Workshops for Gaza (10/06/25)
Beatrice speaks with “L,” “B” and Rosa from Workshops for Gaza about their work trying to redirect funds to keep people alive in Palestine, the importance of survival work in this moment, and why we all need to stand up to free the political prisoners facing persecution taking part in the Palestine solidarity movement.
Find Workshops for Gaza and many of the links and fundraisers mentioned in this episode at https://linkin.bio/workshops4gaza/
Sign the petition to free Tarek Bazrouk here and donate to Leqaa Kordia’s legal defense here.
Donate directly to Sameer Project here.
As always, support Death Panel at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod
Transcript by Kendra Kline. (Kendra is currently accepting freelance transcript work — email her if you need transcripts or visit her website)
[ Intro music ]
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 0:33
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I'm Beatrice Adler-Bolton, and today I'm here with my guests, who are three of the folks involved with a project called Workshops 4 Gaza. First, we have B. B, welcome to the Death Panel.
B 1:04
Hello.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:05
And next is Rosa. Rosa, welcome to the Death Panel.
Rosa 1:08
Hi, thank you for having us.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:10
And then we have L. Welcome to the Death Panel, L.
L 1:13
Hi, thanks for having us.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:15
Thank you all so much for joining me today. I'm a big fan of this project, but before we start talking about it, I just want to foreground that this conversation is taking place days before the two-year anniversary of Operation al-Aqsa Flood and the most recent escalation of genocide in Gaza which followed. This marks two years of ongoing escalated bombardment, blockade, starvation and forced displacement, which have devastated every aspect of life for Palestinians in Gaza, from the destruction of homes, hospitals and schools, to the systematic murder of entire families and neighborhoods. Yet it's important always to note that this violence cannot be seen as an aberration or a sudden eruption. It is the continuation of decades of settler colonialism, siege and systemic deprivation imposed on Gaza by the Zionist entity settler colonial regime. Now, the ongoing eliminatory devastation is made possible not only by the Zionist settler state, but also by the steady pipeline of weapons, funding and political cover that's provided by the United States and other imperial powers. The genocide is sustained by these global circuits of money, arms and legitimacy, and that means that those of us in the Imperial core are not mere bystanders, but active participants with an urgent responsibility to act.
Now, in moments like these, people often ask, you know, what can they do? How can they possibly make any kind of difference from 1000s of miles away with very little power. And too often, I think, the answers collapse into either pure symbolism or a helpless despair. And I think Workshops 4 Gaza offers a very different path, which is a direct, material practice of solidarity that transforms the things that many of us already do: reading, writing, teaching, spending time together, creating, into concrete ways to support Palestinians in Gaza, in addition to other material support. So by organizing workshops that are led by writers, artists, educators, this project essentially creates spaces where participants can learn, share and connect, and every registration fee becomes financial support directly for people in Gaza. It's a model that collapses the false divide between awareness and action, or socialization and organizing. And so the time that you spend in a workshop is not only time that you can spend learning something new or deepening your political and creative practice and commitments, it's also time and material resources that can be spent sustaining life, providing material aid, and standing in solidarity with the people fighting for survival.
And it's worth underscoring, this is not a charity enterprise. The organizers are explicit about rejecting paternalistic logics that cast Palestinians as just passive recipients of Western benevolence and saviorism. And Workshops 4 Gaza also importantly is partnering with groups like the Sameer Project to ensure that resources are flowing directly and accountably into the hands of Palestinians in Gaza. Now, funds are distributed in ways that honor Gazan agency and also are able to respond to the conditions on the ground. This is why it matters that the project also links its work to political prisoner support inside the Imperial core, which we're also going to talk about today. It draws out the shared architecture of imprisonment, surveillance and state violence that, as good friend of the show Rasha Abdulhadi reminds us, binds Gaza and US prisons into the same imperial order, right? This is about creating networks of solidarity, chances to transform our everyday practices into acts of resistance, and it's also a reminder that solidarity is not abstract. It looks like showing up, learning together, and refusing to just be passive in the face of genocide. So with all that, I just want to turn to you all. To start us off, can you three share how Workshops 4 Gaza first began, and what inspired you all to create this project?
L 5:00
Yeah, I'm happy to start and then B and Rosa, feel free to jump in as well. This project started about a year and a half ago. I think we first started thinking about it around May or June of 2024, and just to take folks back to that moment in particular, it was a moment right after the student encampments, the Student Intifada, had faced incredible amounts of repression and had basically collapsed after a series of violent raids by police forces. And so people were dealing with the aftermath of that. And at the same time, if people recall, there was a moment, spring of 2024, when the border around Rafah was open for a time. And so people here were really trying to raise large amounts of money to be able to get families across the border and evacuate from Gaza. Sisi's government in Egypt, if people recall, were charging $5,000 per person. And so, for a family of five, this endeavor of evacuating families becomes incredibly expensive. And so a lot of people that we knew were just frantically trying to raise these huge amounts of money to save as many lives as possible. And so in that particular moment, with the confluence of all of those things, both seeing the collapse of the student encampments, or at least one iteration of it, and then also seeing this incredibly pressing need for raising large amounts of money, this project came together both as maybe a way to -- or a model to more efficiently raise these larger amounts of money that were needed, rather than just passing fundraising links around social media, but also we were thinking about our own connections and resources that we had and our own networks. And so, knowing writers and academics and things like this, we thought about a model in which we could use the people and the resources and the knowledge that we had access to in order to funnel funds directly to Palestinians. One of the aims of the Student Intifada was divestment. And unfortunately, we saw that that was largely a failed effort.
There were all kinds of attempts to negotiate with university administration, to pressure them to divest or cut ties with various complicit corporations that were funding the genocide. And unfortunately, as far as I've seen, most universities did not end up divesting. And so I think one way, at least, that I was conceptualizing our work as well is to think about, okay, if the university administration is not going to divest its resources from genocide, how can we maybe think about divestment as like a direct action tactic? How can we directly divest and re-appropriate and expropriate resources from the university, both in the form of material capital, but also human capital and social capital, all the things that come along with that, in order to redirect resources directly to -- to Palestinians. Those are the ideas floating around at the time, that kind of led us down this path, I guess. In the more immediate, I did just want to shout out a friend of mine, she gave me the idea of hosting a class or a workshop as a fundraiser. This was just a friend of mine who is a writer, and I saw somewhere back in April or May of last year that she had organized a creative writing workshop, like she's a writer herself. And rather than people paying her for the workshop, she had asked everyone to donate an eSIM. And she didn't really have like capacity to organize with me, but she was definitely instrumental in giving me that particular idea for fundraising, and was really helpful in kind of corralling some initial people together to get this started. So yeah, that was the initial thoughts or impetus behind it. But I don't know if B or Rosa you want to jump in and add anything else here.
Rosa 9:14
I can add. This is Rosa. So I think one of the things -- like issues is that in terms of just being passive observers of the genocide, or thinking, okay, like, yes, this is horrific, but it's not something that I can intervene in, I think there are a lot of people who took that stance by saying that, well, this isn't really my expertise. I don't really have the ability or right to speak on it. And one of the things about Workshops is what L said, which is to think about what you have, what knowledge you have, what skills you have at your disposal, and really not worrying about everything else, and just saying, okay, this is what I have to offer. And it might not directly be related in terms of topic or focus to Palestine, but it's something that I'm willing to donate my time in order to raise funds that go directly to helping life-saving efforts that people are doing in Gaza. So I think it's really important to just break this idea that because this is not my area, I don't really have to concern myself with it, except to express my horror. So yeah, trying to get more people to -- to feel as though they should -- they can and should get involved. Yeah.
L 10:47
Yeah. And also with that, something that's been true about Workshops 4 Gaza from the very beginning, is that the classes and the workshops that we organize are not all specifically related to Palestine. Some of them have to do with decolonial, anti-colonial topics in other places in the world, not necessarily in Palestine, but we've also had people offer just donate my time in order to raise funds that go directly to helping life-saving efforts that people are doing in Gaza.creative writing classes and the emphasis more is on what knowledge or skills does a particular person have that they think they can contribute to others, and also as a way to raise funds for Palestinians who need it.
B 11:24
This is B and I can speak in terms of how the bookshop got involved. It was along the lines of that question of thinking about, what do I have access to that can be put in service to the greater goals of survival and liberation, and seeing the work that the Workshops was doing around building workshops, like L is saying, that were engaging sort of those questions on a wider scale as well. And also the way that Workshops was emphasizing the need to provide material support through intellectual and collective gatherings. There's just been so many instances of intellectual and collective gatherings that are then culminated by a celebration of that gathering, and then a moving on. And it felt like Workshops was saying -- was forefronting, or foregrounding the point of the gathering, the point of the thinking together, the being together, was to materially support someone's survival. And seeing that, and a lot of people were saying, bringing to light this issue of what you're doing with your resources, with what you have, and thinking about that, and seeing the bookshops -- I think they were offering books through a Google form or something. And I -- I know what it is to distribute books and to package books into all of that. And I was like, whoo, okay, well, let me see if there's any -- if there's any way that I can be helpful on it. Like I can't -- I can't organize workshops. I'm not tapped into academia, all of that, but I don't know, I can send somebody a book, so. And then that's kind of how that happened.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 13:22
So for folks who aren't familiar with the kind of bookshop aspect of it, B, can you just talk a little bit about how that additional portion of this project works? Because, as we've talked about, there are workshops that you can take part in, but there's also this bookstore where the proceeds from the books are also distributed as donations as well.
B 13:42
Yeah, so we -- I mean, it's basically that. So it -- we have a section on our website. We have the infrastructure for collecting payments and sending people books, right, which can be a barrier for people trying to organize, because there's a lot around those two processes that are really complicated to do. But I knew that I had a storefront that would make it fairly easy for someone to buy a book, and then the bookstore collects the funds and then distributes those funds to wherever Workshops was distributing. And that has been different throughout but mostly -- I don't know how long it's been that we've been pretty exclusively going to the Sameer Project.
L 14:31
I'll also add one other thing about the bookshop, which is that, like B said, there's this infrastructure that was already set up that was so helpful to be able to tap into because, I think, in the beginning, we were just desperately trying to think of various ways to raise money. Like Rosa and I were literally just selling whatever books we had lying around, like a Google form, and sending them in the mail ourselves. And then B reached out and was like, let me help you. But so the bookstore that B is talking about has all kinds of different books. But basically we made a page on the bookstore that has a curated list of books that we collectively choose together. So basically, it's not -- it's not a situation where anyone can buy any book in the world and have the proceeds donated. But there's basically a section of the bookstore, in person and on the website, that has specific books that we as a group have picked out, a lot of which are books by Palestinian authors, but again, not all. But then we also have added books by people who have taught workshops for us. So if there's a writer who is going to teach a workshop for us, sometimes we'll add their book to that book list. And then just when the workshop happens, we'll just let people know, like, hey, if you like this workshop, check out this person's book, we have it in our bookstore. All the proceeds will also get donated. So that is just how that is set up. And more recently, one of the other people in our collective who's not here, had this really amazing idea to also offer people this option, specifically academics and educators, where if they need to buy books for a class that they're teaching, they can fill out a form on our website and let us know what books they want for a class, and we can ship them those books. And so then that's another way that proceeds can get rerouted to Gaza, because sometimes professors will have research funds or whatever, and those funds are, I'm sure, closely surveilled by the university, right? You can't just spend those research funds on anything, but if you say that you're buying books, it's kind of fine. And so, that is just another way, right, that we can redirect resources from the university, like people who have access to research funds like that can buy books for their classes through our bookstore, and then we'll just donate all those proceeds. So that's another avenue that we've been pursuing with the book aspect of this project. So far, not that many people have taken us up on it, but I think it's a really cool idea. And if any professors out there have research funds that they want to use to get books for their students, definitely do it.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 17:22
Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a really great example of just taking whatever skills you have, whatever networks you have, whatever other work you may be involved in, and doing what you can to use that towards redirecting some -- you know, we live in this context in the United States, or, we have many listeners who are all over the world. We have listeners in Gaza. But you know, for those of us who are not listening in Gaza right now, we all live within these political economies that distribute significant resources from all aspects of everyday life towards sustaining and running cover and creating legitimacy for the genocide, right? And so this is, I think, a good way of thinking about how other aspects of just your day-to-day life can become part of work that helps to work against some of those material, political and affective pathways that support the genocide, right, to work against it in all aspects of your life, even in ways that, as you guys are saying, have nothing to do sometimes with Palestine, right? Maybe it's just you're buying books. Maybe you're doing your PhD and you've got some funds left that you want to spend on books for research, or you're teaching, or you're just going to buy a book anyways. Like, for example, Health Communism is in the bookstore. We're very proud that it's in the bookstore. When Artie and I give talks around the books, we give folks that link to the Workshops 4 Gaza bookstore. And we're saying, if you're going to put a link to our book somewhere, please use this one. Please direct people here. If people are going to buy the book anyways, might as well also contribute additional funds. And I think that's why this project is really interesting is because it takes this approach of not just thinking about fundraising in terms of a campaign, but also incorporating it into a kind of everydayness of people's lives.
And I know we talked a little bit so far about ways that the project has evolved as it's gone on, but I wonder if we want to talk about some of the deeper political vision behind the project as well. Every project carries a vision of the world that it's trying to move us towards. And I'd love to hear you all talk about some of the politics that underpin Workshops 4 Gaza. What is the kind of -- beyond the logistical and the idea of doing it and where that comes from, which I think is really tenacious and creative and really fascinating and inspiring, I'm curious if you all would talk about the larger strategy and orientation guiding the work. For example, you've talked a little bit about expropriating from the university, right, and countering the depoliticization of material support and fundraising and things like that, building these infrastructures that are outside of the NGO, nonprofit industrial complex, creating these material links between struggles in Palestine and elsewhere. But I'm curious if you all would just sort of talk about how do you think about solidarity from the Imperial core, how that factors into the way that you do the work, not just the work that you do, but the way that you approach it in Workshops 4 Gaza, and what kind of horizon is Workshops 4 Gaza gesturing toward? What does it look like?
L 20:29
Yeah, I can definitely start and then, yeah, again, B and Rosa can jump in anywhere. So in terms of the politics and vision behind Workshops 4 Gaza, one thing that was on my mind specifically last year was this idea of divestment, and divestment being one of the main demands, right, of the student movement, the demand for universities to divest from corporations that are complicit in the genocide. And personally, feeling that that demand for divestment didn't go far enough and that specifically, you saw during the student encampments, a lot of proclamations of false victories, where people would say, like, oh, you know, we won divestment. And then you would look at the fine print and realize that they hadn't actually won divestment. What they actually won was a meeting with the university administrators to discuss divestment. Meetings that would continue and continue, and then the divestment would never happen. Or you would see people proclaim victory of divestment, but really it was just that the university, as a token of appeasement, maybe divested from one specific company, but if you think about the structure of financial portfolios, what they're likely doing is just reinvesting that money into something else that's complicit in the genocide.
Because, I don't know, what is not complicit in the genocide, right? It's like the United States' economy, the culture, everything is just like -- it's so all encompassing, the level of complicity in the Zionist entity. So, obviously, no one act or gesture is going to get us to a liberated Palestine and every small step counts. But at the same time, I think we have to be really honest about the scale of the violence that we're up against, right, like the full horror of the moment that we're in, and try to remain kind of humble, right, about the actual impact of our actions. And so I guess with that, I was really thinking about how do we think about divestment in this broader sense, both as we discussed, how can we -- those of us who have access to the university or certain people in the university, how can we directly divest from it ourselves without asking the rich and powerful to divest on our behalf. How can we divest directly from the university, either through straight up stealing shit and expropriation of resources, or creative finagling of research funds. All these other pockets of money just exist in the university. I don't think people realize, there's just random pockets of money that exists in the university, and it is very possible to redirect, right, those resources in to things that actually materially help Palestinians. Even if the university itself would never do that on paper, individual actors within those institutions can resist or be these agents and pushing these funds out in various ways. So that's like, why not just divest ourselves, right?
But then, the third component of it is thinking about divestment not just in terms of material but also ideological ways. I just think there's so many -- it's just been interesting to see the last couple of years, the way that so many people who have claimed to speak up about Palestine or do something for Palestine, I don't know, maybe they signed a petition, or they wrote a statement, or something like this, and yet, signing that statement took five minutes, but the rest of the 24 hours of their day are spent with most of their activities bolstering and legitimizing the university, right, or the elite culture industry, which is, very much materially complicit in the Zionist entity. In other words, their careers and their identities are invested in a structure that is complicit, right? And so, even if they're signing a statement or a petition, or whatever, what does it mean for them to make those statements, while, meanwhile, the rest of their lives are spent legitimizing these structures that we actually want to delegitimize, right? Because I think if the student movement showed anything, it was not just that the university -- these universities are like "complicit" in the genocide, let's be clear, the function of the university in the United States is to be a major arm, right, of imperialism and colonialism. It's not -- it's not this indirect thing. It is happening there. The research to make these weapons is happening there.
These are people with real lives and real salaries that are being paid to do this research, to develop these weapons. And so if we're clear about the function that the university plays in US imperialism writ large, and this is not anything new, right? This is like something that was true during Vietnam and before that. These are land grant universities also, right, that are built on stolen land. Then, yeah, what does it mean to talk about Palestinian Liberation while still investing your identity and your career in ways that uphold the legitimacy of these institutions, right? So, I think people should think about making that brave step, right, of completely divesting themselves of these institutions, even though I understand it's very scary for people who have worked within these spaces for maybe all of their lives and don't know anything else, but there is a world outside of academia. There are jobs that one can get that may still be complicit in the genocide to some degree, but maybe you're not working at an institution that is producing weapons, right? There's not that much of a difference for me at the end of the day between working at a university that is producing weapons and working at an Elbit Systems factory. One just has this cultural cover to make it seem more, I don't know, benevolent or something, but it's really not at the end of the day.
And so, yeah, I guess in terms of the politics and vision, those are all kind of things that guide my thoughts about it. And so part of the workshop series is kind of like, I don't know, we don't necessarily have the resources or the time to properly start our own school or something like this. But the idea is that we don't have to spend our time trying to make the university a little less bad, we can actually just put it aside and try to build something completely separate from it and new that can still serve people's need for intellectual inquiry, their need to connect with others, right, to foster communities of learning, like none of that has to happen in the university. And the more that we can create and nurture and develop structures outside of it altogether, I think the better off we will be, because we're showing people that there is an alternative to it. So yeah, those are just some of my thoughts about the guiding visions, but I know that everyone in the group also comes to this project with different motivations and things they see in it. So yeah, just want to give Rosa and B a chance to weigh in as well.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 27:59
Thank you, L.
B 28:00
I think, yeah, for me, that question of -- like I was saying before, of just figuring out how to leverage resources, but also not leveraging resources in service to patting myself on the back, or sort of -- which tends to happen, there's just a lot of language that gets used and then immediately turned into the language of becoming a passive agent in the middle of really active horrors that are happening. And I think what the idea of Workshops that has always inspired me and kind of kept me going in it is just this question of constant action, and within the realm of where you can act and always asking that question and pushing that question. And so, from where I'm coming from, in this world of books and bookstores, where there's a lot of money made off of people's thoughts and ideas, and people's desire for thoughts and ideas, and people's wanting to be in spaces with other people's thoughts and ideas, all of which I celebrate, I love, I think places that have books are wonderful places. I also think I've just seen so many instances of that being where that action ends. And so I -- there's just been a lot of instances of seeing displays about a concept or an idea, displays about -- I remember in 2020 all of the Black Lives Matter displays that would pop up, but I also remember trying to like -- you know, sending a note out to bookstores asking, hey, is there some other way we can organize beyond just like displaying books, maybe we could collectively call for some things, and it was just silence, because moving from, well, I'm just a bookstore, I -- my job ends at the First Amendment or whatever kind of things these people think to themselves, I don't -- I don't know, but it's in keeping with what L was saying in terms of, for me, the idea of learning and thinking is critical, and books are wonderful, but also challenging the book group as a thing, as a way of gathering people to think together is great, but if that's where it ends, then what has that information done?
What are we -- what's happening there? And so, I think that's what I've seen in the space that I've been in, both in the world of bookstores and in the worlds of poetry, there's just a lot that gets said in those spaces that sound great and then end there. And I want to just be -- figure out how to be connected with the people who see that it's not about what I say, or what someone says, or having said a thing, it's having participated in a thing. And so having said a thing, having signed a thing, having expressed sadness about a thing, is where it often ends in the literary bookstore world, and moving it toward the, how do I participate in what it is I'm naming and in this moment, it's this question of Palestinian Liberation, Palestinian survival. And that's where, in those questions of what do I do from the belly of the beast, and what do I -- do I just say, well, I'm interested in finding the people who are not comforted by either extreme of what you can do from the belly of the beast, so either the, well, you can't do anything because it's bigger than you, so I'm going to take comfort in knowing that, and therefore not do anything. Or, well, you are -- yeah, mainly that, to be honest, and just kind of pushing against the idea that if you're not doing every single thing, or you're not bringing about an immediate change, then you're -- what you're doing is insignificant, which is just a way to get people to do nothing. And so, figuring out how to say, how do -- how can this thing that does exist within the parameters of the system that we have, which could change over time, there could be better ways of doing this, but this is how we're doing this now, what, at minimum, can be put in service to those wider goals? And Workshops is always asking that question and then moving in that direction, which I've appreciated.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 33:14
Thank you so much for that, B. I really appreciate the framing, because I think that the way that people hold themselves back through these very logically fallacious frames of all or nothing, or of the need to feel like they can claim an easy win or victory, which L, you also spoke to, often that conversation, along with the conversation around the Jewish feelings from within the Imperial core, about how you feel about how this is changing the perception of Judaism or whatever, which coming from that perspective, I've had way too much of Jewish feelings for the last 10 years in particular. But, this is a kind of framing that is a way of centering yourself in this work, and checking in and saying, okay, I checked these boxes, I've signed letters, I've done this, I've written a piece maybe, I've published this, I've made my argument, I've done my posts. But this is what I appreciate about Workshops 4 Gaza is that I think you all are engaging this in a emporal way that's very different. It's not a one-off fundraiser. It's not a one-off material redirection of goods. It's about creating a continuing relationship, or a place for people to plug in, in an ongoing manner, right? Not as a kind of one and done, like, okay, job done. You fixed it.
L 34:40
Yeah, totally. Something that I was reading about recently that reminded me of the way you've been framing the project, Beatrice, that I really appreciate about this, everyday quality is accounts of the Second Intifada in Palestine, something that was really extraordinary about that moment was that it wasn't just this single rebellion, or single uprising, but rather it was this kind of resistance that was woven into every aspect of society. And so there wasn't this separation of organizing from everyday life. And I think that kind of refusal to draw this distinction between what's political from what's everyday, or this is my organizing work, this is my personal life, sort of refusing those distinctions also feels very anarchist to me. But it was just interesting to see in the Second Intifada, that that was something specific to that moment as well, the way that -- I mean, and you also see it now, right, like in Gaza, there's resistance.
It takes so many forms. And that's not to say that -- I don't know, I don't want to -- I don't want to water down this idea of diversity of tactics, but there are militant struggles that are going on and there's also work being done by people like the Sameer Project that are simply trying to keep as many people alive as possible while these hospitals are getting bombed. That is also a form of resistance, and I think we should understand it as a form of resistance, because the goal of Israel and the United States is to kill off as many Palestinians as possible. So anything that is preventing that from happening should be understood as a form of resistance, right? And so that includes all of these everyday acts, like it includes driving people from the north to the south. It includes getting food, baby formula. All these things add up to a totality of resistance. And particularly for people in Gaza, that the idea that politics can be separated from one's everyday life just becomes absurd, right, when you're living in a genocide. Everything is about -- any act of survival becomes about resistance.
And so, I don't know. I just feel like so often here, in the Imperial core, there's this idea of like, oh, there's this horrific thing going on. You want to do something about it? What should you do? Join an organization. But then keep living the rest of your life just as you were, you know? And it's kind of like, well, I don't know about that [laughter]. How might we challenge ourselves a bit further, right? I don't know about other people, but for me, this past two years has completely changed how I think about the totality of my life and how I live it. And there's no aspect of my life that has gone unscrutinized, right? Like, how is this either contributing to genocide or resisting it, right? And it's that's not just about my organizing or my job. It's about every aspect of my life. And I, yeah, hope that people will think about that, right, in that way, that it's not just about joining an organization and then clocking out at five o'clock and going home and turning on Netflix, right? It's like, how can we develop a politics and ethos that does away with these artificial distinctions and see ourselves as having a lot more agency than maybe we realize, right, in terms of our willingness to participate in certain infrastructures and certain institutions, even in certain ambitions or careers, right? How can we make active choices about divesting ourselves from those things in order to actually live our lives in a way that is threatening to the state, or at least fucks it up, or does not simply go along with it, as June Jordan says.
So yeah, I just wanted to put that out there, because I really appreciate the way that you're framing the work in terms of this everydayness. And then, sorry, there's one more thing I wanted to add, because I also want Rosa to speak, is that in terms of the structure of Workshops 4 Gaza, I think that all of us have been pretty on board with this idea that we are not an organization that is trying to recruit members. I think we're all pretty against that model and rather than -- rather than recruiting people into this organization, I think what we want and prefer is for people to take the model that we've developed and use it elsewhere, or develop it for their own purposes, where it's useful. We want a proliferation of models rather than a constellation, right? And so one thing that's been really heartening to see is a Workshops for Sudan series start up. There's a group of people that have been working on that, and so it's a similar thing where they're organizing talks and workshops and classes around, yeah, political education having to do with Sudan or other decolonial topics. And same thing, people donate in order to attend. Then that all goes toward mutual aid groups on the ground in Sudan. Recently, we had another group called Friends of the Congo reach out, and they're working on a similar series, working on funding mutual aid efforts in Democratic Republic of Congo. So I think that that's the kind of thing that really inspires us and that we want to see. We don't want our collective to become this placeholder for people's actions, where it's like, oh, I had this idea for a class or a workshop, like I have to -- I have to do it through you. It's like, no, you could just do it. There's nothing stopping anyone from just organizing a class or a workshop in their community and posting a Google form where people can sign up and donate. It's really not that complicated. And so, we really just encourage people to do it and maybe adapt the model in a way that makes sense for their context, right? Rather than try to consolidate everything into one place, which is I don't think what we're interested in. So yeah, I just wanted to say that, a little bit about the structure. But yeah, also want Rosa to get a chance to speak.
Rosa 41:02
No, no. Well, I mean, Beatrice, you can cut this if there's too much academia talk [laughter], but I don't know, one thing that I really learned, or that you learn a lot when you are actually trying to ask people for things, and ask people for money, and Workshops has, put me in, and all of us in this position where we are asking people for things that they maybe don't know they want to part with [laughter], and one of the things that we tried to do earlier is we were trying to take a look at the academic conference and understanding that academic conferences are places where a lot of people gather with a lot of knowledge and with a lot of money, personal as well as institutional funds, and we were trying to figure out a way to talk to associations, academic associations that had made pro Palestine or BDS resolutions or statements in solidarity with Palestine, to see what ways that they might be able to work with us to distribute some of the funds at their disposal to organizations like the Sameer Project. And that was really eye-opening, because one of the things that we learned is that these associations really don't feel as though they have any material resources that they could devote to these kinds of projects. They insist that all of the money is tied up, they have no money, or all of it is tied up in, I don't know, running a conference, and aren't really interested in thinking about things like, well, do we really need that cocktail party? Or do we really need that lunch? Maybe we can poll our members to see if that's something that we want to donate instead. That was really a no-go when we talked to people. And so, I mean, what we did was we also then tried -- one concession that they gave us is, okay, you can have a table, like at the conference, something like that. And so, we tried that out a little bit and we found out a couple of things. One thing was that it was really people who had the least resources, at least as far as we could tell, that were very, very happy and willing to donate what they had.
The people who we know have really healthy salaries, who knows what else they're going through, but who have very healthy salaries, not be so interested in actually donating, even though they will -- like they did sort of tell us good job, things like that. And then, the other part of it, which is related to this idea of having the need to really figure out ways for academics to divest in terms of their own like -- I don't know, really sort of tying their lives or the value that they see in their lives to all of these networks that they've created in academia, because those things are the very things that sustain really harmful practices within academia is, you know, this need to -- I don't know, like, how do we shake that off? And how do we convince people that, actually, no, it's really not worth it to be polite to somebody who has been an IOF soldier, who is now your colleague. And it's actually more important to call them out, right, or to just -- you can call them out. You can shun them. You can do something, but there's no need for you to practice civility with people who have engaged in genocidal acts against Palestinians. Yeah, so I'm not sure, but I think really trying to do the material thing of raising money and trying to identify who has money that can be donated has really been eye opening. And we found that people are really hesitant, at least academics, who are properly salaried, are really hesitant to let go of that, or to even part with a few dollars. Okay, now I'm just talking shit. Maybe we don't -- maybe we don't need to do that [laughter], but it was just like -- you know, you remember when some of us were there and then trying to just -- we had a table and we're trying to raise money --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 46:36
At a conference.
Rosa 46:37
At this conference, and then people would come up to us and sort of say, oh, is that -- you know, kind of, are you working on this as part of your next book project?
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 46:47
Oh. Eww. Ugh.
Rosa 46:48
Like what? Yeah. And so it was unthinkable, you know, that we would -- we would just be there, because we were trying to raise money. It had to be tied to some kind of academic --
L 47:05
Advancement of one's career. Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 47:07
Ugh. Gosh. I wish that I were surprised, you know what I mean? Ugh, it just leaves such a bad taste in your mouth. And this is really -- I really appreciate you speaking to this, Rosa, because I think this is a really important aspect of this discussion that is not always foregrounded, which is really also the career-making that we've seen proliferate in the last two years. Everything from the publishing industry framings of -- you know, we've got a ton of books coming out by fantastic authors on this, but you also have books coming out by people who are married to IOF soldiers, or who have no interest in this other than to raise their own profile. There are people who have really used this as a moment for building their reputation and things like that, and all of those actions can often be justified in terms of, like, oh well, you know, this is someone raising awareness or whatever the fuck you want to say. But ultimately, what I appreciate about Workshops 4 Gaza is also the insistence on anonymity. As you guys have all said, it's not about taking credit or patting ourselves on the back. We are literally just looking at what are the things that we have available to us? What are our skills? What do our -- what do the people we know have available to them? What are their skills? And how can we use that to redirect any material resource, any effort or time in an ongoing way, in a very quotidian, everyday way, in a consistent, enduring way, out of these structures and institutions and practices that build up and continue and perpetuate everything from the genocide itself to its legitimation.
L 48:57
Mhm. Yeah, definitely. There's this idea of this split between words and actions, right? It's like either you can be doing organizing on the ground and taking direct action, or you can just be proliferating discourse. But I don't know, you could also proliferate discourse in a way that actually materially helps Palestinians, like you can proliferate your discourse and educate other people, if that's what you think you can contribute. But you can do more than just educate people. You can make sure that whatever event or talk you're doing is not just talking about Palestinians to educate non-Palestinians, but you can make sure that the time that you spend doing that raises money that will help a Palestinian family survive another day. And yeah, as you said, so many people stop at this like, I wrote a book about Palestine. I published an article. I'm great, because I'm trying to educate people and raise awareness, as you said, but that helps Palestinians how exactly? I don't know, for like -- for people who are literally just dodging bombs day and night, how does having another conference panel about Palestine actually -- like, why would they care? What they're asking us to do is donate to them so that they can eat. And also, get in the way of these weapons shipments however we can. Those are the asks.
And so, yeah, just endless proliferation of symbolism and discourse, not only at the level of academia, but also in the nonprofit activism world. There's just an endless proliferation of symbolic speech and actions that doesn't really seem to engage very deeply with the question of, what impact is this having? How does this get us closer to our goals? And again, not to say that like -- not to try and say that anything is -- everything is useless that doesn't immediately stop the genocide. But really being honest with ourselves, like, is this the best we can do here? I think we just owe it to people in Palestine to continuously be asking ourselves that question, right? Is this the most I can do with what I have? Is this really the most that I am willing to risk? And I don't know, I feel like usually the answer should be no, because our entire lives are built on the perpetuation of this genocide. So our lives should be constantly being re-examined. Yeah.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 51:46
Yeah, absolutely. And perhaps this actually brings us to one of the things we wanted to talk about next, after going through some of these grounding principles and frameworks with which you're approaching the work that you're doing, which is talking through like how -- how the funds are actually moving, and who they're going to and why. One of the things that I think stands out about Workshops 4 Gaza is that there's a lot of clarity around redirecting material resources and where that's going, right? This isn't a vague promise of supporting communities or raising funds to go to an NGO that's going to then bring supplies, or something. There's an interest and principled, really, commitment to direct material support, right? And there's, I think, when it comes to redistribution of material resources, there's a very pernicious and really kind of awful popular framing of like you kind of -- that it's dangerous to give people money directly, right, or that you don't know what people are going to spend that money on.
And you see that in everything from fundraising to the ways that people react to crowdfunding to the ways that even formal benefits programs and the social safety net is designed within the architecture of the state, where you have this preference for public/private partnerships that are going to provide services over direct material support, right? Like direct cash funds are seen as a bad way to redirect money, to redirect resources. And the fact is that that's so far from the truth, and that it's sort of embedded in this deep-seated distrust of people in need and of poor folks, and also an enduring paternalism that we know that those who have the funds know best about how money should be spent, right? And that's -- that's really kind of the opposite commitment that you all have in terms of redirecting material resources. You're very invested in a structured way of redistributing funds to people on the ground. We've talked briefly about how recently a lot of the funds have been going to Sameer Project. This is a group that we've called out on the show a number of times. But can you talk a little bit about why it's important to do that to you all, and sort of the partnership with Sameer Project, and also why you all have chosen to really focus resources on supporting their work recently in particular?
L 54:20
Yeah, I can speak to it a little bit, and then let Rosa and B jump in again. But yeah, I think one thing that's significant to note is that when we first started out, there was really -- I don't know, there wasn't this grand vision. I was of starting this organization or collective. It really was just like a friend of ours had reached out to us because -- basically, she was like, there's this person in Gaza that I've been put in touch with. He's a friend of a friend and is just really needing funds for his family. Can we think together about how to raise funds for this one specific person and his family. And so, that was the initial impetus, I guess, that pulled us together. And so, initially, we really were just like, okay, how do we raise money for this person that we have been in touch with and have gotten to know and care about? And so that was just -- at first we were just sharing the fundraiser around, like everyone else. And I then saw this other friend of mine do this thing where she was teaching a writing workshop and having everyone donate eSIMs. I was like,oh, that's cool. Maybe we can do that and that can speed up the process of raising this large amount of money that he needs. Because, remember, at the time, evacuation was still on the table, right? And so he has a large family. This is like -- we're talking upwards of $100,000 that needed to be raised quickly to save this family's life. And so, yeah, it really was just like, how do we help this particular person in the most efficient way possible?
And so, yeah, in the beginning, we really were just having the funds go to this one person's fundraiser. Eventually, we were put in touch with another family in Gaza who needed evacuation funds. And then -- so in the beginning, we really were just trying to raise money for these individual families that we had a connection to, and I don't know if any of us expected to be having to do this work for so long, and the genocide to go on for so long. But I think as time went on, we faced all of these really difficult ethical and technical questions about fundraising, right? And I mean, here's the situation where a million and a half people are displaced and just incredibly desperate for the most basic of resources. And I think what was surprising, at least to me at the beginning of the project was we actually were able to raise a lot of money fairly quickly. And I guess for me, once we had maxed out or completed this one family's fundraiser, and then another, I was just kind of like, okay, are we going to then continue to only support this handful of families? Not that there's anything wrong with that. Obviously, everyone needs funds. But I personally felt conflicted about raising, I don't know, $70,000 for one family, versus, I don't know, maybe distributing it a bit more equally to five families, right, that all really need it. At the same time, I'm not there. None of us are there. None of us are on the ground. None of us know the situation there and who needs it, right, aside from these internet interactions with various people in Gaza. And so, I guess, the shift eventually to Sameer Project felt like maybe a way to be a bit more equitable with our fundraising. Once we were getting to the point where we were raising quite a bit of money every month and we were just like, wow, this is great. How can we be -- how can we try to be most equitable and fair in the way that we distribute these funds, given that we're not on the ground. Sameer Project was a group that I had had my eye on for a while. They, I think -- I believe they started out just fundraising to distribute tents like in the south of Gaza when the mass displacements in Rafah were happening, but then eventually they kept building and expanding. But one thing that I really appreciated about them is that there was a very clear politic to their fundraising.
And something that I would often see them say is that aid is political, fundraising is political. There are numerous, as you noted, nonprofits and NGOs that claim to be helping Palestinians, who are actually really just another arm of the occupation, ultimately sort of a tool that is used to normalize relations. There's plenty of NGOs that, again, claim to be helping Palestinians, but we don't actually know where that money is going, because everyone trusts a nicely built, fancy website, right? Everyone is just like, oh, these people must know what they're doing. They have a name and a nice website. Surely, they must be getting money to people on the ground. There's just this inherent trust, right, of institutions and nonprofits. But I was hearing word from people who are doing work in Egypt that some of these really large organizations and NGOs that everyone was donating to actually weren't able to get a lot of aid into Gaza. And were very much inflating their wins, right, like claiming that they helped this many people, but really they're just putting that number on their website so that they can get more donors right? It's not actually reaching people on the ground in the way that they say it is, right? Because ultimately, they are motivated by donors, right, rather than like -- and they're not necessarily accountable to people on the ground. And so I think the Sameer Project, their continuous willingness to call that out and to say, we have a strategy for what we're doing, which is that we are three Palestinians in the diaspora. We work with people on the ground in Gaza that we have actual relationships with and actual relationships of trust, and we work to raise the money, and we work to get the videos and the information out there, but then the people on the ground who are part of the Sameer Project ultimately make the decision in how those funds are distributed, right? They actually physically go to these camps and see, all right, who is needing food, who is needing water, who is needing a haircut today. They're not making the decisions about financial distribution based on who has the most sympathetic story, right --
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:00:49
Or connections to folks in the --
L 1:00:52
Yeah, who is able to speak English, right, who has access to the internet, who is able to even set up a GoFundMe because they know someone in the West, right? All of these layers of things that people have to go through to even have a fundraiser in the first place that Westerners can access. I think that's also something that they've raised that has really given people a lot to think about, right? It's like, there's thousands of these fundraisers that need funds. But then, beyond just the fundraisers that we're seeing online, like thousands more people in Palestine don't even have such a fundraiser, right, because they don't have access to a phone, right? Or they don't have access to the internet, or they don't -- they can't speak English, or they don't know how to use Instagram or Twitter, right? Like, there's a million barriers. And so there's this whole other layer of people that we aren't even seeing, right, who are probably even in a more desperate position. And so the fact that Sameer Project is distributing these funds to people on the ground based on what is needed at that place, at that time, that day, and not based on favoritism or who they know, or again, who is able to portray themselves in the most sympathetic way to a Western audience, was really cool to see. And I have since connected with some of those organizers and really respect them so much for -- they're just -- they haven't taken a day off in the last two years. It's really -- I don't know how they do it.
They do have a bigger team now helping them with different stuff, but they are always just -- I don't know, they've always just been really clear that aid is political and that we should think of it as political as well, rather than just seeing fundraising or donating as this kind of passive act. Like, oh, I'm just gonna donate some money to make myself feel better, and I don't really care where it goes. Like, no, let's actually scrutinize where this money goes. Is it being handled ethically, is it being distributed in an equitable way to people on the ground? Is this the best way? Is this the best way that we can do this? We should examine those things for ourselves, rather than just being like, oh, this nonprofit. I've heard their name, and they seem like they're trustworthy. I'm sure they'll figure it out. Rather than leaving it in someone else's hands, really making these decisions. Okay, we have this money, we have this ability to raise this money. How can we best, in the most direct way possible and in the most equitable way possible, get these resources directly to people who need it and not go through all these middlemen.
So, yeah, that's how we've been thinking about it. And one of the reasons why we have been working with the Sameer Project so much. But I will say that our, I guess, rule for workshops is that when people propose to teach a workshop, we have a form that they can fill out where they can write up a little proposal for what they want to do. We leave it up to the person teaching the workshop to decide where the funds go. So, sometimes we have had people who want to teach a workshop and they're like, oh, I have this family that I've been supporting, I want the funds to go here. Or, yeah, there is this aid refugee group in Cairo that I really want to support with this. So we just leave it up to them, right? But a lot of people will propose a workshop and not really have any particularly strong feelings about where it goes. And so in that case, we'll just kind of default to the Sameer Project. But we do leave that window open for people who are actually teaching the workshop to decide where the funds go. So, yeah. I'll leave it to B and Rosa.
B 1:04:27
I don't know if what's in my head can come out properly, so I'm gonna try. So I feel like this question of scrutinizing where money goes and how people tend to view people in the West, people who are really committed to the systems here, tend to view their money as their identity and their -- who they are, and proof of their worthiness, proof of their whatever -- whatever they want to value about themselves, their ingenuity, their intelligence, whatever. Money is sort of validating that. And so then money gets used -- when they spend their money, that's sort of in and of itself, again, validating whatever it is about themselves that they're trying to validate. And then it's also exercising power. They now have -- they've opted to do this thing, and so then they get power from it. And so that tends to build this NGO system where people get celebrated for giving up their hard-earned money, or their innately, intrinsically talented given money, then they're celebrated for it, but they're also reassured that that very hard-earned money is going somewhere good. And so the people who are receiving that money have to spend a lot of work assuring them that their very hard-earned money is going somewhere positive. That whole process is -- you know, it is what it is. And it feels like the Sameer Project is taking that act of scrutiny, and like L is saying, is bringing in the political component of it. And so it's not asking the person receiving the funds to be scrutinized, but instead is asking -- is participating in what I think Workshops is doing, the Sameer Project is doing, a lot of fundraising, GazaFunds.com, and Lifelines for Gaza, is people asking for the scrutiny to go the other direction, in terms of, how are you facilitating the survival of Palestinians? How are you participating -- the liberation of Palestine is a liberation of people. That's what it is. It has to be about that. And it feels like the Sameer Project has never shied away from putting that as the front of what they're saying. They aren't -- when you receive their messages, when they comment, when they write posts, they're not trying to placate donors, which is what it feels like can often be the model of a lot of NGOs who are like, well, in order to get money, we have to make people happy who have money. The Sameer Projects tends to just say, these are the facts. This is what's happening. And they don't -- they don't shy away from saying really what's happening and what needs to happen, both in terms of the survival of people and in terms of the wider project of liberation. There's no separating those two things for the Sameer Project. I think that's been for me why I have felt like continuing to support the projects that are keeping both of those things very connected has made a lot of sense.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:07:49
I really appreciate that point, and I think -- it's one of the things that I think is an important lesson from this project, in terms of what I would hope folks can take from this, as to what you were both speaking about earlier, in terms of wanting to encourage other things to proliferate and this is not a kind of end all be all. But that perspective specifically is, I think, really important. And one of the reasons why this is a project that's really interesting, and that I thought our listeners might be interested in it. And another striking element, I think, of the work that Workshops 4 Gaza is doing is the attention to political prisoners from within the Imperial core. I think it's really powerful to place their struggle alongside the fight for Palestinian liberation, especially given how states coordinate repression across borders. Can you all talk about a little bit what it means to bring political prisoners into this project and conversation and how you see that work also shaping the vision and deepening the practice of Workshops 4 Gaza?
L 1:08:47
Yeah, for sure. One thing that is kind of striking, if you look back at the 60s and 70s, is that with the burgeoning radical, Black radical prisoners' movement coming out of that moment In the United States, how many revolutionaries in prison, but not just in prison, were talking about Palestine, right, and seeing it as extremely connected to domestic, anti-colonial struggles. Thinking about the Black Panthers, thinking about George Jackson, thinking about people in the Weather Underground, like the BLA, you look back at a lot of the things they wrote and Palestine is everywhere, right? And these were not people that were associated with the university, right, or necessarily came from this kind of privileged background, but there was -- I think it really speaks to how that particular moment, there was such a stronger sense of internationalism, and a sense of all of these different struggles being really one thing.
And I think that's something that's been really lost in the present and I guess it speaks to decades of counterinsurgency, through both the university and the nonprofit industrial complex. That one result of decades of counterinsurgency, I think, is really the siloing and the splintering of different movements into niche areas, or specializations such that everything is disconnected. And so, you'll have people that are in the Palestine solidarity movement, but don't know the first thing about prisons, right, in the US or how they work. Or you'll have people that have spent years organizing around abolition and the prison industrial complex, but they're really disconnected from any conversations about Palestine or decolonial struggles around the world writ large, because for them, prisons are this US domestic issue that we're trying to make better, right, but they don't see -- they don't have this necessarily anti-colonial perspective of prisons are a tool of colonialism, right? They are a tool of domestic genocide waged against Black people here, very intentionally, right? It's not just that prisons are these for-profit industries. They are actually a tool of Black genocide and a form of domestic colonial oppression for Black and Indigenous people that is very intentionally trying to destroy their communities, right?
Maybe at a slower pace than what's happening in Palestine, but not substantially different, right? And so I think -- I'm not saying that everyone in the prison abolition movement lacks that analysis, but it's just something that I've observed that there is this kind of general siloing of different issues-based organizing or issues-based activism. And I do think that academia and the nonprofit industrial complex have played a huge role in that, right? Because if you think about what academia is, it's just a bunch of people becoming a specialist in a very specific field, and not necessarily connecting it to anything else, right? And same with nonprofits, you have these like experts, right, in these particular issues. Often they have advanced degrees and are adjacent to the university as well, and they build careers off of being experts on a particular issue. But those issues are not necessarily getting connected to other things. And I just think that's so striking, when you look at the 60s and 70s, it was this moment before the rise of the nonprofit industrial complex, where you really could have this mass movement that connected all of these things very organically, and having these political figures who are speaking to all of these things in this very interconnected way, rather than claiming to be specialists in one kind of activism or the other. And so, I think the reason I've been thinking about this so much is because two years into -- I'm not going to say the genocide, but as you said, the accelerated phase of the genocide in Palestine, one glaring thing that is happening is just an immense increase in repression on the Palestine Solidarity Movement in the United States, and elsewhere.
And it's been striking to me how much -- not only just how much state repression the Palestine Solidarity Movement has faced, but there are now people from our movements who are literally facing 20 years in prison for their participation in the Student Intifada, for example. Many people who are facing years and decades in prison. And it's striking to me to see these large organizations, NGOs, kind of self-appointed leadership of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, be completely silent on that repression. It's actually just astonishing. Just to shout out Casey Goonan, who is, as far as I know, the only person from the Palestine Solidarity Movement in the last two years who has had to go through a federal case and has now been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. It's just -- it's really striking to me that people don't see a connection between that level of repression against our movements and the genocide in Palestine. It's almost like these things are seen as separate. It's like, oh, we can't -- we're not going to really talk about prisoners here, because that is a distraction from what's happening in Gaza. And it's like, no, it's not, right? They are literally putting Casey away for 20 years so that no one else in the movement here will ever do what they did, or will ever even try to resist, because they'll be so scared of the consequences, right? And so, really, the goal -- the purpose of a 20 year sentence for mere property destruction, right, the explicit purpose of that is to make sure that there is no more resistance to the genocide in Gaza, in the United States, right? That is what that sentence is intended to do.
And so to ignore that, for the Palestine Solidarity Movement at large to ignore that, that that is happening, I think is a huge mistake, because if they give Casey 20, what are they going to give the next person? Probably 30, right? And it's just going to keep upping the -- they're just going to keep upping the ante, as we see that they're doing. And they want -- they're doing this repression to us so that they can have an easier time sending the bombs over and continuing to drop the bombs, right, with as little resistance as possible. So I think we ignore these things at our own peril. And again, just to gesture back to the 60s and 70s, not to romanticize that period or anything, but if you look at something like the Black Panther Party and all of the work that they did, right, including community defense, armed patrols of their neighborhoods to protect their neighborhoods from cop killings, community service programs like free breakfast and bus programs and things like this, all of that work that they did was completely and totally integrated with a defense of their prisoners. It wasn't something that was split off from that work, right? Very quickly after the Black Panthers began, they faced repression. COINTELPRO was literally busting down people's doors and murdering them.
Their leaders were getting imprisoned left and right, with life sentences, being framed for things. And they saw the defense of their prisoners as a part of their political work, right? Not something separate. Because when Huey Newton went to prison, they weren't just trying to kind of -- they weren't just having -- no shade, but it's like they weren't just trying to have letter writing events and put money on Huey's commissary. They were actually trying to free him, right? And so they had -- they built a mass movement to free Huey Newton. And so you saw -- you see footage, right, of hundreds of people on the street carrying signs that say, free Huey Newton. And I just -- when we think about the present, we're just, such a far cry from that, right? Even Leonard Peltier getting out recently, there was just -- it was covered on Democracy Now, but you didn't see thousands of people coming out into the streets for him. And so, I just think that it's really -- it really speaks to this way that prisoner support and -- I mean, prison abolition work, prisoner support in general, it has become siloed off from the movements that those political prisoners came out of.
And when you have those things disconnected, I just don't think that you are going to be able to really free those people, right? Because we've made -- we've made prisoner support into this specialty issue that only people that have written books about prison know how to do, instead of seeing prisoner support as integral to any kind of liberation movement, right? Because any kind of movement is going to have prisoners. And so, yeah. I mean, that's one of my motivations for integrating prisoner work more directly into what we're doing because I literally don't see them as separate, right? I think that we should fundraise for Casey Goonan's legal defense and for Jakhi McCray's legal defense. I don't -- I think that that work is just as important as supporting people on the ground in Gaza. And I don't think that it's a distraction at all, because we have to be engaged in both, right, in offensive and a defensive strategy. And so there's all kinds of other ideas that we want to pursue further with doing -- thinking about prisoner support, but, yeah, I'll just leave it at that for now is just our movement, like the Palestine Solidarity Movement in the United States, has political prisoners. And that is a fact that I want to put out there for people tolike, understand and think about. We have actual political prisoners from our movement that are being sentenced to 20 years in maximum security prison. And I want people to really sit with that and think about what that means for our strategy going forward, and not just brush it off as an incidental thing that happened. I really want us to think about what that means and to take efforts to free them extremely seriously, because any efforts that are made into freeing our political prisoners can only strengthen the rest of our movement, and they really are not separate things at all.
B 1:08:48
I mean, I think -- I don't have anything to add. You just laid it all out.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:08:48
Yeah, that was very well put.
L 1:08:48
I guess, just one thing that we can add, if we want to link this to some of the workshops that we've done, and that folks can still access through our website, is we had an online reading and discussion of a poetry collection that was written by Shukri Abu Baker, who is a Palestinian political prisoner, who's spent the last 16, 17 years incarcerated and remains in bars today. So we've done that workshop that you can register for. I think there's books in our online bookstore that maybe L or B can point to, that folks can can purchase if they're interested in learning more. And we did an in person workshop at Red Emma's with Orisanmi Burton, but Orisanmi has tried to make the link between Palestinian political prisoners and political prisoners in the US. So we've done some things. I think that the hope is to do more. But I just wanted to point to the ones that we already do have.
L 1:10:39
Thank you so much for bringing that in, Rosa. And I think one thing that this makes me think about is the conversation that has been ongoing with our listeners in Gaza around their frustration with the ways that -- there's a kind of like disembodied mode of talking about folks in Gaza that I think is very much mirrored in this selective, looking away from political prisoners and looking away from the need to center inside/outside solidarity, and also beyond just solidarity organizing, you know, really seriously talking about and thinking about how to get folks free. Because there's a kind of prefigured consent to the annihilatory violence that folks in Gaza face, that's reinforced by this idea that, as they put it, like everyone's already dead, that everyone's already gone. That this is an event that has a pre-foregone conclusion, that the Zionist entity not only wins through the physical bombings, the starvation, the deprivation, the refusal to allow materials in to repair desalination plants. But that there is a psychological, psychic warfare of enforcing an idea that Gaza is already gone and that Palestine has already been subsumed by the Zionist entity, that is not only not true, but is also demobilizing and depressing to folks on the ground, because they feel forgotten. They feel like those comrades that they have in the West are kind of, in some way, even in their support of folks in Gaza, still committed to the vision of their annihilation. And that's, I think, a similar dynamic as to what is playing out relative to political prisoners.
And obviously, part of that is an appeal to respectability, right, where you have some of these larger orgs and some of these larger, more mainstream projects, I'm sure intentionally distancing themselves from folks like Casey because of a desire to assert their nonviolence, or whatever respectable argument they're trying to make, and how they think that that is a winning tactic when it's absolutely not. But I think that there is also a similar attitude at play here, where it's like, well, they got Casey, they're incarcerated now, and prisons are not emptied, and we do not break down prison walls, and we do not free our prisoners, whether by legal means or by extralegal means, right? And that there's an acquiescence to the institution of incarceration that is embodied in people's selective attention, that I think it's really important in the work that you all are doing, that you're specifically calling that out and addressing it, because this, I think, very much as you're saying, L, is specifically a byproduct of repression that ultimately undermines all of our movements because it reinforces the power of the state to kidnap our comrades, to lock them up, and it reinforces the power of incarceration and the prison. And I think all of our work always has to be working against the institutional self-assertion that the prisons will never fall.
L 1:24:21
Yeah, yeah. Agree with everything you're saying, especially all the aspects of psychological warfare and propaganda spread by the enemy that leads to this defeatism. But yeah, I mean, I guess, just to make the really obvious comparison, Gaza has been under siege for decades, and it has rightly been compared to an open air prison, right? People cannot leave. They're starved, they're bombed, just have immense amounts of violence directed at them, annihilated, genocided. The population of Gaza, I believe, when -- right after October 7 was around 2 million. And there's different ideas about the number of people that have been killed over the last two years, but upwards of a million, right?
Their population just cut in half. And it was just striking to me, I was thinking about that number, like 2 million people in Gaza, because 2 million is also the same number of prisoners in the United States, right? That's how many people, roughly, are behind bars right now. And so many of the conditions of life in Gaza are similar, intentionally, right, by design, similar to what people in US domestic prisons experience, like the immense amount of surveillance, control of movement, monitoring of communications, the random acts of violence and death that they're subjected to in there with no public scrutiny. It's just a black box of death that -- it's just like all the laws are off the table and you could be killed and no one could even know or care. They -- yeah, so just that number really stood out to me, as like, yeah, there's 2 million people in prisons here, there's 2 million people in Gaza. And I guess in terms of prisoner solidarity work, one thing that I also just want to mention is -- and one thing that I want to emphasize going forward is as we've been talking about throughout this whole episode, often people's first go-to when they want to do something to help a situation is to defer to institutions or organizations that they see as having some kind of authority, right? It's like, okay, we're going to join an organization, we're going to donate to a nonprofit. We're going to join or donate to these entities that purport to be experts, right?
And so, a lot of people wanting to do prisoner solidarity work will similarly join a nonprofit or join an organization. And I think what I just want to emphasize to people, whoever is listening to this, you can literally write to prisoners yourself directly. You don't have to go through a middle man. You don't have to go through an organization or nonprofit. Their addresses -- all 2 million people locked up in prison right now, you can find them on the internet. You can look up where they are, exactly where they are in the locator, and literally just write them a letter. And I don't know if people realize that, or that that is a possibility, that you can literally just do that. I think part of the psychological warfare of prisons is -- I mean, I don't know how many times I've heard people talk about living prisoners as though they're dead. It's so bizarre. It's kind of like, oh, after someone gets arrested, it's like everyone starts talking about them in the past tense, and it's like, hello, they're still alive. Just because they're in prison doesn't mean they are no longer there or no longer able to communicate with us or share their ideas, and it certainly doesn't mean, especially for political prisoners, just because they are in prison does not mean they are going to, A) stop organizing, B) stop being who they are with the principles that they've always had, and C) I think just because they're in prison does not mean they have to stop being a part of our movements.
To me, such a key part of prisoner support that I feel like has really gotten lost in this moment is not just this material and technical support, of let's put money on their commissary, let's write them letters. That stuff is important, don't get me wrong. But there's this other aspect of prisoner solidarity, which is political support, right? These are individuals that the state is intentionally isolating from the rest of the movement that they came out of, and singling them out and pointing to them and saying, this person is an extremist. This person has views or did actions that are different and more extreme than the rest of the movement. We need to make an example out of them so more people do not follow in their footsteps, right? And a key way that the state does that is to decontextualize their actions, right? They criminalize their actions and their beliefs by decontextualizing them. And so any discussion that the state offers about Casey's, for example, actions is completely divorced from the fact that there's a genocide going on, and maybe that's why they did what they did, right? It's solely seen as this random act of violence. And so I think a thing that we have to do in terms of political support as a movement is to insist that this person is not extreme. This person is not -- really, this person holds beliefs that we all hold. They don't hold beliefs that are extreme. In fact, everything that they believe in or that they're saying is absolutely reasonable, and we need to really push back against this framing that the state has around them as somehow separate from the rest of us, right? Because ultimately, what the state is doing with any individual political prisoner is that they are trying to make an example of them, right? Because their actions represent the kind of future possibility that the movement could develop into, that the state wants to clamp down on now, right?
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:30:19
Yeah, foreclose on.
L 1:30:21
The state does not want another 2020, right? And so just really thinking about how many cop cards were set on fire in 2020? How many police precincts were burned down? And if you look at -- that was just five years ago, right? And all the people who face federal charges from 2020, almost all of them have walked free. There's a few that are still locked up, right? But for property damage, people were receiving anywhere in the range of three to five years, sometimes seven years sentencing. Compare that to Casey, who engaged in the very exact same act as they did, receiving 20. So that really shows you very clearly that the 20 year sentence is not about the act of what they allegedly did, right. Rather, it's about their motivation and their ideas, right, and the way that the state is actually terrified of the beliefs and ideas that Casey holds, that very much pose a threat to their interests, their imperial interests in the Middle East, right? But what they're also afraid of is those ideas spreading to other people. They're so terrified of how many people Casey knows, how convincing they are, how brilliant they are, and the way that they communicate their ideas. That is what is actually threatening to them, rather than the police car, right? And they try to make it about the police car to have an alibi, but really why they're locking them up is so that they can't spread their ideas anymore, right?
And we have to be super clear about the fact that that is what is happening. They are a political prisoner, even though the United States will never admit that. But that is specifically what they are. And so, how can we develop a strategy as a movement to politically defend their ideas and their actions and create a counternarrative to the one that the state has, right, insisting that they are not a criminal.
The criminal is the state. It's not Casey, right? What they did and what they're saying and believing is absolutely justified and it's beliefs that many of us hold, right? So I think that is the work of political defense and political support that I really hope people start to engage in more beyond just the bare minimum of supporting people materially, which I'm not saying is unimportant, but like you're saying, if we are serious about not giving in to the inevitability of a 20 year -- something like a 20 year sentence, and we really hold on to the belief that that is not inevitable, we can intervene in that. Casey doesn't actually have to spend 20 years behind bars. There are things that we can do as a movement to change that, right, and to actually free them. If we're really going to hold fast that belief, we're going to have to do more than simply write letters and put money on their commissary. Again, not saying that that's unimportant. More people should do it. There's never enough money on commissary. But I really want to see people go beyond that, because otherwise, there's just going to be more and more and more of this, and we're going to have no strategy for countering it.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:33:26
Mhm. I think that's so important.
B 1:33:29
I think for me, what's really resonating in all -- in all of it, is the framing of fighting back as where the choice comes, not the oppression of that. And so, I feel like I hear people resigned to, oh -- so they'll say, oh, so what did they do? Oh, well, yeah, I guess that -- of course that's going to land you in -- and they sort of -- as if the choice comes from -- you know, the choice to put somebody in jail is not the actual choice that's being made. And everything gets flipped. And so -- which kind of plays in, as L's saying, into these ideas of -- it sort of moves everyone, keeps everyone in the lines of the wrong and right way to protest something, which doesn't even make sense because how is there a wrong way to protest a genocide? It just doesn't -- it doesn't make any -- when you really -- if we're all going to agree that what's happening is a genocide, or we're all going to agree that what's happening is -- anywhere, you know, wherever people are resisting, then what does it mean to wrongly push back against that and people are constantly being policed in the literal and figurative way of, you're saying it wrong, you're being too loud. You're being too -- the flip that I see a lot of people not making is this, they're still leaving the acts that people take as the root of the choice, where the choice gets made. And so this inevitability, I think that's the word, and we see it in a lot of different areas -- the inevitability of Palestine being completely taken over, the inevitability of everyone having COVID, the inevitability of the way that the United States is inevitably this capitalist nation, and we're just supposed to accept that those things are the inevitable, and when you say no to them, you're then making a choice against what is inevitable. And that's what just keeps boggling my brain and has forever, is how it always gets positioned that that's not the terrible choice being made, but rather the opposition to it.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:36:08
Mhm. Such a good point, B. I really appreciate that. And I think the inevitability is so much a part of what the goal of repression is supposed to create, right? It's not just about discouraging actions, but it's about reinforcing and enforcing that inevitability as a kind of start, middle and end point for what the political horizon can be. It's a way of ensuring the perpetual domination of the things that we're organizing against, even in the act of organizing against them. It's such an important, I think, core principle, and it's very clear that this just runs through so many aspects of the project that you all are doing together with your many other collaborators as well. And perhaps this is a good moment to talk a little bit about some of the workshops and offerings that you're running, because I'm sure that folks who are listening, who have not participated yet, might be very interested in taking part in any of the workshops that y'all have put on, both past and future. So for listeners who haven't participated yet, can y'all paint a picture of what the workshops are like and talk about what some of the kinds of offerings are that are happening, who's involved in facilitating? I think that the workshops do a really interesting kind of double duty. Both are raising funds for Gaza, while also building community and political education among participants. So I'm curious, if you all would also talk a little bit about what does that look like in practice, and how folks have responded to the kinds of knowledge and skills and connections and just time that's been shared together in these workshops?
Rosa 1:37:43
Yeah. So we have, as you said, Beatrice, we've done a lot of different kinds of workshops. We've done, at this point, over 100 and there are a few different categories. I think some of them are kind of skill related, you know, book reviewing by Summer Farah was actually the first workshop that we did. And we also have a lot of interactive writing workshops, poetry as well as fiction and nonfiction workshops. We had somebody talk about how to write podcast scripts. So we've had those. We've also had, I think, four poetry readings at this point. And one of the cool things about those is that we actually did have a professor reach out and say, hey, I really want to show this to my class. Is there a way that we can -- I can purchase the recording? And so, we were able to provide that for them with the permission of all of the poets. And we were able to -- or they were able to actually use their university funds to pay for that workshop. We have those. We've had some that have been really focused on colonial -- like other kinds of, multiple forms of colonialism. We've had a caste workshop. So we've had a wide range. And I think it was mentioned before, but if you're interested in accessing some of those past workshops, we have a form that you can use, and it's the same process as signing up for our active, ongoing work or future workshops, which is that you make a donation to the funds that the workshop is raising money for, and then, in return for you filling out the form and submitting the receipt as proof of your donation, we then can send you a link to those workshops.
And so that's how that works. Yeah, I have my favorites, but I think really what's interesting and what has been inspiring is the way that people have gone to workshops and then have been inspired to propose workshops of their own. So one of the, I think, earlier workshops that we had was Gaza Kitchen workshop, on Gaza Kitchen. And a person who attended that workshop decided that they really also wanted to think about the way that food and cooking and food sources were really important ways of resistance, and also maintaining connection and building community. And so we had someone propose a workshop that was inspired by Gaza Kitchen, to do one in the context of Okinawa. So there are ways that I think even this kind of workshop convener community is one that sort of grows. In terms of -- we have one right now that's running at the moment that we're recording by a writer, a poet that we know, Maya, who's doing her fourth workshop for us. And so, I learned by moderating the earlier one or opening the earlier workshop that she has kind of an idea of the amount of money that she herself wants to be accountable for raising, and the workshops are a way for her to fulfill her goal. And so I think the workshop conveners approach, these workshops, you know, kind of with their own intentions, and we're always really happy to facilitate that as well. I don't know. Do you all have favorites or anything that you want to plug?
L 1:41:58
Yeah, I think one thing that has been really cool is just to see the range of things that people bring to the table. And definitely at the beginning, I think some of the workshops tended to be a little bit more academic, but over time, there's just so many different kinds of people proposing different things, depending on their skills and their background. And so, yeah, Gaza Kitchen, the one that Rosa mentioned, was taught by Laila el-Haddad, who is a pretty celebrated, actually, Palestinian chef. I actually reached out to her because I was just like, it would be so cool to have her do something. And she was thankfully willing to do it. But, yeah, her workshop was very interactive. It was basically just a cooking class that she held over Zoom, and she sent out the list of ingredients for people to buy beforehand, and then during the workshop, everyone was just on Zoom, but cooking along with her. And as the session went on, she was basically describing all of the ingredients and their significance, in the context of not just Palestine, but Gaza specifically.
So Laila's parents, I believe, are from Gaza. And so she went to Gaza a number of years ago, and went around, talking to people, women, and collecting recipes, and doing research on these ingredients, and not just recipes, but ways of cooking that were historically specific to Gaza. So that was just a really amazing event where it just combined this historical and cultural knowledge with something really hands-on and tangible that was very accessible to everyone, right, because everyone likes food. So yeah, it was just really an example of a workshop that was just a way of sharing knowledge that was so open and accessible to any kind of person, even if they didn't have an academic background or really knew anything about Palestine, actually.
So yeah, that was such a cool, cool thing. And that one was really, really popular. That workshop, actually, the funds that we raised all went to Laila's family in Gaza, so that also felt really good to have her donate her time and knowledge. But also, as a result of that hour and a half she spent with us, we were able to raise several thousand dollars for her family members. So yeah, that one was really special and stands out in my mind a lot. Yeah. I mean, one thing that for people who do a lot of fundraising. I think one barrier that they often encounter is eventually your network gets kind of tapped out. It's like, you're asking the same people for money all the time, and it's like, at some point there's only so much they can give. But I think one thing that's been cool about this project is because there's so many different kinds of people that are proposing so many different kinds of classes and workshops, all of which are, I think, going to be interesting to different types of people.
B 1:45:09
I'll just add that to L's point about the variety of different offerings as a way of contending with the tapping your -- tapping your audience, so many of the workshops have recordings, and it would be great -- we're looking at ways to present the recordings also and make that really accessible for people. Because another wonderful thing about the workshops model is that the idea of the classroom happening one time, and if you're there, you get it, and if you're not there, you don't, is sort of, no, a lot of these are recordings, are available. People can share them. If you attended a workshop and really liked it, then you can see about getting a recording and sharing it with people that you know. And then people who watch it can donate, and it can keep going. And I like that model of the recording, which is also just a question of increasing the accessibility of knowledge and of gathering, because another way people can approach the workshops, and this is something that I'm also trying to really think about ways that I can help facilitate this too, is people could gather together and watch a workshop and then talk about it amongst themselves. And there's lots of ways that the work of these workshops can continue on, because the model of it is not about privatizing knowledge in any way. It's just about people coming together to -- around some topic, in service to raising funds. And so that just can be extended and people can watch -- so naming that, too.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:46:57
Mhm. And there's some really great workshops coming up. Like, there's one on boycotting Israeli pharmaceuticals called Medical BDS, about the boycott Teva US campaign.
L 1:47:08
Yeah. Exactly, yeah. I really like -- and I think -- I mean, maybe you can say this is part of our ethos too, but it's like, we have workshops that are just sharing knowledge about a particular topic, but a lot of our workshops are teaching people how to do something in this very active way. So, we had this group of folks that have been so wonderful, the Refaat Alareer Mobile Library come through and teach people how to set up a mobile library in your community. We had another one from our friend Jane, she came through and basically walked people through the steps of how to send an eSIM to Gaza, because it is not that complicated, but if you're someone that gets really easily overwhelmed by tech stuff, it's just nice for someone to walk you through that process. So it's a lot of people who are already doing political work or working on a project, kind of come through and teach people how to do it themselves, right? And so in that way, it's like a lot of the workshops are not just about consuming knowledge in this passive way, but learning how to do something yourself and replicate a project or a model or an idea for a model and apply it elsewhere. And so yeah, I really -- I really love that aspect too.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:48:26
I really appreciate all of the time that you all have been able to give us today. And I just wanted to thank you all for everything today. And so before we wrap, is there anything else that y'all wanted to make sure to mention that we didn't get a chance to touch on, or is there anything that you all want to shout out specifically for folks, as a last thought that you want to leave people with?
L 1:48:49
Yeah, I can just mention, like I said, we don't really consider ourselves an organization with members, or we're not really trying to recruit new members or anything like that. So rather than -- if you're interested in the work, rather than trying to join, I think just thinking about how you could use this model in whatever work you're doing is really awesome. But that being said, we do always -- something we do always really need help with is graphic designers, people who can be on call to design an Instagram slide deck here and there. That's just a very labor intensive thing that we've been trying to redistribute more people so it doesn't fall on the same people all the time. So if you're someone that has graphic design skills or experience and you know how to design some slides on Canva that look decent, come through, just email us, and we'd be really grateful for your help. There's no real expectations around it. We just have a chat where we post requests, and if you're able to help out, you help out.
There's something that we want to get into more is designing and distributing zines. So if you're someone that has experience with zine formatting, things like that, also hit us up. We would love to have your help. But yeah, otherwise, just spreading the word, and more than spreading the word, thinking about how to proliferate this kind of work, taking whatever is useful from what we do, and discarding what's not useful and just running with it. If you've proposed a workshop and it takes us a while to get back to you, because we have a big log of proposals that is always taking us forever to get through, if we're taking too long to get back to you, there's nothing stopping you from just organizing your own workshop, right? It's also -- I really want to encourage people to just not -- not everything has to come through us.
So if you have an idea for a workshop, why not just teach it, right? All you need is a Zoom link and a Google form. That's pretty much it. So, yeah, just want to encourage people to always think autonomously and proactively about things. Also, we recently started a newsletter that folks can subscribe to. We also have a Substack that people can subscribe to. We're trying to think of ways to get off of social media platforms more as they become more volatile. So we will be sending out information and updates about once a month through that newsletter, which you can get through email, and we'll be posting information there about not only upcoming workshops, but also different campaigns that we're trying to uplift. And so most immediately, there is a political prisoner from our movement named Tarek, a very young Palestinian activist in New York. He's been locked up in pre-trial detention for many, many months now, and there is a call to sign a petition to his judge asking for time served, which just means that we're asking for the judge to mitigate his sentence to the time he's already served in jail. I understand that people are very jaded by petitions, and usually they won't do anything, but in this case, it is actually incredibly helpful, materially speaking, to have a lot of signatures on this petition, because it shows the judge that Tarek has substantial community support behind him. So I just wanted to shout out that petition, if you're able to sign it and circulate it in your organizations or your communities, that'd be really helpful. I think the petition is at around 7,000 signatures right now, and I think the goal is to get to 10,000 by the time of Tarek's sentencing, which is actually just later this month. It's coming up very quickly.
So yeah, any help and support with circulating that would be really appreciated. You can find the link to that petition in our link in bio in our Instagram. Leqaa Kordia is also someone we want to shout out. She is also a Palestinian who was kidnapped by ICE last year and has been locked up in the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Texas for many, many, many months, again held under horrific conditions. There is a fundraiser for her legal defense that is also linked in our link in bio. She is one of the political prisoners from our movement that I think has gotten substantially less attention. She doesn't really fit the perfect victim narrative that some other people with more high profile cases have had. So she she's actually from Patterson, New Jersey, like a local person to New York area, and so yeah, just really want to encourage people to shout out and talk about her case and to donate to her legal fundraiser if possible.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:53:37
Thank you all so much. And as we just close this conversation, I just want to reiterate my gratitude for you all for taking the time to share the vision and strategy and the praxis of Workshops 4 Gaza. I really think this is a very powerful example of how solidarity can both be practical and political and not a kind of thing that just is siloed to one aspect of your life, right? It's about combining education and community building, direct material support, theory, praxis. As we've been saying, in an everyday way. And I think it's an important reminder that meaningful action doesn't have to be distant or abstract, and that there are concrete, small ways that each of us can make this a part of our lives every day. And for everyone listening, as we've talked about, there are multiple ways that you can engage and contribute. Sign up for a workshop. Take inspiration and run with this idea. Do your own projects. Buy a book through the bookstore. You can donate directly to Sameer Project, which is a really important way that you can ensure that resources that you're trying to redistribute can reach people in Gaza. You could also support other avenues for material support, Crips for eSIMs for Gaza, GazaFunds.com, individual GoFundMe or Chuffed campaigns, right? There are so many ways that we can help folks survive and all stay alive another week together. And as we wrap up, I just want to invite listeners to carry forward not only the knowledge that was shared in this conversation, but also the commitment to act. So thank you all so much, L, B and Rosa. I really appreciate our conversation today. It's been really wonderful to take the time to talk about this project that I think is really great, and to be able to share it with our listeners. So thank you again.
Rosa 1:55:21
Thank you so much for having us.
B 1:55:22
Thank you so much for having us, and thank you for all you do with your podcast, with your book, with everything. Thank you.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton 1:55:30
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Patrons, we’ll catch you later this week in the main feed. As always, Medicare for All now, solidarity forever. Stay alive another week.
[ Outro music: “Tezeta” by Time Wharp ]
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The following links and notes have been prepared by "L," "B" and Rosa for inclusion in this episode description:
1. All of our current projects and campaigns can be viewed on our linkinbio, including calls to action to support political prisoners from the Palestine solidarity movement: https://linkin.bio/workshops4gaza/
2. Sign up for workshops, buy books, and propose new workshop on our website:
workshops4gaza.com
3. A few books we recommend from our online bookstore, where all proceeds are donated to the Sameer Project: George Jackson, SOLEDAD BROTHER; Sameeh Al-Qassem et al, ENEMY OF THE SUN: POETRY OF PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE, Orisanmi Burton, TIP OF THE SPEAR; Dhoruba Bin Wahad, REVOLUTION IN THESE TIMES, Shukri Abu Baker, LIGHT FROM DEEP UNDER, Safiya Bukhari, THE WAR BEFORE, Souha Bechara, RESISTANCE: MY LIFE FOR LEBANON
4. We also want to send out a solidarity statement: “Workshops4Gaza sends our heartfelt solidarity to one of our former workshop instructors, Eman Abdelhadi, who was brutally detained by Chicago police outside Broadview ICE detention facility on October 3rd. Their workshop on speculative fiction writing recently raised over $5000 for Palestinians in Gaza and Cairo. The repression they are facing shows their dedication to multiple fronts of the struggle in both words and action. Insha'Allah you will be home soon Eman!”