Today we speak with acclaimed author and activist, and San Francisco legend, Chris Carlsson about his new novel, When Shells Crumble. It begins in December 2024, when the US Supreme Court nullifies the popular vote in the Presidential election and awards the presidency to an authoritarian Republican, who proceeds to demolish democracy and install a fascistic state that hastens ecological havoc. The novel is much more than your usual dystopian tale—it focuses on how to resist political cynicism and defeatism, and rebuild on planetary wreckage. It is a world-building project filled with wisdom, sadness, and joy. We put this fictional text in conservation with Chris' brilliant non-fiction work, Nowtopia, which offers a radical redefinition of “work” that restores dignity and value to their proper places.

Chris Carlsson, co-director of the “history from below” project Shaping San Francisco, is a writer, publisher, editor, photographer, public speaker, and occasional professor. He was one of the founders in 1981 of the seminal and infamous underground San Francisco magazine Processed World. In 1992 Carlsson co-founded Critical Mass in San Francisco, which both led to a local bicycling boom and helped to incubate transformative urban movements in hundreds of cities, large and small, worldwide. In 1995 work began on “Shaping San Francisco;” since then the project has morphed into an incomparable archive of San Francisco history at Foundsf.org, award-winning bicycle and walking tours, and almost two decades of Public Talks covering history, politics, ecology, art, and more (see shapingsf.org). Beginning in Spring 2020, Carlsson has hosted Bay Cruises along the San Francisco shoreline.

His latest novel, When Shells Crumble was published by Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn, NY at the end of 2023. At the dawn of the pandemic, he published a detailed historical guidebook of the city, Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories (Pluto Press: 2020). His full-length nonfiction work Nowtopia (AK Press: 2008), offers a groundbreaking look at class and work while uniquely examining how hard and pleasantly we work when we’re not at our official jobs. He published his first novel, After The Deluge, in 2004, a story of post-economic utopian San Francisco in the year 2157. He has edited six books, including three “Reclaiming San Francisco” collections with the venerable City Lights Books. He redesigned and co-authored an expanded Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay after which he joined the board of the Mission Creek Conservancy. He has given hundreds of public presentations based on Shaping San Francisco, Critical Mass, Nowtopia, Vanished Waters, and his “Reclaiming San Francisco” history anthologies since the late 1990s, and has appeared dozens of times in radio, television and on the internet.

Today we speak with co-authors Sami Hermez and Sireen Sawalha about their book, My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine. The eminent Palestinian author Hala Alyan calls it “A breathtaking display of literary prowess that tells the story of an entire homeland through the frame of one woman’s life.”

In our conversation Hermez and Sawalha explain the intricate back and forth that took place as the two collaborated to weave together Sireen’s many stories about her extended family on Palestine through many generations. At the heart of the book is the story of her brother Iyad. Through his life, and those he interacts with we hear a story of colonial violence, Palestinian resistance, and the never-ending struggle for liberation across generations of Palestinians.

Sami Hermez, PhD, is the director of the Liberal Arts Program and associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. He obtained his doctorate degree from the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the author of War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (UPenn 2017), which focuses on the everyday life of political violence in Lebanon and how people recollect and anticipate this violence, and My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine (Stanford 2024), that tells the story of a Palestinian family resisting ongoing Israeli settler colonialism. His broader research concerns include the study of social movements, the state, the future, memory, violence, and critical security in the Arab World.

Sireen Sawalha, born in the small village of Kufr Rai in Jenin, Palestine, comes from a family deeply connected to the region's rich history. She moved to the US in 1990 and completed her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at Rider University. Recognized by Cornell University for her outstanding contributions to education in 2022, Sireen serves as a social studies teacher in New Jersey. Beyond academia, she is a passionate chef and compelling storyteller, sharing her family's experiences under occupation. My Brother, My Land is the story of her family.

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Jeanelle Hope and Bill Mullen about their new book, The Black Antifascist Tradition, which uses a vast set of archival materials to show how Black intellectuals and activists regarded anti-Black racism as inseparable from fascism. This is brought out vividly in the ways the law was constructed, labor was extracted, culture oppressed, and lives curtailed.

Struggles for Black liberation are therefore connected across national boundaries, just as fascist and racist laws and practices are shared by oppressive regimes globally. Hope and Mullen show how these cross currents work in examples like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought against fascism during the Spanish Civil War, and the momentous 1951 document, “We Charge Genocide,” that linked fascism in the US to violations of international humanitarian law. Ultimately, we talk about how peoples’ movements must always acknowledge how racism and fascism are baked into the law, and unite in world-making projects that lead to liberation for all peoples.

Dr. Jeanelle K. Hope is the Director and Associate Professor of African American Studies at Prairie View A&M University. She is a native of Oakland, California and a scholar of Black political thought, culture, and social movements. Dr. Hope is the co-author of The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition. Her research has been published in several academic journals including The American Studies Journal, Amerasia, View, and Black Camera, and her public scholarship has been featured in Voices of River City, Essence, and the African American Policy Forum.

Bill V. Mullen is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue. He is co-author with Jeanelle Hope of The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-lynching to Abolition. He is also author of James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press) and We Charge Genocide!: American Fascism and the Rule of Law (forthcoming September Fordham University Press). He is a member of the organizing collective for USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).

As the long burning genocide against the Rohingya continues to unfold with recent conflagrations of violence in Rakhine State, we are joined on Speaking Out of Place today with prominent Rohingya advocate and writer Nay San Lwin and veteran journalist Chris Gunness, now with the Myanmar Accountability Project.

They take us through recent disturbing developments in the area and the present perils facing the Rohingya. They discuss the pervasive failings of international institutions and the relationship between the Gaza and Rohingya genocides, and also, together, envision what a just future might look like and require.

Chris Gunness covered the 1988 democracy uprising for the BBC in what was then Burma. After a 23-year career at the BBC, he joined the United Nations as Director of Strategic Communications and Advocacy in the Middle East. In 2019 he left the UN and returned to London. He founded the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP) in 2021.

Nay San Lwin is a Rohingya activist and blogger. For the past 18 years, since his departure from Myanmar, he has been documenting human rights violations and the military campaigns of the Tatmadaw in Arakan State of Myanmar. He is a prolific commentator on Rohingya issues on radio, television channels and other mainstream media outlets. He is a co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition.

Today, on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by eminent political theorists Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra to talk about their thesis of a global war regime and its relationship with capitalist governments, a significant challenge to dominant conceptualizations of war, and its relationship with the international order.

We discuss colonial continuities, historical transformations, and global Palestine movements against the Gaza genocide as an inspiration for non-nationalist, internationalist resistance futures.

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author of several books with Antonio Negri, including Empire. His most recent books are The Subversive Seventies and (with Sandro Mezzadra) Bolivia Beyond the Impasse. Together Sandro and Michael host The Social Movements Lab.

Sandro Mezzadra teaches Political theory at the University of Bologna (Department of Arts). His work centers on borders, migration, global processes, and contemporary capitalism. For many years now, he has been part of autonomist movements as an activist and he participates in the further development of Italian autonomist Marxism. Among his books in English, In the Marxian Workshops. Producing Subjects, London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. With Brett Neilson he is the author of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013), The Politics of Operations. Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019), and The Rest and the West. Capital and Power in a Multipolar World (forthcoming from Verso, 2024).

As protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, and apartheid repression within ’48 harden into a proliferation of encampments on US university campuses, still more have popped up across the globe—in Asia, Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere.

These encampments have been met with brutal repression as many universities have called in riot police and even the military. Today we are joined by activists from the US, the UK, and Northern Ireland to discuss this historic formation. On the program is a faculty member from Columbia University; a lecturer, organizer, and PhD student from the London School of Economics, plus a masters’ student and undergraduate; and two undergraduates from Queen’s University, Belfast, who helped push through a divestment agreement.

Even as some universities have started graduation ceremonies, these rituals have also been stages for protest and resistance, and these protests show no sign of lessening over the summer—it’s rather the opposite. The next academic year will certainly see an acceleration and expansion of what has started this Spring.

Sarah Ali is President of the Palestine Society at the London School of Economics, as well as a third-year Social Anthropology student.

Ethan Chua is a Chinese-Filipino spoken word poet, comic book writer, community organizer, historian, and scholar-activist. Their poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in The Journal, while their translations are forthcoming in AGNI and can be found in Alchemy and Asymptote. Their first chapbook, “Sky Ladders,” won the Frost Place / Bull City Press 2022 chapbook contest. Their graphic novel, Doorkeeper, is available in Philippine bookstores. Some of their scholarly work can be found in Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, and their words have been featured on the Washington Post.

Joseph A. Howley is Associate Professor of Classics at Columbia University where he also teaches in Columbia's Core Curriculum. His research focuses on the intellectual and social history of the Roman Empire. He has spent the last year organizing with other faculty in defense of student protestors, on behalf of Palestine, and against the weaponization of antisemitism.

Jack McGinn is a researcher, editor, designer and PhD student, based at the London School of Economics. His doctoral project focuses on the experience of the revolutions of 2011, particularly in the SWANA region, and in London he is an anti-borders and anti-imperialist activist, focusing on solidarity with Palestine. He is an organiser with London for a Free Palestine and the LSE UCU branch. He tweets at @jack_mcginn

Salim is Co-Chair of the Decolonise, Demilitarise, Democratise Campaign at Queen's University, Belfast. Studying International Relations and Conflict.

Eli is Secretary of the decolonise campaign, and QSU Education officer 2024-25.

As protests against Israel’s geocidal attack on Gaza and increased dispossession and violence on the West Bank grow into encampments that have sprung up across the globe, they have been suppressed by college administrators and national political leaders alike as being anti-Semitic and harmful to Jewish students. The US House of Representatives has just passed a bill endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism as including criticism of the State of Israel.

In this context, there could be no better time to discuss a new book by Professor Geoffrey Levin, Our Palestine Question. In this fascinating and revealing study, Levin documents longstanding criticisms of the State of Israel, and of Zionism, by both Jewish American individuals and organizations, dating back to the early 20th century. In varying degrees, since the founding of the State of Israel, American Jews have argued for Palestinian rights, for their enfranchisement, for their repatriation, and some for a Palestinian state. In this episode of Speaking Out of Place we discuss the debates and controversies over the decades.

We are grateful that Professor Joel Beinin, an eminent historian and participant in many of these debates, is here with us, as well as prominent Jewish American activist Simone Zimmerman, who is co-founder of If Not Now and who appears in the documentary film, “Israelism.”

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford University. His research and teaching have been focused on the history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He has written or edited twelve books. In 2001-02 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

For many years Joel Beinin was a member of the editorial committee of the Middle East Research and Information Project, which provides critical reporting and analysis of state power, political economy, social hierarchies, and popular struggles in the Middle East and US policy in the region. More recently, he is a non-resident fellow of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an American non-profit organization that advocates for democracy and human rights in the Arab world.

Geoffrey Levin is assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. His research interests lie at the intersection of Jewish, Arab, and modern US. histories.

Prior to joining Emory's faculty, Levin was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Jewish Studies. He holds a PhD in Jewish history from New York University. Our Palestine Question, published by Yale University Press last November, is his first book. The book has been discussed media outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian,+972 Magazine, and Jewish Currents, and it is now available as an audiobook.

Simone Zimmerman is an organizer and strategist based in Brooklyn, New York, and the co-founder of the Jewish anti-apartheid organization IfNotNow. Her personal journey is currently featured in the film Israelism, about a younger generation of American Jews who have been transformed by witnessing the reality in the West Bank and connecting with Palestinians.

Recent weeks have seen a series of strikes between Israel and Iran. Israel's attack on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus, killing seven, followed by Iranian barrage of missile and drone strikes on Israel, killing no one, and then followed by Israeli strikes on Iran in Isfahan all of this occurring, of course, with the continuing unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and intensifying violence in the West Bank. As these strikes between Israel and Iran ignited fears of a regional conflagration, we are joined on the show by prominent Iran scholar and anthropologist Narges Bajoghli, whose most recent co-authored book is an in-depth study of the impact and perverse effects of sanctions on Iran, as well as by eminent scholar of international law John Quigley.

We discuss recent events from the perspective of international law and dissect dangerously pervasive myths, assumptions and racist tropes informing policy with respect to Iran.

Narges Bajoghli is Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. She is an award-winning anthropologist, writer, and professor. Trained as a political anthropologist, media anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker, Narges' research is at the intersections of media, power, and resistance. She is the author of several books, including the award-winning book Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press 2019; winner 2020 Margaret Mead Award; 2020 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title; 2021 Silver Medal in Independent Publisher Book Awards for Current Events); ​How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare (with Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Esfahani, and Ali Vaez, Stanford University Press 2024); and a graphic novella, Sanctioned Lives (2024).

Before joining the Ohio State faculty in 1969, Professor John B. Quigley was a research scholar at Moscow State University, and a research associate in comparative law at Harvard Law School. Professor Quigley teaches International Law and Comparative Law. In 1982-83 he was a visiting professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Professor Quigley is active in international human rights work. His numerous publications include books and articles on human rights, the United Nations, war and peace, east European law, African law, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1995 he was recipient of The Ohio State University Distinguished Scholar Award. He formerly held the title of President’s Club Professor of Law.