Here we go again—another invasion, another occupation, another aggression. The US government is a warmongering behemoth that is in a constant, continuing state of war, and it ceaslessly gas-lights the pubic, asking us to repudiate “your own lying eyes,” and to instead embrace euphemisms designed to make murder, theft, and brazen lawlessness sound inevitable and benevolent. A humane future makes a simple demand on each and all of us: RESIST! We’re joined in conversation with Michelle Nickerson, professor of history at Loyola University Chicago and author, most recently, of Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial, an illuminating account of the organized Catholic resistance to the US war against Vietnam, and an inspiration for the task ahead.

We each share a human culture, a human experience, and a human fate with everyone who exists, or ever did exist—we are born, we suffer, we die. And yet, within that vast shared experience there are enormous disparities and variations—all of which can test our capacity for empathy and human solidarity. Imagine facing bombardment and continuous war, invasion and occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide, the murders of your friends and your children and your family members, the loss of home and community, dislocation and exile—all the worst experiences human beings have suffered. Come close; don’t look away. Now, connect. We are joined in conversation by Tareq Baconi, a Palestinian writer and activist who has written a memoir—Fire in Every Direction—that is also an exquisite love letter to the people of Palestine—their land, their ancestors, a history that cannot be forgotten and a future that cannot be denied. Free Palestine!

International solidarity is at the heart of our hopes for fundamental, humane change in the US. There can be no revolution in values or in fact if progressive Americans wrap themselves in the myth of “exceptionalism” and stand aside from the global struggles leading the fight against imperialism and for peace and justice. We need to become comrades, standing together—shoulder-to-shoulder against a common enemy and toward a common goal. We join, then, a voluntary association characterized by enthusiasm and joy at being part of something larger than ourselves. We’re not allies, functioning in service to, but rather comrades, acting in solidarity with. The biggest obstacle to authentic comradeship in US history—the third rail of American radical politics—is and always has been white supremacy, and tepid work toward International Solidarity and Black freedom. Comradeship in America emerges only from an unconditional embrace of Internationalism and Black Liberation. We are joined in conversation with Martha Biondi, the Lorraine H. Morton Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University, author of The Black Revolution on Campus; To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City, and most recently, We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation

and Prexy Nesbitt, a Chicago organizer, engaged scholar, and activist who built (over several decades) international solidarity with African liberation movements fighting against colonialism and apartheid in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa.