More Interesting Stuff
Mo! Palestine! Finally!
Mohammed Amer, a Palestinian American who has been doing stand-up for 20 years (you should watch his two specials on Netflix — Mohammed in Texas and Mo Amer: The Vagabond) has crafted a sensitive, funny, and wrenching comedy/drama, “Mo,” which is now available on Netflix. The show is loosely based on his family’s lives as refugees and their struggle to survive in Houston while they fight with the government for asylum. I have seen documentaries in which Palestinians describe their personal experience of the Nakba — the violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1947-1949 by Zionist militias — and the continuing ethnic cleansing by Israel, but this is the first Palestinian story I’ve seen on a commercial streaming platform. The family talks about being forced by Zionists to leave their village of Burin, being made refugees once again by Saddam Hussein, the central role that olive oil plays in their lives, the daily run-ins with anti-Palestinian racism, and the sacrilege of chocolate hummus. Example:
Buddy: You look like you’re wiring a bomb.
Mo: ‘Cause I’m Arab?
Buddy: No. Hell no. That just popped in my head.
Mo: So if Manny was doing this, you’d be thinking the same thing?
Buddy: Why would Manny be wiring a bomb?
“Mo” skirts the politics of Israel/Palestine and of anti-Palestinian racism, but for most Americans, this will be the first time they see Palestinians portrayed as human beings. This is in contrast to “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” on Netflix, an Israeli show about a Sephardic Jewish family that jumps around the years between 1919 and 1942. I watched the first season and was intrigued by the portrayal of Sephardic life but disgusted by the characterization of Palestinians as rapists, obsequious fools, sex workers, and victims.
More on Howard Zinn
A couple more resources related to Howard Zinn (see last week’s Thoughts-letter):
On the occasion of Zinn’s 100th birthday (August 24, 2022), Haymarket Books, Beacon Press, The New Press, and Seven Stories Press are offering the free e-book A Life of Activism: Howard Zinn in His Own Words, a collection of six of his essays.
At a recent commemoration of Zinn’s centennial, a number of speakers – including author Alice Walker and professor Imani Perry – remarked on his wonderful sense of humor and his ability to use that humor to bring his audience into his argument. This clip from his speech at an international conference on anticommunism, which was held at Harvard University in 1989, is a hilarious example.
No Contract, No Coffee
Labor Notes reports that “Starbucks Workers United [SWU] just marked the one-year anniversary of its first organizing committee meeting. In that time, the new union has won union elections at 225 stores, covering more than 6,000 workers. A third of those stores have gone on strike, and hundreds more locations are in the process of organizing … The union is now asking supporters to sign its No Contract, No Coffee pledge and recruit 10 other people to do the same. Pledgers commit to join picket lines, sip-ins, and other actions.” Don’t know what a “sip-in” is? Here’s a history lesson. Daisy Pitkin, national field director of SWU, describes what the union wants supporters to do: “Sip-ins [where supporters gather in a store to drink coffee] are another way. Sometimes workers call for sip-ins to happen in the week before their [union] election, to pump people up, or if they know there’s going to be a particular kind of union-busting in their store on that day. Some sip-ins have been effective in canceling [mandatory anti-union] captive-audience meetings.”
BTW, reading updates from Labor Notes is a great way to counter the feeling of hopelessness that can overwhelm us in these trying times. You wouldn’t know it from corporate media, but workers are organizing and fighting back all over the country. Their spirit is contagious and they need our solidarity.
Socialism 2022
If you have time next Saturday and Sunday, September 3 and 4, you might want to spend some of it in the virtual program of the Socialism 2022 Conference. It is the largest gathering of socialists in the country. Among the panels: disability and deinstitutionalization; transgender Marxism; Black feminism; abolition; Gaza; sports; reproductive justice; health communism; and class struggle trade unionism. Speakers include: Robin D.G. Kelley, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Harsha Walia, Joe Burns, Barbara Ransby, Aziz Rana, and Shafeka Hashash.
Dad Joke
What’s another word for “on time”?
Answer: prelate.