Transcripts For ALJAZ Lowkey And Patrisse Cullors 20240713

You know a lot of rubber bullet and lost her eyes one side. And theres no justice for any of these none of these cases are being investigated so far as we. And the police are not being held to account and so i think this has led to an increasing divide. And so has more on the report from hong kong but the key conclusions are all thats looking at chinas direct influence on the home phone media landscape now the reason why this report has been on the take it is simply because of the changing landscape in the last 12 months it is the key areas of chinas increasing influence in the media and this is not a true increasing purchase of Media Outlets and also the direct control whether it be through the investments in those Media Outlets in hong kong the all the states of those Media Outlets with a prior beijing slant im more inclined to get heavy or bigger investments and increasing advertising revenue side if the reports are not to the pays to be pro beijing as. Charles a media outlet in hong kong it also talks about the demise of the number of independent Media Outlets it says that the only way these independent Media Operations will survive is if the people support them now another point in this comprehensive report undertaken by the author stephen but he notes that the germans are now in the front line or increasingly on the front line and this is. Impacted on them the actual sector as well as the increasing number of points being made by journalists on the ballot instance whether it be through the probate purchases on those journals as well as the complaints of excessive use of conduct against the media on the front lines of their comprehensive analysis of the media landscape and the journalism as a sector and its future in hong kong. Now at least 4 people and now known to have died during sundays powerful earthquake in the southern philippines where skews a continued to search for survivors after 6. 00 tremor had the island of mindanao the region still recovering from a series of quakes in october Officials Say a 3 story Market Building collapsed in the town of daraa trapping an unknown number of people inside. Following weeks of mass protests lebanons president is set to meet with the parliamentary blocs to name the next Prime Minister when late on sunday Security Forces in beirut fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protests gathered outside the Parliament Building for a 2nd night they were angry at the potential nomination of solve her levy who resigned as Prime Minister in october in the wake of the antigovernment demonstrations. Turkeys president is promising help for libyas internationally recognized government including troops if needed. Or the ones offered could put the turks on a collision course with the u. A. E. Egypt and others who back any for half there on thursday have to announced a final offensive to capture the capital tripoli after 8 months of fighting on its outskirts. A senior u. S. Democrat is demanding to. And white house aides give evidence that president Donald Trumps impeachment trial Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer wants acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security adviser john bolton to testify he made the proposal in a letter to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell the house of representatives is expected to vote in the next few days to impeach the president which would set up a trial in the senate. Now a poll taken to gauge the mood of people in chile has shown an overwhelming majority want a new constitution or months of protests over rising living costs and inequality prompted the ballad of referendum on the constitution is due to take place next year well those are the headlines on aljazeera do stay with us studio b. Unscripted is coming up next thank you very much for watching. By always look to him as the fall guy face all but the crying empire i think when we make the decision to stand up for ourselves the powers that be a reality we have a deep state that do whatever they want to do ever they want whenever they want. I put a hash tag on 3 words black lives matter for about they called me a terror. My name is patrice colors i am an artist and activist a woman of the. Time. I use music to denounce the structures that oppress us to question to mobilize to empower the right speak out so i go by the name of low key iraqi british long been interested in the feet. Of people 6 is somebody more black people have done we are part of a Liberation Movement across continents and chairs histories and oppression we have to take care of each other if we want to change things rosa angela and now patrice bringing the struggle to the 21st century i got the chance to sit down and talk with her its great to be here in studio b. Unscripted our stories may be different but theres always Common Ground theres going to go faster. God. Thank you. Its really amazing to be here with you i have to say that i was really touched in a visceral way by your book you know because of your activism and because of your collectivizing were paste into this very precarious and dangerous space of being defined by some as a terrorist how did it feel when you were watching bill oreilly on the news essentially mobilizing millions of people within the same countries you start to view you as potentially a target or very serious state and Political Violence by describing you as a terrorist. Like a lot of belt like a lot you know i think as someone who has studied the civil rights movements of the United States whos studied the history and the evolution of struggles both in the u. S. And outside the us i had heard and learned about. State repression learned about how the media is used against black Power Movement so how cointelpro the Counter Intelligence agency developed entire operation to try to take down the black Power Movement i didnt know i was going to be living through it that it know that when we declared that black eyes matter that there was then going to be a state wide apparatus that was going to go after us even though intellectually i had studied it you dont know a thing until you live it and to experience it and to you. Turn on your television or someone text you and says hey bill or he is has your name on a screen and is calling you an american and a terrorist and dangerous to really white people thats who he was talking to the the base he was mobilizing on the one hand made me scared scared for my safety but they messed with the wrong person the mess of the wrong family. Im im competitive. Bill or i was going to go after me call were just going to but were going to make this bigger and stronger and were going to learn from history and so we called the elders who have gone through this you know angela davis being someone who was. By the f. B. I. Who was hunted and eventually went on trial and won and asked her what do you do in these moments when your government is going after you what do you do how do you respond and not just from like a campaign why is because we had to build a campaign to protect us but also how do you protect your sanity here when we 1st started we didnt have a lot of tools to protect us we didnt realize we had to do a lot of Cyber Security and many of us were going to events by ourselves you know we werent we were just out here you know fighting and realized rather quickly what kind of threat we were and i think that is something that is very specific to being a person of color you know to be black and the state of particular but i think its also really specific to being someone whos decided that youre going to fight that youre going to challenge the norm when we make the decision to stand up for ourselves that really the powers that be they react and i think for me you know when when they told me that we were going to. Conversation i was like ok when you learn everything about this human being and what youve talked about so much is this place and challenging this place and so im curious to hear from you like at what moment did you decide like im going to challenge the norms here im not going to show up the way they want me to i think for me it was understanding the sea and how large the stakes actually were you have to understand in 2003 you had the largest single taney as mobilization of human beings around the world in recorded Human History against the iraq war were talking about some estimations have it at 30000000 people worldwide now an inevitable consequence of taking that kind of action against the will of so many people was the death of Civil Liberties and to a certain extent so where i think commonalities do exist are you know for example ive been stopped on the schedule 7 terrorism act its not particularly that rare when you think that around half a 1000000 people in this country have been stopped under it 84 percent of our of quote unquote ethnic minorities despite the fact that they are only 13 percent of this country the schedule 7 terrorism act allows police to stop someone hold them for up to 9 hours they are legally obliged to answer every single question asked of them they have no right to publicly funded legal advice during that process so for me this process of politicization was the beginning to affect my life and me turning into somebody who was going to directly challenge it was a process of linking them together it was thinking ok why was i called this name in the street in this situation. Is it linked to this and it was combining those things. But then also looking at the traumas that affected me in my childhood and others that i knew and one of the interesting things about trauma is that a affects the regulation of fear and anxiety and so what im directly identifying now are forces or violence but its a violence that can often move in invisible way and so it was trying to seek it was trying to make the invisible visible you know lets face the fact that we live in security procedures that we have a deep state and Intelligence Service that do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever they want they detain people indefinitely without charge and to people that are racialized as muslims within this society its almost as if their behavior and their activity has become algorithm. But when we actually look at the fact of the matter if we look at e. U. Research that was carried out between 20062014 the percentage of terrorism carried out across the e. U. That was the responsibility of people claiming to be muslims was not point 7 percent so in terms of data this bears no relation to the way that. Certain communities are targeted for certain reasons and i was reminded by your book the point where you are arrested aged 12 in class now this reminded me of the prevent program in this country which is a Program Within the Public Sector which looks understanding vulnerability to radicalization and often among children you have children as young as 3 that can be taken out of their classroom at their nursery and questioned by police without the presence of their parents so you know i just wanted to ask you how is it that that close matter what able to universalize. Your message in the way that you have and connect with so many people around the globe you know if it was supposedly an issue that was just affecting people racialism back in the United States from a very beginning we knew black lives matter was not just about people in the United States black people United States in particular we have a deep commitment to global struggle and we have a deep commitment to the global black family and so theres a reason why it was black lies matter in our africanamerican lives matter theres a reason why the minute we launched black lies matter we called for folks across the globe we wanted people to talk about their stories in south africa we want to focus talk of those stories here in the u. K. And canada and theres a reason why i think there are resonance of black lives matter was felt across the globe so quickly because it was clear that the issues that we were talking about and that we were experiencing and that we were expressing were not isolated they were not just about us and that there was a necessity to challenge the history of of black struggle and the history of the black Power Movement you know i think i was thinking when youre talking about this word terrorist and what they really mean when they call us terrorists the Us Government label black resistors black organizers black Freedom Fighters as terrorists it was really important to understand that and to understand that that was being weaponized against us but also in that term theres a solidarity that happens because you start to look around see who else are they calling terrorists and then you start to think about well what what is what is terror because actually growing up in. Environment where the police are westing down your doors where you are unable to walk without being harassed where most of your family by the time youre 13 years old are in some sort of prison or have been arrested or have been harmed by the state thats terror thats what terror is and you you talked about earlier that the idea of trauma and as an organizer is that activists we have big words and big thoughts and big ideas. And graces to sticks but we dont often talk about how does this thing then impact our real life i think its an interesting question and one of the things in your book that really resonated with me in a heavy heavy way was your description of your brother monty as somebody who was suffering from a Mental Illness the view of him was so course from the supposedly benign institutions they were scrambling to convert him into an economic unit. At the expense of his mental how. Situations where rather than having handcuffs thrown on his wrist he should have had a home put around a showdown rather than being. Thrown into a cell he should have been given a hug this is the reality of the situation you know i compared it to the actions of my brother who was undiagnosed but we sure suffered from serious Mental Illness and took his own life at the age of 23 so i felt when reading your account of monty. And also amazingly your lemmas that you were in exactly the same in terms of the dilemma as in terms of do you submit this person you know there was a point when my brother. The Police Wanted to section him you know and the police do not have any training on how to deal with people with psychotic episodes and what not and you actually see often in these situations people dying in the hands of the police there is an extent to which if this person was viewed as a human being this would just not be happening this would not be playing out and so with the situation my brother the preference was not allow him to be sectioned but you know hes not with us today and with suicide what it always does is it leaves within this surviving loved ones a sense of haunted aegean haunted being trapped in the moment yes of the thing that you wish never happened but for me one of the things that James Baldwin said had always connected to me in a deep way he said that your pain is trivial except in so far as you are able to use it to connect to the pain of others and through doing that you are able to release yourself from that pain and in a sense its what im attempting to do through the music you know using music in some instances where really traumatic things have happened its taken the making of a song about that incident to kind of commonly and soothe me in that way would you say that the writing of your book was actually kind of cathartic in a way. Yeah the absolutely was just me or brother rest in peace yeah it was devastating and cathartic. I had the i am a big Firm Believer of therapy and healing justice and so i have done a lot of my own work around the trauma experience as a child in my home and by Law Enforcement but to write it and relive it i didnt realize how much still lodged in me i had compared you know what my brother had gone through to what i had gone through i feel like we do this a lot of people who grow up and Serious Violence called survivors guilt where you dont acknowledge what youd experience because it was maybe less harsh that what someone else experienced and i think for especially women because we often become the caretakers we often become the people who are Holding Space for the people whove been traumatized by the state while were also being traumatized state we dont take the time to grieve our experiences and the book you know for so long but conversation around mass incarceration and the president just are a complex and say the u. S. Has really been through the framework of really assists mel lens it was one of the 1st times as someone who had not been in a cage for a long amount of time talking about what it meant to have to take care of and be basically the social service that didnt exist for my family and the type of pressure that takes for a young person and so i think you know. The book writing process was one process and then i had to record it. And do an audio book but that process it felt like i wrote it and then i read it out loud and then it was like i wrote i can move on to the next chapter of my life and that is something that we dont often talk about around trauma like you said it we actually get stuck in a place and so how do we transform that place and i think as were thinking about these systems these large systems that are often the agents of an acting the trauma nurse it actually serves them for us to be stuck are healing really is another way of challenging those systems and i think it should be part of what we do. So i think were going to take it out for some questions. Better is my question is really for you ive been reading the book lately called why im no longer talking to nigerians about race and the theme of the book is something that i could really identify with because he was examining that issue that sometimes we as africans who come over to the west find it difficult to identify with either black british people africanamericans or by the issues or is it because it had to get over yourself just get on with it so what i want to ask is heard do we break down that lack of empathy because i think we are stronger together than we are so how do we make that happen. What weve been doing and black eyes matter is having those kinds of conversations across the globe and so it looks like spending the time in other countries looks like. Not being afraid to name our differences part of the struggle that we have as black folks were not a monolithic group and so we have to talk about our differences we have to talk about where we share commonalities and where we dont but i also think this is a challenge that i often provide to my friends from the continent is you have been deeply damaged by the west as well theres a history of colonialism and the impact that has on your countries and so we have to have not just a domestic conversation about blackness we have to have a global conversation and its not just about interpersonal relationships its about corporations its about companies its about whole countries that have colonized not just our physical space but how weve been relate to one another and i think that to me is really important not just interested in the interpersonal while i think thats incredibly important im also interested and a larger political conversation about how we ended up this divided from each other black americans werent always so focused on the domestic that was actually. Something that was purposeful purposefully perpetuated making us thinking nationally as only us americans and taking us away from the global conversation and so all were doing in black lives matter is taking that 500 year old conversation or reminding us that weve always been a part of a global family. Im a teacher of worked in and for about 15 years with young people who are now ive seen increasing examples of trauma i just wanted to hear a little bit more about how we can support the healing process for most of those young people how we can be part of that i think im going to kind of use the term healing justice as a term that was really coined about 20 years ago as a response to the kind of selfhelp the movement that in a lot of ways is new a liberal movement that isnt grounded in the healing of people who are at the margins or who are being most traumatized by the system i think its very easy to spiral into the conversation about trauma but its important that we dont stay there because theres a other thing called resilience and so part of the work that we do especially with young people is we know old that many young people especially if theyre poor especially if theyre of color have deal dealt with a significant amount of trauma or what environments are we creating for them so they can be resilient beings. And tokenize a way that you know picks the most gifted of us and that elevates us thats another type of trauma no im talking about type of resilience that is a collective resilience that creates an environment where we can uplift all of us. I think whats interesting about that question is one of the things and especially the way you once said one of the things that neo liberalism does is it seeks to convert what are social and economic problems into emotional and psychological individual problems so from being based on the collective it turns into something that is a force of atomizing in isolating that person off from other people across the last 10 years youve had over 600 Youth Centers closed in this country and 3 and a half 1000 youth workers put out of work similar tamia so that process you have had the richest 1000 people in this countrys wealth increased by 500000000050 percent of the land is owned by one percent of the population that has a status quo doesnt actually lend itself to people being healthy and so what you see in terms of the social ills is an increase so how do all of these things these big macro issues affect the micro issue of the Individuals Mental Health and issues of traill. Thank you. If your on screen overall does the system itself need to be dismantled i would say it does theres nothing romantic about losing your family and having to fight for them not activists should be hungry and activists should be out of a job no activists who put their life on the line should not have the things they need if he is a right to life. What was the last thing the president said to you about impeachment when you last spoke to him 4 oz Multicultural Society its not about you. Pretty damning allegations that would allow you to go true how worried are you that the conditions are still ripe for another i think they are right join me man of the house and as i put up from questions to my special guests and challenge them to some straight talking political debate here on aljazeera. Aljazeera. Where ever you are. With. From ancient and prose to come mislead us. Age old philosophies and the rule of order remain sensible to the worlds oldest living civilization in the 2nd of a 2 part series the big big joe johns the rise of a 21st century superpower examines the challenges it now faces but the outside and from within the china complex up to the fun out of his era. Hello melissa problem in doha with the headlines on aljazeera china has been accused of infringing on press freedom and Media Press Freedom in hong kong and taiwan the committee to protect journalists says its found ballance is increasingly being used against journalists working in hong kong including those covering the prodemocracy movement its also concerned about chinas increasing influence and ownership of Media Outlets its put the media on the front line against police and weve seen many instances of police. Is really gratuitous attacks on journalists journalists who were standing at the side who were tear gassed or pepper spray or in the case of one journalist who was hit by you know a lot of rubber bullet and lost horizon one was i dont want. And theres no justice for any of these none of these cases are being investigated so far as we know. And the police are not being held to account and so. I think this has led to an increasing divide. Now at least 4 people have died during sundays powerful earthquake in the southern philippines rescue as a continuing to search for survivors after the 6. 00 trevor had the island of mindanao the region is still recovering from a series of quakes in october Officials Say a 3 story Market Building collapsed in the town of the daughter trapping an unknown number of people inside lebanons president has had to meet parliamentary blocs to name the next Prime Minister following months of protests where late on sunday Security Forces in beirut fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters gathering outside the Parliament Building there angry at the possible nomination of saad hariri who resigned as Prime Minister in october protesters are demanding an overhaul of the government they accuse of corruption and sectarianism. Turkeys president is promising help for libyas internationally recognized government including troops if needed regicide the once off a could put the turks on a collision course with the u. A. E. Egypt and others who back ward Khalifa Haftar on thursday half announced a final offensive to capture the capital tripoli after 8 months of fighting on its outskirts where turkey signed a military Cooperation Agreement with libyas government last week. Well those are the headlines on aljazeera do stay with us Kemal Santa Maria will have the next news bulletin for you in just under 30 minutes studio b. Unscripted continues next thank you very much for watching. The u. S. Government label black resister black Freedom Fighters as terrorists you have children as young as 3 that can be taken out of their classroom at the nursery and question by police without the presence of their parents from a very beginning we knew back was matter was not just about people in the United States we have a deep commitment to the global black. So that was a the conversation in the. I want to actually talk about our favorite topic was stuff 45 also known as trump. Here. And you know i think its i dont want to actually spend the rest of the segment focusing on him what i want to do is focus on what hes. Not created because its existed but what hes surfaced and how that impacts the conversation about race and racism here also how it i think impacts countries like the u. K. Who say were not as bad. As that place is right and what that then creates for our struggles and so the 1st question i have for you you know what did you feel in the morning that you learned that donald trump became the 45th president of the United States i mean to be honest i always looked at him as the crude and vulgar face or. The u. S. Empire of a declining empire but without make up in donald trump. He was somebody who depicted himself as. Anti establishment antihero against neo liberalism essentially he was speaking to people in the d. Industrialized parts of the United States who had been dispossessed and disempowered by nafta which you know moved millions of jobs from the United States to outside of its borders where people would work in the regulated environments for a lot less money and what he performed was a really vital trick for an Economic System which is widely discredited. And has allowed 8 men to have as much wealth as half of humanity was he performed a projection trick so it allowed people to look at their problems that they faced and project it onto an external other and it really gave credence to this siege mentality which a declining empire inevitably goes through when you look at the history of some of my 69. 00 empires in Human History they follow generally along similar trajectories and towards the end of it is often a large amount of energy is put into the spectacle and is put into a very bloated Celebrity Entertainment class who are massively overpaid and hugely under useful in serious moments of political change. So and so it was that that trump was able to appeal to you know youve got to remember that we lived through forever war yeah in terms of us imperialism and he was able to not only play on the externalization of labor but also the internalization of the external violence that the u. S. Empire was seeking around the world what strikes me as interesting with trump is the spying the bravado or what he claim to represent is not actually true so you look at even the ministry of labor in the United States when trump was elected president for the 1st year they stopped reporting workers deaths. So the idea of him somehow protecting the interests of these people in the most clear way was violated and you know for instance when he was talking about the movement of people through latin america you know of course a place where numeroUs Governments have been destabilized have had terrorist movements themselves like the contras who were given the green light by the cia to sell cocaine in order to gain funding for their movement in nicaragua so youve had these people moving across latin america towards the United States borders and one of the ways that trump is able to turn the population against these people is he said theyre mixed in with middle easterners and terrorists and so he uses every trick in the book to try and encourage this vertical solidarity by people in the United States with him but we know that he is a racist thank you so much. And we have to assert that and be absolutely clear in that assertion and any mythology there is being propagated to the otherwise is clearly clearly misguided yeah i think for so many of us who had been fighting and side of our movement we saw what he created as you know many people call it a white lash. It was a response in history when ever weve seen black people rise up we see the response of a the next government in place be a government that is about repression that is about squashing resistance and in some ways trump was one of the 1st candidates to call us terrorists. The 1st candidates to have his supporters physically assault are protesters we dont need police he created a vigilante ism and i think what were what were seeing not just inside the states but across the globe is the rise of the white rate. The rise of white radicalized sists men primarily and creating not a new movement because the movement has existed but a reinvigoration of that movement and you know for those 3 to 4 years we were scared of Law Enforcement and scared of White Nationalists too but what became very clear the day after you know 45. 00 was elected was that white vigilanteism was not just going to be on the rise it was going to be accepted it was going to be a part of. A culture that was you know the more people we can attack the more people we can harm as an White Nationalist saying this of folks of color or women of queer and trans people the more stripes you get and i wonder for you how how has that impacted. Whats happening in the u. K. And do you see that as something that has impacted the conversations you are having what we actually see are the same people who are funding groups in the u. K. And groups in the United States who deny Climate Change completely counter factually that encourage the targeting of muslims. And encourage the targeting of the most vulnerable in the society also mixed in with the scapegoating or of immigrants as the cause of all problems so its of that wing really that were seeing on the street fighting level being clear that. The same forces that are empowered and are promoting and are pushing trump in the United States are also pushing this vigilante type or program like thinking towards people racialized as. Maybe 10 years ago or even 5 years ago people would call us conspiracy theorists and clearly that there is a deep link between our countries. Of course and something that really struck me when i was here a couple years back on my book tour as when i went to go speak to media especially Mainstream Media they would always sort of laugh and say you know the black lives matter people in the u. K. Swear that there is issues here. And they didnt realize that i knew the issues. That were happening in the United Kingdom and so i would challenge them and talk about the black death in custody and i would challenge them and talk about a Law Enforcement violence against black people and the u. K. And the conditions of Climate Change and how that impacts black people and they would kind of be this like starry eyed like you know we got caught you know and i think that we have to have this conversation in a way thats much more sober youre right and that there has to be a challenge and a consistent challenge because it then becomes easy to sort of see donald trump as the laughing stock of the world and that he isnt actually creating a new environment for countries like the u. K. To thrive you know and a new element of radicalization that is about. Harming violating killing whole communities you. Know. We both have children. Knowing all this stuff and knowing how the world works how do you think about raising your child and this place for me the connection to my son is thinking about how he will be a time where governments have access to information through our Digital Footprints through the microphone and camera that we all carry with us everywhere and rely on for so much of our daily life allows governments to get information that previously they would have had to torture to procure and so then how now will having a father who is a professional contrarian throwing metaphorical molotov from behind the picket line what that will mean for his life but also what it will mean for certain social mythologies to be projected upon him because hes going to go through the experience of living in this society being racialized a certain way being spied on inside Public Sector institutions no doubt and thats something that of course is a source of worry for me but i do take solace in the fact that in the u. K. It was 300 years that people you know while its flawed. Fought for the right for people that dont own property in this country to vote for parliamentary representation as a limited as that allows them to be but looking at that 300 year struggle it was actually fought for and won from below rather than bequeath by the powerful to the rest of the society and i think for a few. Thank you all for taking the time to listen to us we would love to hear from you if you have a question please this is the time to ask it speaking of global struggle. Isnt part of israeli activist believe that today b. D. S. Ease at the most Effective Campaign for anybody who want to show sit it out you would have palestinians. And my observation me to most respect the culture by could so i was wondering for both of you what is your experience for me i find what is common is artists not being put in a situation where they clearly see that there are consequences to them violating that cultural boycott of b. D. S. Which calls for boycott divestment and sanctions upon the advice of somebody like those men to 2 and those that were successful in south africa in breaking apartheid you know thanks to the work of the Musicians Union actually in this country with the 1st organized trade grouping which banned its members from traveling to apartheid south africa you had the specials release the song free Nelson Mandela at a time where even showing orson mandelas picture in public in south africa was illegal. You had even bob dylan and Bruce Springsteen releasing sun city calling for other artists not to go and perform in sun city you know it was an intel go or part of the movement that far far far preceded the apartheid act in u. S. Congress in the ninetys which was really the death now shall we say for apartheid because what it meant is that the banks like barclays and chase pulled out of south africa and really that was the end of it so the point is is that in a traditional way the movement for b. D. s can force the leaders of power to react but whats really clear is that we as people that do have some role in this process should apply that pressure to artists and say well if you do that there will be repercussions you will face a problem in terms of sales you will face a problem in terms of attendance of shows you will see palestinian flags brought our your shows and so i think thats quite an interesting part of it how would you say for black lives matter solidarity with the palestinians was. Kind of initiated we realized we need to take our solidarity a step further and we need to be more public and so the one of the 1st delegations that went to power through was led by the dream defenders who it was folks from ferguson folks from black lives matter folks and joined offenders and we we went on a solidarity trip and i think it transformed all of us transformed how we understood the power study and struggle but also how we understood it in relationship to black People Struggle inside the us and i think it was a profound moment of clarity also a lot of fear of what kind of backlash we were going to receive which we did we did receive backlash specifically on the palestinian issue absolutely of what kind of backlash we so many funders pulled from funding us after we came back from palestine and issued a statement and solidarity of Palestinian People and so once again many of us duggar hills into the ground and said no thats even more reason why we should be showing up and took several other delegations into palestine after that i think in some ways have been laying the foundation for the more public facing solidarity i think thats been incredibly powerful for our movement hi my names miss yanking im a poet and an activist and the conversation you have in that palestine maybe think is the way mommy darwish he famously wrote a really controversial poem called id card so i was hoping i could show you a really short snippet of that poem and ask you to tell us your thoughts on why poetry is so important in activism for movements like that matter and free palestine if thats ok. Right down i am an arab i work with my comrades in a quarry my children are 8. And outs of this rock i draw their Bright Clothing and writing paper i do not beg for charity at your door nor do i grovel at your doorstep tiles thank you. Thank you for bringing him into the space for those of us who have been blessed to be able to use our art i think its been such an important intervention into the pain of this place for a long time my heart was used to kind of. Deal with the pain and so i was are often not replicating but my art became very painful to do as well and most recently ive shifted that and are living in a world where especially when we have access to the internet we could see black death all the time really wanted to make our that was still deeply political but it was a political that looked at the the black people being alive. And thriving and so thats what i love about that back home because its its a pain theres always going to be that pain there thats what we feel but it there is a there is a resistance in it and i think thats very very important i would trees silently thank you for sharing your experiences with us today i guess my question is how do you maintain you know with the family and and with being in the spotlight in the public can and having to fight against your government and news organizations. Sometimes they dont maintain. And i think thats important for people to know especially for those of us who become sort of physicians as the voice or one of the voices or in the spotlight out of trauma. I say often i dont want to stand in the middle of a highway and risk my life felt like what i was born to do but you do it because you have to and we do it because nobody else is. And so often times are forced forced in a position to do things prematurely before maybe we even have the courage to do them weve or for forced to do things even when our spirit is like this as a filter by you know i have to do it and i think its important to name that i wrote something on the 6 Year Anniversary of blackwells matter and said the last 6 years have been the most profound and the most traumatizing 6 years of my life and we have to name all of the nuances theres a theres a very unfortunate sort of heroism and idea of what we do thats very romanticized theres nothing romantic about losing your family and then having to fight for them and then your government. Treating you like crap while youre doing it is nothing romantic about that and so we have to sort of be in that sobering reality and then i think the next thing is we have to build a Community Together no activists should be hungry and activists should be out of a job no activist whos put their life on the line should not have the things they need thats where we step in we should be taking care of each other and should have priority i check on almost all of the people that i know that are actively fighting the u. S. Government i check on them hows or how are you eating or being taken care of because people forget to check on us and so that to me is like a call to this team were sitting here listening to us which is great and brave but how do you leave this room and make sure that you all are ok. So previously you made feeling to rise and liberalism under the cloud of personal well being so do you think. Its really argue for reform within a capitalist framework hold any merit to the arguments or talk when we argue for things like social democracy when we know about the forces of capital always shifting and changing their hand trying to break down the regulations where we put on them. So on so that as quickly as possible because i only have a minute so on to those things so you know if youre asking overall does the system itself need to be dismantled i would say it does because in implicit in it is to many different forms of violence and the logic which underpins it is this the if occasion of profit at the expense of human life but what i would say is that undeniably within that there are. More merciful models and more aggressive and more course models so yes neo liberalism and as a counter revolution within capitalism has been responsible for a huge amount of suffering and a huge amount of pain we do have the opportunity to vote for an alternative within that system if were talking about Counter Cyclical spending on arms or spending on social services then i would choose their spending more in social services you know because i have seen the way that peoples lives have been improved by those d very institutions so yeah if thats as turfs an answer to your question as possible. I get even my name is jake obama youth worker in south london would you consider required reading for young people to fully understand the environment that theyve grown up in and become more walk into the changes are happening so they can be ready for i should become activists in their communities. I think you should read everything. Im serious i really do i think theyre reading lists should be long it should be wide. I think you should read peoples memoirs especially folks who have been in political struggle i think you should read hi fi i think that when we only read a certain discourse we get stuck in that and so its really important both for your Political Development but also for your Mental Health to read as much and everything and to try not to just focus on reading it on social media i would say go to a library. And sit in it and find a topic that you feel really passionate about and go deep and so im hesitant on telling you what to read but i want to point you on what makes sense for you to read and then you make those decisions. Thank you lowkey thank you with this was an honor im so so grateful and patrice thank you very much more power to everybody here lets go out there and struggle because the future is to show. One of the things that i think is hard about social media considering its called social media its more like monologue media when you think of the word evil do you really mean that there is such a thing is it used for work i dont think even as a useful word i think weve seen aljazeera now and you and i just saw the cult of love you know that about im not sure meaning charity a little hoards what is broken and. From the outer london broke out send tac to a special guest in conversation this is a chance to start the revolution unprompted uninterrupted to do away with the way evil because it stops a conversation which should be good and to put on meat can be this is the beginning of friendship this is the beginning of love great like getting somewhere you can really break through the barriers studio and scrape dates on aljazeera. Halibut in plenty of rain recently in lebanon syria and turkey its just about clearing up now with the biggest downpours in the last 24 hours in cyprus with a fading away so by the time it gets a monday it should be dry in the skies not on the ground not particularly warm 15 aleppo but not that back in the sunshine the cloud downs developed more to bring rain into iraq and kuwait and just over the rainy in border where with height of course he gets in snow out of it now thats almost going to bifurcate split in 2 with rain going side in the 4 thunderstorms and snow being more prevalent up in western iran azerbaijan this is coming tuesday so the something happening now in the gulf states once again is going to be significant sundry rain this is the picture for monday the cloud gathers its a southerly breeze you might get dust ahead of it and then the rain will eventually push it back biggest to impose are going to be around bahrain possibly qatar than the iranian side of the gulf and they should be on their way down to us which riyadh probably staying dry all this time the breeze being the dust on the Empty Quarter just to add to the fun now as always has some big downpours recently in south africa the forecast sees it fairly dry with chows developing again in botswana and if youre lucky in the old 90 bia as well. You stand the differences. And the similarities of cultures across the world. Aljazeera. I was thinking oh my god the world. Muscling the media a new report accuses china of using force and influence to stop hong kongs journalist from reporting the antigovernment protests. In doha everyone on come all santa maria and this is the world news from aljazeera press give us look for survivors at least 4 people are killed in an earthquake in the southern philippines. Love. A crackdown during a night of violence in lebanon