De Verbranders Neske Baerwaldt & Wiebe Ruijtenberg

Our guest today is Ghassan Hage, a professor of anthropology at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Today, we talk with Ghassan, not about Europe’s borders, but about Palestine, and the intensification of the destruction of life in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli state and the powers that support it.

We recorded our conversation a few weeks ago, in January 2024. As I record this introduction, I am struck by how difficult it is to find words that speak to the moment we are in. We are witnessing military attacks of unimaginable brutality, with countless bodies still to be found under the rubble. Alongside this obliteration of Palestinian life, we see the destruction of the conditions of possibility for life, with the bombing of water wells, tanks, greenhouses, food depots, ports, fishing boats, hospitals, schools, and bakeries.

At the same time, as Ghassan points out, this violence is not new, but an intensification of the structural, settler colonial violence inflicted upon the Palestinians for the past 76 years and more. We must pause and reflect on the histories that made it possible for Gaza to become the place it is today, a place where Israel can cut off the supply of water, food and electricity to Gaza, turning hunger and thirst into weapons of war. As Ghassan points out, violence is inherent in the very existence of Gaza.

Where does the legitimacy of such violence come from? How do we accept living in a world where it is normalized?

Ghassan identifies the root of the problem as the virtual absence of the very thought of negotiating one’s existence with others, creating the fantasy in Israel that supremacy over everyone is possible. This fantasy is fueled by a frightening racism that makes it such that Palestinians can be treated as if their death is meaningless.

In the episode, Ghassan describes Israel as an ethno-racial state and as a meta-colony, a colonialism of all colonial powers. This means responsibility lies not only with the Israeli government but also with the meta-colonial powers that make this destruction possible, in the form of massive military aid and diplomatic support. And we must dig deeper, and think about the global infrastructures in place that provide the materials and cover necessary to sustain this onslaught and find ways to challenge it.

We close the episode with a reflection on the future. Israel as an ethno-racial state, Ghassan asserts, is going to come to an end. The question is what kind of an end. Tragically, with massacres and counter-massacres? Or through a negotiated mode of existence where everyone can live together? Let us work towards the latter.

In the episode, we play a clip of Refaat Alareer, the writer, poet, professor, and activist, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on the 6th of December 2023, along with several members of his family.

Refaat was a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. He also co-founded the We Are Not Numbers project, which provided writing workshops for young Palestinians.

We close the episode with a recital of one of Refaat’s poems, titled, ‘If I must die, let it become a tale’. It became widely shared and recited at protests all over the world after he was killed. The recital we use is read by Peter Griffin and can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0zYDME9oaw

Our guests in this episode are Bridget Anderson, Cynthia Wright, and Nandita Sharma. We speak to them about their editorial called “Why no Borders”, which they published in 2008. In it, they distill the scholarship on borders at the time, in order to draw the conclusion that we should get rid of borders.

Taking the editorial as our starting point, we speak about collaboration, and the joy of working together with people with whom we share a politics, and a sense of humor. And we talk about no borders as a practical political project, that is carried out in the here and now, by all of us who refuse to conform to nationalized borders.

Bridget, Cynthia, and Nandita bring two pieces of music to the episode: No One Is Illegal, by Renovatio, and Absolute Power, by Akala.

We recorded this episode right after the Maritime Solidarities conference that brought Bridget, Cynthia, and Nandita to Amsterdam in September of 2023. This was a few weeks before the Israeli state took the Hamas attack on the 7th of October as an opportunity to escalate the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza and the Westbank. We don’t speak about Palestine in the episode. But, as we publish this in January 2024, we want to state that the freedom dreams we express in this conversation apply to Palestine in Particular. And right now, we must act. We must reject this total destruction of life. We must resist the occupation, we must resist settler colonialism, and we must resist ethnic-nationalist states. And, we must refuse to lose, as Bridget puts it in this episode.

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion) and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

Our guest today is Hidaya Nampiima, co-founder and spokesperson of Amsterdam City Rights, an organisation of people living in Amsterdam with and without the right papers.

What is Amsterdam like if you don’t have a BSN number? When you are shut out from healthcare, schooling, housing, education, legal work, and political participation? Hidaya talks about becoming undocumented and being pushed onto the streets, to then pick up her pieces and find her voice by challenging injustice.

There is no such thing as being undocumented, she explains. It’s the system that creates undocumented people.

Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

During the episode, we listen to two pieces by Bobi Wine:
- his song Freedom
- a speech he gave at the 2022 Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy

In de aflevering vandaag spreken we met Roos Ykema, van MiGreat. MiGreat werd vorig jaar bekend door de hulp die ze boden in ter Apel, toen honderden mensen noodgedwongen op het veld voor het aanmeldcentrum voor asielzoekers moesten slapen. Daar zag Roos hoe op allerlei manieren en door allerlei beslissingen een crisis werd gecreëerd, en hoe vervolgens die crisis uitnodigde tot nieuwe harde maatregelen.

Verder hebben we het met Roos over haar politieke ontwikkeling, over hoe noodhulp gebruikt kan worden door het grenssysteem, en ook, hoe het een springplank kan zijn voor verzet en systeemverandering.

Ten slotte spreken we over het politieke werk dat MiGreat doet, zoals rechtszaken aanspannen samen met mensen in asielzoekerscentra, het organiseren van demonstraties, en het opzetten van politieke campagnes.

En we luisteren naar Mississippi Goddam van Nina Simone, naar Don’t Hurt Yourself van Beyonce, en naar een prachtige speech van spoken-word artist Lev Avitan: https://levavitan.nl/

Zoals altijd zijn we benieuwd naar jullie gedachten! Je kunt een reactie achterlaten op onze Instagram of Twitter, of ons een mailtje sturen naar deverbranderspodcast@gmail.com

Graphic design: Thomas, van Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)
Thema muziek: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)
Thema muziek: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin) – Doina van Fanfare Ciocarlia

In this episode of de Verbranders, we talk to Gracie Mae Bradley about a book she co-wrote with Luke de Noronha, called “Against Borders: The Case for Abolition”. In it, they draw inspiration from prison abolitionism and the black feminist politics that shape it, and they bring that body of thought and practice to the work of organising against borders.

We talk about the harm borders do, the hierarchies they produce, and the importance of dismantling them. And we talk about how prison abolitionism teaches us to do this work of dismantling alongside the equally important work of building the worlds we want to live in, with the ultimate goal of shrinking borders into non-existence.

We also ask Gracie about what it is she loves, and the kinds of worlds she dreams of and is fighting for. We asked her to bring three pieces of art, which we weave into the conversation.

Enjoy!



Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast)

Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums)

Theme music: Allen (accordion)and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia

During the episode, we listen to Philip Glass' Dance No. 4, and Gracie reads from Alexis Pauline Gumbs' "Undrowned" and from a stunning poem she wrote, called "On Ending"

In our conversation today, we talk to Luke de Noronha about his book Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica. Meant as a contribution to the collective struggle against racism and deportation, the book tells the life stories of four men who grew up in the UK, were deported to Jamaica following criminal conviction, and now struggle to survive and rebuild their lives in the Caribbean.

We start the conversation talking about Luke’s process of conducting research for this book. We talk about his friendship with the four men he writes about, and what this friendhip meant – and continues to mean - for his work as a researcher.

We also talk about Jamaica, the legacies of slavery, colonialism and ongoing neocolonialism that explain Jamaica’s relative position to the UK, and the immense amount of ignorance on the effects of these legacies in the European nation-states we speak from.

We end our conversation discussing Luke’s forthcoming book on border abolition, called ‘against borders: the case for abolition’ which he wrote together with Gracie Mae Bradley. In it, Luke and Gracie argue we must transform society and our relationships to one another, and build a world in which everyone has the freedom to move and to stay.