Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Look, say what you want about Hitler, but in the end, he was the one guy who managed to kill Hitler.
I'm Matthew Rimsky. That was an anti fascist dad joke. This is the Anti Fascist dad podcast, episode two, Encampment for Palestine with Sara Racique, who was a lead organizer and spokesperson for U of Ts occupy for Palestine, an encampment that grew to 200 strong strong between its founding in the early hours of May 2, 2024, to its dismantling on July 3, 2024. Now, Sarah is my guest because as a parent and an anti fascist and just a human being, nothing makes me prouder than people who are younger than me putting their lives on the line for justice. And nothing sickens me more than older people standing in their way, or calling them naive for wanting to change the world that we have handed them, or claiming that protesting state violence is somehow itself violent when it gets to the point of sicing the cops on kids because they are disrupting your propriety or your own self image over your failure to oppose a genocide. Let's say you. You've crossed over into fasci dad territory and this podcast exists to do the opposite. So today we talk about how the encampment came together in response to Israel's genocide in Gaza, the support Sarah received from peers and elders, what it all cost, and what was learned. So that's coming up in a bit.
Of course, first we have some housekeeping, because as our favorite fact uncle says, it's like, I don't know how you can go out and protest the structure of the entire economic system if you can't keep your room organized. Hey, thanks again, Jordan. I hear you've been really ill lately. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you are getting really good care here in our socialized healthcare system.
So, housekeeping. You can find me on Blue sky and Instagram under my name and at YouTube and on TikTok as anti fascistad. I'll be on TikTok for as long as possible, you know, until Larry Ellison decides to kick me off.
But I have had a few viral hits there, which has been kind of interesting. And also I'm spinning up a Patreon to make this all more sustainable. As I noted last week, my idea for Patreon for this project is to use it as a temporary paywall for what I really want to be educational content that's accessible to everybody. So today you'll hear the first half of my interview with Sara Resik. And if you really can't wait to catch the second half, you'll find it on Patreon at AntiFascistDadpodcast there. It's already up. It'll be exclusive to Patreon for two to three weeks. And the other series of temporarily paywalled episodes will be a YouTube series called Antifascist Dad Basics, in which I do some woodshed work on key terms like left, right, liberal capitalism, and so on that we just can't avoid if we're trying to have a clear conversation about fascism and how to oppose it. And here's a request for you. Please share this podcast feed around. Can you thank you. And lastly, in the show Notes you will see a pre order link for the book that this podcast is based on and supporting, also called Antifascist Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. It's coming out in April of 2020.
Next up we have Fascist Squish and Anti Fascist News of the Week.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: Okay, let me be very clear. There is a genocide going on in front of our very eyes. A livestreamed genocide on all of our phones. No one has the privilege to say we are not aware of what is happening.
No one in the future will be able to say we did not know.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: So that's Greta Thunbere in the Athens Airport on October 6 after arriving on her deportation flight from Israel. And she's speaking right into the mouth of the eternal and ongoing FASC Squish anti Fascist battle. This is a person who, from the age of 13, has been smeared by the right wing as a hysterical puppet. They've spread conspiracy theories about her family, they've mocked her autism, they've fantasized about Israel killing her.
But in the squish department, liberals who once platformed her as an ecological savior have retreated as her message expands from climate alarm to colonialism and Gaza.
Thunbere enrages fascists by breaking obedience, and she unsettles liberals by naming capitalism as the crisis. And her neurodivergent vantage point helps, I believe, reveal contradictions that most people are trained to ignore. Now, over on Conspirituality Podcast, I've done a number of episodes on the intersection of Thunbere's activism with her autistic experience of life. I'll link those in the notes. The one thing I didn't lean into is her persistent refusal to center herself, to buy into the personal baiting from the right and the fragile adulation from the center.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: And I could talk for a very, very long about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment, trust me. But that is not the story.
What happened here was that Israel, while continuing to worsen and escalate their genocide and mass destruction, with genocidal intent, attempting to erase an entire population, an entire nation, in front of our very eyes, they once again violated international law by preventing humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza while people are being starved.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: I think that's how you do it. And I think that it speaks to Tunber's ability to learn from outside of the imperial core and to decenter herself, but also perhaps to her lived understanding that she's not where she is because of some kind of individualistic heroism that's unique to her.
As I covered in those previous episodes, Thunbere is very clear about the extent to which her family and comrade network have been essential to meeting her support needs. As an autistic person. This is someone who spent years with selective mutism and enormous challenges in eating and in leaving the house. She did not get out of autistic burnout alone. And so one of the things I see in her selflessness is her willingness to pass that network of care on.
Now, there were plenty of outraged remarks at reports of Tunbera being physically assaulted and humiliated in the Ketziot prison in Israel.
And this is understandable. I felt it too. It's horrible to think about.
But I also detected some notes of infantilization there as well, probably related to her physical size or maybe a frozen in time image many now have of her as that school boycotting kid on the pavement in front of the Swedish Parliament all those years ago.
But she's 22 years old today, and I think we should look carefully at how some of that she's a vulnerable little girl attitude is related to an implicit diminishment of her moral clarity. As in, only a child could be so naive as to speak truth to power like that.
I think there are a lot of grownups out there who simply can't believe that their basic morality is being challenged down to the core. And so it's easier to pass her on the head or to patronize her.
Okay, so I want to give a little background on why Sarah Racik is my second guest. There were three major turning points that drove me inexorably towards this project.
When the dust cleared on January 6, 2021, it was clear to me and a lot of other people, including historian Robert Paxton, that the warning phase of impending fascism in North America was over. It was in the can. It was yesterday's news.
The insurrection had been put down. But we knew this was only temporary, it wouldn't be enough for me to continue to investigate just how weird and dangerous QAnon was or how bad Christian nationalism was. It was obvious that their material power was largely unopposed, and so the focus of my journey turned toward people who were standing and fighting.
So if we fast forward TO More than three years later, the sun rises on November 5, 2024 and our 12 year old asks me who won the election and I had to tell him. And then he asked what's gonna happen now? And I didn't have anything to offer beyond a hug. But then, haunted, sleepless, I sat down to write a book about all of this stuff. Now between those two days fell the Hamas strike taking of October 7, 2023, during which hundreds of Israeli civilians and military personnel were murdered by Hamas fighters.
At least 14 civilians were killed by the disorganized IDF response that morning as they invoked the Hannibal Directive, which states that it's better to kill one's own citizens than allow them to be taken as hostages.
Now that day was immediately followed by an overwhelming military response from Israel which pretended that the attack had come out of the blue, that history had somehow begun on October 7, and from the outset it was clear that the response was not about security or vengeance, or even retrieving the hostages.
Within weeks, Israeli leaders were invoking genocidal passages from scripture that described all Palestinians, including the children, as animals deserving of death, and they promised to cut off electricity, food and water to the entire Gazan population of over 2 million people. And it turns out they meant it. And yet still they enjoyed nearly universal material and political and even moral support from the governments of the global North.
Liberal governments who give lip service to human rights while maintaining the capitalist order. Governments like that of then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau here in my home country of Canada, who is very careful to meet diversity goals in assigning cabinet positions and he marches in every pride parade.
But from the jump, anti fascists understood many things could be true at the same time. First, that the Hamas strike was shocking, may have involved war crimes, and was intended to accelerate the question of Palestinian self determination by risking incalculably high costs.
Second, violent uprisings in decolonial contexts are historically predictable acts of self defense.
October 7th flowed seamlessly out of a 77 year history of displacement, ethnic cleansing, mass political imprisonment, the normalized maiming and killing of protesters, and forced caloric restriction through food blockading.
In such a situation, a violent uprising is an attempt, as Frantz Fanon wrote in Wretched of the earth to regain agency and dignity.
Third, that day would initiate a test of whether the global north capitalist status quo that maintains and expands colonial era inequalities could be exposed for what it is and challenged in all of the places that serve as its pillars of support our governments, our banks, our corporations and our universities. And that test would be written in the response to protests.
So for people familiar with the Palestinian struggle over decades, these three realizations came early and wrapped up together. And what it took me and I think a lot of others to realize in addition to that was that as the civilian death toll in Gaza kept spiraling upward, was that the way in which we orient ourselves towards a genocide unfolding before our eyes is about as clear a litmus test as we could ask for when it comes to whether we can it all together to realize that colonial murder and environmental destruction on the other side of the world and fascist repression at home are part of the same picture and that you can't effectively fight one while ignoring or downplaying the other.
This is the imperial boomerang analysis of Martiniquet poet and politician Aime Cesaire from his discourse on colonialism going right back to 1950, which says that the origins of European fascism lie in colonial terror turning against its own people.
One of the things that makes the boomerang so visible in the case of Gaza is that we can see it fly out to strike the civilians there dead, and then we can see it arc and curve and spin back to menace those who protest those deaths on the streets.
The urgency of this analysis was accelerated as the Biden Harris administration attempted to campaign against Trump for a second White House term in the lead up to November 2024.
Their strategy was to continue business as usual by funding Israel's war machine and ignoring and then condemning as violent the rising tide of protest from their own voters against Israel's actions and American complicity.
That tide was largely driven by university students at 140 campuses in the US and internationally, including universities here in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and several European countries.
So this is why I wanted to talk with Sarah more than a year and a half later, because she was a leading organizer and spokesperson for U of T's Occupy for Palestine throughout that time that they were active that spring, I'd seen and heard Sarah on major.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: Media outlets to President Gertler and the Board of Governors. Hear this There will be no business as usual on campus until you meet our demands.
You can continue trying to get your injunctions, you can call your police, but you cannot stop the people from pushing for justice every day you refuse to act, you further harm your own reputation. This encampment is just one tactic, and we are prepared to employ as many as necessary to achieve our demands. We call on every student, every faculty member, every staff member with a conscience. Right now is the time to stand up, join us in escalating pressure, whether it's in the classrooms, boardrooms, or on the streets. Make sure that it is impossible for this university to get by with its complicity in genocide, in a genocide that is killing babies, creating orphans, and murdering Palestinian civilians. To our fellow students and comrades across the country and around the world, take note. Again, just like at Columbia, just like at ucla, just like at U, Calgary and Edmonton, this is how institutions react when their moral bankruptcy is exposed. But we will not be silenced. We will not be moved. Our movement on campus is growing and it will continue to grow until Palestine is free.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Like her fellow organizers, she was on fire.
And despite the obvious exhaustion and weathering intimidation from counter protesters and warnings from the Toronto police services and the U of T administration, and being aware of how universities across the world were violently cracking down on other encampments, she remained on message. And I want to underline that in Canada at that time, there were very few other organized protest events focused on the genocide. So for those two months, Sarah and her colleagues provided the most visible resistance to the administration of this global catastrophe. And this is despite the fact that the Trudeau government was continuing to approve military export licenses to Israel worth tens of millions of dollars, even after pledging to pause in January of 2024.
According to the investigatory group Arms Embargo Now, Canada sent 47 shipments of military related components to Israeli weapons companies between October 2023 and July 2025, including 421,000 bullets. So when I hear about some kid getting shot by the IDF while lining up for a bag of flour, I know that could have been with a bullet that I paid for out of my taxes.
And that acute awareness of the interconnected nature of things is what these students were hanging on to day after day, night after restless night in their tents. And as Sarah tells me in our discussion, there was nothing abstract about the issue. She was camping with comrades who were receiving reports of their family members being murdered in Gaza.
As a Gen Xer and a parent of two, as I said at the top, there's nothing that enrages me more than seeing young people like this dismissed, condescended to, told that they don't understand what they're doing, that they're being a nuisance and should really just get back to their studies.
So here we are. Sarah rasik is a PhD student at the University of Toronto. She holds a Master's of Arts in Social Justice Education and an honours Bachelor of Arts in Ethics, Society and Law and Critical Studies and Equity and Solidarity, both from the University of Toronto.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Sam.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Hello, Sarah.
[00:19:30] Speaker D: Welcome to Antifascist Dad.
[00:19:32] Speaker E: Thanks for having me.
[00:19:33] Speaker D: Spring of 2024.
You and your friends and your colleagues have for months been hyper aware that Israel has responded to October 7th with overwhelming murderous collective punishment.
Do you remember the moment that you first heard about the idea of encampment as a protest and resistance strategy?
[00:19:55] Speaker E: I don't remember a single moment when the encampment idea first came up, but I do remember knowing that we had to do something when they began emerging globally. We had already occupied Simcoe hall one time, which was the president's office at the university, a few months earlier. And that was the first time that the administration even acknowledged our presence on campus after weeks and weeks and months and months of weekly protests. And so there was that. And then at the same time, we were obviously carrying the grief of entire families killed in Gaza.
Tens of thousands killed, entire families erased, famine being weaponized, which as we know is still happening to this day. And so we knew that we had to stage an encampment at U of T. We kind of waited as much as we could to try to align the encampment with convocation to make it impossible for the university to celebrate while remaining invested in companies profiting from that violence. And so we had all these thoughts going and it kind of happened as the encampments were emerging with regard to.
[00:21:00] Speaker D: The personal and familial grief. I think you're describing the fact that within your community there are direct connections to the region and there are people whose family members are being directly attacked. So this would be a central focus, I imagine, in some of your meetings and gatherings.
[00:21:20] Speaker E: Absolutely, yeah. We've had a student go directly up to the university president and tell them that they've had family members murdered in Gaza and they've been told to go and get mental health support at the Health and Wellness Center. And so, you know, we've confronted the university with these facts and students who have been directly impacted have confronted the university directly and they've just kind of been pushed away.
[00:21:44] Speaker D: That deflection or handing off the student to mental health services is quite extraordinary because it suggests that somehow it's some sort of personal trauma that the person has to work on Themselves. And that's not the point at all.
[00:22:00] Speaker E: And that's why it's so frustrating. It feels as if we're speaking to an entity that is so distant from where we're coming from and our reality.
[00:22:11] Speaker D: But they have some way of sort of pretending that they can offer some care.
[00:22:15] Speaker E: I mean, they have to say something. And so. Exactly. It's deflection. It's. It's exactly that.
[00:22:21] Speaker D: I just want to make a full disclosure here and say that I went to U of T back in the early 90s. I studied English literature, cultural theory, religious studies. At the time, I went to, like, a lot of Marxist meetings and environmentalist meetings and rallies. But the university itself was something that we saw, or maybe I should just say I saw as an organizing hub.
I didn't really see the institution itself as the target of my political awareness. But I'm sure that if we'd looked closer at the money at the time, we would have seen endowments and pensions invested in arms manufacturers, Zionist corporations.
Do you think we were naive? Are you guys just smarter nowadays? And are these universities less capable of hiding their capitalist nature at this point?
[00:23:16] Speaker E: I wouldn't call it naive. I think that each generation confronts universities within their own context. I think what may be different now could be the visibility of financial and political ties. I think that it's harder for institutions to hide their investments in corporations profiting from occupation and war and violence. I think at U of T, student organizing against South African apartheid in the 1980s laid really, really important groundwork for the organizing that we're doing today.
As you may be aware, beginning in 1983, students and allies created the anti apartheid network, the AAN, and they drew members in from the Communist Movement Club, the African and Caribbean Students association, the Student Christian Movement, to name a few.
And similar to us today, they had strong support among students, but little traction with the administration.
And the archives of their organizing, some of which are available through the Varsity, which is the U of T student newspaper. And their strategies kind of gave later generations, including ours, a foundation.
I think that it's that history that built us up for the encampment. We weren't necessarily smarter, but we could draw on decades of this collective knowledge about how to pressure universities while navigating, obviously, their reluctance to act, which has always existed.
And so I do think that there is a pretty direct connection.
[00:24:44] Speaker D: Maybe I'm outing myself as somebody who might have been in some sort of pocket of, you know, protest and resistance that just was not that connected to the previous anti apartheid Struggles. And so I never remember sort of the examination of accounting or finances really coming up in discussions. And I guess I wouldn't have known at the time how to go about learning more about that. I mean, I assume that when your organizations are looking into U of T finances, you're looking at, you know, online records and disclosure reports that are not that difficult to find and to understand they're publicly available.
[00:25:23] Speaker E: Absolutely, yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: So I also think it's connected to.
[00:25:28] Speaker D: A curriculum issue as well, because by the early 90s, I was starting to get drift of post colonial scholarship. You know, who does and who doesn't have the right to speak.
And when I read Edward Said on Orientalism, I thought it was because the university was enlightened.
And I think I missed the part about how institutions resist outsider knowledge as hard as they can. So it took me a long time to realize that curriculum battles mirrored battles over real material politics in the university itself. Like.
So I wanted to ask, do you think that that aspect of things has changed very much?
[00:26:07] Speaker E: Yeah, that's a great question.
That dynamic is still very much present. I think that universities continue to selectively embrace radical or postcolonial ideas, but they highlight theory while actively avoiding the political implications.
[00:26:22] Speaker D: Oh, okay, so the books are okay.
[00:26:25] Speaker E: The books are okay, the language is okay to use, but as soon as that becomes praxis oriented, now that's a problem. And you know, I know leftist professors at the universities who have faced pushback from the administration or from other students as well, for teaching certain ideas, for introducing radical, again, practice oriented ideas into the classroom, for challenging institutional norms, for supporting the encampment for one.
And I think it's in that way that curriculum battles often reflect material power. But what gets taught shows what the university is willing to legitimize and what it wants to erase.
And in the case of Palestine, I think that culturally responsive frameworks often leave out the realities of occupation. And so in that way they can still protect their financial and political interests while awareness is still something that is being passed down to students.
And so that underlying resistance to outside knowledge that you mentioned I don't think has really changed. But I think that that's where grassroots in student organizing and movements kind of come in. And they continue to challenge these limits and create spaces where this knowledge can surface and where institutional resistance can then be kind of confronted more directly. And at the encampment, I keep coming back to the encampment, but we had libraries that students and allies built from books excluded from institutional collections. And we launched political education Initiatives that centered Palestinian and indigenous worldviews that I would say the university often considers beyond the bounds of acceptable, you know, university discourse. And so it's in those ways that we kind of take that power back and reintroduce, quote, unquote, radical ideas and politics into the classroom and also make.
[00:28:14] Speaker D: This transition that you're talking about between the books and practice. And I think that the encampment is a situation in which the contradiction between, you know, what is being read or what's being accepted as kind of like historically interesting and what's actually meant to be used becomes really vibrant. Because you can read Frantz Fanon on the violence of decolonization as a historical text, or you can sit in the encampment and realize that he's speaking to you and to your situation and to something that's actually vibrant and alive. And it seems that that's the threshold that gets crossed and makes the institution very uncomfortable.
[00:28:57] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. And at the encampment, for example, we had so many students mobilize and show up for Palestine, but then leave with a more radical politic.
And so that's kind of how that happens too. Right. It's when we connect to these texts and to these theoretical ideas in a way that so directly tied or linked to our reality, but also the work that we're doing.
[00:29:19] Speaker D: How did you flow into your role as a spokesperson and negotiator during the encampment? Was there anything specific that prepared you for that?
[00:29:28] Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, I flowed into the role of spokesperson, I think, out of necessity, but also solidarity. Palestinians obviously carried the highest risks for speaking out publicly. And so others of us kind of stepped into forward to share that burden. And it obviously wasn't easy. You know, sleeping in a tent for two months, as I mentioned earlier, meant that we were constantly underslept and overworked.
And then on top of that, being a public facing organizer came with real costs. I was doxed. We received online threats. We carried constant fears about how this might affect our academic standing, our future career opportunities.
When the university filed for an injunction, they named myself and most other visible spokespeople directly. And that kind of made clear the personal risks of visibility as well. I think what held me through all of that wasn't any special preparation, but I think the understanding that these personal costs were nothing compared to the costs that Palestinians were facing as they endure genocide. And I think that it was the recognition that these risks, as real and as frightening as they were, remain a fraction again of what Palestinians live through daily. And so while I did fear damage to my career or to my future opportunities, it was kind of just grounding myself. And this is just what we did as a collective grounding ourselves in this reality that Palestinians are facing. The loss of their homes, of their families, of their land, of their very ability to survive, to live. The genocide, as we've discussed, is relentless airstrikes, starvation, mass displacement, the deliberate targeting of every facet of Palestinian life. And so remembering that, I mean, we just couldn't allow for the fear of our own losses to silence us. And again, as you mentioned earlier, we had Palestinian students, staff, faculty allies with us at that encampment. We had parents who had lost children. We had siblings who had, you know, students who had lost their siblings, people who had lost uncles and aunts and cousins.
And these were our comrades in that moment and continue to be.
And so just kind of grounding ourselves in that reality and reminding ourselves that we're implicated, our tuition dollars, our taxes, we are directly contributing to that violence, the brutal, ongoing genocide that kept us going.
[00:31:51] Speaker D: It sounds like you're directly, through the personal contacts and the storytelling and the familial contacts, you're actually feeling quite closely, moment by moment, and probably taking in news reports of, you know, the latest strikes or attacks or death counts. It's something that I think you're probably feeling quite closely as if you're there, but you're not.
[00:32:19] Speaker E: That's right. It felt very personal. And every evening when we'd have our, like, big community dinner or our evening meetings, we would read out these facts, and we would read out.
We would look at the news, and we would, you know, kind of share escalations with one another just to keep up to date and to remind ourselves why we were there and why the protest was so urgent and so necessary.
[00:32:43] Speaker D: I would imagine, because empathy exhaustion is real, you would have to also sort of care for each other to protect against burnout.
[00:32:54] Speaker E: Absolutely. Solidarity was at the center of the encampment, and the work that we did and building comradely relationships as well was. Was quite central.
And without that care that we were extending to each other and without that support that we were getting again from being in that space and from one another, there would have been no encampment.
There couldn't have been. It was all about coming together, supporting one another, building trust, the slow work of building trust, something that can't be rushed, and just grounding ourselves again in the certainty that this was the right thing to do. And again, necessary and urgent.
[00:33:32] Speaker D: Was your family concerned for your safety? Were they supportive? Did you get guidance from your elders?
[00:33:38] Speaker E: Yeah, they were definitely concerned. They saw the doxxing, they saw the police violence at other encampments.
They were worried about how all of this might affect my long term opportunities.
But at the same time, I do think that they understood why I was there. I come from a family where solidarity and justice aren't just abstract values. They're deeply connected to reality and to left commitments. And so even in their worry, they never really asked me to step back. Instead, I think their guidance was more about how to manage the different emotions that surfaced at times, how to carry myself through everything.
My elders reminded me to be intentional with everything that I was saying, to never make the movement about myself, to always center the movement's interests in everything that I did. And that every generation is kind of faced with its own tests of courage and its own tests of responsibility and that ours in that moment was standing up against the genocide in Palestine. And so it was mostly supportive, but of course there was deep concern as well, especially when I was going through it or when I was having tough days.
[00:34:46] Speaker D: You know, I think there's a level of concern, parental concern, that is supportive to the extent that it does look a little bit farther and it says, make sure you consider X, Y and Z.
And then it can cross over into a line where it has a chilling effect, where it's like, I'm actually too scared of you going forward with this action. And so I would like you to reconsider.
And it sounds like that's going to be a difficult line for a lot of parents to find. But it also sounds like your supporters, they didn't go over it.
[00:35:26] Speaker E: Thankfully not. Yeah, I don't know what I would have done if they did, but they were supportive enough for me to remain there and to continue doing the work that I was doing.
[00:35:34] Speaker D: One feature of the encampments that I found really, really moving was that often I would see on social media that there would be Jewish groups that would organize seder for the whole camp.
And I wanted to ask whether the Muslim folks offered kind of spiritual gathering or ritual as well. Like, I didn't hear about that, but I wouldn't be surprised.
[00:35:57] Speaker E: Yes, there were definitely spiritual and religious rituals offered throughout the encampment. As you mentioned, Jewish students, staff and faculty would hold weekly Shabbat service on Fridays. And so Friday evenings, which was so beautiful. And then Muslim students organized daily prayers and especially Friday jama prayers inside the camp, which again was also really powerful. And then we had Christian students who came in to offer their prayers and their blessings.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: And.
[00:36:26] Speaker E: And I think beyond the formal rituals, there was just a shared epic of care that felt deeply spiritual in its own right, that brought people together from people cooking from one another, tending to the garden, singing together at night. I think the encampment became a space where these spiritual practices kind of came together in solidarity. And for me, it was those moments that showed the power of community and coming together. Having Muslim folks, for example, participate in the Shabbat service, having Jewish students, staff and faculty show up and be part of the jama' at prayers, Christian folks come in and, you know, offer their blessings. And for everybody to really be present in those moments and connect with each other's faiths and spiritual practices was something that I had never witnessed before.
And it was really, really special. And I think again, it was those moments that really brought us together and helped build trust and solidarity and care.
[00:37:23] Speaker D: I think what's most moving about those stories is that they really represent a kind of prefigurative politics for the region that is under scrutiny and that's going through chaos. Because I think when we're talking about stopping genocide in Gaza, that ecumenical spiritual longing has got to have a role to play. And people figuring out, like, what do we actually share and how do these celebrations weave themselves together? That's got to have a role to play.
[00:37:56] Speaker E: Absolutely, yeah. And it was central. Again, these were the moments in which we came together and built the care and the solidarity necessary.
[00:38:03] Speaker D: You talked about food, and I wanted to ask you about that because I imagine there were some pretty good potluck nights.
[00:38:09] Speaker E: Yes, there were some really great potluck nights. I think that food was a huge part of how the encampment sustained itself, both practically and emotionally.
People would bring big trays of home cooked meals, often dishes from their own cultural traditions, and we'd gather around and eat together.
And those nights, I think, felt less like a protest camp and more like a family or community space almost.
You'd have, you know, Palestinian food alongside South Asian food, someone's lasagna and then dessert passed around at the very end. And what was special about those evenings wasn't just the food, but the feeling of generosity and abundance in a context where the university and the media were constantly trying to frame us as dangerous or disruptive. And so, you know, sitting together, sharing food from so many kitchens, it felt as if we were caring for one another in a way that the university would refuse to. And as if kind of like what you mentioned earlier, as well, as if we were creating the kind of world that we wanted to live in, one rooted in care and in solidarity.
[00:39:18] Speaker D: Is this where the parents also came in? Were there vans rolling up with the Tupperware and stuff like that? Like, if you're gonna protest, at least you're gonna have some good food.
[00:39:26] Speaker E: Yes, the parents and the kids and the grandparents.
[00:39:30] Speaker D: Amazing.
[00:39:30] Speaker E: And the uncles and the aunties. Yeah, we'd have community show up and we'd break breath together.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: So that is the first half of my conversation with Sarah Racik. And you'll find the rest of it on Patreon right now, in which we go a little bit deeper into the logistics of support, what protesters learn and what happens when the cops rip your tents down.
So that's a wrap for episode two, except for faschy dad of the week. Oh, note the distinction. Sometimes this segment will target full on fascists, as we did last week with Vice President Vance. This week, the adjective is fascy because the winner, in keeping with our theme today, is Keir Starmer, the toniest, cleanest, cut, poshest fashy dad on the world stage today.
And there's a ton to say about his slimy slide into facilitating Israel at every turn. But I'll highlight one point.
Amidst continuing to allow UK firms to sell military technology, including 15% of the parts that are required for Israel's F35 fighters, besides sending supply flights, besides offering Israel air surveillance support out of Cyprus through hundreds of flights of unmanned aircraft, Starmer's government has cracked down on even the most benign protests by classifying certain posters as vocalizing support for domestic terrorism.
At issue is a group called Palestine Action, a direct action group whose members have committed property damage against the Royal Air Force by splashing red paint on two jets used for air to air refueling and banging on them with crowbars, members suggested that these jets are the types of jets that are being used to aid Israeli military activities. The Starmer government, which is currently underwater and all polling, but especially in polling on foreign policy, contends that this tiny group is a threat to domestic security.
But so too is anyone who expresses support for their aims with a Sharpie marker. So every weekend over the past few months brings a stream of absurd videos of regular folks, including elderly people, clergy members, and even a friend of mine who is a yoga teacher in London. Shout out to Norman Blair, hauled off by police for holding signs that say stop genocide. I support Palestine Action.
Now, the issue of how liberal democracies deal with and criminalize protests, especially involving groups that damage the instruments of state violence. This really needs its own episode to explore because there are plenty of complexities that people get into over definitions of violence. I'll be exploring some of that material next week with Ben Case, who's a scholar of street protesting.
But what I want to leave you with this week is the taste of the fasci here as opposed to the fascist.
Because when we watch the Metropolitan Police in London very carefully and methodically read elderly men and women their rights and inform them of their alleged association with terrorists and hear from the protesters that they're not gonna stand up and they're not gonna move, and so they get picked up by the team of six bobbies and carried off. We're not seeing the goose stepping, we're not seeing the jackboots stomping. The cops aren't screaming at anybody. But what we do see is the nitpicking procedural suppression of speech and resistance by a liberal democracy that doesn't want to fundamentally shift its ways of doing business. In the global hierarchy of capitalism, there is literally no reason for these old nuns to be arrested, except to signal to the rest of the population that there is a heavy price for challenging business as usual.
I'm Matthew. That's it for this week. I'll see you over on Patreon for Sarah Racine, Part two. Or next week, back here with Ben Case, where we'll be talking about courage, physical and otherwise, in anti fascism.
Take care of each other.
