“Wherever you are on this journey… you are welcome!"

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I'm Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work older women, elder women and grandmothers on the move, the podcast that kicks old stereotypes to the curb.

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Come meet these creative, outrageous, authentic, adventurous, irreverent and powerful disruptors and influencers older women and grandmothers from the living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life.

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The living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life.

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Hello, it's Ilana, welcome back to Wisdom at Work.

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And today I have a really special conversation, important conversation.

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I have to admit to you that it took place a month ago and so it hasn't been updated with all of the recent events in the world and in the United States, where these three remarkable and inspiring activists are living in New York.

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Esther Farmer, who is the director and playwright of Wrestling with Zionism, in addition to producing storytelling workshops around the country.

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As a Jewish Voice for Peace national artist, she has played leadership roles in the New York City Housing Authority, as a United Nations representative and as a founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

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And then there's Dr Rosalind Pachesky, distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science at Hunter College City University of New York, cuny.

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She's a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship and the Charles A McCoy Career Achievement Award.

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She's written critically important books and articles in the field of reproductive and sexual rights and justice, and Roz is a Jewish voice for peace, new York City chapter leader, a classical pianist and a kickboxer.

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Esther and Roz co-edited, authored with Sarah Sills, a book called A Land with a People.

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Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism in 2021.

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And joining them is Pam Sporn, a Bronx-based educator and award-winning filmmaker and activist.

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A pioneer in bringing social issues documentary making into New York City high schools.

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In the 80s and 90s, pam contributed to the growth of the youth media movement she organizes with Jewish Voice for Peace and Bronx Neighbors for Palestine.

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And for some context, before we begin, jewish Voice for Peace describes itself as the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of leftist Jews in the United States in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle.

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You may have heard of JVP in the media as the organizer of many of the protests against the actions of the state of Israel in Gaza, like the one in Grand Central Station in New York.

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There is, of course, a wide range of worldviews within the Jewish community.

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There always has been and there always will be, and it is an indescribably painful moment in our history and this conversation will not be easy for everyone.

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I want to acknowledge that.

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But since its inception, this podcast has sought to shine a spotlight on the remarkable and important contribution older women, grandmothers and elder women in our communities and countries are making to the betterment of the human condition and to amplify their voices and perspectives.

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And I was inspired by the profound commitment to an action for justice that has informed the activism of Esther, roz and Pam and others like them, and the thoughtful way in which the JVP has worked to open brave spaces to help us engage in these critical and challenging conversations.

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In that spirit, I want to welcome you, pam, esther and Roz, to the Wisdom at Work podcast.

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Thank you for being here today.

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I thought I'd start by asking you what brought you to this moment where you decided that you must join in the protests and raise your voice and be heard in the movement of protests against the genocide in Gaza.

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Roz, why don't we start with you?

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I'll just say that we are involved deeply, all of us, in Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish Voice for Peace New York City, in different neighborhoods, but deeply in that organization.

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That's our political home, our leaders, where we learn our messaging.

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I just tell my story.

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I was very involved in JVP for 10 years and I was traveling with a group of old friends that I grew up with in Oklahoma, old ladies traveling in Nashville, tennessee, and all of a sudden the news came it was October 7th of what had happened and then the Israeli response and I was so devastated, almost hysterical, I mean.

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I was deeply, deeply frantic and worried and felt very like a fish out of water in this weird place of Nashville Tennessee, with all these friends who really didn't share my politics but were very comforting and very sympathetic, and all I wanted was to be home and with my people.

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And from the minute I got on the plane and then I got off the plane and was on my phone looking at all the messages and I saw we're doing a demonstration tonight in front of Schumer's building I said that's it, we're going, I go home, I get my things.

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In case I'm in CD civil disobedience I say I might be in jail.

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Get a toothbrush, have the sanitary things I need, what I need in case I'm in jail overnight, and go.

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Go to Grand Army Plaza.

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That was all I could think.

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Just act in the moment with my people who are Jewish Voice for Peace.

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It wasn't even something I had to think about because we had been working for so long and we knew Israel's going in.

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We know this is it.

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They're going to take the moment, this pretext for utter devastation.

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We didn't call it at that moment genocide, but we were anticipating something of the sort and we were very, very angry and devastated and worried collectively.

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This is Esther speaking.

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So I think all three of us have been anti-Zionist Jews for many, many years.

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I myself, I'm a Palestinian Jew.

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My father was born in Palestine.

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Many people think that's very weird.

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It's not weird.

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Palestine was a country and it contained Muslims, jews and Christians and at the time that my family lived there, it was about 10% Jewish, 10% Christian and 80% Muslim.

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And my family who lived in Palestine.

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They were very religious, very religious Jews and at the same time, extremely anti-Zionist.

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Religious, very religious Jews and at the same time, extremely anti-Zionist.

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That very existence of my family gives the lie to the fact that anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism.

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It's simply not true and there have always been anti-Zionist Jews.

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And what was my father's worry about Zionism?

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He said the Palestinians are being blamed for the Holocaust when they had nothing to do with it.

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It's going to make the world completely unsafe, both for Palestinians and Jews.

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He used to say why do Jews need a state?

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We're nomads.

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We take culture everywhere.

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So like the whole thing now about diasporic Jews is something that he used to say.

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And the other thing that was very prophetic which really affected me deeply was when he said that the Zionists love Israel but they hate Jews, and that's the name of my story in the book A Land with a People, and I've seen that over and over again.

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It deeply, deeply hurts me to see how Jews have moved to the right based on this.

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You know, tribal, small, horrible philosophy that says Jews have to be supreme, and whenever you say any people have to be supreme, you're going to have resistance.

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And so all of this talk about Hamas, hamas, hamas.

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You can talk about the ethics of that, and of course we do, but it's going to continue to happen as long as this repression of Palestinians happen.

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So when October 7th happened, it was very clear, as Raz said, what Israel was going to do, and we were there.

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So this is not a moment, in some ways, that are different for us, because we've been involved in this for many, many years and we actually knew that something like this was bound to happen, and that's one of our deep messages.

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This was bound to happen and it will continue to happen until we change the occupation and the apartheid state in Israel.

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Right.

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This is Pam Sporn speaking, and I've been demonstrating against the Israeli occupation of Palestine with Esther and Raz for over a decade.

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I was with my brother, who had come into New York City from Chicago to visit my brand new grandbaby on October 6th 7th, and we heard on the news the attack that Hamas did.

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We knew right away that something horrific was going to come in response, and I must say that one of the things that keeps me going out there in the streets is that when I visit this grandbaby, who is now nine months old, or will be nine months old almost the same length as this war has been going on, she's healthy, she's happy, she's not suffering trauma, she's well-fed, she's a chubby little, wonderful role of funniness.

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And I just think about how the experience for babies in Gaza some who were born after October 7th and never made it to two weeks old and it just keeps me going back into the streets.

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I was one of the early people in the JVP chapter, so we've been demonstrating against horrific bombings of Gaza, but never in that time have I seen this kind of destruction and mass death and it's just unbelievable.

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I actually had stepped back a bit from being very, very involved in Jewish Voice for Peace because I was working on a film and just other things and when that demonstration was called that Roz spoke about Grand Army Plaza in front of Schumer's office, I canceled something else and I went there and I didn't know how many people to expect because all of this had just happened and I thought maybe there'd be a hundred people and I just couldn't believe how this thousand or more people turned out and this kind of new crop of young people stepping forward and I was just really, really moved.

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And you know, we've been doing it ever since and unfortunately it looks like we're going to be doing it for a long time.

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Thank you for that, all of you.

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And I have a question.

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Esther, you brought something to mind.

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I wasn't going to ask, but you spoke a little bit about this.

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And Pam and Roz, I'd love to hear from you too.

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I'm fascinated to know where your anti-Zionism came from.

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Well, I tell that story.

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This is Roz from In a Land with the People, a book that Esther and I and Sarah Sills co-edited and wrote big parts of it.

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I was 16 years old and I was in a family that was quite Zionist, but liberal Zionist.

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My grandmother, my father very much so my mother wasn't terribly political and we had learned about Israel from the time.

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I was very small and we thought Israel was just something fabulous.

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I learned much later when I was researching the part of the book that I wrote.

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I did some research in the archive of the temple that we went to in Tulsa, oklahoma, and learned details about how the messages of Zionism were imported into communities like the one I lived in and to the rabbis, and it was a big campaign, you know.

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I mean the planting of the trees and putting your little tzedakah in the box and all of that stuff.

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And you probably experienced that, ilana I don't think Esther did.

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I don't know about Pam.

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By the time I was 16, I said to my parents I want to go to Israel because there was an opportunity.

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It was a forerunner of Birthright, it was the B'nai Abraith youth and my parents were pretty indulgent with me and they said OK, and I went on this trip and I'm all starry-eyed about Israel, but I was also beginning to be involved in the civil rights movement.

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It was the early civil rights movement, it was actually 1959.

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And I was becoming an anti-racist.

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And there I was on a kibbutz and I'm talking to this man I didn't know him but he was clearly African and we were just talking and a woman came up to me, a white woman, ashkenazi white woman with a very strong Brooklyn accent, and said don't talk to him.

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And I said what, why not?

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She said he's African.

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And that was the beginning of my lifelong radicalization, dismissed by the local rabbi saying that I was just a young girl and I didn't know what I was talking about.

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And honestly, that was a favor to me.

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It made me strongly, not just anti-Zionist, not just anti-racist, but feminist.

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I said what are you saying that I'm a girl and I don't know what I'm talking about?

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I mean, I didn't have fuck in my vocabulary then but I would have, you know, used it.

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So it was from.

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From then on, and then I had a lot of contact with Palestinians.

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My mentor in college was a great intellectual, ibrahim Abulagud.

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He's the father of Laila Abulagud, the anthropologist, and then my students at Hunter College when I was teaching there years later, a a lot of them were Palestinian, great Palestinian feminists.

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You would know who they are.

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And I just was pulled as a Jew to say we didn't say not in my name then, but that's what we meant.

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We meant no way, we will not support this.

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And I found solidarity with Palestinian feminists and ever since.

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So anti-Zionist, absolutely.

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And I'll just say one more thing as a political theorist, which is my field, I am strongly and have been forever against ethno-nationalism.

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Any ethno-nationalism is going to be like Esther's father was describing it's a setup for conflict and war.

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My uncle was a man named Maurice Friedman.

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He was the biographer of Martin Buber.

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Buber was one of the 20th century Jews who opposed the idea of a Jewish state.

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It was going to cause much conflict.

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It was going to cause war.

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He knew that.

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Hannah Arendt knew that.

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Albert Einstein knew that there were lots of anti-Zionist intellectuals, and not just intellectuals but ordinary people too.

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So we feel like we're part of a very proud and noble tradition that goes way back.

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So this is Esther.

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You know we have a program in JVP that we developed called how to have Hard Conversations About Israel-Palestine, and in that program I always say that I take my hat off to people like Roz and Pam and I have similar backgrounds.

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But you know people like Roz who have had to turn away from a lifetime of propaganda and you know heavy duty, constant propaganda.

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I didn't have to go through that.

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My father would say Israel, shemizreel, the United States needs Israel, not Jews, I mean.

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So way before October 7th we had a theater project called Wrestling with Zionism where we had people tell their stories of exactly what you're asking their journeys around becoming an anti-Zionist, and I think that's really important.

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This weekend we just came back, roz and I just came back from lobbying Congress and you know we met the most interesting people and one of the people that I met was a rabbi who was a kahanist.

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She was in the JDL.

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Now, when I was at Brooklyn College people of color we had pitched battles, physical battles with JDL people around the issue of open admissions and around the issue of establishing one of the first Puerto Rican studies departments and the first African-American studies department in the country, which Pam so beautifully did a film on called Making the Impossible Possible, beautifully did a film on called Making the Impossible Possible, and we had pitched battles with the JDL.

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And here in front of me was this woman who had been in the, you know, raised as a Kahanist and now with JVP, and that was such a thrilling thing that, you know, people can actually move and people are moving.

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So, you know, for 50 years we have been like, considered this fringe, crazy, you know, group of people who were saying this thing that nobody is saying, and now all of a sudden this is no longer fringe.

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So one of the things that we noticed in this lobbying thing, I mean, you know, some of the same stupid stuff comes out of their mouth.

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It's embarrassing how stupid some of these folks are that are supposed to represent us.

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But they have to be respectful because we are now we are an established force in this country and the tide has turned and the narrative has changed and we've been working at changing that narrative for the last 50 years, but, especially since JVP has been formed, we have really been at this narrative and all of a sudden, the social motion has just you know, what's happening is this anti-war, leftist movement that's concentrated on Palestine.

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I never in my life would have thought that was possible, so it's quite a moment to be involved.

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This is Pam.

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Again, I echo a lot of what Esther has expressed.

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I also have been tremendously impressed and moved by Roz's story and also the young people who tell stories of how they've had to find a new way of understanding the world and Israel-Palestine.

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That's different from their families.

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My immediate family, my parents, were never Zionists.

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My father was a communist.

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He was part of the communist movement and I think one of the reasons that it may seem strange to some people that there are anti-Zionist Jews is because the history of the communist and left movement has been suppressed and a lot of people don't know about it.

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But I grew up in a household where the idea of the unity of multiracial and multiethnic working class people was the goal, that that kind of unity is what would make social change happen and that without that unity and I remember I grew up in Detroit I was an activist in anti-war and anti-racist, anti-police brutality issues when I was a teenager and I remember there was a forum and someone came to speak.

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It was an Israeli Jew who was a communist and he was on a speaking tour.

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He was talking about the need for Israeli, jewish and Palestinian workers to unite and he later had to serve, I think, 30 years in prison.

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So I have been aware for many years that that idea was deeply problematic for the powers that be in Israel and I wish that we had evidence that many, many, many Israelis were following that belief now, and I hope that happens.

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So that's the kind of background that I come from, although different.

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There were other family members that were Zionists and I knew that my father and this particular uncle.

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I grew up they would have pitched a battle across the dinner table, so I always knew that there was a contest about this.

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This was not necessarily the biggest issue for me, because I grew up in Detroit.

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I've lived in New York City for the most of all of my adult life.

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I've been a teacher in under-resourced schools in the Bronx and Harlem.

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My students have faced police brutality.

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You know other issues up front that I was involved in, but I say that a Haitian-American friend of mine actually recruited me to JVP in a roundabout way, and that's that I was involved in scheduling a film series that had to do with Afro Latinos, and one of the films was about anti-Blackness in the Dominican Republic and anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic, and so this Haitian American friend of mine was on a panel Q&A after we showed that film and she said that only change will happen when Dominicans who are not of Haitian descent speak up against this racism.

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And something just kind of clicked that I am Jewish and I need to make this an issue of mine, where I need to speak out against the occupation and the racist apartheid in Israel, and that's when I searched and I found Jewish Voice for Peace.

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Esther, you wanted to say something, one of the very interesting things that's happened, which I never expected, you know, as Pam was sharing.

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You know, most of the anti-Zionist Jews came from the socialist and communist.

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That's what it meant to be a progressive at a certain point in our history.

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So many Jews were socialist that's the history we come from and they were the anti-Zionist.

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Now it's completely different.

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We are getting so many very religiously oriented Jews, young Jews who grew up with seeking alarm and you know we have to repair the world and they're really putting their money where their mouth is.

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You know, relative to, you know, liberation theology, which is what it is.

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So we have so many rabbis and so many very observant Jews very odd for some of us thousands of young Jews.

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So that's a real interesting phenomenon and a change that we can't seem to get our representatives to understand.

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That you know, this is very critical for young Jews who are observant and believe that Judaism, this is not their Judaism, and so you know, based on that, I mean, we have almost tripled our membership.

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Jvp has over a million supporters and followers and continuing to grow, so it's quite something.

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What has happened with the narrative?

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Yeah, and I wanted to say that for a lot of us elder secular leftists, jvp has brought us closer to Judaism.

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I mean, for me I grew up that way but then I was severed from it and I was alienated from it.

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Really, meeting and working with these young people and also the rabbis has really brought us back to something about our traditions and the notion that Jewishness and you know, judith Butler has always said this Jewishness is different from Zionism.

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It comes with a whole set of values and ethics that we cherish and that are close to our socialism, close to our feminism.

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The other thing is meeting these young people.

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I've been struck by their struggle, a lot of them.

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They have struggles with their families like some of us have had.

00:23:02.896 --> 00:23:12.241
I met this young man who was part of the Columbia Barnard encampment and we were talking and he said, oh, I wish you could talk to my mother, I wish you could talk to my grandparents.

00:23:12.241 --> 00:23:13.584
It's so hard.

00:23:14.289 --> 00:23:17.921
I'm so glad you mentioned this story because it's something I wanted to ask you.

00:23:17.921 --> 00:23:20.734
You know there is this impression.

00:23:20.734 --> 00:23:22.940
I've heard it implicitly.

00:23:22.940 --> 00:23:32.762
Certainly it comes through in the coverage by the media that you know it's older people who are Zionists and it's younger people who are the protesters, partly because of the encampments, of course.

00:23:32.762 --> 00:23:41.555
But I think it speaks also to something I wanted to ask you about which is this terrible fracture, the fractures in our community and in our families?

00:23:41.555 --> 00:23:45.242
And you know what do you do to find solace, who do you turn to?

00:23:45.242 --> 00:24:03.787
And, in fact, one of the things that compelled me to speak to the three of you is that I think, in times like these, it's extraordinarily important for young people who are protesting and who feel this terrible dislocation to know that there are elders who have been at this for a long time and to whom they can turn.

00:24:03.787 --> 00:24:10.992
Do you say, and what do you think of this impression of sort of the elders and young people in terms of the protest movement?

00:24:11.314 --> 00:24:14.444
Yeah, I mean we've worked really hard in JVP, you know.

00:24:14.444 --> 00:24:21.241
I mean I have never felt so respected and loved by so many of the younger people in JVP.

00:24:21.261 --> 00:24:23.131
It's kind of remarkable, yeah, and.

00:24:23.191 --> 00:24:26.255
I don't you know I don't have a family issue.

00:24:26.255 --> 00:24:34.451
All my parents are unfortunately dead for a long time now but you know, relative to my kids or you know it's a small family, but no, I don't have that.

00:24:34.451 --> 00:25:30.231
And other people are really, really struggling with this and in the hard conversations workshop that we do, we started off dealing with Misraim, sefardi, andrahim, arab, so-called Arab Jews, where there is this you know again this racist kind of stereotype that all Arab Jews are the most Zionist, and so there's a huge network now of Misrahim that have said no way and they've been building and working and we've done a lot of work relative to family relationships, relationships and some of it's like therapy because for a lot of the Arab Jews that are so upset about the ruptures with their family, it's a particular kind of isolation, because they're already isolated in the Jewish community that they're not real Jews, or particularly not.

00:25:30.231 --> 00:25:32.541
That it's not meaningful to everybody, but it has a particular consonance for a lot of misrahim.

00:25:32.541 --> 00:25:39.842
So we've been doing a lot of work with these hard conversations in how to keep your relationship, maintain your relationship and try to build as you organize.

00:25:39.883 --> 00:25:44.627
It's an organizing job to talk to people right now and more and more Jews are coming around.

00:25:44.627 --> 00:25:47.574
Recently, somebody said to me well, you know my father.

00:25:47.574 --> 00:25:53.744
He was an ardent Zionist, but he saw something about what was happening in Gaza and he said this is not my Judaism.

00:25:53.744 --> 00:26:05.876
And that is the kind of thing that we're hearing more and more, and we are urging and working towards teaching people how to have the kinds of conversations that are going to move people on this journey and in JVP.

00:26:05.876 --> 00:26:11.373
Wherever you are on this journey, you're welcome and that's very important, because we don't want to be.

00:26:11.373 --> 00:26:16.155
You have to be pure and you have to think exactly the same way that we do with every single aspect.

00:26:16.155 --> 00:26:20.191
We know that this is a journey and we want to support people along that journey.

00:26:20.652 --> 00:26:27.394
I love that, esther, thank you, and I wanted to ask the three of you about intersectional identities.

00:26:27.394 --> 00:26:33.827
There's the whole issue that's come up just recently, this summer, of course, of a parallel march to the Pride March.

00:26:33.827 --> 00:26:52.542
That is more of a protest because of the inclusion of an Israeli contingent in the Pride March in New York City, and they've also raised sort of young people and elders in the community and I just wanted to hear more from you about that in terms of this moment of protest and the coalescing around the movement.

00:26:52.970 --> 00:27:03.759
Well, one of the things that's really wonderful for me about our JVP culture and the young people who are really very much in the leadership is they are intersectional.

00:27:03.759 --> 00:27:05.303
They came into it that way.

00:27:05.303 --> 00:27:10.352
They came from labor movements, they came from climate justice organizations.

00:27:10.352 --> 00:27:16.835
I mean it gets to me a little bit that they take feminism for granted because they think, oh, we did that, we won that already.

00:27:16.835 --> 00:27:25.261
But you know, as far as pride is concerned, I mean our JVP chapter in New York City has been involved in pride every single year.

00:27:25.261 --> 00:27:28.297
We're deeply involved with former ACT UP people.

00:27:28.297 --> 00:27:36.280
The queerness of JVP leadership is amazing and you know there have been splits in the past.

00:27:36.280 --> 00:27:40.035
So separate pride march, that's very pro-Palestine.

00:27:40.336 --> 00:27:46.090
This is Pam, again coming from a neighborhood that is not primarily Jewish.

00:27:46.090 --> 00:27:59.594
I'm in the North Bronx and a lot of the big rallies happen either in Brooklyn, where there's a sizable Jewish community, or in Manhattan in front of Schumer's office, where the target is quite clear.

00:27:59.594 --> 00:28:09.643
And I felt like I want to bring this movement more into the Bronx where there are pro-Palestinian activities.

00:28:09.643 --> 00:28:17.997
But it's different than, say, if I were in an area where I know people do a lot of good work and there's a progressive synagogue in Brooklyn.

00:28:17.997 --> 00:28:23.175
That it's kind of like it's more natural that we should be talking about this because we're Jews.

00:28:23.738 --> 00:28:28.792
But now coming up here in the Bronx, like, why would this area care about this issue?

00:28:28.792 --> 00:28:34.624
My neighborhood is a lot of Bengali, dominican, african-american, white too.

00:28:34.624 --> 00:28:36.576
People do care about this.

00:28:36.576 --> 00:28:55.896
We've come together and a few JVP people but other people who are not Jewish, informed Bronx neighbors for Palestine and it's intergenerational and it's multi-ethnic and we're trying to make the comparisons and the analysis of all of the money that's going to support war.

00:28:55.896 --> 00:29:03.703
How could that money be used to build up the social service needs that we need here in the Bronx?

00:29:03.844 --> 00:29:12.050
It's important to connect these struggles, to connect these struggles.

00:29:12.050 --> 00:29:13.113
I'm really glad you mentioned this is Esther.

00:29:13.113 --> 00:29:13.914
I'm glad you mentioned Alana.

00:29:13.914 --> 00:29:15.157
You know this whole issue of the queer community.

00:29:15.157 --> 00:29:18.151
I mean it amazes me and it's so touching.

00:29:18.151 --> 00:29:30.750
The contribution of the trans community, both Jewish and Palestinian, is incredible and you know, given the attacks on the trans community in this country in particular, it's like the last thing they need is Palestine.

00:29:30.750 --> 00:29:43.346
And yet they're here and have been unbelievably active and principled in fighting the established what we used to call gay community.

00:29:43.346 --> 00:29:52.355
When they don't say anything about this genocide, they're the ones in front of that struggle and lead the rest of us and it's been incredibly moving.

00:29:52.935 --> 00:29:59.115
So a lot of the discussions around strategy and how do you resolve some of these conflicts that you're saying.

00:29:59.115 --> 00:30:04.057
It's an organizing job and they're in the forefront of helping us to figure that out.

00:30:04.057 --> 00:30:07.990
So that's been a remarkable process and very touching.

00:30:07.990 --> 00:30:22.923
And it's part of what we're doing in JVP, which is not only about being anti-Zionist but about creating the culture that we want to be in, that we want to live in, because we know that people will come for the politics but they won't stay for the right political line.

00:30:22.923 --> 00:30:30.560
They'll stay for the environment and for the culture that we build and it's really important that we continue that kind of culture.

00:30:31.290 --> 00:30:39.959
Well, it isn't the most natural segue to go from the kind of community that we want to build and the kind of world that we want to live in to the next question I have.

00:30:39.959 --> 00:30:42.531
But I really want to ask you about this.

00:30:42.531 --> 00:31:07.354
We're living in such a challenging and intractable moment where any anti-Israel sentiment or objection to the actions of the State of Israel, or anti-Zionist sentiments, anti-genocide protest so often, are now conflated with anti-Semitism, and I don't want to suggest, by saying this or voicing an objection to that, that anti-Semitism isn't present and doesn't exist.

00:31:07.354 --> 00:31:10.598
I certainly grew up with it and still see it very much in action.

00:31:10.598 --> 00:31:25.953
But this moment where any kind of protest against the genocide or any expression of outrage against the actions of the state of Israel is now often decried as anti-Semitic, I wonder how do you think about that?

00:31:25.953 --> 00:31:26.934
How do you deal with it?

00:31:26.934 --> 00:31:27.736
What do you say?

00:31:28.076 --> 00:31:35.165
The weaponization of anti-Semitism is a terrible, terrible threat and it has to be addressed.

00:31:35.165 --> 00:31:46.930
But at the same time, sometimes I tell a story and I say, look, I didn't grow up experiencing a lot of anti-Semitism, maybe I was just protected from it by my family, by my household.

00:31:46.930 --> 00:31:49.811
It must have been there in Tulsa, oklahoma, are you kidding?

00:31:49.811 --> 00:31:51.133
I mean, we had the Klan.

00:31:51.133 --> 00:32:19.099
Of course it was there, but I never experienced, to my memory, a direct, blatant attack on me, anti-semitic attack on me, until last year, 80 years old, I'm walking in the street of my neighborhood where I walk all the time, walking down Columbus Avenue, and a guy comes up, a youngish guy, and he's walking behind me and then he's next to me and then he says dirty Jew.

00:32:19.099 --> 00:32:21.567
I was so taken aback.

00:32:21.567 --> 00:32:23.172
I never experienced anything like that.

00:32:23.172 --> 00:32:27.550
I couldn't say anything and later I thought why didn't I run after him and beat him up?

00:32:27.550 --> 00:32:30.276
That's my usual belated response.

00:32:30.276 --> 00:32:34.690
I mean, I was a kickboxer and I wanted to punch somebody, but I never did so.

00:32:34.690 --> 00:32:35.652
There's that.

00:32:36.012 --> 00:32:54.218
But another thing was that I was doxxed at my college, where I haven't taught for a decade, where I'm retired, and there were these doxxing trucks and the truck had my picture just as it did 25 other people on the truck with the caption CUNY's worst anti-Semite.

00:32:54.218 --> 00:32:56.039
And then it was paired with a.

00:32:56.039 --> 00:33:05.045
This was true of everybody who got doxxed with a website thing that said all this nonsense about me, that I was an administrator, I don't know what.

00:33:05.045 --> 00:33:07.046
They made this stuff up, but you know.

00:33:07.046 --> 00:33:09.448
Then I thought, wow, what can they do to me?

00:33:09.448 --> 00:33:13.700
They can't fire me I'm already retired but somebody could take that.

00:33:13.700 --> 00:33:17.315
They could find out where I live easily or threaten me.

00:33:17.315 --> 00:33:22.374
I could be followed, and that was much scarier to me than the guy walking down the street.

00:33:22.374 --> 00:33:23.416
Well, I'll never see again.

00:33:23.758 --> 00:33:29.239
He called me a dirty Jew, and I tell that story because it's just to accentuate.

00:33:29.239 --> 00:33:31.624
We are in a particular moment.

00:33:31.624 --> 00:33:33.673
Anti-semitism is real.

00:33:33.673 --> 00:33:35.935
It's not to be dismissed.

00:33:35.935 --> 00:33:53.933
We, as JVP and as individuals, we totally oppose it, as we do all forms of racism, but we have to understand it as part of a whole array of racisms that white nationalism and white supremacy cultivate in this country.

00:33:53.933 --> 00:34:02.942
And the real anti-Semites are there, and they're in the Republican Party, you know, and the ones who actually abet it are the Zionists.

00:34:03.490 --> 00:34:05.516
Yeah, this is Esther and the Zionists.

00:34:05.516 --> 00:34:12.815
Just you know, to build on what Raza's saying, which is so important, the Zionists and the MAGA people, the biggest racist, are now together.

00:34:12.815 --> 00:34:14.936
That's what Zionism has wrought.

00:34:14.936 --> 00:34:18.500
So for us, zionism is profoundly anti-Semitic.

00:34:18.500 --> 00:34:23.443
It takes the whole history of Jewish support we like to say.

00:34:23.443 --> 00:34:31.693
My mother used to say we're Jews for justice, not just us, we're Jews for justice, not just us.

00:34:31.693 --> 00:34:33.438
It takes that whole philosophy and turns it around and makes it only us.

00:34:33.438 --> 00:34:34.262
No more justice for everybody.

00:34:34.262 --> 00:34:38.072
It's totally anti-Semitic and anti-historical of who Jews are supposed to be.

00:34:38.072 --> 00:34:39.476
So there's that.

00:34:39.476 --> 00:34:46.275
And then you know, this confluence of MAGA people, trump people and Zionists is so shameful.

00:34:46.797 --> 00:34:52.496
So to answer your question, which I think is really important no, I don't think we should shy away from antisemitism.

00:34:52.496 --> 00:34:58.579
I mean, it's certainly the case that what Israel is doing is fueling antisemitism around the world.

00:34:58.579 --> 00:35:10.996
And an interesting story my partner was on the subway and these religious Jews got on the train and there were two people talking about it and one said to the other oh, look at these, you know awful Jews, look what they're doing in Gaza.

00:35:10.996 --> 00:35:13.954
And the other person said well, you can't really say it.

00:35:13.954 --> 00:35:15.777
Look what they did in Grand Central Station.

00:35:15.777 --> 00:35:20.876
So I mean, in fact, we're the ones that are fighting anti-Semitism.

00:35:20.876 --> 00:35:24.478
By what we're doing, we feel totally unsafe.

00:35:24.478 --> 00:35:28.840
I mean, roz is Jewish and she's been doxxed by who.

00:35:28.840 --> 00:35:31.056
Who is really attacking Jews?

00:35:32.231 --> 00:35:32.954
To follow up.

00:35:32.954 --> 00:35:49.356
I've been thinking about this whole, this new McCarthyism, and how pro-Palestinian or anti-occupation, anti-zionism has become like what communism that's now the new target.

00:35:49.356 --> 00:36:03.961
And so my father was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee because he was a communist and because he was a Jew in 1964 in Buffalo and one thing that my parents protected us from.

00:36:03.961 --> 00:36:11.753
I was eight years old at the time, but my parents got a lot of hate mail and the hate mail and I have it now they've given it to me, as you know.

00:36:11.753 --> 00:36:14.059
I have it because we have our legacy.

00:36:14.481 --> 00:36:26.893
I have clippings of a newspaper headline and scrawled on it in this terrible scrawl and says you dirty commie Jew, I'm going to kill your children.

00:36:26.893 --> 00:36:28.478
Signed Adolf Hitler.

00:36:28.478 --> 00:36:43.199
And so one of the things that my father did in front of HUAC that was so brave a lot of those senator congresspeople who sat on the HUAC committee were from southern states that didn't allow Black people to vote in 1964.

00:36:43.199 --> 00:36:44.663
And he said that to them.

00:36:44.663 --> 00:36:56.454
He said this committee is illegitimate because you're coming from states that don't allow Black people to vote, so you're sitting illegally in Congress, so that makes this committee illegal and illegitimate.

00:36:56.853 --> 00:37:17.110
And so I thought about that, comparing these hearings where they've called these college presidents to testify, and who is the biggest one to attack them is this woman, elise Stefanik, here in New York State, carol Maga, republican, and she's the one who's so worried about anti-Semitism on college campuses.

00:37:17.110 --> 00:37:27.416
And so I wish that those college presidents had the presence of mind and the strategy and said like, who are you to be called out?

00:37:27.416 --> 00:37:33.856
But they, you know whatever they crumbled and they didn't take a forceful stand.

00:37:33.856 --> 00:37:37.824
But I think that that's really an important point to make.

00:37:37.824 --> 00:37:55.726
I think right that anti-Semitism has been weaponized, not to say that it doesn't exist, but where it exists is among these right-wingers who would be done with Rod, esther and me as fast as they would be done with the migrants that are being now that Biden is shutting down.

00:37:55.726 --> 00:37:56.766
How many people?

00:37:56.786 --> 00:37:57.851
can come yeah.

00:37:57.931 --> 00:38:08.746
So I think that that's an important point to be made, and teaching of enslavement in schools and teaching of women's rights and all the things that we've worked for.

00:38:08.746 --> 00:38:10.797
Yeah, they want to abolish.

00:38:11.309 --> 00:38:18.389
You know, when Pam said earlier about the history of Jewish socialists and Jewish communists, my father was also called before the House of Amendment Committee.

00:38:18.389 --> 00:38:31.293
We have very similar histories and he told them to go to hell and they were going to deport him back to Palestine, but there was no Palestine Irony of ironies, he literally had to prove that he was a citizen.

00:38:31.673 --> 00:38:40.380
But I mean, you know there were so many Jews that went through that and one of the status things was the influence of Zionism even on them.

00:38:40.380 --> 00:38:43.010
That you know, we used to say progressive, except for Palestine HEPS.

00:38:43.010 --> 00:38:44.452
And as you, that you know we used to say progressive, except for Palestine heps.

00:38:44.452 --> 00:38:47.659
And, as you said, in Canada there were many socialist Jews.

00:38:47.659 --> 00:38:51.516
It wasn't ordained that they necessarily were anti-Zionist.

00:38:51.516 --> 00:38:53.800
And you know there is historical context here.

00:38:53.800 --> 00:38:56.014
There's no, there's no doubt about that.

00:38:56.014 --> 00:38:58.922
You know, people, after the Holocaust, jews were damaged people.

00:38:58.922 --> 00:39:05.721
They thought that the only thing that would keep them safe was to have their own state and didn't keep them safe.

00:39:05.721 --> 00:39:06.402
How about that?

00:39:06.402 --> 00:39:15.259
So some of the early anti-Zionist in our community that we need to look at again have always said that.

00:39:15.259 --> 00:39:17.202
And history is a funny thing, you know.

00:39:18.710 --> 00:39:26.601
Well, I'm glad I asked you this and this is why I wanted to talk to the three of you, because I feel like there's so much, there's a lot of untold, unwritten history here.

00:39:26.949 --> 00:39:27.351
I agree.

00:39:27.351 --> 00:39:40.965
I agree with you about that history and I think one of the things that is also very important and is not understood that much is the question of how class and race has been the complexities around that in our US history.

00:39:40.965 --> 00:40:22.313
So when Esther and my family backgrounds, coming out of a very working class Jewish immigrant community that was faced with discrimination, were workers in factories, is a different experience from maybe some of these young people, people who grew up in suburban upper middle class Jewish communities, you know, reconnecting them to this history of working class Jews and the idea that because in this country Jews were then accepted as white and were able to move into other areas, that history gets lost.

00:40:22.313 --> 00:40:28.958
So it's a question of understanding our class backgrounds and how do different politics flow out of that.

00:40:29.099 --> 00:40:31.172
I think it's really important because I don't think it was lost.

00:40:31.172 --> 00:40:33.617
I think it was deliberately suppressed.

00:40:33.617 --> 00:40:38.918
It is not to Zionist advantage to talk about that history of Jewish activism.

00:40:38.918 --> 00:40:43.798
I think it's even more important that you know this history gets raised, that people know about it.

00:40:43.938 --> 00:40:51.240
For people like me it's interesting the class differences between us and our families, because I grew up more like the young people you're talking about.

00:40:51.240 --> 00:40:52.873
We have a lot in common.

00:40:52.873 --> 00:41:00.938
It wasn't suburban, but Tulsa, Oklahoma, wasn't, you know, heavily urban and a lot of the Jews there were professional or they were in business.

00:41:00.938 --> 00:41:07.157
I didn't know until I came, moved to New York as a young person, that there was any such thing as poor Jews.

00:41:07.157 --> 00:41:08.059
I had no idea.

00:41:08.059 --> 00:41:09.161
It was so shocking to me.

00:41:09.161 --> 00:41:12.661
I worked in housing and I said, oh my God, these people are Jewish and they're poor.

00:41:12.661 --> 00:41:14.175
It was really incredible.

00:41:14.175 --> 00:41:23.802
I mean, my family, of course, the generation before, were poor, but I didn't know about them, and so it was suppressed from us too, as was the history of racism.

00:41:23.802 --> 00:41:30.081
So there's a lot of suppression of history that has to be recovered for all of us, not just for young people.

00:41:30.570 --> 00:41:34.802
Agreed, and not just for young people and not just for the Jewish community.

00:41:34.802 --> 00:42:03.824
And to speak about living history, roz, I read something recently that talked about the fact that you were the oldest person who was arrested at the demonstration at Grand Central Station, and I know that you were also involved in the organizing of the elders who chained themselves to the fence of the White House, and I wanted to ask you about that, about that experience and about you know, what is it like as an older woman activist?

00:42:03.824 --> 00:42:04.465
Is it different?

00:42:04.465 --> 00:42:06.393
Is it different being arrested?

00:42:06.393 --> 00:42:09.681
Is it different going out on the front lines in this way?

00:42:09.990 --> 00:42:14.681
I mean, I was arrested three times since October 7th and tried for a fourth time.

00:42:14.681 --> 00:42:15.690
It didn't quite work out.

00:42:15.690 --> 00:42:26.173
I got conned by a cop into going home, but anyway, I was so angry and everybody was, but I thought wait a second, I'm in a position of power.

00:42:26.173 --> 00:42:34.960
I am old, I am retired, I do not have children at home, I do not have people I'm caring for, I can get arrested.

00:42:34.960 --> 00:42:36.184
It's not a big deal.

00:42:36.184 --> 00:42:38.190
I had to work to get arrested.

00:42:38.190 --> 00:42:47.155
I had to beg almost to get arrested, because they did not have any interest in arresting a little old white Jewish lady with a cane.

00:42:47.155 --> 00:42:48.978
No way they didn't want to.

00:42:49.657 --> 00:42:58.503
In one case, the first one, I had to pretend I was cuffed and walk onto the police van to be arrested and then get taken down to one police closet.

00:42:58.503 --> 00:42:59.585
It was an amazing thing.

00:42:59.585 --> 00:43:09.463
And the second time, these guys, the police, were holding each of my arms and there's a picture of me being accompanied by the police and laughing.

00:43:09.463 --> 00:43:11.974
I'm laughing because it was hilarious.

00:43:11.974 --> 00:43:18.998
They treated me like I was their grandmother and I was so conscious of how much race and class had to do with that.

00:43:18.998 --> 00:43:22.373
If I had been black, if I had been Palestinian, forget it.

00:43:22.373 --> 00:43:27.601
If I had been an elderly Puerto Rican woman, no, it wouldn't have happened like that.

00:43:27.601 --> 00:43:32.516
So I was treated with such deference, such dignity.

00:43:32.516 --> 00:43:35.382
Here we're going to take you, you're going to get in the first seat.

00:43:35.909 --> 00:43:39.579
So I learned something from that I certainly was less afraid.

00:43:39.579 --> 00:43:40.981
I wasn't afraid anyway.

00:43:40.981 --> 00:43:42.670
I mean, I wasn't afraid.

00:43:42.670 --> 00:43:43.972
What were they going to do to me?

00:43:43.972 --> 00:43:51.177
And so that was just an attitude that came out of my experience of privilege.

00:43:51.177 --> 00:43:59.646
I mean, as older women, we've been very present and interviewed and vocal, and so it changed our lives in a way.

00:43:59.646 --> 00:44:07.257
The White House fence was something we did collectively, a strategy that was developed by some of our younger members.

00:44:07.257 --> 00:44:11.014
They thought this would be great and we were all willing to do it.

00:44:11.014 --> 00:44:15.612
It was freezing cold, it was hard, but the repercussions were not terrible.

00:44:15.612 --> 00:44:17.335
What lasted was the image.

00:44:17.697 --> 00:44:19.681
Just to add to what Roz is saying.

00:44:19.681 --> 00:44:36.976
You know, we know in JVP the privilege that we have as Jews and as older Jews, and I think it's brilliant that you know we're using that to advance things and we're using that in conjunction with our Palestinian partners, who also know what that privilege can do, and that's a very effective thing.

00:44:36.976 --> 00:44:39.813
People make decisions about that, what they're willing to do.

00:44:39.813 --> 00:44:40.695
We don't have this thing.

00:44:40.695 --> 00:44:43.364
Oh, you're not good if you decide you don't want to be arrested.

00:44:43.364 --> 00:44:44.266
You've had enough of that.

00:44:44.266 --> 00:44:45.710
You know, you did that when you were younger.

00:44:45.710 --> 00:44:46.775
I did that when I was younger.

00:44:46.775 --> 00:44:48.260
I don't particularly want to do that now.

00:44:48.260 --> 00:44:52.693
Well, I'm just somebody who's going to do it every single time and I love her dearly for that.

00:44:53.034 --> 00:44:56.257
And people make decisions about what they can do and what they can't do.

00:44:56.257 --> 00:44:57.960
You know that's decided beforehand.

00:44:57.960 --> 00:45:07.199
I will say that the chaining of the you know, the elders to the fence was very symbolic in many ways.

00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:17.403
That was done by the suffragette movement and we people, we had done the research to make sure that this is historically accurate and that it's going to have an impact on the world, which it has.

00:45:17.403 --> 00:45:24.416
And so these decisions are made in conjunction with you know people who have some consciousness about what symbols mean.

00:45:24.416 --> 00:45:25.492
It was 18,.

00:45:25.492 --> 00:45:27.637
You know woman, 18 means high.

00:45:27.637 --> 00:45:29.021
You know all of these things.

00:45:29.021 --> 00:45:32.418
You know we talked about as part of the Jewish tradition.

00:45:32.679 --> 00:45:33.240
Thanks, esther.

00:45:33.240 --> 00:45:54.512
It's tremendous to hear about the strategic thinking that's gone into all of these different forms of protest, and I wanted to ask you, before I let the three of you go, when I was speaking to people about interviewing you today, I asked each of them if you had the chance to speak to these three tremendous and inspiring elder women in Jewish Voices for Peace, what would be a question that you'd want to ask them?

00:45:54.512 --> 00:46:00.713
And everyone had the same question on their minds, which was what do you think the solution is now?

00:46:00.713 --> 00:46:05.943
And I know you've been asked this, that I know everyone wants to know this, so I'm compelled to ask you.

00:46:06.230 --> 00:46:08.735
This always comes up like what's the solution?

00:46:08.735 --> 00:46:14.615
And you know, we in JVP, and I myself, feel that we don't have anything to say about solutions.

00:46:14.615 --> 00:46:16.822
We live in this country, we don't live there.

00:46:16.822 --> 00:46:17.990
It's up to people there.

00:46:18.512 --> 00:46:26.103
But I will say this that whatever solution and our Palestinian partners and our friends tell us this the same thing one state, two states.

00:46:26.103 --> 00:46:27.746
That's not so concerning to them.

00:46:27.746 --> 00:46:38.485
What's concerning to them is that they treat it like human beings, that they don't have to go through checkpoints, that they don't have to ride on separate roads, that they have access to care and can go to work and can live.

00:46:38.485 --> 00:46:41.351
So equal rights would be nice, you know.

00:46:41.351 --> 00:46:42.985
Equal rights would be really helpful.

00:46:42.985 --> 00:46:45.976
Whatever decision is made about one state, two states.

00:46:45.976 --> 00:46:51.177
And of course, we're very aware that the reason that there hasn't been a state already has been because Israel didn't want it.

00:46:51.177 --> 00:46:59.952
That's very important for us to say, because almost every politician that we saw yesterday was like well, hamas has to be convinced to take the ceasefire deal.

00:46:59.952 --> 00:47:02.697
Hamas doesn't have to be convinced about anything.

00:47:02.697 --> 00:47:04.161
They were the ones that put this deal out.

00:47:04.161 --> 00:47:07.414
It's Israel that said they would refuse to deal with the ceasefire.

00:47:07.414 --> 00:47:11.606
So it's a constant battle around this narrative, which is a lot.

00:47:11.990 --> 00:47:17.880
But it's also very, very difficult because right now is the crisis.

00:47:17.880 --> 00:47:28.784
Lives have to be saved and the problem I totally agree with Esther, and most Palestinians and most people I know think one state, two state, that's a red herring.

00:47:28.784 --> 00:47:30.295
That's not the issue.

00:47:30.295 --> 00:47:32.211
Except what's different?

00:47:32.211 --> 00:47:40.324
Now, in the wake of the genocide, there are not many Palestinians who would feel we can live with these people.

00:47:40.324 --> 00:47:42.655
So what's the answer?

00:47:42.655 --> 00:47:48.036
I don't know, but, as Esther said, it's not up to us to decide that.

00:47:48.878 --> 00:48:09.521
Fair enough, that's a fair enough answer, and I hear you, roz, and so I have to ask you, as we come to a close, with your government continuing to send money to the state of Israel, and with the academic year coming to a close and the encampments no longer in the protests, no longer in the news cycle, how do you keep going?

00:48:09.521 --> 00:48:11.012
What's keeping you going?

00:48:11.012 --> 00:48:12.755
How do you keep the pressure on?

00:48:13.097 --> 00:48:13.918
This is Pam.

00:48:13.918 --> 00:48:25.163
One thing that keeps me going is seeing the response of people and knowing even a small effort, a small action was important.

00:48:25.163 --> 00:48:32.586
And we were leafleting here in an area of the Bronx and we were out there it was, I think, four of us.

00:48:32.586 --> 00:48:48.536
It's not an area heavily populated by, like necessarily, activists, it's not by a college, but just regular people walking down the street and almost everybody walking by agreed and we're happy to see what we were doing.

00:48:48.536 --> 00:49:00.114
And a guy walked by and he had a t-shirt on that said the best falafel, something like that, and he kind of looked and then he gave the thumbs up and then a couple minutes later he came back and he said do you like falafel?

00:49:00.114 --> 00:49:02.476
He said I make the best falafel in this truck.

00:49:02.476 --> 00:49:24.193
He was Palestinian and he was so moved to see us there, kind of like out of the blue, and then he came back and he brought us these huge falafel sandwiches that were absolutely delicious and actually a hookah bar.

00:49:24.213 --> 00:49:25.257
We decided to do something a little bit different.

00:49:25.257 --> 00:49:30.657
We had our activist people who came, and then there were people there who just young people who go there to do hookah, and we had them.

00:49:30.657 --> 00:49:44.780
We showed a film called Speed Sisters and we had this remarkable discussion afterwards where a young guy who was Iraqi grew up after 9-11, and as a little child and kind of faces Islamophobia and it was just.

00:49:44.780 --> 00:49:55.552
You know, you might walk by and think, oh, you know, these people don't care about what's going on, but you realize that people out there care about this thing and that makes me want to keep going.

00:49:55.952 --> 00:50:03.581
Yeah, I mean, I just have to add to that I like to characterize this moment as the horror and the hope, because it's both at the same time, which is pretty exhausting.

00:50:03.581 --> 00:50:07.481
But you know, we have this Bronx Brooklyn kind of competitive thing going on.

00:50:07.481 --> 00:50:18.320
But you know, I mean you know the work that they're doing uptown for Palestine is fabulous and stories are so indicative of you know what's happening.

00:50:18.320 --> 00:50:27.755
We had a Palestinian restaurant that opened up in my neighborhood and when they first opened, you know there was a lot of hate mail and they had in their menu on the seafood thing.

00:50:27.755 --> 00:50:34.079
It said from the river to the sea, and so the Zionists went crazy from the river to support the restaurant.

00:50:34.079 --> 00:50:50.221
They were so moved by the support that they got that they decided to sponsor a Shabbat dinner for the community, which they did.

00:50:50.221 --> 00:51:00.773
A thousand people showed up and they spent $40,000 feeding the entire community with Shabbat services that went on for about two and a half hours.

00:51:01.195 --> 00:51:07.742
So this is an example of stuff that's happening in New York and around the country that you know gives us the hope to realize.

00:51:07.742 --> 00:51:17.572
I mean, even when Roz and I yesterday were you know we're lobbying in Washington and there were these other groups that were lobbying and as we pass by, in our shirts it said ceasefire now, not in our name.

00:51:17.572 --> 00:51:21.840
People are going like this and you know so you know.

00:51:21.840 --> 00:51:25.755
We've had demonstrations where people are like thank you so much, thank you so much.

00:51:25.755 --> 00:51:31.596
It's really like a very different moment relative to ordinary people on the street and what they're seeing.

00:51:31.596 --> 00:51:38.007
Very dear Puerto Rican friend of mine who's been involved in Puerto Rican activism for many years, said JVP is giving us hope.

00:51:38.007 --> 00:51:38.931
It means a great deal.

00:51:39.211 --> 00:51:41.179
And many Palestinians say that.

00:51:41.179 --> 00:51:44.489
I mean, I've been told by Palestinian friends and partners.

00:51:44.489 --> 00:51:46.538
We saw you on Instagram.

00:51:46.538 --> 00:51:52.338
That was the first moment we had of hope the Grand Central Station or something else.

00:51:52.338 --> 00:51:58.918
So it's very clear that our presence means something and gives encouragement.

00:51:59.130 --> 00:52:01.237
Personally, I'm going to just be honest.

00:52:01.237 --> 00:52:02.375
Esther and I came back.

00:52:02.375 --> 00:52:04.177
We were wrecked.

00:52:04.177 --> 00:52:09.726
It was hard to go all through those buildings for miles and miles, and miles.

00:52:09.726 --> 00:52:10.809
I use a cane.

00:52:10.809 --> 00:52:14.759
My body thought, if I don't get in bed right now, I'm going to pass out.

00:52:14.759 --> 00:52:18.393
I mean, it was difficult and that's a real thing.

00:52:18.393 --> 00:52:19.394
I'm 81.

00:52:19.394 --> 00:52:25.684
I have to cope with the reality that my body isn't going to be able to do this indefinitely.

00:52:26.130 --> 00:52:27.313
I do many things.

00:52:27.313 --> 00:52:29.260
I'm a writer, I'm a speaker.

00:52:29.260 --> 00:52:34.713
I can continue doing those things and still, hopefully, have some kind of impact.

00:52:34.713 --> 00:52:40.896
I can't be out in the streets as much as I want to be, even though when I am there's so many people.

00:52:40.896 --> 00:52:43.242
And that's the thing about hope too.

00:52:43.242 --> 00:52:45.956
I mean the culture that we've created.

00:52:45.956 --> 00:52:47.860
When I say we, I don't mean just JVP.

00:52:47.860 --> 00:52:52.096
I'm talking about the encampments, I'm talking about the young people.

00:52:52.096 --> 00:52:56.541
It's one of care and love, as well as justice and struggle.

00:52:56.909 --> 00:53:00.159
I've been in every kind of movement, many organizations.

00:53:00.159 --> 00:53:06.193
Over my whole life, I have never experienced the feeling I'm well cared for here.

00:53:06.193 --> 00:53:11.572
Not only do they love me, they care of me, they make sure I'm okay, that I have what I need.

00:53:11.572 --> 00:53:15.181
It's unbelievable, and it's not just because I'm old.

00:53:15.181 --> 00:53:17.090
They do the same thing for each other.

00:53:17.090 --> 00:53:20.217
They're there for each other when they're suffering.

00:53:20.217 --> 00:53:27.454
They put resources online about massages, about needle what do you call it?

00:53:27.454 --> 00:53:32.972
Acupuncture, acupuncture, acupuncture I started saying needlepoint.

00:53:32.972 --> 00:53:36.740
They're amazing.

00:53:36.740 --> 00:53:38.784
That is my hope.

00:53:38.784 --> 00:53:44.050
The hope of people with that kind of politics is the hope for the future of the world, I think.

00:53:44.150 --> 00:53:47.099
What a perfect note to end on, and thank you so much.

00:53:47.099 --> 00:53:53.802
The three of you Thank you with a full heart for this and for all that you do and all that I know you will continue to do.

00:53:54.090 --> 00:53:54.411
Lovely.

00:53:54.411 --> 00:53:55.996
Thank you very much Love you guys.

00:53:59.670 --> 00:54:00.373
Thanks for listening.

00:54:00.373 --> 00:54:06.179
I'm Ilana Lansford-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work older women, elder women and grandmothers on the move.

00:54:06.179 --> 00:54:17.659
To find out more about me or the podcast, you can go to wisdomatworkpodcastcom, formerly grandmothers on the move, and you can find the podcast at all your favorite places to listen to them.

00:54:17.659 --> 00:54:18.873
Tune in next week.

00:54:18.873 --> 00:54:20.498
Thanks and bye-bye for now.