Speaking Out of Place

How do not only monuments, but also the very idea of monumentality, serve to mystify and perpetuate beliefs that maintain social orders that deserve to be strenuously re-evaluated? Archaeologist and anthropologist Dan Hicks traces the development of a particularly virulent strain of monument-worship, that which emerges out of what he calls “militarist realism,” which harnesses technologies of war, particularly colonial, white supremacist war, to build institutions, disciplines, museums in its image in order to permanently maintain a border between those deemed human subjects and the object-worlds of the non-human—which includes racial others. Rather than grant the past immunity, Hicks argues that we need to decide for ourselves what we chose to remember, and what deserves to be forgotten.Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at Oxford University, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College. He has written widely on art, heritage, museums, colonialism, and the material culture of the recent past and the near-present. Dan's books include The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution (Pluto 2020) and Every Monument Will Fall: a story of remembering and forgetting (Hutchinson Heinemann 2025). Bluesky/Insta: @ProfDanHicks 

Today we speak with Daniela Navin and Jeanette de La Riva, two members of Grupo Auto Defensa, a community organization based in Pasadena CA which has come about in response to attacks by ICE which have violently disrupted everyday life and led people to form new relations of mutual support and care. We hear their stories of how Trump lieutenant Stephen Miller's demand that ICE arrest 3,000 people every day has put unbelievable constraints on hard-working people's lives. Nevertheless, we also hear how they have invented tactics to challenge these repressive measures. We are joined by journalist-activist Maxmillian Alvarez of The Real News Network who grew up in Los Angeles and comments on the broad networks of resistance cropping up organically to fight fascism.Maximillian Alvarez is an award-winning journalist and the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Executive Director of The Real News Network (TRNN) in Baltimore. He is the founder and host of Working People, "a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today," and the author of "The Work of Living," a collection of interviews with US workers recorded during Year One of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to joining TRNN, he was an Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review. His writing has been featured in outlets like The Nation, In These Times, Poynter, Boston Review, The Baffler, Current Affairs, and The Chronicle of Higher Education; as an analyst and commentator, he has appeared on programs like PBS NewsHour, Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The New Republic, NPR’s 1A, The Hill’s Rising, and more.

Today I talk with Rahim Kurwa about a powerful study of housing rights and police repression in Southern California. Tapping into a vast historical archive as well as oral histories with residents of Antelope Valley, California, Rahim traces the complex relationship between this region and the City of Los Angeles.  Using David Harvey’s famous notion of a “spatial fix,” Kurwa argues that for decades Antelope Valley acted both as a safety value for LA’s over-accumulation of capital, and Black labor. Anti-black racism took the form of powerful collaborations between local police departments, politicians, the courts, the media, and citizens groups that acted as vigilantes. Yet Rahim Kurwa also speaks about organized resistance to these attacks that resulted in significant victories, and of the history of Sun Village, that started on land from a socialist community, and grew into an all-Black town. Given today’s brutal ICE assaults on migrants and others in Los Angeles and the policing of public and private space, this episode is of special importance.Rahim Kurwa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His work is broadly focused on the policing of housing, and he has published work on this topic in Du Bois Review, Housing Policy Debate, City and Community, and Feminist Formations. His book, Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing, traces the past century of Black history in Los Angeles' northernmost outpost, known as the Antelope Valley, showing how pre-1968 methods of racial segregation have been replaced today by policing. At UIC, he is currently studying the eviction crisis in the Chicago Housing Authority while teaching courses on race, class, gender, and the law. He received his PhD from UCLA in 2018.

On May 15, international legal experts Lara Elborno, Richard Falk, and Penny Green joined me to discuss the work of the Gaza Tribunal, a group devoted to creating an archive of facts and a set of documents and arguments to help international civil society fight against the genocide in Gaza and the Zionist regime that, along with the United States, has perpetrated this atrocity.  Today they all return to update us. They present a grim picture of what they call the final phase of genocide and note both the overwhelming global support for Palestine and the concurrent repression against advocacy and protest. This is a critical episode to listen to and share.Lara Elborno is a Palestinian-American lawyer specialized in international disputes. She has worked for over 10 years as counsel acting for individuals, private entities, and States in international commercial and investment arbitrations. She dedicates a large part of her legal practice to pro-bono work including the representation of asylum seekers in France and advising clients on matters related to IHRL and the business and human rights framework.  She previously taught US and UK constitutional law at the Université de Paris II - Panthéon Assas. She currently serves as a board member of ARDD-Europe and sits on the Steering Committee of the Gaza Tribunal. She has moreover appeared as a commentator on Al Jazeera, TRTWorld, DoubleDown News, and George Galloway's MOAT speaking about the Palestinian liberation struggle, offering analysis and critiques of international law."\Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University (1961-2001) and Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, Queen Mary University London. Since 2002 has been a Research Fellow at the Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Between 2008 and 2014 he served as UN Special Rapporteur on Israeli Violations of Human Rights in Occupied Palestine.He is Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, having served for seven years as Chair of its Board. He is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. He is co-director of the Centre of Climate Crime, QMUL.Falk has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times since 2008.His recent books include (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), Power Shift: The New Global Order (2016), Palestine Horizon: Toward a Just Peace (2017), Revisiting the Vietnam War (ed. Stefan Andersson, 2017), On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (ed. Stefan Andersson & Curt Dahlgren, 2019.Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation at QMUL and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has published extensively on state crime theory, resistance to state violence and the Rohingya genocide, (including with Tony Ward, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption, 2004 and State Crime and Civil Activism 2019). She has a long track record of researching in hostile environments and has conducted fieldwork in the UK, Turkey, Kurdistan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel, Tunisia, Myanmar and Bangladesh. In 2015 she and her colleagues published ‘Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar’ and in March 2018 ‘The Genocide is Over: the genocide continues’. Professor Green is Founder and co-Director of the award winning International State Crime Initiative (ISCI); co-editor in Chief of the international journal, State Crime; Executive member of the Gaza Tribunal and Palestine Book Awards judge. Her new book with Thomas MacManus Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold: Myanmar and the Rohingya will be published by Rutgers university Press in 2025

Today we welcome Malcolm Harris back to the show.  Previously he talked with us about his mammoth study, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. This time we are looking not at a history of Capitalism and the World, but our possible futures under the threat of catastrophic climate change. We talk about not only failed policies, but failed perspectives on society, politics, and culture, and focus on a deadly form of Value that has led us to the abyss precisely because it has emanated from a basic rift between humans and the world. It is a rift that Capital has always both fed and exploited, but will end up exhausting a finite resource—the Planet. We talk about what is needed to heal this, and what we are up against. Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days, Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit, and Palo Alto. His newest book is What's Left?: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis.

Ever since its publication, Abolish Silicon Valley—How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism has proven to be more urgent and insightful. Today I talk with author Wendy Liu about how developments like AI and LLM, further erosions of intellectual property, and increased invasions of privacy make the case for abolishing Silicon Valley even more important. We talk about how abolition is critical at a time when more and more the private sector has come to eviscerate the public good. Turning to the genocide in Gaza, we discuss the ways Capital has enlisted technology in deadly and horrific manners. We end with a meditation on the commons and how one can live with fewer commodities and find value in common projects to make life more valuable and worthwhile outside of the logic of the market.Wendy Liu is the author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism, a memoir/manifesto about the tech industry from the perspective of a former believer. She lives in San Francisco and is working on a novel.

Today we talk with Samar Al-Bulushi about her rich and complex work on Kenya, which, across multiple scales of time and place, discovers how the War on Terror both tapped into colonial ideologies of the past and present-day political calculations at the intersection of the local and global. We find out how the War has taken many different forms that often escape the eye—embedded as they are in structures of feelings and new practices that were instilled as Kenya maneuvers its different roles as war-maker and pacifier, independent state and partner with the US. We end with an important update on Kenya since the book’s publication, which has seen a popular uprising and state repression. We speak about the roles of civil society and international organizations in this new historical moment.Samar Al-Bulushi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine. Her book, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror, was published by Stanford University Press in November 2024. She is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and previously served as contributing editor for Africa is a Country. She has published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa.

Last week, over 100 agents from nine federal agencies stormed a bucolic public park in Los Angeles, claiming it was a hotbed of terrorism and lawlessness. In fact, heavily armed soldiers in camouflage found a group of young children attending a summer camp. This was a show of force meant to intimidate, shock, and awe, but just like Trump’s military parade in Washington, DC, it ended up pathetic and farcical. Today we are fortunate to speak with journalist Mel Buer, who was at MacArthur Park and witnessed this sad spectacle. We talk about what she saw  and how is simply part of a recent history of attacks on mostly brown people. We get Mel’s thoughts on both the broader national context, and how local people and longstanding immigrant’s rights groups are resisting and fighting back.Mel Buer is an LA-based independent journalist covering labor, social movements, and community organizing. 

Today on Speaking Out of Place we have a special episode on Israeli attacks on Iran that resulted in 12 days of bombings and culminated with the US dropping bunker bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities. Scholars and activists Persis Karim and Manijeh Moradian discuss both the Iranian national issues involved as well as the regional context, connecting this war with the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s extensive wars elsewhere. At stake is both Iranian sovereignty and the calls for so-called “regime change.” We question the use of that term, delve into how the struggle for liberation in Iran rejects both the repressive Islamic state and the US/Israeli war machine.  Our discussion draws the frightening parallels between Iran’s stifling of dissent and imprisonment of political enemies and others with our own government’s.  Finally, we recall the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and build hope for international solidarity with groups working for liberation in Iran, Palestine, and elsewhere, and insist liberation will never be achieved by dropping bombs.      Persis Karim is the director emeritus of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies and a professor in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature at San Francisco State University. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master’s in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.Manijeh Moradian is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, was published by Duke University Press in December 2022.  She has published widely including in American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Studies, Scholar & Feminist online, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is a founding member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective and a member of the Feminists for Jina transnational network. 

On today’s episode I talk with geographer, artist, photographer, and activist Linda Quiquivix about her new book: Palestine 1492: A Report Back. Combining her work learning and working alongside the Zapatistas and Palestinians, and incorporating anti-fascist politics from the Black Panthers, Quiquivix reaches back to the 15th century to see the beginnings of the Western project to carve the surface of the planet into spaces to be both shared and wrestled over by those Above.  Instead, Linda asks us to walk side by side with those Below. She writes, “what might it look like what might it feel like, to walk with the Below? To place yourself under fire with the Below, so that the need to shake off fascism becomes a shared necessity for you, too?  I do not know, but I hope we will find out together because there's no blueprint. From the Zapatistas I learn to ask questions as we walk.  From Aida Camp I learn sometimes we must ask questions as we jump. May we learn the answers together.”Dr. Linda Quiquivix is a geographer, illustrator, and popular educator of Maya-Mam roots, raised by Palestinians, Zapatistas, Panthers, and jaguars. Her work centers on decolonial land struggles that  challenge us to share the world with all our difference, a world “where all worlds fit.” She is author of Palestine 1492: A Report Back (Wild Ox Books, 2024), a visual and literary exploration that weaves Palestine into global struggles across 500 years. Quiquivix is also a co-editor of “The Fourth World War: Zapatista Writings on Global Capital 1997-2023” (Paliacate Press, 2024). Learn more about her work at quiqui.org