This week, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank interview Eman Abdelhadi and Khury Petersen-Smith on all things Palestine, from organizing to liberation.

Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072. She is also a columnist for In These Times where you can follow her latest. She also organzizes with Faculty and staff for Justice in Palestine and Salon Kawakib.

Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow and Co-Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He researches the U.S. empire, borders, and migration. His work has appeared widely, including in Truthout, In These Times, and Foreign Policy in Focus. He is one of the co-authors and organizers of the 2023 Black Voices for Ceasefire statement, which was signed by over 6,000 Black activists, artists, and scholars.

Unavoidable evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change confronts us at every turn. Record high ocean temperatures. Once-a-century storms that appear every other year. And on and on. In the face of ongoing ecological disaster, international best-selling author Kōhei Saitō asks why our society continues to prioritize corporate profits (and the rapacious expansion on which they depend), and proposes a revolutionary alternative to unfettered capitalism: degrowth communism.

In Slow Down, Saitō provocatively argues that any solutions that don’t directly confront capitalism itself—from the COP agreements to the “Green New Deal”—represent dangerous compromises that may ultimately worsen the climate emergency. Because it creates artificial scarcity and endlessly produces commodities based on their value, rather than their usefulness, our economic system itself makes it impossible to reverse climate change so long as capitalism remains in place. The biggest contributor to the problem cannot be an integral part of its solution.

Instead, Saitō advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and our system of production. By returning to a system of social ownership, degrowth communism, we can restore the abundance of things that we truly need, and can focus on those activities that are essential for human life.

What would this alternative look like? How do we end mass production and mass consumption without reducing living standards? What do we need to do to redress global inequality without accelerating the rate at which the planet burns?

For this launch event Saitō will be in conversation on all of this, and more, with Science for the People editor, and Pilsen Community Books collective member and CounterPunch Radio co-host Erik Wallenberg. This event occurred on May 24, 2024 at Haymarket House in Chicago.

Last week the 2024 Democratic National Convention took over Chicago. Over the course of the week, the Democratic Party elite rubbed elbows and egos at the United Center and the McCormick Place Convention Center while outside, thousands gathered for meetings and marches, demonstrations and disruptions. CounterPunch Radio co-host and worker-owner at Chicago’s Pilsen Community Books, Erik Wallenberg, captured voices in the streets. Nathaniel St. Clair edited and produced the episode.

We hear from leaders of the opposition including Cornel West and Medea Benjamin as well as protesters who organized against the 1968 DNC and came out in the streets this year too. A speech from Chicago for Abortion Rights leader Mandy Medley, music from Songs for Liberation, and words from Mennonites for Ceasefire ring out alongside members of Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Veterans Against the War. The episode closes out with a song, Fields of Palestine, which was performed by Ryan Cason, a member of Songs for Liberation and Irish Americans for Palestine. This Irish folk song, Fields of Athenry was first adpated by Seth Stanton Watkins in solidarity with the struggle in Palestine.

This week on CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank interview M.V. Ramana on nuclear power and why it’s not an answer to the climate crisis. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin Books, 2012) and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream (Orient Longman, 2003). Ramana is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the Canadian Pugwash Group, the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and the team that produces the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society.

He is the author of the new book, “Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change” published by Verso.

In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt talks with fellow members of California Jewish Artists for Palestine Sophia Sobko and Steph Kudisch, about their collective decision to submit and withdraw explicitly anti-Zionist artworks to an open call for Jewish artists at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. They discuss the process of pulling their works out of the exhibition; the importance of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel (PACBI); and what it means to be Jewish artists publicly confronting Jewish arts institutions that receive Zionist funding and are struggling to address the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Steph Kudisch is a trans genderfluid artist whose work uses mutated intertidal aesthetics and personal storytelling to dwell in in-betweens. They work as a teaching artist on Lisjan Ohlone land, also known as the San Francisco Bay Area. Kudisch and their collaborator Kate Laster form Clear as Schmutz Press as well as the collective Hevra Kadisha in which they create site-specific works across the mediums of printmaking, sculpture, performance, and sound.

Sophia Sobko (she/they) is an artist, educator & researcher born in Moscow, USSR & based on Lisjan Ohlone Land in Oakland, CA. They are excited about collaborative learning, participatory art, and co-creating a more liberatory world. Sophia is founder/co-steward of two queer post-Soviet Jewish collectives: Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon and Krivoy Kolektiv.

Get in touch with CJAFP at cajewishartists4palestine[@]proton.me

In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, editor Joshua Frank and Pilsen Community Books worker-owner Erik Wallenberg talk with Ray Acheson, Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Ray provides analysis and advocacy at the United Nations and other international forums on matters of disarmament and demilitarization. They served on the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban nuclear weapons, and is also involved in organizing against autonomous weapons, the arms trade, war and militarism, the carceral system, and more. They are also author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages (Haymarket Books, 2022). Ray is a regular columnist at CounterPunch+. Two of their most recent articles are “Solidarity to Stop AUKUS: Saying No to Nuclear Subs” and “Divest from Death: Resisting the Complexes of Empire.”

Join Counterpunch Radio contributor Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt, in conversation with activists and community organizers, Alakaʻi Kapānui and Fatima Abed, to discuss the Palestinian Solidarity movement in Hawai’i.

From being the first “state” to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, to the #CancelRIMPAC campaign against the world’s largest Navy exercises, Hawai’i organizers are drawing deeper connections between the military occupations of Hawai’i, Palestine, and the Israeli apartheid state. Decades of Native Hawaiian-led demilitarization efforts and current Palestinian and Jewish-led grassroots community are finding ways to collaborate towards genuine security.

Alakaʻi Kapānui is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Jewish activist and community organizer. She is the poʻo (head) of Kona 4 Palestine and co-founder of Huliau o Nā Wahi Kapu both of which focus on the demilitarizations and deoccupations of Hawaiʻi and Palestine. She has been a Hawaiian Kingdom and sovereignty activist since 2018 through Hui Aloha ʻĀina and with a heavy focus on cultural reconnection and practice. She is a kiaʻi o Mauna a Wākea, Mākua, Kaloko Loko ʻIa, and Pōhakuloa.

As the head of Kona 4 Palestine, she has been able to begin to reconnect to her Jewish heritage and since started working with other pro-Palestine organizations by hosting a series of teach-in events that directly address Palestine and global imperialism. And as a co- founder of Huliau o Nā Wahi Kapu, she has been able to focus on the ends of military leases and occupations such as Pōhakuloa Training Area, Mākua Valley, and the parallel military occupation of Palestine. Aloha ʻāina ʻoiaʻiʻo.

Fatima Abed (she/they) is a Palestinian and Puerto Rican human rights and animal activist residing in Hawaiʻi. She is the founder of Rise for Palestine, a grassroots organization focused on lobbying for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a free Palestine. Spearheading the campaign to adopt a ceasefire resolution in Hawai‘i at the “state” level, Rise for Palestine hosted teach-ins and film screenings, led rallies, and mobilized nearly 26,000 emails and phone calls to elected officials from residents throughout the islands. Once resolutions were given hearings, Rise for Palestine led the effort to mobilize testimony, helping to secure more than 1,600 pages of written testimony and numerous, powerful verbal testimonies in support of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in the State House and Senate. These efforts led to Hawai‘i becoming the first “state” in the nation to adopt a resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire resolution for Gaza, with 72 of Hawai‘i’s 76 elected legislators voting in support.

Fatima has also led events to support Sulala Animal Rescue in Gaza, the only animal rescue still operating under fierce bombardment. You can follow Sulala and Saed on instagram: @Sulalaanimalrescue

Fatima is currently traveling the continent, gathering the stories of Palestinian-Americans, and activists and students who are fighting for a free Palestine. She is headed towards the DNC as an elected “Uncommitted” delegate for the “state” of Hawai’i. Here she will uplift and echo all of the voices of the activists she encountered during this genocide in Gaza to US media and elected officials.

Follow her journey and support here: https://gofund.me/8c8b0b1e

And on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RiseforPalestine

Follow Rise for Palestine on Instagram: rise_for_palestine

If you know anyone interested in sharing their stories you can contact her at rise4palestine@gmail.com.

In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg interview Silky Shah, author of “Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition” (Haymarket, 2024). Silky has been working as an organizer on issues related to racial and migrant justice for over two decades. Originally from Texas, she began fighting the expansion of immigrant jails on the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2009, she joined the staff of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigrant detention in the United States, and now serves as its executive director.

Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt, sitting in for Eric Draitser on CounterPunch Radio, talks with Hanin Siam, a Palestinian organizer based in Tokyo, Japan. They discuss the challenges of organizing the Palestine solidarity movement in Japan, including the nuances of their communities in Tokyo and Hiroshima. From the history of Japanese support for Palestine, to BDS, to the social and legal limitations of protest, Rebecca and Hanin cover the diverse strategies and public response to the fight for Palestinian Liberation in Japan. Follow @palestinejapan for more. Edited by Kryzia Villada.