Join a panel of experts for a discussion of el-Sisi's role in repressing human rights in Egypt and Palestine.
Trump’s reference to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as his “favorite dictator” revealed the former US president’s penchant for lawlessness and authoritarian rule. But the Biden administration continues to provide carte blanche for Sisi’s widespread repression and human rights abuses, based on the premise that Egypt plays an important role in enforcing US policies for the region, in particular as a mediator between Palestinians and Israel. This Realpolitik logic of unconditional support for tyrants is shortsighted. The Sisi regime is currently imprisoning an estimated 60,000 political prisoners while it also plays a central role in maintaining the longstanding blockade of Gaza and jails Palestine solidarity activists in Egypt.
This forum will address the state of human rights in Egypt, Sisi’s role in besieging Palestinians (in collusion with Israel and the Palestinian Authority), how US policy fuels repression in Egypt and Egypt’s nefarious role in Israel-Palestine, and what progressives can do to improve human rights conditions for Egyptians and Palestinians.
Speakers:
Raed Jarrar is Advocacy Director for Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Since immigrating to the U.S. in 2005, he has worked as a lobbyist on political issues pertaining to the U.S. engagement in the Arab world. Widely recognized as an expert on political, social, and economic developments in the MENA region, he has testified in numerous Congressional hearings and briefings. He is a frequent guest on national and international media outlets in Arabic and English, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Sky News Arabia.
Yasmin Omar, a human rights lawyer, is Egypt Legal Associate at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP). She has been a practicing human rights lawyer for the last nine years. She has worked with several NGOs in Egypt and is a member of the Front of Defense for Egyptian Protesters. She holds an L.L.M. from Syracuse University with a focus on counter-terrorism, national security, and refugee and asylum law.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Prior to his current role, he was a Bertha Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he focused on US counterterrorism policies, including legal representation of Guantanamo detainees. As the 2013-14 Arthur R. and Barbara D. Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch, he investigated human rights violations in Egypt, including the Rab’a massacre, one of the largest killings of protesters in a single day.
Ted Swedenburg (moderator) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past and co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Identity.
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This event is co-sponsored by the Middle East Research & Information Project (MERIP), US Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Internationalism from Below, and Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.
Learn more about our sponsors:
MERIP: https://merip.org/
DAWN: https://usegyptsolidarity.org/
Internationalism From Below: https://www.facebook.com/intlfrombelow/
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2Gbf3Tfkwc0
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
Mar 2, 2023
American Sex Tape (poetry book launch)w/ Jameka Williams & Kemi Alabi
In American Sex Tape, Jameka Williams captures the reader’s gaze and stares right back. In this stunning debut collection, Williams offers a deeply personal investigation into how Americans (herself included) have been duped, buying into classism, sexism, and racist beauty ideals, while sacrificing self-love and self-determination. With whip-fast profanity and fiery humor, she charts a tender, exalting, and vibrant path to freedom from mirrors, stages, and screens.
Fiercely feminist, Black, American, and powerful, Williams speaks for a generation of obsessive social media influencers and consumers, revealing the complex ways in which we are actors and witnesses, and victims in our public and private performances. Though we may be permanent residents of this soulless cultural landscape, this stunning collection refuses to let it define us.
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Speakers:
Jameka Williams holds an MFA in poetry from Northwestern University. Her poetry has been published in Prelude Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and Gulf Coast, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she resides in Chicago, Illinois.
Kemi Alabi is a poet and culture worker from southeastern Wisconsin. They're the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, and coeditor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021). Alabi's work appears in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, and has been supported through fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, MacDowell, Tin House, and Pink Door. They currently live in Chicago, Illinois.
This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and University of Wisconsin Press.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 2, 2023
Freedom Dreams Episode 4 with Elleza Kelley & Robin D.G. Kelley
Join Robin D.G. Kelley for the Freedom Dreams discussion series. The fourth discussion features Elleza Kelley.
Freedom Dreams is a classic in the study of the Black radical tradition that has just been released in a new 20th anniversary edition. In this live event series, Robin D. G. Kelley will explore the connections between radical imagination and movements for social transformation with pathbreaking artists and scholars.
Speakers:
Elleza Kelley is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Yale University. Kelley works on African American literature, with an emphasis on black geographies and radical spatial practice in the United States. Her current research traces how black spatial knowledge and practice appear in literature and art, particularly through experimentations with form, genre, and media. Her first book project looks at practices of inscription and mark-making as modes of spatial production, representation, and reinvention. Her writing can be found in Antipode, The New Inquiry, Cabinet Magazine, and elsewhere.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement.
Join the upcoming events in the Freedom Dreams Series: www.eventbrite.com/cc/freedom-drea…-kelley-1288129
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/xQdu-7fpVbU
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: @haymarketbooks
Mar 7, 2023
No Winners in Nuclear War: Nuclear Power & the Military Industrial Complex
Joshua Frank's Atomic Days is an urgent look at the dark side of nuclear power. Hanford Nuclear Reservation, once the United States' largest plutonium production site, is now designated the most toxic place in America. We can't afford inaction: an accident at Hanford could make Chernobyl pale.
Joshua will be joined by peace activist Frida Berrigan and reporter Indigo Olivier for a discussion on nuclear proliferation and the antiwar movement. Frida's recent article, "The End of the World is Back: Why We Need a New Generation of Nuclear Abolitionists" calls on us to join the fight for nuclear disarmament. The world as we know it is at stake.
Buy Joshua's book, Atomic Days: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1940-atomic-days
Speakers:
Frida Berrigan is community activist and urban gardener living in New London, CT with her husband, three kids and six chickens. She is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being Raised By Radicals and Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood (OR Books, 2015). Her writing appears regularly at TomDispatch.com and Waging Nonviolence.
Joshua Frank is an award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor of the political magazine CounterPunch. He is a co-author of several books, including The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (AK Press) and Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America (Haymarket Books), which examines the ongoing environmental and human turmoil of the Hanford Nuclear site in Washington state.
Indigo Olivier is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic. Her writing on politics, labor, and higher education has appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, Jacobin, and In These Times, where she is a former investigative reporting fellow.
This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and In These Times.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/Ghdh75MkNmA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 8, 2023
A Spectre Haunting: China Miéville on the Communist Manifesto
Join award-winning author China Miéville and New Yorker contributing writer E. Tammy Kim, for a discussion of Miéville’s latest book, "A Spectre, Haunting"
Few written works can so confidently claim to have shaped the course of history as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Manifesto of the Communist Party. Since first rattling the gates of the ruling order in 1848, this incendiary pamphlet has never ceased providing fuel for the fire in the hearts of those who dream of a better world. Nor has it stopped haunting the nightmares of those who sit atop the vastly unequal social system it condemns.
In A Spectre, Haunting, award-winning author China Miéville provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a critical appraisal and a spirited defense of the modern world’s most influential political document.
For this launch event, Miéville will be joined by E. Tammy Kim for a conversation about contemporary capitalism’s rapidly multiplying crises and the Manifesto’s enduring relevance.
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Get A Spectre, Haunting from Haymarket Books:
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting
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Speakers:
China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta, and he is a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage.
E. Tammy Kim is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the co-host of the Time to Say Goodbye podcast. She's also the writer-in-residence at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, a contributing editor at Lux magazine, and a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Type Media Center.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/PKwxKR5-QKU
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Apr 6, 2023
The Great Escape: Saket Soni and Naomi Klein In Conversation
Join Saket Soni and Naomi Klein for a launch event for The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.
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Saket Soni, a Delhi-born labor organizer, was in his late 20s and working in New Orleans when he began to receive mysterious calls from inside a heavily guarded Mississippi work camp. He knew immediately that the callers were in crisis. But he could not have imagined they were caught up in one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern US history.
In his new book, THE GREAT ESCAPE: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America, Soni tells the stunning story of five hundred Indian workers who were held in those camps, their escape, and the years-long campaign for justice that followed—a fight Saket Soni engineered. Bringing to light the invisible migrant workforce that rebuilds after climate disasters, The Great Escape reveals the government and corporate corruption fueling a hidden struggle at the intersection of climate change, racial justice, and immigration.
For this launch event, Soni will be joined by internationally renowned author and activist Naomi Klein, to discuss migration policy in the U.S., the reality of twenty-first century trafficking, and the true costs of climate catastrophe.
Order a copy of The Great Escape from Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781643750088
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Speakers:
Saket Soni is a labor organizer and human rights strategist working at the intersection of racial justice, migrant rights, and climate change. He is founder and director of Resilience Force, the voice of the rising workforce rebuilding America after climate disasters. Soni was profiled as an “architect of the next labor movement” in USA Today, chose as a 2022-23 Aspen Institute Fellow, and named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business for 2022. His work was the subject of a major New Yorker feature story in November 2021.
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and international bestselling author of eight books including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough and On Fire, which have been translated into over 35 languages. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept and an inaugural Marielle Franco fellow of the Social Justice Initiative Portal Project at the University of Chicago. In 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia as UBC Professor of Climate Justice and is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/APD7lLcYWGA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Apr 10, 2023
Freedom Dreams Episode 5 with Harsha Walia & Robin D.G. Kelley
Join Robin D.G. Kelley for the Freedom Dreams discussion series. The fifth discussion features Harsha Walia.
Freedom Dreams is a classic in the study of the Black radical tradition that has just been released in a new 20th anniversary edition. In this live event series, Robin D. G. Kelley will explore the connections between radical imagination and movements for social transformation with pathbreaking artists and scholars.
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Speakers:
Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and, most recently, Border and Rule (2021). Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/wp-UBJT5DnQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
