Progressive Political News

Labor researchers have long argued that America needs unions to preserve and strengthen the middle class. But now, when American democracy is hanging in the balance, we also need unions to stand up for democracy. And for unions to be effective agents for democracy, they need to truly practice it. 

If my experience as a public school teacher in New Hampshire is any guide, these challenging times present us with an opportunity to increase engagement within our unions, a first step to re-democratizing the voices of workers everywhere. Unions without democratic structures or cultures become fatigued and moribund, or develop an entrenched status quo that makes organizing more difficult. But a culture of debate and a steady infusion of leaders from rank-and-file members on the “shop floor”—or in my sector’s case, the classroom—can keep unions engaged with their members in a way that is not only responsive and effective, but can make unions a social and political pillar of democracy.

In 2021, when I saw the rise of an expansive voucher system in my home state and the passage of a law aimed at restricting the teaching of honest history, I could not help but notice that these attacks on public schools and intellectual freedom coincided with a decline in democratic engagement in our union.

Like many teachers across the country, my first response was to get involved locally. Working with fellow teachers and administrators, we applied for and were awarded a grant to diversify our class bookshelves. Later, a number of those books were confiscated as a result of the chilling effect from a law to censor history instruction, which became known as the “Divisive Concepts” law of 2021. Similar laws have been enacted in other states, and the federal Department of Education has embraced a similar legal strategy to New Hampshire’s, with the goal of chilling classroom dialogue.

After serving as the vice president of our local, an opportunity came my way when a board member at the state level of my union resigned. Few teachers I spoke to knew what the board really did. I counted myself among the mystified members, and I wanted to see if joining the board could provide a way for me to change things, to prevent more books being taken away from students and teachers. But an entrenched status quo was an obstacle that my coworkers and I had to overcome.

The status quo in unions has long been the “service model” of operation, which tends to emphasize elite advocacy over building real power among rank and file members to effect change in our communities. The service model goes hand in hand with the staying power of “business caucuses”—cliques of long timers within unions that see the role of the union as simply to deliver the services of contract negotiation, legal advice, elite level lobbying in capitals, and credit card promotions—and leaves little room for new avenues for member-driven change. This status quo is maintained to the detriment of democratic engagement, leadership development, and organizing.  

But to fulfill the promise of organized labor, and the promise of democracy, unions must be more than transactional. They must be based on the common value that we share as workers: that our worth is more than our paychecks, our value more than the dues we pay, and that, in my case, we as classroom educators are the heartbeat of public schools in America. Sooner or later, unions that become distanced from their rank-and-file membership place themselves on life support. That’s why it’s so important to shrink the distance between members and leadership.

A first step that teachers unions around the country can take to democratize themselves is to rotate leadership from the classroom into positions of power. When the “leadership ladder” has been pulled up, or when there has been a lack of investment in developing future leaders, long-time leaders can become entrenched, and knowingly or unknowingly perpetuate an anti-democratic culture within the union. This can look like an overreliance on one leader, a hollowing out of democratic protections such as term limits, or a decline in the solicitation of member feedback.

For rank-and-file members in our state, democratizing unions meant devoting time to create competitive races for leadership positions. As the saying goes, movement forward requires friction, and friction produces heat. In our attempt to bring about a bolder vision, organizers in my union worked with fellow members, spoke up for a living wage for support staff, and tried to be the leadership we wished to see. Bringing candidates together from around the state, we ran as a slate for positive change in the union and  propelled a record turnout, garnering more than one-third of the vote and attracting support from many long-time members who were first-time union election voters. While we ultimately lost this election, our team of educators celebrated the progress we made in starting to shift the culture within the union toward a democratic classroom orientation.

During the historic wave of “Red for Ed” protests in 2018 and 2019, it was rank-and-file members who came together to spur on the movement, which culminated in legislative wins in West Virginia, Arizona, and other states. West Virginia, which ranked close to the bottom nationally in teacher pay, saw a 5 percent increase in pay following their labor action. Teacher activism in Arizona yielded a $273 million increase from the state aimed at improving teacher pay. But unions nationwide still continue to wrestle with elevating democratic culture and practices that allow the people who are most affected by the issues of the day to have the greatest role in shaping the fight for a better future.

The trajectory for becoming a democratic union that can fight and win is a long one. It’s a process that even long-established traditions of union activism can struggle to sustain. The United Teachers of Los Angeles’s (UTLA’s) tremendous win in elevating Cecily Myart-Cruz to the union’s presidency is an example of how the struggle can be successful. Myart-Cruz, part of the Union Power Caucus, ran as part of a slate of educators bringing energy and a commitment to union democracy back to their union. Together, they negotiated victories for the “common good” including caps on class sizes, the creation of dedicated green spaces at schools, and the defeat of a two-tiered health care plan. Their work has been chronicled by Alex Caputo-Pearl, who himself ascended from the rank-and-file to UTLA President before eventually returning to the rank-and-file. The dynamic of power-sharing, stewardship, and an adherence to a democratic process resulted in major gains for public schools in Los Angeles, with the union adopting more broad-based community visions of what they could accomplish.

Our union in New Hampshire is much smaller than UTLA, but the size of the union hasn’t limited our capacity to be a proof point in the movement for union democracy. Seizing the momentum, our team launched a raft of reform resolutions. We proposed that the union take on issues such as promoting mental health supports for students and staff and creating a culture of belonging in our schools. We went further, proposing that the union adopt resolutions on gun-free school zones, universal public pre-K, play-based learning, access to nature, universal free breakfast and lunch in all public schools, and supporting the freedom for every student to learn and read what they want, especially in the face of book bans and assaults on teaching accurate histories. These measures were all adopted at the union’s annual meeting in 2024.  

By addressing “low-hanging fruit” with our resolutions, we were able to show members what kind of union we could be, and that all of us could have a say in its collective vision. Successfully running candidates for union office and passing resolutions got the wheel of democracy to slowly start turning in our union again. Now, rank-and-file members are seeing that it’s possible to run for office, to bring a new idea forward, to become part of the fabric of our union, and to create changes to the union’s constitution and bylaws to better reflect the values from the classroom and give locals a leg to stand on when it’s time to advocate in schools. All across New Hampshire, members can now say that universal free school lunch is our state union’s position, and that we can all work toward realizing this policy goal.  

Unions must dream big to act big. We must revitalize our organizations to address the inequities of our current system of education all across the United States. We can’t afford to have our public schools crumbling under the feet of our students. 

Educators and allies, it’s time we build the unions that our profession, our communities, and our nation deserve.

These views are of the author alone and do not represent his employer, union, or any affiliates.

For the past five years, I have engaged in an activist strategy known as “protective presence” in the West Bank. The premise is absurd, but simple: When more privileged people are around—particularly white, Jewish Israeli citizens—settler and military violence towards Palestinians is less likely to happen. 

Whenever something does happen, we put our bodies in between Palestinians and violent actors while filming everything. All of our footage is then used for legal documentation and to raise awareness through NGOs, news publications, and social media. 

A poll conducted by the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel shows that this activism works. Ecumenical Accompaniers (EAs) affiliated with the program offer a protective presence by witnessing the daily struggles of people living under occupation. 

More than half of Palestinians surveyed at Israeli checkpoints said they benefited from the presence of EAs during inspections. Anecdotally, the stories of settler and military brutality that my Palestinian friends and colleagues have shared with me are much more extreme than what typically occurs in my presence. However, I recently briefly experienced a tiny taste of what it is like to be Palestinian in the eyes of Israel.

On March 12, I went to the village of Jurat al-Khail as a field coordinator for Rabbis for Human Rights, which brings volunteers into protective presence networks in solidarity with Palestinian communities. The community there had fled rampant settler violence in October 2024, but later received a warrant from the Israeli Supreme Court allowing them to return to their land with the assistance and protection of the military. I went to join the villagers of Jurat al-Khail, but was quickly ordered by the army to leave. Because of the various checkpoints, gates, and road closures I encountered on the way there, my car was far away, and it was a long trek back.

Just as I was approaching my car alongside an American volunteer from Rabbis for Human Rights, two soldiers approached. I had inadvertently parked near a military pillbox, and the soldiers demanded that I identify myself and explain what I was doing. I complied, but the soldiers quickly became aggressive, and one began filming and stuck his phone in the volunteer’s face. I began filming in response, and one soldier immediately yelled, “Oh, you just wasted six hours of your life,” referencing the fact that military detention can legally last up to six hours.

He threw me to the ground and began beating me while accusing me of attacking him. He stole my phone and tried to open it through biometric locks, which I do not use. He told me to give him the code, and when I replied that a warrant is required to search a phone, he threatened to kill me. Under duress, I complied: Legality does not matter if the legal body itself does not care. 

The volunteer and I were both brought into the pillbox, where we were further threatened and abused, and one of the soldiers threatened to rape the American volunteer. We were zip-tied, blindfolded and forced to kneel on the ground. But when the soldiers realized that I am Jewish and an Israeli citizen—I heard one say, “He’s Jewish, apparently. His name is Shmuel [the Hebrew version of Samuel] and he speaks Hebrew”—the abuse became significantly milder. They berated me and called me a traitor while looking through my Instagram account on my phone, but only hit me once or twice more. The commander even loosened my zip ties and blindfold, and I could feel my heart rate slowly return to normal. I no longer feared for my life.

After a few hours of kneeling on the ground blindfolded and zip-tied in the military pillbox, I was placed under arrest. The American volunteer was released with no charges. While the police station was an overall safer environment, they continued violating my civil liberties there. 

I was deprived of my right to privacy with my lawyer, as the officers refused to walk away while I was on the phone with her. The police also interrogated me in Hebrew and failed to provide me with a translator during the interrogation, as is legally required. Eventually, I was released on probation with a fifteen-day ban from the location of the incident.

The roughly fifteen minutes during which the soldiers thought I was Palestinian were the scariest of my life. Having had extensive legal training, I know the rights of both Palestinians under military law and non-Palestinians under Israeli civil law. It did not matter: If the state has no interest in enforcing its own law, those laws effectively do not exist. 

This was nothing I did not already know, but I have now internalized it on a deeper level. Even with my status as an Israeli Jew, it was clear during my interrogation that if the police wanted to break the law, there was no way to stop them—as I saw again less than two weeks later, when No Other Land co-director Hamdan Ballal was beaten by Israeli settlers and then detained by police in the West Bank.

This is not a uniquely Israeli problem: In the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) illegally arrested and detained Palestinian solidarity activist Mahmoud Khalil, even though he is a lawful permanent resident with a green card. Amnesty International has accused Japan of abusing inmates. India has a documented record of oppressing religious and ethnic minorities. The list goes on and on. 

Many or all of these human rights abuses violate the legal codes of the countries committing them. But the expectation that these states will hold themselves accountable is absurd and farcical. Whatever systems of checks and balances we may rely on inevitably fail when powerful governments refuse to play by their own rules. 

These abuses are a symptom; the disease is hierarchy. And as long as we conform to systems that afford state forces unequivocally higher status than civilians, we are tacitly agreeing that cases like mine—and the much more severe ones that happen every day, in the West Bank and throughout the world—are part of the deal.

I would not wish my experience on anyone, and yet, in some ways, I’m glad it happened. I am glad to better understand what Palestinians go through every day. I am glad that when Hamdan Ballal and two of his neighbors describe spending an entire night on the ground in a military base, I have a tiny bit of context for what that experience feels like. 

I hope that this experience helps me to become a better ally and activist; in line with the internal logic of protective presence work, the sad truth is that more people will empathize with this story when it happened to an Israeli Jew instead of to a Palestinian. For about fifteen minutes, I was effectively Palestinian, and I now know better than before: Protective presence works.

Editor’s note: The Progressive and others are calling for an immediate investigation into Stein’s forceful detention and full accountability for the actions of the soldiers involved. On March 15, The Progressive sent a formal letter to both the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Ministry of Defense Complaints Unit raising concerns about Stein’s treatment and requesting a written response. As of press time, no response, nor any acknowledgement of these letters has been received.

Part of the Series Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation Sen. Bernie Sanders announced on Thursday that he would soon force a vote in the Senate on two joint resolutions to block the Trump administration from selling an additional $8.8 billion in certain bombs and weapons to Israel in the next week. While the…

The first two months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been marked by a whirlwind of dangerous climate-related executive orders and frightening, fossil fuel industry-friendly cabinet confirmations. Every day makes more clear what climate advocates have been warning us about: Trump is actively and deliberately destroying any hope of our federal government helping our planet. 

Trump and his supporters have laid bare what they want: unregulated corporations spewing pollution into our air, land, and water. Corporate oligarchs enriching themselves as our planet burns. Greed over people. 

It is clear that, for now, any real chance of protecting our communities from the increasingly destructive and devastating impacts of climate pollution will have to come from bold action by state and local leaders. The best way to do this is by supporting the growing movement to hold polluters accountable for their contribution to the climate crisis, against the inevitable industry pushback. Enter the climate change superfund movement.

For decades, Big Oil knew fossil fuels were contributing to climate change, but they engaged in a massive disinformation campaign to keep profiting from its pollution. Now, while they continue to make record profits and spend record amounts of money lobbying, we’re the ones footing the bill—in destroyed homes, ravaged communities, and lost lives. 

In May of last year, Vermont became the first state to pass a climate superfund act allowing the state to recover financial damages from polluting industries for their climate impacts. New York, where state residents have incurred more than $2 billion in climate-related costs in 2023, followed shortly after. 

A large, diverse coalition of activists, local government officials and environmental justice advocates pushed New York Governor Kathy Hochul to sign her state’s Climate Change Superfund Act into law in December. It is projected that the law will raise $75 billion over twenty-five years from the companies most responsible for the climate crisis to fund vital climate adaptation and resilience projects across the state, potentially saving New York taxpayers $825 billion.

The rest of the country has the opportunity to join in these efforts to hold polluters accountable. Similar bills have already been introduced in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland; states including Minnesota and Oregon are crafting their own superfund bills as well.

Take New Jersey, which has experienced seventy-five severe weather events since 1980, with damages stretching into the billions of dollars. The recently introduced New Jersey Climate Superfund Act would empower the state to assess and collect on the damages caused by climate change over the past thirty years from the massive fossil fuel companies that do business in the state. This revenue would provide dedicated funding through a new state program for everything from recovering from extreme weather events to upgrading the transit system and electric grid. The bill is rapidly gaining grassroots support across the state, with several large cities such as Jersey City and Hoboken passing supportive resolutions in recent weeks.

In California, legislators have introduced a climate superfund bill of their own as the state continues to reel from January’s climate change-related wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles. And with calls from Trump and his fellow Republicans to place restrictions on California’s much-needed wildfire aid, it is more imperative than ever that the Big Oil companies, not taxpayers, absorb the cost of rebuilding.

Corporate polluters—and the politicians they’ve spent billions and billions of dollars lobbying—will increasingly fight efforts to hold their industries accountable for the decades of pollution they’ve profited from. Just weeks ago, a group of fossil fuel companies and twenty-two states filed a lawsuit alleging that New York’s superfund act is unconstitutional. 

These faulty lawsuits will come, but we urge leaders in these states and others that will soon be joining the movement to stand firm in holding climate polluters accountable. Know that doing so will not only save taxpayers money but send a powerful message to these industries that our water, our air, our homes, and our health are more precious than their profit margins.

This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

“New York’s shield law was created to protect patients and providers,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

As Republican lawmakers wage an all-out assault on transgender people, Democrats are reportedly “reshuffling.” In a recent article, sources told NOTUS that the party is attempting to adjust its tone on trans issues following its crushing losses in the 2024 election, instead seeking a sort of middle ground that won’t “inflame” voters. The myth that…

We’re joined by the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and critic of U.S. foreign policy. He serves as executive producer for the new documentary The Encampments, which follows last year’s student occupations of college campuses to protest U.S. backing of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He tells Democracy Now! why he got involved with the film and the roots of his own activism, including the making of his song “Hind’s Hall,” named after the Columbia student occupation of the campus building Hamilton Hall, which itself was named in honor of the 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab. Rajab made headlines last year when audio of her pleading for help from emergency services in Gaza was released shortly before she was discovered killed by Israeli forces. “We are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution,” Macklemore says.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.The Trump administration is escalating its crackdown on international students. On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the State Department’s role in the arrest of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, who seized on Tuesday by a group of masked federal agents on the streets of Somerville as she was walking to dinner. A year ago, Ozturk had co-written a piece in the student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to Palestinian solidarity protests on campus. She’s now jailed in Louisiana. Massachusetts Democratic Congressmember Ayanna Pressley denounced Ozturk’s abduction, saying she was, quote, “kidnapped in plain sight.” Pressley wrote, quote, “She’s a peaceful protestor, grad student, & my constituent who has a right to free speech & due process. Now she’s a political prisoner. Free her now,” the congressmember wrote.Marco Rubio was questioned about Ozturk’s abduction on Thursday.
HÜMEYRA PAMUK: Mr. Secretary, a Turkish student in Boston was detained and handcuffed on the street by plainclothes agents. A year ago, she wrote an opinion piece about the Gaza war. Could you help us understand what the specific action she took led to her visa being revoked?

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Yeah, well —

HÜMEYRA PAMUK: And what was your State Department’s role in that process? Can I —

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Well, we revoked her visa. It’s an F-1 visa, I believe. … I think it’s crazy — I think it’s stupid for any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors — they’re visitors — and say, “I’m going to your universities to start a riot. I’m going to your universities to take over a library and harass people.” I don’t care what movement you’re involved in. Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt? We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. And if we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.
AMY GOODMAN: This week, thousands of students and faculty and community members in Somerville, Massachusetts, have gathered to protest her abduction. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went on to say the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas across the country.Nearly three weeks ago, unidentified federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampments at Columbia University. He was also a negotiator with the university. He was a permanent legal resident and a green card holder. He’s now being held in an ICE jail in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil is featured prominently in a new documentary called The Encampments. It’s an inside look at Columbia University Gaza solidarity encampment and the nationwide student uprising against U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza. This is the film’s trailer.
SEN. TOM COTTON: We’re here to discuss the little Gazas that have risen up on campuses across America.

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS: There is a movement to radicalize young people.

BRIAN KILMEADE: Can you believe they are chanting about the infitada [sic] in New York City?

DONALD TRUMP: I really believe they are brainwashed.

SUEDA POLAT: There was a very concerted effort by the media to portray things a certain way and refuse to discuss Gaza. Columbia is materially invested in the genocide in Gaza. We don’t want our money to go towards Palestinian death.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, and the university was cracking down on Palestinian activism on campus.

GRANT MINER: It’s completely farcical to imply that in any way, like, Jewish people were being persecuted.

SARAH BORUS: I have never felt more proud to be Jewish than when I was pushing our university to divest from genocide.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: They would just criminalize anyone who would participate in a protest. That was the moment where students were like, “We need to do something more.”

PROTESTER 1: Letting me on the lawn!

MAHMOUD KHALIL: The university would say, “Oh, you’re overestimating your power.” I remember, like, telling them, “There are 60 universities setting up encampments across the United States.”

PROTESTER 2: We’ve got Yale holding it down right now, all live.

JAMAL JOSEPH: In ’68, the students at Columbia took over the campus, mainly in protest of the war in Vietnam. Columbia talks about how it was OK then, but not OK now.

MAYA ABDALLAH: Bravery is very contagious. We kind of watched Columbia in awe, and we knew we were next.

PROTESTER 3: The only weapon they have is fear. And when we call their bluff, they have nothing!
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for The Encampments, a new documentary produced by Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough News. Later in the show, we’ll be joined by two protest leaders at Columbia. One of them was just expelled by Columbia, a fifth-year grad student. We’ll also be joined by the film’s producer.But first, we turn to the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, who served as the film’s executive producer. In May of last year, Macklemore released the song “Hind’s Hall,” inspired by the pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University who occupied a campus building and gave it that name in honor of the [5-year-old] Palestinian child Hind Rajab. She was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in January of 2024 in a car alongside of her family members. Prior to her death, Hind was on the phone for hours with emergency workers, pleading for help, pleading for them to come and save her. Macklemore announced all proceeds from the song would be donated to the U.N.’s Palestine relief agency, or UNRWA. In September, Macklemore released a sequel to the song, “Hind’s Hall 2,” with help from the Gazan rapper MC Abdul, a teenager, and Palestinian American singer Anees.I spoke to Macklemore on Thursday and asked him about how he became involved in The Encampments documentary.
MACKLEMORE: Alana Hadid had reached out to me. I had seen her in San Francisco at Palestinian Day back in the fall, and she mentioned the film then. And I watched it and was blown away. What BTN was able to capture, I think, was a moment in American history that will be — that we will come back to, time and time again, when we look at resistance movements.

What the students did at Columbia University was deeply inspiring to me, on really every level. But it came at this point in the genocide in Gaza that I think a lot of us were feeling a certain fatigue around. What can we do, our voices? This isn’t working. And what the students did by peacefully protesting and advocating for Palestinian life and demanding that their university disclose information about the investments that they were making, their ties to the genocide that was underway, and coming together and rallying for humanity in that moment was one that rekindled a flame, I think, in all of us, and definitely in myself, of the students are always at the forefront of resistance movements. If you look at American history, the students are always those that are willing to risk, you know, being demerited, being — facing deportation, as we see with Mahmoud, and really spearheading what was to come, which was getting millions Americans back out into the streets and demanding for a permanent end to this genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, the film is coming out, and now the people who are featured in the film are speaking alongside it: Grant Miner, who’s just been expelled from Columbia, a graduate student there; Sueda Polat, who, alongside Mahmoud Khalil, negotiated with the Columbia administration. I mean, originally, Mahmoud Khalil and the others were going to be live at the Q&As after the film, coming out this weekend. Now he can’t be reached. He’s in ICE jail in Louisiana. And you have this latest news of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish graduate student at Tufts that is kidnapped off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, as she’s ending her daily fast, as she’s going to iftar with her friends, and she’s taken by six masked ICE agents. Can you talk about the latest news, as your songs come out and The Encampments, the documentary, is being released?

MACKLEMORE: I don’t know if I exactly have words for what’s happening. I think that we are under the utmost threat that we have — that we have seen as Americans using our voice. Our First Amendment is completely being stripped away from us in real time, in a way that is scary, in a way that is instilling fear, or as it attempts to instill fear. And you see real-life, very serious consequences to those advocating for peace. You see it with Mahmoud. You see it at Tufts yesterday. You know, we’ve been seeing it the last couple weeks. And people are scared, people that have been very at the forefront, and not even at the forefront, of this movement, that are being targeted right now and risking deportation.

And I think what it’s serving for me in this moment is this rally cry, right? Because if they’re coming for Mahmoud — and Mahmoud, as you see in The Encampments film, is just this very diplomatic, coming-from-the-heart Palestinian refugee from Syria, you know, university student at Columbia, super educated, super tapped in and a leader. And he is a — he is a threat. They are trying to use Mahmoud and everyone else that’s been abducted the last couple weeks as examples of this is what happens when you go against — when you go against our country. This is what happens when you go against genocide. This is what happens when you criticize Israel. And the narrative that is being spun around this being hateful or a form of terrorism or antisemitic is the furthest thing from the truth. These are human beings that are advocating for Palestinian life, that are leaders, that are brave, that are willing to risk their own freedom for the liberation of the Palestinian people. And we, as those in community, this is a call to all of us to step up in this moment, to realize that our First Amendment is being compromised and that we must come to the forefront and ensure that this stops.

AMY GOODMAN: Macklemore, I was wondering if you can share with people your own journey. Born Ben Haggerty, you’re now a four-time Grammy Award-winning rapper. And if you can talk about what changed you and if you were afraid to speak out and what it meant for you?

MACKLEMORE: I was on the road in the States on tour when October 7th happened. And the nature of being on the road is that you have a lot of time in the day. You know, I work for an hour and a half at night doing a show. And as video started to come out of Gaza — and to be honest, like, I, of course, knew about Palestine and knew about Israel. I knew there was a, quote-unquote, “conflict.” I didn’t know about the 70 — at the time, 75 years of oppression. I didn’t know about the Nakba. I didn’t know what Zionism meant. I didn’t know about the apartheid state and the system that is Israel. I did not know about the open-air prison that was Gaza. I did not know. And I started to learn. And once I started to learn, in conjunction with the videos that were coming out of Palestine, something happened in me. There was an awakening and a remembering of what actually matters in this world.

And I think that there was that first couple weeks of, like, “How am I watching this, and no one else — how are we all watching this, and no one in the music industry is saying anything? I feel crazy.” And I wanted to say something, but I would have conversations with friends, and they’d be like, “Yeah, dude, if you say that, you’re going to get canceled. If you say anything around Palestine, they’ll come for you. They’ll cancel you.” And at a certain point, I remember I saw a fellow artist and friend, Kehlani, and she had said something. And someone told me she was going hard for Palestine. And I went to her Instagram page, and I saw that. And as it says in the film, bravery is contagious. And I saw Kehlani, and I was like, “OK, that’s all I needed, was one other person stepping up and saying, ‘This is wrong.’” And it gave me kind of that push to make a first statement. And I haven’t really turned back since.

I believe it’s my moral obligation, not just as an artist, not as someone with a platform or four-time Grammy — like, all that is just labels. What this really comes down to is humans, human beings, humanity advocating for the most marginalized. When we strip all of it away, when we take away what — you know, what’s at stake here, what — you know, I just — I’m done. I’m done playing the game of capitalism and “let me walk the straight and narrow so I don’t offend this person and that person.” And that was an unlearning. You know, that was an unlearning for me to be like, “You know what? I am not tied to any record label. I don’t care about a brand deal. I don’t care. I’ve been so lucky in my career that I’m financially stable enough that I don’t have anything to risk that’s going to actually jeopardize, like, putting food on my table. I need to step up in this moment right now.” And I felt called. I felt called by my ancestors. I felt called from those who came before. I felt called by all the people that have put their freedom on the line for the freedom of all of us. And I’m not going to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: The film, among others, features Grant Miner, who’s what? A fifth-, sixth-year graduate student at Columbia, who is a Jewish American, now expelled. So, were you afraid of being, as you were talking about, being called antisemitism, when so many of the activists around the country who are fighting for Palestine are Jewish?

MACKLEMORE: Of course. Of course I was afraid of it. But you realize this has never been about Jewish people. This is — at the very root, at the core of this resistance movement, is beautiful Jewish people in solidarity with Palestinians. As Mahmoud says in the film, Palestinian liberation is Jewish liberation. Jewish liberation is Palestinian liberation. They are not separate. But this term “antisemitic” is being used in this way to instill fear, to create division, to continue the absolute genocide that is taking place in Gaza, to center that fear and use it as a mechanism in which to silence the people.

And what we have seen is education is the greatest tool. It’s the greatest tool in this moment. The young people — at a certain point, we know what it is. We see it. Young people are educated. They know the difference between Judaism and Zionism. They are not — they are not linked. Zionism is a political ideology. It has nothing to do with the Torah. We know this. But the way that it is being spun in the media as anything but a movement of love and of solidarity is completely false. So, shoutout to Grant. Shoutout to all — to JVP, to IfNotNow, to Israelism, the film. There’s so many Jewish people right now in our country stepping up and dispelling this insane notion of antisemitism. They’re actually showing the beauty of collective liberation.

AMY GOODMAN: Macklemore, can you talk about the making of “Hind’s Hall” and “Hind’s Hall 2”? Start with “Hind’s Hall” and why [Hind Rajab], her story, the [5-year-old girl], touched you so much. It became basically an anthem of the encampment movement across the country.

MACKLEMORE: I hear the 911 tape of Hind, and I hear my own 6-year-old daughter. You know, I have a 6-year-old. She just turned 7. Hind didn’t get to turn 7. I hear her crying out. I cannot help but imagine my own 6-year-old. And it makes me emotional even just saying it. I can’t imagine my 6-year-old making that 911 call and pleading for someone to please come and save her, and the way that her life was ended by IDF bullets, you know, over a hundred of them. I can’t make sense of that. I can’t make sense of that world.

And really, the song came from a place of — I was writing. I was just — I had no other way to process this. You know, writing has always been a means of me trying to process this world and get deeper into my own truth and this human experience. And I was so moved by what the students at Columbia were doing. I was so moved by — by their bravery and taking over Hamilton Hall, you know, being reminded of resistance movements of the past, of seeing that the students have never been wrong. They have always been on the right side of history. And look at what they’re doing again. Look at what they are doing again. They are leading not only our country, but showing the rest of the world what it looks like to risk, to risk all — you know, again, they paid — who knows how much money they paid to go to college there at Columbia University? They are uprooting this notion of “I need to protect myself,” and they stepped in. And I think that it came in a time where we were all feeling that fatigue, and Columbia reminded us of what is possible.

And it spread. It spread to universities all across the country. That news got back to those kids in Gaza. They saw, “You know what? Although the U.S. is literally bombing us, Israel is literally killing us, there are people out there that know that our lives are worth the exact same as anyone else in this world.” Those kids in Gaza felt seen.

And the students at Columbia reminded me of what it means to show up. And I remember I came home one day, I went to yoga, and I left yoga, and my heart was feeling open, and I heard this sample by Fairuz that my friend Tamara had played me. And it came on in the car, and it was divine timing. I came right down here to this chair that I’m in, and that song wrote itself. You know, I believe that songs that come from source write themselves. I was just — I happened to have the pen in my hand at that moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you share a few lines with us of “Hind’s Hall”?

MACKLEMORE: [rapping] The people, they won’t leaveWhat is threatenin’ about divesting and wantin’ peace?The problem isn’t the protests, it’s what they’re protestingIt goes against what our country is fundingBlock the barricade until Palestine is freeBlock the barricade until Palestine is freeWhen I was seven, I learned a lesson from Cube and Eazy-EWhat was it again? Oh yeah, F— the police.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, “Hind’s Hall 2,” you made that with the help of a Gazan teenager, a rapper named MC Abdul, and the Palestinian American singer Anees. Can you talk about them?

MACKLEMORE: I wanted to continue, you know, continue. I think it was important for me to give Palestinian artists a voice, that was maybe a voice through my platform. Obviously, both those artists have amazing platforms and voices, but I think that my demographic is different. And I wanted to ensure that, like, everyone was able to come and lend their perspective on what’s going on right now, and have it be as heard by as many people as possible.

Anees and I had been going back and forth, and we had kind of both talked about, like, “Yo, we got to do something. We got to say something. You know, we got to make a song.” And it was the perfect opportunity. And right after “Hind’s Hall” came out — it was probably within a couple days — I was in New Zealand. And I hit Anees, and I was like, “Bro, we got to do — we got to do a remix to this.” And I started making the beat. We started sending things back and forth. And slowly, you know, in the next four months, the song was made.

My guy Ghazi from Empire Records put me in touch with MC Abdul, 15 years old, you know, from Palestine, who’s just a phenomenal MC, phenomenal person. And yeah, he sent his verse in. And just the imagery — you know, he’s able to tell a story that I’m not able to tell. He’s able to tell us a very personal story about, you know, losing family, about getting out, about the Palestinian struggle from the perspective of a Palestinian that’s from Palestine. And that voice needs to be heard.

So, to me, it’s just, we are storytellers. We are — art is the greatest form of resistance, or a form of resistance. And “Hind’s Hall 2” was birthed out of that resistance and coming from a place of “We are going to tell our story and not have it be told by anybody else.”

AMY GOODMAN: Macklemore, what do you hope will happen with the film The Encampments, that’s just opening today in different theaters, from Los Angeles to New York?

MACKLEMORE: I hope it wakes up people’s hearts. I hope it reminds people, it serves as a deep reminder, that we are all connected, that it dispels any notion of division, and yet what it actually shows is true solidarity. I hope that it rewrites this history. I think this history — the truth will be our history, as much as it’s attempted to be censored right now. But I think that it will remind people, again, that the students are never wrong. It rekindles bravery. It rekindles courage. And it’s a call to action. We need to get mobilized, organized, And we are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution.
AMY GOODMAN: Four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore. He’s the executive producer of the new documentary The Encampments, which is opening in the next week in New York, in Los Angeles and beyond. Coming up, we speak to two Columbia graduate students, one who’s just been expelled, as well as the producer of The Encampments. Stay with us.

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