don't know silver linings,
Kumars Salehi
but I know you're not framing it that way. Yeah, I'm still obviously a little bit on the other side of this, although I will tell you, personally, I do feel a sense of relief also, like I just, I feel like I need to hold those two things in my head at the same time. And I guess the reason I keep coming back to it is that, and you called this when we talked before, my sort of acceleration is case for Harris or the Democrats. But it seems to me that we are the most fucked if we have to start organizing right now with the people who think what's wrong right now is enough of a problem, because there aren't enough of those people right so the opportunity that more Democratic administrations give us is that people can actually have more time to recognize those things as problems without having it be a full blown crisis for which only modern Mussolini can be responsible.
Rasha
I don't know a crisis for whom, like as a Palestinian. I, yeah, these, these distinctions,
Kumars Salehi
Yes a crisis for everyone else who we need. I mean, you don't need their support, maybe, but I'm just saying that I need to organize these people. And so it feels dishonest for me to tell people, you know, to posture away on my podcast. I have an easier time, you know, getting PMC white women to give a shit about Palestinians when Trump is not at the top of mind for all of them, even if you know some of what they imagine is, is this sort of petrifying Handmaid's Tale, maybe even fantasy of what is to come. That sense of like we can only move forward with the people that already consider the current situation a crisis. And I know you said you're not saying one way or the other is universally applicable, but the reason I push back is just because we have not reached critical mass on that yet, and it's just going to get worse for marginalized communities from here, if we have to go through another round of just get Trump out. Anything is justified, but I understand, again, from a narrative point of view, even if you want to put it that way, this had to happen this way. Maybe where we agree is that everything that we would do to prepare for a Trump administration where things may or may not get worse, we should already be doing now. I just think we should also be ready to see a lot more people get on board as they see the need for it, or as Trump activates their, you know, activates their political consciousness after being dormant for four years.
Rasha

(02:53):
I want to find a way to respond to you honestly and with care like and practice as you know, because you're naming some specific organizing challenges you face or are anticipating or have already experienced, and I don't want to
Kumars Salehi
you don't have to let me down easy. No,
Rasha
it's not that I want. I want to meet you there, because this is work, and if it's work you're doing and are willing to do all the work that people are willing to do can be valuable, and I want to be able to offer something that's useful to you and other people who might you know identify with. What your frustrations are, your anticipations are, the challenges or obstacles you might already be experiencing. I would not say that one should only organize with people who understand the crisis is already here, but I would say to encourage people who are organizing others and who recognize that the crisis is already here, to offer people opportunities to name and recognize that how the last eight years, or the last 24 years of really how they are all present in this moment, and across both political parties, across what four. For administrations.
Kumars Salehi
I mean, you could say Reagan honestly, like there are people with whom that resonates, because they remember neoliberalism. They remember social, you know, funding being cut,
Rasha
yeah, I think that there's a lot of collapse of time in this moment that can actually be useful for organizers. It can be a challenge to organizing, and challenge for organizers themselves to even find footing of where we are in time, or find grounding rooting of where we are in time, if we're speaking of being radicals the you know, I'm giving like a greatest hits of podcasts, but I think that they are one accessible way, sometimes particularly for people who may not have as much time or access to reading or who have wrong COVID disability, that makes audio easier to use. Sometimes there's a 20 december 2020 podcast episode. There's it's actually two parts from citations needed, and it's about what they were anticipating for a Biden Harris administration and a continuity of politics from both War on Terror politics and and disciplinary discourses and formations from sort of 2000 onward, and also like crime bill resurgence from the president elect's historical commitments to criminalization and policing and also other things that they were anticipating. And I think that is something I keep encouraging people to go back to. I think the way that that 2020 conversation reflects on cycles of time and the return and acceleration and ratcheting up of some of these policies might be helpful context for organizers who are trying to bridge people from responding to the crisis now and Continuing to respond to the crisis people are anticipating. I don't know people are wrong about the crises they are anticipating. I don't mean at all to minimize those. I you know, I don't mean to be flipped, but I will say that people were asking me how I was doing after the election in real space where I am physically and I tried to give people at least 24 hours before they had to see me, because I knew my responses would be so different than theirs. As a Palestinian poet summerfada says, and I think about this often, most people don't know what it would be like, what it would even mean to be on the same page as a Palestinian, and I mean that, like somatically, like intuitively, like what it means to experience the world as a Palestinian in any location, like as a Palestinian, my answers to people who ask me, like, how was I doing two days after The election in this settler this genocidal settler colony. Now I I said I'll answer your question if everyone around the table will ask me, and I'll give you a different answer to every person. And so my first one was that every empire ends. And my second answer was that despair for the future of the genocidal settler colony is not necessarily an unhopeful thing. And the third answer I offered is that I welcome everyone who is now fearing the survival of their peoples to join Palestinians in a shared reality like Ahlan wa sahlan like meet marhaba like and that our lives here in the settler colony as we fund genocide, whether we want to or not, our lives are not more worth more than the lives of people murdered by us settler weapons here, here, in this colony itself, around the world and in Palestine. And the last part that offer is that there's no outside sanctuary right from a world of genocidal fascism. There is no refuge except the ones that we fight for and make for each other. So the conditions are not the same. I don't mean to flatten reality. But a lot of the work that I understand as necessary to keep people alive is continuous from 2000 until now at least, and that's just really dating my own youthful political consciousness and what I can credibly take responsibility for understanding. Yeah, I'll pause. I don't know if any of that is useful to you. Like I think that there's nothing wrong with working with people who recognize that crisis is escalating. I think that there are I can imagine. And. Million ways to make those connections and reinvigorate refusals for genocide. I don't I'm not someone who's advanced arguments one way or the other about which candidate I thought should win. I frankly, did not have an opinion. I think that, if I am to be honest, I if I were a Palestinian in Palestine, what would settler elections in the state committing genocide against my people mean to me? And the same answer applies in this state, which is committing genocide against my people and committing genocide against multiple peoples that I'm a community with here
Kumars Salehi
that makes all the sense in the world. Really appreciate that we took the time to have you articulate that in closing. And I know I've already kept you. This is slightly topical still, so I have to ask you about it. Recently the New York City, DSA was criticized for holding their first post election recruitment meeting in close quarters, more than 300 people packed to the guilds with nary a mask in sight. There are other chapters of DSA, like San Francisco, that have a policy of masking during these types of events. But for days after this picture started circulating my Timeline. Let me tell you, my Twitter feed might as well have been a DSA meeting, because it was filled with defensive white people calling anyone raising concerns about the lack of COVID protocols, records and Feds and hypochondriacs. Did you happen to catch any of that
Rasha
you and I have very different timelines. Kumars . Kumars-I'd like yours. Rasha-Yeah, feel free to follow more of the disabled people that I follow, and I think you'll have a very different experience of it.
Kumars Salehi
I might have more fun. You know,
Rasha
if fun is what one is looking for, there's definitely a sporting time to be had on social media whenever one of the various three letter auxiliary arms of the Democratic party decides they want To post a photo or a graphic for stunts online, I confess I am maybe less interested than most in getting into what one organization does or doesn't do. The patterns that I see are so common that they really exceed any particular organization, whatever critiques, very valid critiques could be made of those organizations. I also, I have enough experience in organizing and moving with organizations to recognize the complex terrain of institutions and organizations that leadership and members don't always share the same perspective. Different chapters have different projects. People come through organizations and memberships at different parts of their political development, or just, you know, community engagement in sort of being in relationship with other people. And so I don't, actually, I kind of hold a lot of these flame ups around specific political formations or proper nouns, maybe a little more loosely than others do, whether it's act up or Working Families Party posting about, you know, politics being a game of chess rather than a love letter, and the graphic that they post shows the player is losing the game. It's, I think there are lots of pieces of bait, there's lots of chum in the water for us to go for. And I don't think it's not valuable to have these conversations. I think that there are forms of these conversations and aspects of them that happen every time these flare ups happen, that can be useful. And What can I say about COVID and organizing that maybe connects to some other things that I would offer to organizers. There's so much that I could say about COVID. We could talk about common misconceptions about COVID, and I watched that play across the timeline people being watching, you know, in a similar fashion to when people say, Oh, under the next administration, under red Maga, it's going to be so much worse for Palestinians. And these are people who have paid no attention to how bad it actually is that, you know, folks who would say like, oh, it's really not a big deal. And like, three replies in, they're like, oh no. Every. Thing that I assumed about COVID is wrong, and I should probably mask now. They're like, Oh, wow, maybe this is as serious as y'all are saying it is, and not everyone's going to say that. And who knows how deeply that goes into people's practice, or how long that sustains given the amount of economic and social pressure, health care pressure, even that people may feel to unmask, which was an active propaganda campaign of this current administration, the VAX relaxed and unmasked in summer of 2021. Hot Vax summer is it was pushed at the highest levels, and there are people now who are were organizing against COVID abandonment under the previous under the previous administration, and who in 2021 were so excited to take the mask off and be vaccinated that there became a public pressure campaign to get people to unmask. I can link the tweets to the people now who have returned to masking and are even active in Palestine Solidarity work, people whose names will be familiar to you. Some of these people follow me that if you think I'm talking about you, I am who really pushed for active unmasking? Not just like, oh, vaccine is good, but if you get a vaccination like, you shouldn't mask anymore, that would be bad. And I think that if we want to understand how we got to where we are now, I'm not holding my breath for any particular people to take responsibility, but I think we should understand that it and I don't also buy the argument that it's just about propaganda, and everyone is propagandized. But there are a lot of opportunities for popular education. I think that there. You know, I frankly, want to do a quick rundown, because I feel a responsibility of saying some of the stuff that feels obvious to me, go for it like about COVID, because maybe this is an opportunity for some folks to hear some stuff that they may not hear anywhere else, and maybe they'll be open to it, because I'm Palestinian, I don't know. Maybe not. COVID is transmitted in the air we breathe. The air we breathe in and out is as much a bodily fluid as any other bodily fluid. If you wear protection during sex, wearing a mask would be consistent with that good health decision making that you making COVID also stays in the air like smoke and takes time to dissipate, even when rooms are empty, a mask can protect you from both COVID and smoke particles, including from wildfires and chemical fires, like we saw at the Bio Labs incident after Hurricane Helene in Conyers, Georgia, that is still an ongoing issue. Vaccines do reduce the likelihood that people will die or be hospitalized, but they do not stop you from getting COVID or transmitting it to someone else, including when you have no symptoms or only mild symptoms that you might mistake for allergies, food poisoning or cold slash flu. Vaccines do not reduce your risk of long COVID If you are planning events, if you are organizing, if you're holding meetings, it is better protection for everyone if you ask folks to wear masks than if you ask them to prove they're vaccinated. It's great if they get vaccinated. It's not a bad idea, but masks are the most significant intervention we can make to reduce transmission and spread. The other thing is paxlovid. Can reduce the severity of symptoms from acute COVID infection, but you have to rest, and people have reduced access to it now because the federal funding for vaccination and paxlovid has been rolled back, as well as Medicaid support has there's been Medicaid disenrollment people may experience rebounds of COVID symptoms that are really common in the acute phase, so you might feel a little bit better, and then you get sick again. Radical rest for at least two weeks is the only effective treatment. Even if you're on other prescription medications, like really powerful ones, the risks for heart attack, stroke and other organ damage, including developing long COVID are higher for two to three months. For two to three months after every COVID infection. So maybe people know someone famous or personally who has had major health issues, not in the immediate acute phase, but after COVID. Once you have COVID, you have a pre existing health condition that is not, according to me, that is including to health and life insurance companies, and you are not allowed to make a blood donation. You are put at higher risk for your next infection. You're now among the quote vulnerable who will fall by the wayside. The effects of each COVID infection can be cumulative. New strains can affect you differently, just because you were fine before, were you actually like? Did you get a full physical? Do you know the things that you would have? A check to be able to get assessed for long COVID effects. Even if you were, quote, fine after the first or last infection you had, it doesn't mean you'll be fine after the next the next one could still kill you or disable you. Yes, even if you are young, yes, even if you are healthy, sometimes you are maybe, like me, at higher risk because you were an endurance athlete, because you worked 80 hours a week while you had a mild COVID infection, and you made your symptoms worse, you triggered an autoimmune disease that now I may have for the rest of my life. This could also affect someone you love or someone you organize with, could be transmitted to someone you work with, or someone you sit next to, on a bus, a train or a plane. Well, I'm not going to say a lot about this part, but what we are doing to children as a COVID Children is a crime. It is brutal, the level of exposure and sickness they are exposed to, the long term effects that it has on them that we don't even understand yet. And it's not going to get better if we keep going as we are. And I get so angry about this that I'm not going to talk about it a whole lot more. Last couple of points, the federal government, under the current Biden Harris administration has rolled back COVID protections and welfare supports since coming into office in 2021 and outright denied or ended others. This includes foreclosing on their promise to implement OSHA safety and workplaces and unions have also abandoned this. People should push their unions on it. The child benefits, which raised so many children out of poverty were ended under this current administration, including pandemic unemployment, which was also for freelancers, medical care coverage for acute COVID treatment, paxlovid and vaccination covered at federal level. I already mentioned Medicaid disenrollment, mask mandates on airplanes, which were pushed through by corporations, reporting and mask mandates and health care, which means we don't even really have an idea an accurate picture of what COVID levels and transfer transmissions are. This current administration of blue fascists implementing a eugenic elimination is genocidal, back to normal, Vax and relaxed policy has taken the frog boil approach, and it's worked. They have largely succeeded at hiding a pandemic in plain sight with a bunch of people who are tired and sick and exhausted and can't remember and can't think straight, and I don't chalk all of that up to COVID. I, too, thought for a long time it couldn't be COVID because I was under such tremendous stress as an organizer, but I think that I would invite people to really at least consider whether it might be there are a lot of safety practices that were well established before the pandemic that are currently being challenged or discarded, including in workplaces, industrial construction, demolition and disaster cleanup and healthcare masking, and I'll bring up again, food safety, food contamination, I don't imagine that it's helped by mass infection and disabling of workers combined with active deregulation under this under previous administration, that hasn't been reversed by this current administration, and the removal of testing by federal by the federal government over the last four years. We need more. Yeah, these are, these are just a few things I I don't know.
Kumars Salehi
I'm grateful that you included this in our conversation. Honestly, I could use a refresher as well. I still am wondering whether I can push you a little bit more sure to talk about the dismissive attitude towards disability that people have on the left, because there are a lot of things that the Biden administration and the Democrats did that the left, at least the parts of it that we know people who identify as socialists. I'm using the example of DSA, just because that's the biggest one, and people are familiar with the examples I might use. But you know, people did sort of embrace that and go along with that messaging. And you often hear it suggested as a corrective in these debates, that the left should sort of just be more normal. Just to name one example, maybe you remember this. I remember in 2019 when people took measures to at a convention, accommodate people with auditory and sensory issues, and once video of their alternative to clapping was published, you had this cacophonous backlash from some DSA members with big platforms, journalists, pundits, including people who are considered, you know, active within the group, that escalated well outside of our sort of online circles. This culminated in Angela Nagle going on Tucker Carlson to talk about how socialists need to, you know, support e verify and demonstrate to the working class that socialists don't have to be weird or gross or, you know, compassionate towards minorities. And this meme just kind of stayed around for years as a trope to blame identity politics for the failure of socialist organizing. And you know, to hear some people tell it back then, you would have thought Bernie lost the 2020 primary because some people snapped at a DSA convention. And by May. The of that year you had probably thinking of some of the same people that you sort of mentioned but did not name earlier. You know, you had the same sort of performative denunciations of things like masking in gyms or at concerts that you saw from conservatives, also in some corners to the left, and I won't name any names or media ventures, but for the listeners, if you don't know what I'm talking about, just Google. I'm not wearing a frost mask. What parallels Do you see between the tacit acceptance of genocide in Palestine? Maybe this is a way to bring our conversation full circle, and the unwillingness to acknowledge that COVID is not over and precautions are still necessary. What are the ideas and attitudes that you see functioning to naturalize mass death in either case, whether it's consciously eliminationist or not.
Rasha
I’m aware of our time, so I'll ask for your permission. I'll tell a short story about Palestine and the pandemic from 2020 please do. And then I'll name a couple of resources for people to go to for more. But then I will talk specifically, because I think the attitudes of people who think of themselves as leftists or people, regardless of label, organizing for a more livable world For all of us, I think these attitudes do need deeper addressing than just at the political level. There. I think what I hear you naming, and that I think is important to attend to, are not just politics, strategies, tactics or even analysis. Which analysis around ableism would be valuable in an understanding of the connections between ableism, eugenics and fascism is important analytically, intellectually, for people who need that, or for whom that's an avenue. But I think that there are some deeper confrontations that people are often broadcasting simultaneously broadcasting and repressing when they have these attitudes about masking, I think that's a really great sort of dichotomy. It is really sort of a simultaneity of those functions. So I'll tell the story about Palestine, and then I'll give three more podcasts for people to listen to, literally. I I do think it's important to start with Palestine first, because I have a responsibility and an obligation. And I remember in March of 2020, before Washington, DC was sort of partially shut down for just a few weeks, people will over hype what that was like. I remember biking to work to pick up the mail from our office, which was already working all remote. We went remote in late February, and I saw the first cases had been reported in Asia on the Johns Hopkins Global Case tracking tool, and I broke down sobbing in this empty DC office building, because I knew what that meant, how few resources were already available in beyond just Palestine, but really specifically in how little support would be coming for anyone who got sick, and how many obstacles would be put in the way for any help that did make its way to the border, how devastating it could be. Yeah, so for folks who want to understand the pandemic in Palestine and what quote health even means in the context of a century plus of colonization and openly declared genocide, which openly declares its intent to weaponize disease as one way of eliminating Palestinians and expanding the colonial project. I can recommend podcast number one, which is please listening to Dania Cato late 2022 talk with the folks at the death panel about public health in Palestine and all of the long history of what health is and isn't allowed to be under conditions of genocide, and what it means speak of health. And she also talks very specifically about pandemic conditions in early in the early part of the pandemic in Palestine. I also say that Palestine is in some ways not entirely unique. Vaccine inequity and vaccine apartheid and treatment apartheid is de facto global health policy. Vaccine obligations by wealthy extractive nations to the global south have still not been fulfilled, and many of these wealthy settler Imperial nations that implement health apartheid globally are the same ones sponsoring five. Defending, fueling, arming and sending troops for genocide in Palestine, something I'll say before talking specifically about what I think is going on with this dual like broadcast and repression of pandemic feelings. Is disabled people were warning us all in late 2019, onward, when they were paying attention to really early news about an emerging pandemic, that it would that it was coming, that it would last for years, that it would disable many more people than it would kill. And they reminded us, disabled people reminded us all that pandemics in the past have been followed by a rise in fascist authoritarian politics and eliminationist eugenics added eugenic attitudes about letting the weak die or killing them off outright. And this should probably be repeated loudly and often, because I feel if resistance to fascism is nothing else, it is doing our best to not become the greatest danger to each other. The reach of the state depends on how we treat each other, not only on our criminalization and reporting or surveillance of each other, but also the ways in which we allow ourselves to be used as vectors for for, you know, weaponized disease. I think that if I think about this, what is a very obvious to me, pattern of broadcasted feelings about pandemic or any sort of disability accessibility accommodations and also repression of like actually addressing them. Um, I'll give people podcast number two to listen to, which is the most recent episode on RFK JR by the death panel. Rd and B talk a lot about mortality and disability being scary. Being vulnerable is scary. And I think that you know this maybe goes back to us talking about poetry at the beginning and about psychology and spirituality being something that people crave, there are a lot of bypass routes that people sought in organizing even before the start of this current pandemic, and some of those might Be bypass routes to avoid confronting existential horror to avoid confronting maybe their own complicity in supremacy cultures or gendered supremacy cultures, colonial cultures, imperial cultures and in ableism itself. I think that it's very there's so many things that are scary. We are living in a time of almost impossible violence like it. I don't even know how a human being is supposed to be in this time, wherever they live, and are on whatever side of the bomb they are. I don't know how people are making lives, and some people are, including the people carrying out genocide, are demonstrating that it is an untenable psychic position to exist in. But being vulnerable is scary. Not knowing what to do in a time of violence or threat is scary. And I think that there's it's tempting to take any bypass route one can find, and some of that can be Well, thank goodness I don't have to think about the pandemic, because all the government agencies that are responsible for knowing more than I do have told me that it's okay to forget about it. You know, the administration said the pandemic's over, and, you know, the CDC doesn't talk about the CDC is anti masking. We'll see how they handle it in the next administration. But so I think these authority figures it can be comforting to take cues from that, and I think it is very scary to think that we don't have control over our own physical survival or over our complicity in tremendous violence. And it can be cognitively overwhelming for people. I mean, even for me, i i i One of the ways that I handle it is that it's impossible for me to constantly be assessing my risk in a specific situation. So I have a set of like, these are my baseline protocols that I just do everywhere. Like, when in doubt, I'm just masking everywhere, and that's easier for me if I'm too tired or if I. Don't know all the situation, or haven't had a time to plan with everyone. Maybe I'm bringing a HEPA filter the events that I'll be at this week. I will have a portable HEPA filter in addition to whatever else is within, like a room size HEPA filter in addition to whatever else is in the room. So cognitively, it can just be overwhelming for people to have to think about all the fronts of struggle at one time, and I get why. I get cognitively, why people who are organizers think that it's a distraction. I've also been an event organizer. I know how complex they are. I know how impossible it is to do everything that is needed to make it successful. You're just trying to get as close as you can, asymptotically, to like what you hope to be able to provide to people in a gathering, even with the best intentions, and trying to be mindful of everything and create as much accessibility as possible. There will always be things that didn't happen perfectly. We're not to liberation yet. And so I get why people might think, Oh, this is just a distraction. Oh, you're just criticizing for the sake of criticizing, disabled people are going to be so annoyed with me giving this much credit to organizers who you know have done maybe spent way less time thinking about it. But I'm offering a bridge for anyone who needs it, I'm offering this you know, it's your decision whether you want to cross it using whatever method of transportation or mobility aid is useful to you.

(03:14):
Kumars Salehi
Any final thoughts, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Rasha
That’s okay. I think I can close on this part around COVID and organizing, because everyone is going to say, like, there's the trope of, like, a fascist went to the gym today. Did you like, what if I said a fascist jumped off a cliff? What if I said a fascist wore a mask so that they didn't get disabled or identified by the state? Yeah, because, you know, we all have options, and, like, we could, I don't think we win by becoming what we're trying to stop, like there's going to be a temptation to fight fascists by becoming them, and we've seen the blue wave fascists implement that policy, and we see what it did for them. And I would really encourage us all to have a less fascist relationship with our own bodies first, and that that might open up a lot of space and maybe a little bit more possibility. I can send you a link to an article on gym fascism. There are definitely people who've written more about it. Yeah, I think letting go of some of these fascist expectations in our organizing about speed, power, will and strength also goes beyond just like, do we mask or not? But is like, are we trying to do mass mobilizations, or are we willing to reassess, like, what might actually produce results? Are we willing to try something different? I think these things are not unconnected. And if I were going to give you a word of the day, the word that most easily comes to mind is a German word, which I know has been discontinued,
Kumars Salehi
It’s okay. We'll unsuspend it for guests. There's precedent for this.
Rasha
As someone who studied in Germany, and we could talk much more about that, another time, I feel it's worthwhile pushing the Germans a little bit on this Überleben. I think is a great word
Kumars Salehi
to survive.
Rasha
It’s usually translated as to survive, but you probably also hear in it what I hear, which is the literal translation to over live. And to me, that is a very interesting way of thinking about survival, that it is not just living, it is over living. And I could go on about that, but I'll just leave that for people to meditate. I don't mean it is a necessarily positive thing or a negative thing, but just all the different things it might mean to over live as ways that we might survive.
Kumars Salehi
I think that's very beautiful. And you know. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the German word of the week a little bit, although it’s nice that Roqaya has another responsibility, And not me. But I want to thank you so much for coming on, for your unflinching analysis, for your gentle reframings, for sharing your poetry and for questioning our problematic shorthand, we will link to your new book and the events this week. I hope any New Yorkers listening will join in on the fun. Obviously, Rasha is on Twitter @ Rasha Abdul Hadi, and you can look them up on there to follow all of their adventures. The listeners know we are on patreon at patreon.com/delete your account. You can subscribe, rate and review us on Apple podcasts. Thank you so much again for chatting with me. I think I already heard you take us up on this invitation preemptively, but we certainly hope you'll come back.
Rasha
I welcome continuity. Of conversations that continue in relationship and collaboration. So I'd love to I should warn people, if you're thinking about coming to the readings in New York City, I cannot promise they will be fun, but I hope they will be meaningful. And the last thing I have a responsibility to say is I would much rather people spend money donating to Palestinians in Palestine, including through Gaza funds.com or through the municipality of Gaza. That's mo gaza.org/donate please spend money on Palestinians and keeping Palestinians alive instead of spending money on literature, including mine. Get your universities or whatever to pay for that. Don't pay for that individually if you can, but thank you. I'd be delighted to see people who care about Palestinian aliveness.
Kumars Salehi
Hell yeah.I'll include those links as well in the description. And hope you take care of yourself.
Rasha
Thank You too. Thank you for taking time and offering Time today.
Kumars Salehi

(03:35):
Really Appreciate it. Cheers,

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Episode 241 – Poetic Justice

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 241 – Poetic Justice