Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome Patreons to this temporarily paywalled continuation of the main feed Interview of Episode two, Encampment for Palestine with Sarah Rasik, a lead organizer and spokesperson for U of T's Occupy for Palestine. I'm really grateful for your support. I hope this project brings you some joy, some hope, some some utility things that you can use in your work Sundays. And I'll just reiterate that my plan for these part twos is to review, maybe reflect a little beforehand on what I learned, and then roll the rest of the conversation, but then return with some further reflections. So one of the advantages of, you know, parceling these out, as I was mentioning last time, is that it gives more time for digestion. And I'm happy to say that I'm working in advance and so I have a good amount of time to do that. Now just to review part one of my conversation with Sarah, she described how, inspired by global student movements, U of T organizers staged an encampment specifically timed against the convocation festivities to expose the university's complicity in Gaza's genocide. The notion of the university celebrating itself during a time of silence and complicity was just, just too much, and they thought it would be a really poignant contrast. And so she described how students with family in Gaza would share their stories not only with the group, but also with the administration, and how they were patronized by having administrators refer them to mental health services.
So I want to return to this one thing that I discussed with Sarah about my own blinders back in the day when I was at U of T and and it's around this issue of yes, I was there and I was a leftist and I went to protests, but I didn't see the university itself as part of the institutionalized problem of our various hierarchies.
Maybe it was the fact that I had fairly left ish professors.
Maybe I thought they were actually welcome and they were representative of the administration in some way.
I think I also had this youthful illusion that somehow going to university would naturally give a person left wing politics. Like how couldn't it, once you found out a little bit more about how the world works?
And I think I also gapped out that I was attending college alongside MBA students or people who were training to become economists or technocrats.
Now the way I expressed this to Sarah was that I really admire how Gen Z seems to be smarter about all of this, but she reminded me that anti apartheid student protests of the earlier 1980s were specifically targeting U of T investments in South Africa, and they were really effective. And so Palestine actions didn't have to invent some sort of playbook.
But I think the fact that I didn't connect those two things tells me something important about how crucial it is for antifascists to pass their stories and tactics down through the years and through intersectional communities that work with each other. Because I missed that connection and that history, and I wish I hadn't.
I think one of the most daunting feelings I believe we can have as young anti fascists is this feeling that we have to invent things on the fly, but there are always elders standing behind us.
Let me pick things up where we left off.
So there's so much good stuff that.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Comes out of this. It sounds like it's sort of a. As difficult as it is, it's also like an incredibly meaningful and perhaps even peak experience of learning for many people. But you're also vilified during this process.
So I've got a list of shitty things I heard pro Israel counter protesters say. So if you can bear it, I. I just would ask you to comment on each of these and you'll notice a refrain here. Okay, so the first one is, these stupid kids don't know how complex the issue is. They should really be focused on their courses.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: I mean, we heard that all the time. That's a way of delegitimizing student political work. Universities love to brand themselves as sites of critical thinking. But the moment thinking gets applied to power and injustice, suddenly students are too naive. We're too young, we're too distracted from the quote unquote, real work. And so we actually took the issue seriously enough to educate ourselves and to do the research and to connect with community members and to think through what solidarity should look like on our campus. And of course, we made mistakes and we were learning as we were going, but it wasn't the avoidance of our studies. I think that the encampment was a direct extension of our studies and.
And that was a fun one. We used to get that quite a bit on social media and from traditional media as well. I remember being asked by a CBC reporter why we were at the encampment and not studying for exams. I remember these questions would be asked to us quite directly all the time.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: And sometimes I think it came implicitly from the university itself, which is kind of a weird thing to do to your own students because I think most of the time the university wants to talk up the intelligence of their students.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It was weird.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Here's the next one. Well, these Stupid kids are supporting terrorism.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: That accusation was thrown around constantly as well. It was always meant to erase the work that we were doing to scare people into silence. And I think that labeling any resistance to Israel as terrorism also erases the long history of colonization and the ongoing reality of apartheid.
It's also dangerous because it feeds into the anti Arab and the anti Muslim racism, Islamophobia, racism where Palestinian life and political struggle are criminalized. And it's also important to kind of know that we were organizing for the university to be neutral. Divestment is neutrality. Right now they're invested in Israel in every way. And so we were actually calling on them to stand by their so called claims to neutrality. And that's what the protest was about.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Okay, next one is these stupid kids. So that's a refrain, right? Are making Jewish students feel unsafe. And that's anti Semitic.
[00:06:54] Speaker C: Yeah. And this one weaponized the real fear of antisemitism to silence anti Zionist organizing at the encampment. As I mentioned earlier, we had Jewish students, staff and faculty. We had rabbis present almost every single day. They liked programming, they spoke at rallies, ate meals with us. To say that we made all Jewish students unsafe is just untrue. The Jewish students who joined us often said that they felt more safe in the encampment than anywhere else on campus. And what the administration and the media did was collapse Jewish with Zionist raising the diversity of Jewish political thought. And that in and of itself, I think that collapse is anti Semitic. And there's also a difference between being uncomfortable versus being unsafe, feeling uncomfortable rather versus being unsafe. And so if we're talking about safety, I would say that it would be the Jewish students on campus who were getting harassed at every Shabbat service who were unsafe.
It would be the students who were getting threats online 247 who were unsafe.
And to those who were uncomfortable in that moment, I would ask them to question why. Why does resisting or pushing back against genocide and complicity in genocide make anybody feel unsafe?
[00:08:10] Speaker B: The next statement came up quite a bit, which is to say from, or as a slogan to chant. From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free. There's a number of ways of ending that, but that this is a call to murder all Jews, right?
[00:08:27] Speaker C: I mean, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is a demand for equality and freedom across all of Palestine. Historic Palestine. It doesn't say kick people out. It doesn't say murder anyone. And I think that the people who, who say that it means murder all Jewish people are the ones projecting that interpretation, usually because they can't imagine freedom for Palestinians unless it comes at the expense of others.
So, yeah, I absolutely reject that.
That claim.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: All of this said, did you at times have issues with movement discipline? So were there at points at which, for instance, encampment protesters really failed to distinguish between, let's say, anti Zionism and antisemitism?
[00:09:12] Speaker C: We had a few cases of anti Palestinian racism at the encampment and other forms of racism as well, given that the encampment was again, an urgent protest and maybe we didn't build the necessary trust prior to it. Again, the slow work of building trust coming into it. We went from 60 students on day one to 200 within a few weeks. And so there was obviously that little learning curve that emerged from. But I will say that sabotage was real as well. We had counter protesters who would try to provoke us constantly, who would shout slurs and spread disinformation, who would try to send infiltrators into the encampment. In that way, movement discipline, I think, was everything. We spent hours trying to make sure that people understood that we were there against Zionism, that we were there against genocide, against settler colonialism, obviously not against Jewish people.
Were there moments where people slipped up? I think yes. With a camp that large, we couldn't account for every single person. But with anti Semitism, even when people slipped up, it was usually anti Palestinian racism, which is what we witnessed.
I didn't witness any anti Semitism myself.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: What was the process for admitting somebody into the encampment from that beginning? Group of 60 to 200.
Was there an intake process? Was there sort of single gateway through which people could enter? And did everybody have to be interviewed? I mean, it sounds like a lot of work, right?
[00:10:46] Speaker C: We had a gate team.
There was one gate, and then we just had a zero tolerance policy. People would have to agree to the ground rules. Again, things like not using any inflammatory language, not smoking, just like rules around discipline. But also, for example, no anti Semitism allowed, no racism, no homophobia, no sexism, like, no harassment, things like that. And so we had a long list of rules. As long as people verbally agreed to it, they were allowed in. And it's important to note that the university had actually fenced King's College Circle off. And so with the encampment, we almost opened it up to the community and to students, instead of closing it off to students, which is, again, something that we hear quite often, or we used to hear quite often during the encampment, as if we took the space away from students who wanted to enjoy it. But in fact, again, we had opened it up to the community.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: I remember the morning actually, because I think you probably gathered pretty early. It was four or five o' clock and I was watching the reports on social media and the university had fenced with security fences the King's College quad off.
And you opened it up?
[00:11:58] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: I mean.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: It was about letting students in.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: That's kind of an amazing piece of history not to be lost there. Right.
So ultimately the encampment was dismantled, but the killing went on.
And now, as you've mentioned, there's weaponized famine.
Was it for nothing or did you forge wisdom through the process?
[00:12:25] Speaker C: It definitely wasn't for nothing. The encampment politicized so many students. It built deep networks of solidarity. It broke the university silence.
Even though it was dismantled, I do think that it shifted the terrain for me. I think the wisdom was realizing that our role isn't only about immediate wins, but about creating irreversible political consciousness and about showing what mobilizing can do in the face of genocide. And we know that this movement doesn't end here. We know that a commitment to Palestinian liberation cannot be separated from the broader struggle against settler colonialism and racial capitalism. And the connections, I think as well between so called Canada's colonial foundation and the Zionist entities occupation of Palestine are not merely symbolic. They are grounded in a shared logic of land theft, of militarization, of racial hierarchy. And so I think challenging these systems requires sustained grassroots organizing. And that is what the encampment was part of. And at times this work was slow and it was frustrating and we didn't have the leverage to force the university to change course in the ways that we would have hoped to. But that doesn't mean that we hadn't made an impact. In fact, I think the very escalation of institutional repression points to the strength of the movement. I think that the administration's refusal to engage with us wasn't a sign of indifference. I think rather it was a response of fear.
And not fear of violence or chaos, but of clarity, of moral argument, of principled students standing together.
And part of that is on us being honest about the challenges ahead.
The university holds immense resources and it will continue to resist change. And yet our strength, I think, lies in each other and in the small acts of organizing that build the collective power necessary. And not every action will be dramatic. And much of the work will be quiet, for example, flowering or tabling or facilitating teach ins or holding visuals. But that is you know, the work that builds a movement capable of lasting. The encampment gave so many students their first experience of political organizing. It taught us how to stand firm. It taught us how to care for one another, how to keep going when the pressure mounts. And I think our task now is to kind of pass those lessons on and to support those new to the struggle and to ensure that the wisdom, as you mentioned, that we have gained does not stay locked in a single moment. And so to continue growing, to remind ourselves that we are the university as students, staff and faculty, community members as well, who have a stake in this, as the university is obviously located at the heart of the city, and its actions affect us all. I think just reminding ourselves that we are here and that we must remain here and apply pressure until the university meets its obligations and ends its complicity in this violence and this genocide, in the occupation and in the apartheid state.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Picking up on just one of those aspects, I want to say that I think the popularization of the real meaning of the phrase globalize the Intifada is probably, even though this is another demonized phrase that's misinterpreted or it's said to be a call for violence, I think that in terms of popular consciousness, the connection of the Palestinian struggle to other decolonial struggles around the world is incredibly valuable. And I would say that. And I might be speaking to my own youthful naivety here as well, but I will tell you that when I was in high school and the early years of college, I believed the story told about the founding of Israel, that somehow when Zionists arrived, both the early waves and the later waves, that they found either a desert or a swamp, depending on what story I was hearing, that there was nobody there, that they made the desert bloom.
And I'm in Toronto as a white kid learning this story, and I'm not. I'm Catholic, like. And I'm like, why?
Why do I know this story? Why was I taught this story?
And I think part of the answer is that colonial projects provide cover for each other.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: And if I had been told a different story, I might have looked a little bit more closely at the involvement of my heritage and my church in residential schooling. Or I might have looked at the paintings on the roof of the cathedral where we see the Jesuits converting the Ojibwe people, and I would have asked, well, what does that actually mean?
And so I think that when I hear globalize the intifada, I'm excited by people understanding the interconnectedness of decolonial struggles.
I'm also a little bit sad that I wasn't able to make that connection before.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: I mean, and that's exactly what it is, right? Intifada means uprising. And Palestinian uprisings have historically been about mass mobilization from general strikes to civil disobedience to boycotts, to demonstrations. And it's exactly what you said. To globalize the Intifada means to connect struggles from indigenous sovereignty to black liberation to anti imperialist movements around the world. It's about freedom and it's about life and it's not about death. And I think that's really special to connect these transnational movements, these global struggles, to one another because they are linked. It's freedom for all or freedom for none. And I think it's really just reminding ourselves that we must show up for one another. There's no way to separate these movements and these struggles from one another.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: So the last question is, what would you say to, let's say the 14 year old girl or boy in Toronto who looks up to you and who wants to give everything to a social movement? Like, what advice would you offer?
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I tell them to find mentors, to find friends, to find elders that they could lean on because no one can hold this work alone. I would tell them to practice saying no sometimes because boundaries a revolutionary, a sacrifice as revolutionary a sacrifice. I would tell them to remember that Palestine, like all liberation struggles, is about life and it's about beauty. It's about cooking and laughing and learning and praying and loving and that those things are resistance. And I would tell them to not be afraid of making mistakes. That movements need learners more than they need martyrs. And that the point is not to give everything away until nothing is left. The point is to give in a way that can sustain you as well.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time this morning. It's a pleasure to talk to you and I'm so grateful for the work that you do.
[00:19:33] Speaker C: Absolutely. Thank you so much once again for inviting me and for having me be part of this wonderful podcast.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: I want to close out today by talking about the Macklemore moment because it was kind of extraordinary for this white family in Toronto.
Okay. May 6, 2024.
Sara Recique is in a tent and I hear a song on YouTube that blows up the Internet because the 41 year old rap star Macklemore drops Hins hall in support of Sarah and all the other pro Palestinian student occupations and demonstrations that are peaking at that time.
Now his main focus was the takeover of Columbia University's Hamilton hall, which Protesters had renamed Hinds hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian five year old girl killed in Gaza on January 29th of 2024 along with six members of her family.
Their car was struck by Israeli tank fire as they tried to flee fighting in Gaza City and that strike killed most of her family. But Hind survived for hours inside the destroyed vehicle and pleaded over the phone for emergency rescue. And then when the paramedics arrived, tank fire killed them and Hind together.
Now I remember the song came out in the afternoon and that evening I had to drive our eldest son, he was then 11, to a Dungeons and Dragons night. And on the way home in the dark, I had this impulse to share the song with him.
So we had discussed the genocide in Gaza. I'd brought it up months earlier because I wanted to give him some non Zionist background if he came across the story somewhere, so he understood the scenario, the landscape a little bit. But it felt awful to talk about because there was no relief and no one was stopping it and our own government was complicit.
But there was something about this song that turned a corner in me and in our conversation because we're driving through the night. And then that first drop hits with Macklemore quoting N.W.A. when I was seven, I learned a lesson from Cuban Easy E. What was it again? Oh yeah, fuck the police. Actors are bad. And I watched my kid have a full on spiritual experience.
His jaw dropped, his eyes were wide, he's speechless at this intersection of art and rage and love.
And so we listened to it on repeat all the way home.
And that also marked the beginning of his rap listening life. So within a week, he'd also memorized half of the Kendrick Lamar archive.
This song was so, so incredible because it packed decades of history and longing into each bar and we could pick each bar apart and talk about them. And then I was able to tell him that the opening guitar hook was a sample from one of the most famous love songs by one of the most beloved singers in the Arab world, Fayrouz's iconic Ana La Habibi. And that for those folks to hear that woven into a protest anthem was this ultimate gesture of love and respect.
Because when they hear that first five seconds, you know, they probably feel like their hearts are exploding.
So fast forward. And a very similar thing plays out for kid number two about 18 months later. This is just a few weeks ago, also in the car, also while driving.
And he's younger, but he also knows about the genocide.
And we play the song and he also can't believe what he's hearing.
And so we got into the history of the song and especially the reasoning behind the. The fuck the police phrase and how it goes all the way back to protests against police brutality against black people in the late 1980s.
And that opened up a discussion of what it meant that Columbia University allowed militarized police to attack and round up students.
We talked about the complicity of the music industry, and as we listened to it on repeat, he picked out the phrases, white supremacy, nakba colonizer.
And we talked about each of those in turn.
And then at one point he says, I can't believe how perfectly the beat fits with the meaning. But his favorite line, and he waits for it in every repeat run through, is, what if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids?
And so that line comes on and he repeats it, and then he repeats it again under his breath. And then he looks at me with his big eyes and I say, yeah, right.
Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you back here. Peace and courage to you and yours.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Sam.
