What made you decide to run for office?

 HT 
What made you decide to run for office?

ZM
I started organizing around solidarity for Palestinians. I cofounded my college’s Students for Justice in Palestine. And when you get started in that kind of organizing, you typically have zero to negative ambition to political office in the United States.

Soon after I graduated, I worked a bunch of different jobs, as seemingly everyone my age does. And then I heard about a man named Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian Lutheran minister who was running for city council in Bay Ridge and southern Brooklyn. He was a socialist, he was pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and he was running for local office. These are all things that I had been told could never exist simultaneously in a person. And their existence was not a cause for fear or anxiety among so many but, in fact, of inspiration.

There was definitely a point at which I started to call myself a socialist, and that was Bernie’s 2016 campaign. I ran the paid canvass for that campaign, and that was the beginning of my work within local politics in New York City in a serious way. From there, I became campaign manager for a state senate campaign in the same area, Ross Barkan. I then became a foreclosure prevention counselor at an organization called Chhaya CDC in Jackson Heights. I simultaneously became a DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) point person on the Tiffany Cabán for district attorney campaign.

What led me to make the jump to run myself was sustained involvement in DSA, and then a good friend and fellow member asked me at an electoral meeting to run for this seat. That was the first time I thought about mounting a primary challenge. And here I am. ...

Zohran Mamdani represents New York’s 36th district in the state assembly

whole article at: 
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/zohran-mamdani-new-york-state-assembly-queens

Criminal justice system's assault on Muslims families

Activist Radio has the following guest on this week:

GUESTS: Leena Al-Arian, Executive Director of the Coalition for Civil Freedoms, and Zaira Abu Baker, the daughter of Shukri Abu Baker who was horrifically sentenced to 65 years for providing charity to Palestinians, talk about the criminal justice system's assault on Muslims families in the United States.
https://www.civilfreedoms.org

Activist Radio is broadcast: Thursdays 5-6 pm from WVKR 91.3 FM at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY; Sundays 4-5 pm from WIOF 104.1 FM in Woodstock, NY; and Sundays 5-6 pm from the Progressive Radio Network at PRN.FM. It will also be posted on the ClassWars website for the next ten weeks. Simply click on the date to hear it.

Thanks,

Fred

Activist Radio
https://www.classwars.org

 

Co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation

 Activist Radio has the following guest on this week:

GUEST: Dalit Baum, Ph.D., Director of Economic Activism for the American Friends Service Committee, and co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation as well as the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel, talks about what boycott means and why it is being applied to companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine.

https://www.whoprofits.org

Activist Radio is broadcast: Thursdays 5-6 pm from WVKR 91.3 FM at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY; Sundays 4-5 pm from WIOF 104.1 FM in Woodstock, NY; and Sundays 5-6 pm from the Progressive Radio Network at PRN.FM. It will also be posted on the ClassWars website for the next ten weeks. Simply click on the date to hear it.

Thanks,

Fred

Activist Radio

https://www.classwars.org

Pillsbury products in an illegal Israeli settlement

Did you know that food giant General Mills is manufacturing Pillsbury products in an illegal Israeli settlement, on stolen Palestinian land?

That is not OK.

The Pillsbury factory is in Atarot Industrial Zone, a settlement near the infamous Qalandia Checkpoint in the West Bank, which was annexed into Jerusalem.

The U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights has listed General Mills as one of the companies supporting illegal Israeli settlements.Our own research shows that the land the factory was built on was confiscated by force. The factory is located on land that used to be part of the town of Beit Hanina, which Israel dissected using the separation wall.

We wrote a letter to Jeff Harmening, the CEO of General Mills, and received no response.

JOIN US!

Write your own letter to Jeff Harmening and tell him: “No Dough for the Occupation!”

Until the company does the right thing, we’re boycotting Pillsbury.

Help us spread the word: 

Share more information about the campaign as well as our campaign website: BoycottPillsbury.org

Good Shepherd Collective

Thanks for following along with us as we share with you more of what the Good Shepherd Collective is about and what we are working toward here, on the ground in the Holy Land.

As Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is one of the biggest topics dominating the situation and peoples’ reactions to it both in this land and abroad, we feel that it is important to outline and share our perspective on it.

We at Good Shepherd Collective strongly and affirm people’s right to use economic means of pressure (i.e. boycott, divestment, and sanctions) to express their freedom of thought and conscience.

Israeli authorities must release Palestinian human rights defender

Israeli authorities continue to deny Palestinian human rights defender and BDS Coordinator Mahmoud Nawajaa his right to see his lawyer, keeping him in their interrogation dungeons.  Amnesty International is calling for international pressure to #FreeMahmoud and to protect BDS campaigners globally.

Take action to share this statement widely to help #FreeMahmoud

Amnesty International issued a statement that said: "Israeli authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Palestinian human rights defender Mahmoud Nawajaa, 34, the General Coordinator of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).... He has been detained solely for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and association and is therefore a prisoner of conscience."

National Students for Justice in Palestine

The undersigned student groups are in fierce opposition to the Israeli-US annexation plan. With Trump’s blessing, the Israeli regime continues to steal more and more Palestinian land, tearing families from their homes and siphoning essential natural resources, maintaining its goal of Zionist supremacy from the river to the sea.

Illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank have stolen Palestinian lives, land, and livelihoods for over half a century, and Trump’s green light will formalize their theft. While this is indeed a moment of crisis, Palestinians have been resisting systematic Israeli violence for decades while the US bankrolls and politically enables Israeli atrocities.

Annexation means further entrenching a settler-colonial project which imposes apartheid walls that separate families, military checkpoints that brutalize workers daily, settlement construction that destroys centuries-old olive groves, and unequal rights based on race and religion as the permanent reality for Palestinians.

Read full statement and list of sponsoring groups