Speaking Out of Place

David Palumbo-Liu
  • 5.0 (34)
  • POLITICS

Public activism on human rights, environmental and indigenous justice, and educational liberation, with an emphasis on politics, culture, and art.  Website:  https://speakingoutofplace.com/

  1. Making Community Change and Sharpening Activist Skills—A Conversation with Youth United for Community Action

    5D AGO

    Making Community Change and Sharpening Activist Skills—A Conversation with Youth United for Community Action

    Today I am excited to talk with three members of Youth United for Community Action, an organization based in East Palo Alto that has been fighting for community empowerment since 1994, when a small group of young people of color active in their communities came together to form YUCA—“a grassroots community organization created, led, and run by young people of color, the majority from low-income communities. It “provides a safe space for young people to empower[themselves] and work on environmental and social justice issues to establish positive systemic change through grassroots community organizing.” We talk about how YUCA chooses its causes, the way it interacts with the community, and the most pressing issues it is addressing today. We hear inspiring stories about how YUCA workers interact with people in the community in big and small ways, and how this work is giving them the political education needed for meaningful change.  Larissa Perez is a junior in high school. She has lived in East Palo Alto for the majority of her life and is passionate about being able to help others and give back to her community. Through her involvement with YUCA, she has deepened her understanding of East Palo Alto’s rich history while also developing the skills to become a strong leader and advocate for justice.  Estefani Ruiz first joined Youth United for Community Action in August of 2022 and has climbed the pipeline ever since. She first started off as a core member and now finds herself in a Youth Organizer role. Estefani is extremely passionate about giving back to her community and learning new things. This is where her interest in housing and social justice issues first started. She has participated in outreach, community events, and city meetings. She hopes to continue this work as she moves into the next stage of her life by making connections of her prior knowledge to the new area she will find herself in this upcoming academic year. Filiberto “Fili” Zaragoza is one of the campaign organizers and Co-program director at Youth United for Community Action (YUCA) in East Palo Alto, where he grew up. Since joining YUCA in 2019 as a sophomore in high school and moving into a staff position in 2023, he’s developed organizing skills while fighting for his community. Fili draws his passion for advocacy from witnessing social injustices in East Palo Alto and across the Bay Area. He plans to continue his education while building his career in community organizing.

    42 min
  2. The Continuing Struggle to #StopCopCity—Ordinary People Transformed into Activists of Conscience

    APR 27

    The Continuing Struggle to #StopCopCity—Ordinary People Transformed into Activists of Conscience

    In 2021, the City of Atlanta announced that it was entering into a partnership with the Atlanta Police Foundation to destroy the South River Forest and build what became known as “Cop City,” a large facility for the training of police officers. This met with massive public outcry from those outraged by the destruction of the environment and an important historical site (a former prison farm), and the purpose to which the land was to be put—to train police in urban warfare techniques and by extension feed the prison-industrial complex. Activists also pointed to its connection to the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange, which partners with Israel. Protesters occupied the land and carried out a number of direct actions.  In August 2023 the Georgia Attorney General incited 61 people on a sweeping RICO charge, as well as charges of domestic terrorism, and others. In January, a judge threw out all the RICO charges; the state is appealing. Today I am honored to speak with two #StopCopCity activists—both participated in the #Imaginary Crimes Tour, which visited more than 40 cities in the US to publicize the case; one is named in the indictment.  We hear their stories of how and why they became involved in #StopCopCity, what transpired during those events and during the trial, and how it has deepened their commitment to activism. We hear especially about how ordinary people find themselves transformed into activists of conscience, and how they are working in solidarity with many other groups. To keep up to date, please check out this Linktree and join the Signal chat below: https://linktr.ee/sccimaginarycrimestour https://signal.group/#CjQKIFw7xqV1kNadZE8NplWCOD7cpYfB_RtiQ0IScBxjOVgPEhDxoZaYLrElXwyk2kqyynmP

    44 min
  3. Anna Badkhen: To See Beyond—Finding the Language of Survival and Hope

    APR 25

    Anna Badkhen: To See Beyond—Finding the Language of Survival and Hope

    Today I have the immense pleasure of speaking with author Anna Badkhen about her new collection of essays, To See Beyond.  Badkhen talks about how her experiences as a veteran war correspondent exposed her to War’s multiple forms of violence, destruction, and carnage, and how that compelled her to write these essays about survival, and hope.  Speaking from many global locations and from a wide range of historical and cultural perspectives, from antiquity to the present, Badkhen’s essays draw together amazingly imaginative connections across peoples, and ways of seeing. Ultimately, we are shown how to both recognize violence, and hope as well. Anna favors us by reading select passages from this marvelous, and necessary, book. Anna Badkhen’s new essay collection, To See Beyond, is out from Bellevue Literary Press in April 2026. She is the author of seven other published books, most recently Bright Unbearable Reality, which was a finalist for the 2026 Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize and was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and for the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature.  Badkhen’s awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility for writing about civilians in war zones. A former war correspondent, Badkhen grew up in the Soviet Union and is a US citizen. She is an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

    45 min
  4. B******t and Infinity: Why AI Cannot Predict Anything: A Conversation with Carissa Véliz

    APR 23

    B******t and Infinity: Why AI Cannot Predict Anything: A Conversation with Carissa Véliz

    Today I have the immense pleasure of talking with Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the University of Oxford, about her new book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future—from Ancient Oracles to AI.  Linking this work to her previous book, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, Véliz writes: “ surveillance and prediction are digital technology’s original sins.” In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about how both massive and intrusive invasions of privacy at all levels of society and false claims to be able to predict the future erode democracy, are corrosive to ethics, and undermine people’s ability to think for themselves.  Instead, we are conditioned to trust an unregulated band of “effective altruists” who claim to know better than we what kinds of lives we should prefer and the choices we should make.  Véliz argues instead that we should embrace the uncertain to build resilience, to prepare for contingency but not be determined by what we cannot see, and to foster curiosity and imagination. Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy. She is a member of UNESCO’s Women 4 Ethical AI. She advises companies and policymakers around the world on privacy and the ethics of AI. She is a board member of the Proton Foundation, along with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Proton’s CEO Andy Yen. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed Privacy Is Power (an Economist book of the year, 2020) and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. Her new book Prophecy was described as “The most important book you will read for years” by Roger McNamee, the tech investor and best selling author.

    54 min
  5. The Effects of the War on the Iranian People: A Conversation with Fatemeh Jamalpour and and Nilo Tabrizy

    APR 19

    The Effects of the War on the Iranian People: A Conversation with Fatemeh Jamalpour and and Nilo Tabrizy

    Today I am deeply honored to welcome back Iranian journalists Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy. Before, they talked about their book, For the Sun After Long Nights: the Story of Iran’s Women-led Uprising, today they tell us of conditions in Iran, which since January has suffered the government’s massacre of tens of thousands of protesters and the onslaught of the US/Israel war on Iran. Instead of concentrating on how the war is going and its effects on the global economy, as most media sources do, we focus entirely on the Iranian people, and talk about the effects of the bombing on daily life, the attacks on infrastructure, and the shutting down of the Internet. We look at the impact of these many forms of violence on civil society, and talk about the differentials of class, ethnicity, and gender. We end by having Fatemeh and Nilo talk about how covering Iran now is affecting their lives as journalists, and as Iranians. Fatemeh Jamalpour is a feminist journalist banned from working in Iran by the Ministry of Intelligence. Jamalpour has worked as a freelance reporter for outlets such as The Sunday Times, The Paris Review and the Los Angeles Times, and has also held positions at BBC World News in London and Shargh newspaper in Tehran. She has two master's degrees in journalism and communication from Northwestern University and Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran and was a 2024-25 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan. Nilo Tabrizy is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post. She works for the Visual Forensics team, where she covers Iran using open-source methods. Previously, she was a video journalist at the New York Times, covering Iran, race and policing, abortion access, and more. She is an Emmy nominee and the 2022 winner of the Front Page Award for Online Investigative Reporting. Nilo received her MS in Journalism from Columbia University and her BA in Political Science and French from the University of British Columbia.

    54 min
  6. How to Sell a Genocide, and Sustain It: A Conversation with Adam Johnson

    APR 15

    How to Sell a Genocide, and Sustain It: A Conversation with Adam Johnson

    Today I am excited to talk with journalist and media critic Adam Johnson about his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.  Many of us gained an intuitive sense of just how bad the media coverage of the genocide in Gaza and beyond was—not just in the right wing media, but also in the center-left media.  Adam Johnson scoured thousands of stories, articles, news programs, cable shows, and social media posts to not only confirm our worst suspicions, but also, and critically, to fit them into a analytic framework to show the myriad tactics, rhetorical strategies, and instances of journalistic malpractice that not only sold a genocide, but also facilitated it. We talk about how  the media whitewashed Israeli lies, erased Palestinian voices, and contrived a way to make a political settlement seem impossible, and war crimes not only acceptable, but also inevitable. We end by showing how these practices created a template that we see applied today in the coverage of the US/Israeli war on Iran. This is must-listening for those who want to fight genocide and crimes against humanity. Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His writing has been featured in The Nation, In These Times, The Intercept, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle.

    50 min
  7. Amplifying the Violence of Incarceration: Victoria Law on Prisons During Pandemic

    APR 3

    Amplifying the Violence of Incarceration: Victoria Law on Prisons During Pandemic

    Today I am honored to speak with veteran journalist Victoria Law.  She is the author of such books as Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (co-authored with Maya Schenwar), and “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration. Today we talk about her new book, Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration. In this devastating study, Law shows how instead of focusing on care during the outbreak of COVID, prisons took the pandemic as an opportunity to amplify their inhumanity: we learn how things like solitary confinement and strip searches only intensified their worse aspects, and how extractive communications systems preyed on those hungry for news from loved ones. Law also tells of the personal stories she was able to track that give a human dimension to the statistics of the pandemic, and also remarkable stories of self-sacrifice and solidarity, as prisoners gave each other the care and support so badly needed. We end by learning about organizations that are at the forefront of fighting for decarceration and restructuring of parole boards, and other actions to fight against the inhumane and cruel practices of the prison industrial complex.  Victoria Law is a freelance journalist and author who has written about incarceration, particularly women's incarceration, for nearly two decades. Her books include Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (co-authored with Maya Schenwar), and “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration. Her latest book, Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration, is sadly still relevant. You can find her work at victorialaw.net Organizations mentioned in our conversation: Release Aging People in Prison: https://rappcampaign.com/ California Coalition for Women Prisoners: https://womenprisoners.org/ Californians United for a Responsible Budget: https://curbprisonspending.org/ Participatory Defense:  https://www.participatorydefense.org/hubs Article on Participatory Defense NOLA: https://progressive.org/magazine/whose-justice-system-is-it-anyway-law/ Survived & Punished, a national network which works with criminalized abuse survivors: https://survivedandpunished.org/

    56 min
  8. Note from Non-People: A Conversation with Serhat Tutkal and Hevin Karakurt on Kurdish History, Language, Culture

    MAR 30

    Note from Non-People: A Conversation with Serhat Tutkal and Hevin Karakurt on Kurdish History, Language, Culture

    Today it’s a special honor to welcome Serhat Tutkal and Hevin Karakurt to Speaking Out of Place. These two scholars engage in a broad discussion of Kurdish history, culture, politics, literature and language, with particular attention to issues of statelessness, identity, and violence. We talk about the current moment with regard to Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and the US-Israel war on Iran and beyond. We use as a starting poet Serhat’s remarkable essay, “Note from Non-People,” and then move to a discussion of his work on dehumanization. We end with imagining paths out of cycles of violence and dehumanization, and consider specifically the way we might imagine new sorts of utopias and vistas of life-affirmation. Hevin Karakurt is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where she studies Kurdish literature across languages and territories. In this way, she works on the question of how a literature of a collective that shares neither one nation nor any one language might function. Before coming to Stanford, she worked as a researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation funded research project “Half-Truths. Truth, Fiction, and Conspiracy in the ‘Post-Factual’ Age”, at the University of Basel. Serhat Tutkal is a Kurdish academic. He is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti) in Mexico. He has a PhD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá) with a dissertation on the legitimation and delegitimation of Colombian state violence. He mainly works on violence, racism, and dehumanization in West Asia and Latin America

    1h 17m
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About

Public activism on human rights, environmental and indigenous justice, and educational liberation, with an emphasis on politics, culture, and art.  Website:  https://speakingoutofplace.com/

Information

  • Creator
    David Palumbo-Liu
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    186
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Speaking Out of Place
  • Show Website
    Speaking Out of Place

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