Pretty Heady Stuff

Harsha Walia reframes ICE fascism and American aggression in an era of border brutality

Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. Author of the essential Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, Walia has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee. The poet and theorist Gloria Anzaldúa once wrote that “The world is not a safe place to live in. We shiver in separate cells in enclosed cities, shoulders hunched, barely keeping the panic below the surface of the skin, daily drinking shock along with our morning coffee, fearing the torches being set to our buildings, the attacks in the streets. Shutting down.” In this discussion, Walia and I talk about working to shut down the structural forces that are trying to force us to shut down, to drink shock and resist panic.We look at the fascistic violence happening in the United States, the Trump administration’s blood-soaked invasion of Venezuela, and the ongoing push, in Canada, for a border enforcement regime that aligns more closely with the United States’ crackdown on immigration. What, if anything, does the spectre of securitized borders mean in the context of rising eco-fascism and global resource wars? Canada claims to be a climate leader and yet remains a place for rapacious extraction; we profess to being a bastion of multiculturalism and humanitarian values, but wage war on Indigenous communities and perceived others. Walia helps us understand the links between systems of border reinforcement and the monopolization of violence by police. Under capitalism, this sort of fascistic slide is central to the consolidation of moneyed power. It facilitates oligarchic rule. And the accelerating annihilation of democracy should not come as a surprise in this context. If twelve people can possess the wealth of four billion, then democracy will not be allowed to live. If eighteen trillion dollars can be hoarded by a small group of elites, then democracy will be destroyed in order for that system to continue. But we can’t let it, because the possibility of self-determination and the social good are literally at stake. This is why Walia proposes the idea of becoming ungovernable: becoming capable of democracy in the direct sense of disrupting, building support structures for disruptors and generating the momentum needed to take power and protect all people. According to Walia, the infrastructure that the left requires to contest fascism will need to be developed outside the digital realm that you are currently reading this in. If solidarity is to become a serious threat to the status quo, it cannot be reduced to a sentence shared in the comment thread. A shift could send shockwaves, but we’ll need to reanimate the democratic muscles that seem to have atrophied over the course of neoliberalism’s deranged ascent.#leftpolitics [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/leftpolitics] #anticapitalism [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/anticapitalism] #anticolonialism [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/anticolonialism] #ice [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/ice] #fuckice [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/fuckice] #antitrump [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/antitrump] #antizionism [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/antizionism] #antifascism [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/antifascism] #socialism [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/socialism] #venezuela [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/venezuela] #handsoffvenezuela [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/handsoffvenezuela] #monroedoctrine [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/monroedoctrine] #maduroarrested [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/maduroarrested] #nooneisillegal [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/nooneisillegal]

Anna Quon muses about mental health, social trust and the costs of inequality

In this episode of Pretty Heady Stuff, Halifax's Poet Laureate Anna Quon talks about the places and people that her poetry comes from, why she is committed to using art as a means of documenting the suffering and joy that we experience, and how to advocate for more inclusive forms of care. Quon is a writer and writing workshop facilitator. Her first novel, Migration Songs, was released by Invisible Publishing in 2009, and her second novel, Low, in 2013. Her latest, Where the Silver River Ends, which makes a trilogy of her first two unrelated stories, was published in 2022. Her short film Me and My Teeth is available on CBC Gem as part of the Reel East Coast series (Season 10).

Rana Zaman struggles for universal human rights and peace globally. Why is she being attacked?

In the wake of October 7, two political modalities have emerged: one is an imperialist one that seeks to forcefully normalize the retaliatory genocidal violence Israel has inflicted on Palestine, the other is an anticolonial one that refuses the racial domination of people rendered disposable by the imperial machine. A primary effect of the so-called "Palestine exception" -- where one can protest, petition and pressure government to stand up to monstrous violations of human rights, so long as they do not try to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity -- is that people like Rana, who speak the truth about what is happening, are blamed, blacklisted and denigrated. In this conversation, Zaman and I discuss the ostracism and silencing she has repeatedly experienced, with the most recent attacks coming as a result of the YMCA in Halifax awarding her a Peace Medal, only to rescind it days later in the face of a targeted pro-Israel smear campaign. This is not the first time that Rana has faced backlash for resisting the destruction of Palestinian life. It must, however, be the last. The cowardice and complicity of YMCA Canada is an embarrassment for an organization that claims to be intent on "igniting the potential in people and strengthening our evolving communities." Shrinking away from the risks of confronting injustice has earned YMCA a place on the list of organizations that supporters of Palestinian liberation are encouraged to boycott. Stand in support of Rana Zaman, a crusader for human rights in spite of censorship, state-sponsored violence and Zionist propaganda. Resist the manufacturing of amnesia. Fight for a free Palestine.

Kai Bosworth wonders whether populism can turn us into climate activists

Kai Bosworth is a human geographer and political ecologist, and an Associate Professor at the School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently working on a book project provisionally entitled Protectors of the Subsurface: Militant Investigation and Critical Imagination in Anti-Oil Activism. In this discussion, we look at his terrific book Pipeline Populism at a moment of petro-populist boosterism in Canada, the United States and in many polities globally. Pipeline Populism aims to understand opposition to pipelines in the US and the ways these moments have transformed the politics of climate justice. The book is part of Bosworth's broader interest in affect and emotion, radical politics and the ways that nature and ecology get enlisted enrolled in social projects of oppression or liberation. #pipeline [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/pipeline] #oilandgas [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/oilandgas] #oil [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/oil] #politics [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/politics] #energyshift [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/energyshift] #populism [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/populism]

Nora Loreto and Alex Khasnabish argue for saving the university from itself

Many academic workers are striking for better labour protections, including CUPE 3916 in Nova Scotia, but where are the connections forming between different labour movements? Can we forge deeper solidarity in this moment of crisis? Do we blow up the system or try to repair it?Nora Loreto, host of the podcast Sandy and Nora Talk Politics and author of many books on politics, and Alex Khasnabish, Professor of Anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University, help us understand why the university is such an "important social location," what its histories are, and how those histories are brought to bear on the present composition of the institution.Since universities are systematically underfunded and neoliberal austerity has further starved its labour force, these places of knowledge creation and learning have been turned into a reflection of the broader gig economy. Instructors who have to work within that system are left feeling wholly devalued, while the managerial class that operates the university are left with few levers they can pull to make change. In this context, what sort of alternative vision for the university as a site of engagement is possible? Why can't universities rehabilitate themselves and seek more community connections? Alex, Nora and I unpack these and other questions here.#university [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/university] #labour [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/labour] #strike [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/strike] #collectivebargaining [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/collectivebargaining] #unions [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/unions] #education [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/education] #equity [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/equity] #leftpolitics [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/leftpolitics] #policyalternatives [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/policyalternatives]