Embedded Files
Bear Witness Undeniable Truths
The Discourse that is missing from the mainstream:
The Discourse that is missing from the mainstream:
Solidarity Embodied
Solidarity Embodied
P.E.P. (Progressive Except for Palestine) Social Justice Teach-In
P.E.P. (Progressive Except for Palestine) Social Justice Teach-In
This teach-in, presented by Jewish Voice for Peace Members and American River College History Professor, Sara Smith-Silverman discusses and examines why some progressives who advocate for social and economic justice often make an exception when it comes to Palestine, leaving Palestinians out of their calls for justice. This presentation also explains how the false conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is used to silence voices that support Palestinian human rights.
Resisting Erasure Through Art & Song
Resisting Erasure Through Art & Song
"Bent Bladak is a tribute to all women who carry generations of love, sacrifice, and courage within them. It's for every woman who’s ever loved fiercely and stood tall, even when the world tried to quiet her.
For me and my personal identity, I was inspired by the strength, creativity, and resilience of Palestinian women, the true backbones of our families and societies." Dana Salah, Palestinian-Jordanian singer, songwriter, and producer.
Resisting Earsure through Solidarity And Naming the Systems that Exclude
Resisting Earsure through Solidarity And Naming the Systems that Exclude
America and the War on Palestine:
Ta-Nehisi Coates led two conversations at the historic Riverside Church on 10th November 2024
• Noura Erakat and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on thinking beyond the state in the wake of the U.S. presidential election.
• Rabea Eghbariah, Farah Barqawi, Sahar Qawasmi, and Nida Sinnokrot, focusing on the ongoing colonization of Palestine from Gaza to the Galilee, tracing its impact from 1897 to today.
0:00 - Welcome from Rev Adriene Thorne
1:28 - Introduction from PalFest, Yasmin El-Rifae
6:25 - Ta-Nehisi Coates with Noura Erakat and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
52:14 - Introducing the second panel
57:10 - Ta-Nehisi Coates with Rabea Eghbariah, Farah Barqawi, Sahar Qawasmi and Nida Sinnokrot
Source:
The Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) is a cultural initiative committed to the creation of language and ideas for combating colonialism in the 21st century. The festival was created as an act of cultural solidarity with Palestine by a group of international cultural figures brought together by Founding Chair, Ahdaf Soueif, in 2008. Since then PalFest has run an annual festival in which international authors combine with their Palestinian counterparts for free, public events in cities across Palestine. During the daytimes, visiting authors are taken to sites of historical and political relevance and meet with artists, authors and activists.
"The Electronic Intifada is an independent online news publication and educational resource focusing on Palestine, its people, politics, culture and place in the world. Founded in 2001, The Electronic Intifada has won awards and earned widespread recognition for publishing original, high-quality news and analysis, and first-person accounts and reviews. The Electronic Intifada’s writers and reporters include Palestinians and others living inside Palestine and everywhere else that news about Palestine and Palestinians is made.
Across the US, students and faculty are continuing to resist repressive measures by university administrations intended to stifle or even criminalize speech in support of Palestinian rights, as the genocide in Gaza continues.
Along with elite US institutions calling riot cops on their own students who have been holding sit-in protests, or attempting to prevent students from holding protests altogether, some universities have tried to categorize the political ideology of Zionism as a protected identity class in order to define anti-Zionist speech as racist hate speech.
“As long as I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been teaching about Palestine – it’s always been either central or integrated into the work that I do,” Maura Finkelstein told The Electronic Intifada Podcast. Finkelstein, a scholar of anthropology and a writer, taught at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania for nine years. She had been teaching a course on the anthropology of Palestine, a class that she says had been approved by the college. But even though she was tenured, she was fired in May 2024 over her social media posts in support of Palestinian rights and against the political ideology of Zionism – a move that has been seen as a warning to other anti-genocide professors. The firing followed months of targeted harassment by Israel lobby groups and individuals who pressured the university to fire Finkelstein, accusing her of “Jew hatred” over her anti-Zionist principles. Finkelstein is Jewish."--as cited from The Electric Intifada
Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-...
"The new documentary Israelism examines the growing generational divide among Jewish Americans on the question of Palestine, with many younger Jews increasingly critical of Israel and less supportive of Zionism. Simone Zimmerman, one of the protagonists of the film and a co-founder of the group IfNotNow, says she grew up being told that supporting Israel was central to her Jewish identity, but that collapsed once she visited the Occupied Palestinian Territories and saw the system of apartheid under which millions live. “It’s so deeply contrary to our values as Jewish people to support this disgusting oppression and denial of freedom,” she says. We are also joined by Erin Axelman, co-director and one of the producers of Israelism, who says Zimmerman’s journey mirrors their own and those of many other young Jews who realize they “must fight for the freedom and equality of Palestinians while also fighting antisemitism.” The film is on a 40-city screening tour in Canada and the United States after previous efforts to ban the screenings on several campuses."--as cited in Democracy Now Channel
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
"There are many in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland who are ardent supporters of the Palestinian cause. We look at the shared history between the two nations and why many feel that more needs to be done by their respective governments" Al-Jazeera English.
Presenter: Anelise Borges
Guests: Tadhg Hickey - Comedian and activist, Cliodhna Bhreatnach - Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Michaela Rafferty - BDS Belfast
One week into the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, students called a press conference on the campus lawn in front of the President’s House to address accusations in the media that the protests are antisemitic. Students say the attacks pure slander meant to distract from the real objectives of their movement: to bring the world’s attention to the genocide in Gaza and to make Columbia divesting from Israel inevitable. -BreakThrough News
"At BreakThrough News we tell the untold stories of resistance from poor and working-class communities. At present, five corporations dominate the media landscape, including 90% of what we read, watch, listen to, and depend on for information about the world. Nowhere among the headlines do we hear the perspectives of working people and movements for social justice. Our mission is to break through the static, disinformation and fluff."
"How can Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace? Palestinian peacemaker Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli peacemaker Maoz Inon discuss the immeasurable tragedies they've experienced growing up in the region — and how they choose reconciliation over revenge, again and again. With a fierce belief in a better future, they talk about conflict, safety, finding shared values and how they're building a coalition of Israeli and Palestinian citizens who are intent on creating a path to hope and peace." --as cited from TED Ed Talk description
“A land without a people, and a people without a land” is how the relationship between Palestine and the Jewish people was described by Christian writers in the 1800s. And the 20th-century history of the Middle East has largely been written through these eyes. But this film from Al Jazeera Arabic looks at Palestine from a different angle. It hears from historians and witness accounts, and features archive documents that show Palestine as a thriving province of Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of the 20th century. The evidence suggests that its cities had a developing trade and commercial sector, growing infrastructure, and embryonic culture that would enable it to meet the challenges of the decades ahead. However, the political ramifications of the Balfour Declaration, San Remo Conference and British Mandate set in motion a series of events that profoundly affected this vibrant, fledgling society and led to the events of 1948 and beyond. This film is the other side of the Palestinian story." Al-Jazeera English
"Mohammed El-Kurd is - like all Palestinians - a product of his environment. He’s been an advocate for Palestinians since he was a child. Seeing Israeli settlers forcibly take over half of your family home - when you’re just 11 years old - will have that effect. And Kurd has built a big following online not just because of what he says but how he says it. He refuses to temper his language, to make it respectable. He refuses to play the role of what he calls a ‘perfect victim’; head bowed, suffering politely." not my words as cited by Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
Originally published on Feb 16, 2020 -"It has been 55 years since civil-rights activist, James Baldwin, and founder of the conservative National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr., met for a debate on race in America. That discussion and the lives of the two cultural giants are subjects of a new book, "The Fire is Upon Us." Zachary Green spoke with author and political scientist Nicholas Buccola about how the debate's still resonating." Source: PBS News Hour
Original Full Debate Recording:
James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. Debate (youtube.com)
Sac State Public History M.A. Student, Alyssa M. Garcia’s work documents the significance of Virna Canson’s Sacramento home, featured in a new short documentary, titled “Sacramento’s Mother of Civil Rights.” This film is produced by Chris Lango through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sacramento Office of Arts and Culture.
Howard Zinn: Implications for Identity Formation, Research, and Counter-Historical Narrative Writing
Not randomly, I have also intentionally included an important interview with Howard Zinn, critical American Historian and American Social Activist. I think Howard Zinn (Jewish-American self-identifying Man and veteran of World War 2) is a great example to illustrate how personal identity, and lived experiences inform how we chose to research and tell stories. Howard Zinn is a prime example of how one's identity can inform how we write once we recognize the complexity and contradictions of our lives, and how our actions influence other people's lives. Stay tuned for more of Howard Zinn, and how I use his voice to frame a new project I plan on introducing to my first-year writers at Cosumnes River College.
A Poem I proudly integrated as a culturally responsive teaching strategy in a UC Davis academic literacy course, with no regrets, cost me a job-- To read more about this experience scroll down to the bottom of here: Critical Teachings: Language, Power & Discourse --P.S. readers: I do it ALL on Purpose and with a Purpose.
Outside of teaching, for personal development, and to engage and activate my soul, I am a diligent listener to all Brene Brown's Podcasts, and Krista Tippet's On Being Podcasts and Poetry Unbound | The On Being Project series, too. Feel free to check out some of my favorite On Being episodes below.
Discourse I listen to is not random. Some of these discourses found me, and for some, I found them. I started listening to Brene Brown in graduate school, along with Krista Tippet, when I would commute to Sac State. I enjoyed the 45-minute drive listening to Tippet and Brown, switching off periodically depending on my personal interests. It's weird because I believe I discovered their podcasts in the nick of time, a lonely desperate time, when I felt like I did not have enough language or vocabulary to describe all I was witnessing and experiencing both as an academic and a human. Brown and Tippet were my positive affirmations, that I was not crazy, and all the conversations happening in my head were not illegitimate.
Brene Brown
Brown's voice, her history of engaging in qualitative research, conducting interviews and talking to people about how culture influences our human behavior in the workforce, and beyond, was interesting to me because her qualitative research about peoples' lived experiences illustrated what toxic communication can do to our communities if we do not get our emotions in check, and communicate clearly what we mean, or what we think we mean. Her work does more than this, I write more about Brown's most recent text, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of the Human Experience in my personal blog, which I will share soon.
Krista Tippet
Tippet, I love her voice, its soothing to my ears, she is intuitive to the human condition. Tippet artfully bridges academia with the soulful humanities, meshing both the artist and the scientist in ourselves--in my opinion, this is what is lacking in academia, and it is the precise reason I love listening to Tippet--she gives me hope that academia will learn to embrace the arts as a legitimate way of knowing and being.
The Pedagogy of Writing
Below, you will also find podcast episodes from The Writing Remix, a great educational resource for faculty who teach writing in college. If you are someone like me, who is always looking to be inspired by other faculty, feel free to check out a couple episodes below that have challenged me to re-consider how I design assignments for students. Specifically, I am always looking to personalize students' writing and research topics, while at the same time I try to make sure students learn something about themselves as they evolve as writers and thinkers of the 21st century.
And of course, I could not, not include the brave, and daring voices of Anand Giridharadas, husband to one of my favorite people, Priya Parker.
What About Louise Dunlap?
Let me tell a short story of how I was introduced to Louise Dunlap, or how Louise Dunlap found me on the fourth floor of the Sac State Library.
It was the fall of 2018, I was enrolled in a graduate seminar, Teaching College Composition. My professor encouraged us grad students to create our own curriculum using the pedagogical frameworks we discussed in our class. Desperate to find a text that aligned with my values as a human being, and teacher practioner, I strolled up and down the stuffy library hallways searching for inspiration, it was the title that stood out to me, Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing. I slid the text out, and sat there on the floor in the library, crammed between books that were neatly shelved. In my hands, I opened the text and began to skim through, suddenly I realized that this text perfectly fit with the teaching frameworks my professor was encouraging us to consider. More importantly, though, this text gave me the confidence to teach with conviction, to embody what it means to turn writing into action, this text helped me orient myself and my students, it helped set the stage to not give into self-doubt, and fear when using writing as a tool to communicate our needs--that sometimes when your speaking voice is not valued, or your presence is not acknowledged, you literally have to write your way in. I also appreciated how Dunlap poses questions to engage her readers, and audience, and this is something I too have adopted to engage my students and lead them in with curiosity, curiosity about the world, and themselves.
To me, Lousie Dunlap is a daring, brave leader, writer, orator, and committed activist, confronting the issues everyone else closes their eyes to, or pretends is not happening. Most recently, she writes about how her ancestors were among the first Europeans to claim ownership of traditional lands of the Wappo people in what is known today as Napa, California, during a period of genocide. "As settlers, her ancestors lived the dream of Manifest Destiny, their consciousness changing only gradually over the generations" (as cited in Inherited Silence (nyupress.org). Self-reckoning, self-actualization about one's imperfections, about one's participation in oppression begins with looking inward. These are the writers I lean on to keep me in check, to keep me grounded and focused on my purpose; otherwise, I would lose hope in people's humanity, and my teaching would be a lost cause. (most times my teaching feels like a lost cause). Stubbornness has served me well. To learn more about this text and what prompted Dunlap to dig into her family legacy's past, consider watching the YouTube video below, or go here: Inherited Silence (nyupress.org) To be continued....
Anand Giridharadas on "Free Library of Philanthropy" Lecture Series
Anand Giridharadas on "Free Library of Philanthropy" Lecture Series
"A former longtime columnist and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, Anand Giridharadas is the bestselling author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, which was selected to numerous publications’ “best books of the year” lists. His other books include The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, winner of the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism; and India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking. A regular on-air analyst for MSNBC, he has taught journalism at New York University and contributed articles to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and TIME magazine. In The Persuaders, Giridharadas offers insider accounts of the dissenting politicians, activists, and everyday citizens working to heal and safeguard U.S. democracy."-Ellis Wachs Endowed Lecture
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