Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to another edition of talking Strategy, making history. I'm Duraka, and with me is Dick flax.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hi there.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: I want to say hi, Dick.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Yes. Hi, Dick.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And joining us for a conversation today is Murad Mo Sarama, who's a colleague and friend of mine as an activist in the Democratic Party here in California and is based in the.
And, you know, I understand we were the day after or two days after an election in which you were campaigning for a seat on the board of education, on the county board of education. And for folks who don't know, Sacramento has been a real ground zero in the battle around school privatization targeted with gobs and gobs of charter school money. And so everything that's going on there to preserve democratic education is important for the country. And with that, though, why don't you give our listeners just a little bit of an introduction to your work yourself and things that we should know about you before we jump into all the easy questions about geopolitics and conflict.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Thank you, Duraka. Great to be with you today on this podcast, as you said. Yeah, I've been an activist within the Sacramento area community and also within the state party, the California Democratic Party at large. And I'm a tree hugger environmental scientist by education. I went to Sac state and I became an activist locally within the environmental community. And I actually sat on the environmental Council of Sacramento. And as a palestinian american activist, basically, I always got asked about the palestinian israeli issues, and I became an activist by default for the palestinian cause. And I joined that movement within the party as an activist. And actually I run for election for the chair of the arab American Caucus. And I was a chair for one term, actually, I did not run for the second term, but right now I actually sit on the board of the arab american caucus as the treasurer for the caucus as we need to go and continue the movement, continue of our activism and talking about the issues that, pertaining to the arab american community at large, and especially about the foreign policy that entail within the Democratic Party platform and also on a national level. So I was proud to be a delegate for Senator Bernie Sanders for DNC. And we brought in the same thing again. We brought in our boys to the DNC and we formed a ground. And also we elevated the conversation around foreign policy within our activists.
And also locally, we have a chartered club, part of the Sacramento Central Democratic Central Committee that is Democrats for justice in Palestine. And I humbly the chairman of that club. And we do a lot of activism, education around the issues that pertain to our cause, the palestinian cause. And recently we passed a resolution on the central committee, actually was voted on unanimously about ceasefire. And I'm not the guy who's not able to work with the other side. And especially when folks come in and try and go and actually argue certain points in our resolution, I'm willing to listen. So we sat down and talked it over with a group of folks in the resolution committee here in our center committee. And that's why bast got 100% of votes of the center committee, by just talking to each other once again. Yes, emotions are high on our side, and definitely there's a genocide being committed. And nobody can deny that over 30,000 people got killed, over 100,000 affected, and the toll is still going. And we have to recognize that folks, even though the folks that might be opposed to the things that we advocate for, but they actually do recognize that a ceasefire is needed and negotiated safe return of the hostages and the palestinian prisoners should be negotiated as well. And I think that common ground among activists, again, folks that are sitting on the left side or the right side of myself, we're in agreement that is needed. Just a little bit of background and a recent background about what we do here in Sacramento.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Could I just interject that we have another guest, which is Ada Laramore hall, who's become a regular here on the podcast, Laramore Blackerby.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Blackerby. I'm sorry, we didn't pass on both of my last names.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: That's good.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Without that b, I'm sure she'll be.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: A little bit too regal.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: So anyway, I wanted to ask what happened in the race for the school board?
[00:05:14] Speaker C: That's a great question. Well, I was talking to director briefly, and I ran against a lot of money, meaning the charter school association advocates ran. Actually their employee, one of their employee was the candidate for that seat. I saw the money flowing in and basically almost $300,000 would put it in, into that seat to make sure, basically nobody can compete. And I ran on a platform of basically, I'm a father, I have five kids, and I got kids enrolled in a school, I'm involved in a school district. And I was the only Democrat endorsed candidate. And I ran a campaign. Obviously it was a big district. You could not canvass all of it. But we trying to get an actual knock on some doors. But unfortunately, we came in short, unfortunately. And I did have a right wing also opponent who did not prevail as well. I actually did better than the right winger, the Trump supporter. So I did better than him. So that's a good news.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: So it was like a charter school employee, a MAGA, get rid of CRT, crazy nut bag. And you, this is America.
Not even school board, but the county board of education, which for people that don't know or aren't in California, in most counties, is like uncontested the same people for years because they don't directly run the school system sort of thing.
So it just shows you where the battle is happening in so many fronts. So thank you for running.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: Thank you, Derek. And actually, you brought in a good point. You said that usually seed not contested because just four years ago there was actually somebody just get elected in a different area where the seat was open and she didn't have any opponents, that she were just elected by default. Now school boards, school county boards are becoming battleground, unfortunately for a lot of the right wing, supported by groups like Monster Liberty, which is one of my opponent was supported by them. And it draws a lot of right wing folks.
They want to, unquote, control the school board and against indoctrination of our kids. That's the main message. They're saying that liberals are basically mostly with the CTA. They're attacking the CTA and the teachers union, which I was proud to be supported by the CTA and endorsed by our classroom teachers.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: So let me pick up something and ask you a question, something you said that was really interesting, is that your county Democratic party committee. So the board of the committee passed a resolution calling for ceasefire. It was unanimous and it was negotiated and so forth. And my sense is that the base of the Democratic Party right now is not actually that divided about sort of practical questions like we might be divided on is this a settler colonist project or this and that. But when it comes to what should happen tomorrow, it is very much united around a ceasefire, around getting back to the table to talk about a long term solution democratically. We're on similar pages, if not the same page, when we're able to sit down and talk about it in a kind of non loaded way, and then we have our president and many of our leaders in Congress and so forth who just seem like they're in a completely different conversation, a totally different place. What's your sense of that divide and what do you think can be done about changing it? Or am I crazy? Am I right in that general sense?
[00:09:04] Speaker C: No, I think you're spot on. I think we, as Democrat, as our base, the Democratic Party, as the activists, as the folks are actually doing the work on the ground and many of actually the democratic voter base, they agree it must be ceasefire is something like, there's no argument still go ahead and do a ceasefire, negotiate the return of the hostages and also find a permanent solution for that palestinian struggle. I'm not going to argue two state solution, one state solution, but something that need to be talked on and the people on the ground are the folks that be negotiating that, not us. Here from SoCal, we just talked about the school board race that just know I did a text banking. Do you know the most asked question in that text bank was, do you.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Support a C school?
[00:09:51] Speaker C: That was the most asked question in a school board election. And obviously our answer, or volunteers were helping me doing the text banking. They will elaborate about our resolution we just passed in the central committee. And I was the co author of that. I was also helping. One of my friends who ran for City of.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Ada wanted to give you some congratulations.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: She's with you.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: I also was surprised how many people actually asked, do you support, does Katie, that's the candidate name, support ceasefire in the city council. Then I asked some assembly candidates as well because some of them actually came out and said, hey, I support ceasefire and why I know I'm running for assembly, I'm not running for a federal office, but stuff like that sometimes come in to us at the state capitol as resolutions and I'll be supportive of something like that. And also in their text banking, the most asked question was, do you support ceasefire? This is among Democrats. These are democratic candidates and these are democratic voters. So yes, that something that the president should consider and believe. The folks that asked those, they were not ever Americans, by the way. They were young voters mostly when I literally took a survey, because I want to know who those folks are asking because obviously, you know, PDI, which is the voter file. And I look up the data and I want to get kind of survey about who's asking those questions. And these are the folks from 18 to 42 years old. So these folks are asking these questions, do you support ceasefire? What do you think about one of the questions? Other one was, do you think it's a genocide? Do you think of what's happening right now? And a lot of people think it is a genocide, like 30,000 people, indiscriminate bombing, starvation for the entire population. If you don't call this other than a genocide, I don't know what is other thing you can call it. These are the questions that candidates, including myself, were asked during campaign trails, again, for local offices, for state offices. So imagine on a federal level. So I think the president should take that into account going into that general. A lot of folks here in California, I know me and director were talking about, if that vote is going to be counted or know most likely it won't be counted. But folks for the primary, voting for the president, a lot of folks wrote down ceasefire on the right end and it's a significant amount of folks. There was multiple voter guide that actually went out. One of the voter guides that went out, it literally says ceasefire voter guide and went to a wide variety of folks. It wasn't only for, again, arab american or Muslim Americans or it went to a lot of folks, and mostly young folks actually were posting that on their social media. So definitely it was on the ballot on Tuesday, on Super Tuesday, not only in Michigan, a couple of weeks ago, not only in Hawaii during the caucuses, but it was on Super Tuesday in Minnesota. I believe it was 19% uncommitted. So that equals to about eleven delegates. That is very significant. Of folks going on voting committed in Michigan, I believe it was about 13%. That equals to about two delegates. That is also significant. Sending a message to President Biden, hey, it is time to go and change your strategies. It's time to change the way you're handling the relationship right now you have with Israel or with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I understand, like the administration or chief of staff is saying, hey, it's their own country, but when we send in over 200 tons of weapons unconditionally, we could go ahead and hold off on that.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
Let me point out that we are talking right now about 2 hours before the State of the Union address. So some people expect that something significant is going to be said by President Biden in a couple of hours about this very question. But my feeling has been that they've been saying and signaling, well, we really don't like a lot of what Israel's doing in the war.
We want to dissuade Netanyahu from going too far. But the actual delivery of weapons, the delivery of support, has been unwavering and frighteningly so.
They're going to pour in, he's going to announce, I'm sure, significant increase in aid to the people in Gaza, while at the same time we're delivering weapons that prevent that aid from happening. So I'm just sharpening the contradiction here. But maybe we are coming to a turning point. Maybe tonight's going to be the night. I wanted to comment about the uncommitted campaign led by palestinian activists and arab and muslim people in Michigan, Minnesota and so forth, which is very sophisticated from an electoral point of view.
They're very sharply defined in the rhetoric. They're not saying they'll never vote for Biden. They're asking him, demanding that he do the right thing. So what's your own personal hope? Or what do you think the hope is among people you're working with who are in that camp? What do you really hope will happen?
[00:15:31] Speaker C: Once again, the folks, the organizers in Minnesota, the organizers in Michigan, they had one basically united voices like, hey, we're not going to be committed to vote for someone that's basically sending those weapons and not doing anything about ending the genocide that's happening in Gaza, not calling for a ceasefire, ultimately showing the utmost support for Israel and their war in Gaza against the palestinian people.
As you just mentioned about the aid, you cannot just go ahead and send 200,000 tons of weapons and go ahead and rob 100 tons of humanitarian aids by airplanes. They're just hypocrisy.
You just cannot do that. That's not something we as arab Americans here see as held in the situation in Gaza. Held in the situation in Gaza is calling for a ceasefire, pressure the israeli government stopping the military aid until they do a ceasefire and condition that aid to Israel in the future. Condition the aid for not basically committing any human right abuses, any genocides against the palestinian people in their retaliation war, so called war on Hamas. They've been in the war for how long now? And did they release any of the hostages? The main goals were to release the hostages to, unquote, destroy Hamas and bring beasts outside of Gaza. None of that happened in the war. And they've been dropping bombs daily on Gaza and looks like they're still getting resistant from those forces on the ground in Gaza. And they did not find the hostages. On the opposite, actually, they killed many of the hostages during the bombing. Like recently, Hamas released a video showing three of the hostages were killed by the Israelis, allegedly. I'm not sure they were trying even to save him. They were just killed during the bombing. So they're killing more of the hostages. And I think Netanyahu is not committed to return the hostages, and I think in his interest to go and commit the hostage. I think that most of the palestinian people and a lot of folks in the israeli society also agree that Nataniel is not interested in returning the hostages. He's only interested in what's going to happen if he stops the war. His government might collapse, his unity government might collapse, and he might be going again. To court for the corruption charges that he has, and that's going to end his political career. So he's more interested in his political career versus freeing the hostages and reaching an agreement with Hamas to negotiate safe return of the hostages and exchange for the palestinian prison.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: And I would go much further, speaking as a jewish person that cares about only himself and not the fate of the jewish people in the world, or even necessarily what's good for the israeli people in the long run, and right mean, sadly and frighteningly, most people and israeli Jews are supporting this war effort. I'm under the impression, by the way, that very poor reporting in Israel of what is being done in Gaza. It isn't simply this fever of war, it's fever of war that is enabled by the fact that people are not being confronted with what is happening. And I saw a report just the other day that when that shooting of people who were surrounding the aid coming in in that marketplace, that really did hit home, according to some reports in Israel, it actually had an effect. We don't know what the impact will be, but it's scary that they can be, ordinary people in Israel can feel that they're on the right side, and they feel very aggrieved that the rest of the world is angry at them. But they don't even fully aware, or even harshly aware, maybe, of the full extent of what Israel is actually doing to the people and to the future, I would say. Anyway, that's my little speech on that. So I'm wondering, in terms of activism on the part of people that you're working with, the palestinian community and so forth, what's your domestic experience here in terms of Islamophobia and attacks on people, but also receptivity, you've given some indication, you said, that these questions coming from citizens at meetings, even of city council candidates, suggest that there's a lot of this is really important thing you're reporting on, which is there's this groundswell of feeling that something's got to really be done about this to stop this war. Is that your general experience or what's your feeling about that?
[00:20:35] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%.
We're talking about the Democratic Party activism, but we held a rally during the last convention in Sacramento, and it's an endorsing convention. We held a rally outside the convention, then we marched after that to the convention, and a lot of the protesters actually were able to get in inside and did a sit in and end up shutting. The operations of the convention, usually caucus meetings and so forth, were canceled by the chairman of the party as a result. And a lot of these folks were very unhappy with the democratic party, unhappy obviously with the president, and unhappy with the positions of a lot of politicians that not talking about a ceasefire, not supporting a ceasefire, not strongly calling on the administration to go and stop what's happening right now on the ground in Gaza and the genocide. So a lot of folks, actually, I was looking at the turnout of the election. A lot of folks were unhappy with Democrats. I mentioned my school board run and when it's like, hey, I'm the only Democrat endorsed candidate, believe it or not, from Democrats. Like, hey, the democratic body right now turn us down as Democrat. And this is, again, it's not coming in from arab american communities. It's coming in from folks who are registered voters who vote always as a Democrat, but they're very disappointed with the democratic party and especially with the president and many of our representation in know, our local congress, folks that did not call out for a ceasefire right away or they actually run around the war ceasefire with like conditional ceasefire or this and that just to go and I guess appeal to the two sideism of the issue and know there's no two side of how far can Israel go before somebody getting called out for ceasefire. Right.
35,000. How many homes? I don't think there's any functional homes right now in Gaza. You see like the folks, the refugees, like two point some million folks are in tents near Rafa and also Natanyaho and IDF want to go and invade or they want to go and actually conduct an operation in Rafa. How bad that could be? That will be a major massacre. You just mentioned the massacre just happened when folks are trying to get some AIDs from the truck. What threat did they bring to the IDF soldiers? They were in tanks and Humvees on the ground. What threat? They're unarmed. They're trying to get flour so they can cook. That's what they were doing. And they start firing on them and they said, well, they felt threatened, but their news reports from multiple independent news agencies showed the idea, firing an unarmed civilians. They're near starvation, they're trying to get some flour for their family. Over 100 were killed plus hundreds of injured, literally firing on them from their Humvees or from the Merkaba, which is the israeli armor. So I don't know what to tell you. If the administration of President Biden is not going to go talk about ceasefire tonight during his State of the Union address and they're going to talk about a pathway to peace, hopefully very soon. And a negotiated peace with the folks on the ground. Not something we're going to go ahead and bring in or not something we're going to go to negotiate with the PA. The folks are actually in Gaza, and right now the PA is not very popular in the palestinian area because of their stand. And I'm pretty sure you heard about the recent resignation of the palestinian cabinet that was put forward. But regardless, the president is actually, do I want to go and vote for another term for President Trump? No. Does any of the arab american community wants President Trump? No, but definitely they don't want a president who's not going to be siding with, is not going to be calling out for a genocide when we know it is a genocide, somebody who's not going to go ahead and stop the massacres that's happening right now in Gaza, and a president that's just going to be given the utmost support for the Netanyahu government, the most extreme right wing government in the history of the establishment of Israel.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a mean, it's why I think Dick and I are both very encouraged by and supportive of this campaign around uncommitted and finding ways to put pressure on the administration and democratic leadership and so forth. But also knowing that beginning with the Palestinians themselves onto everybody else, a Trump presidency would be just a complete fucking, like, if you think things can't be worse than, like, think again, they will be worse. And so, yeah, that's always a tough thing. And it's a very tough thing to talk to voters about and knock on doors and be like, hey, it'll be only half a genocide if you vote for know. But half a genocide means there's a bunch of other people who are alive. It's awful.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: So both of you are leaders in the Democratic Party in California. And I'm wondering, well, what I'm leading to is, is there, within the framework of party activists and elected and so forth, a peace faction that can come to the fore and really add to the pressure on the White House and so forth on this or move things in different direction. And let me give you one example that popped into my head as we were talking. So here's Kamala Harris. She's from California. She met with the centrist opposition figure in the israeli government the other day that was against Netanyahu's expressed statements.
People are saying, some reports are that she in the White House represents the voices calling for what you were advocating, Mo just know, a path to peace, moving toward the ceasefire, that kind of thing. I don't know whether you have any sense of her and you don't have to, I wouldn't expect you to, but I guess that would be helpful. I'm thinking about my recollections during the Vietnam War when it was really important in changing the war policy that finally some know, people in the Senate Democrats came out in criticism and finally against the war that took years at that time, we need this to take weeks. So I'm wondering what you guys, both of you, think about the prospects of that kind of taking the grassroots movement now and having it actually voiced by, well, Bernie Sanders has. For example, is there anyone running for Congress in California who might be characterized as more of a peace oriented candidate?
[00:27:54] Speaker C: That's a great question. Yeah. As far as the arab american community know, as you know, the uncommitted vote was the biggest thing that got organized. And I think it did send a message to the administration also the Biden campaign. The Biden campaign right now, as you know, for example, Michigan, he won Michigan by 150,000 votes last time. And right now the uncommitted was 101 in a primary election. So in general election, more people vote. So definitely, if he's not going to do something right now in the general, very likely to go to lose Michigan. Losing Michigan could cost the presidency. We could go ahead and go back to Trump. So among the palestinian American, Arab American, Muslim Americans, like, hey, do you want to vote for somebody that want to deport us or want to vote for somebody that want to kill us? That's literally what is the thinking or what is the slogan? You want to vote for somebody that want to deport you versus somebody want to kill you and the genocide Joe. It became a slogan among every chant, every time there is a protest in Sacramento or in San Francisco or in cities in Michigan, always the chant other than other chance, but mostly genocide Joe. So if that's what he want to go down in history as a president and being a genocide Joe, that's up to him. So it's going to be a one term president with a genocide next to him. That will be up to him coming up in November. Again, we have only an hour, probably right now or less than 2 hours to go and see what he's going to say during the State of the Union. But if there's no policy changes, these uncommitted will be committed not to vote. So I'm not going to say these uncommitted voters, they're going to go vote for Trump, but I can tell you they're going to sit home and they're going to vote, and that's going to cost the president another term, and that's going to cost us to suffer under Trump administration. And again, I don't want to do that.
Most of the arab american community, most of the muslim community, they don't want to do that. But again, do you want to support somebody, want to kill us or you want to support somebody? They want to deport us. That's what's on the ballot. And they use that, as you know, in a democracy, you use the ballot box to send a message. That was the biggest message to do that is through the uncommitted. That was the best message that we could send to the president and also to the Biden campaign, to the president's campaign folks. And from what I heard from multiple news that reported, a lot of his advisors are advising him to go and do something or definitely that will cost him the election. And also within the Democratic Party, folks are advising him to go and do something or that will cost him the election. I think it was a strong message. I think as an Arab American, we're very proud of the organizing that took place. And also our allies organized with us as well. And again, it wasn't just a movement from the arab american community, but also from allies around us. For example, jewish force for peace been with us from the start. Young folks, if not now, sunrise movement and others that organize those weekly protests, protests in the state Capitol just a couple of months ago, where the entire session of the legislature was shut down from a protest that young folks did at the state Capitol in California and Sacramento.
So I just want to say, if President Biden does not act immediately and does not address it in the state of union, I can guarantee you that a lot of these folks, uncommitted and more probably that number will be doubled because, again, a lot of folks do not vote in the primaries. And these numbers are significant in a primary election that President Biden and the Democratic Party will lose the election coming.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Up in mean, you're saying that. But I know I even have lots of people that I know in town here, not necessarily pro palestinian, agree that that's the sense that they have, that Biden has to change the policy as part of necessary to having a chance in this upcoming election. And not only Biden, but the whole state of the democracy is at stake really in this contest. I wonder whether you have much contact with palestinian student supporters on campuses and whether you have anything to say about the campus situation, because that's where a lot of direct conflict is happening in America right now is on university campuses.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: Yeah. As I said, most of these protests, most of these actions are led by young people. I was very inspired by a lot of them.
Students for justice in Palestine and other movements on the school campuses are basically organizing around ceasefire, organizing around putting pressures about to elected officials, to city councils, for example, going into city council meetings and speaking in public comments and pressuring local elected officials to issue resolutions calling for a ceasefire. And the movement across the state been very successful. Many city council actually issued resolutions calling for a ceasefire and calling on President Biden to support a ceasefire. And that could not have happened without these young folks going into these meetings, speaking in public, comments, providing personal stories. Here in our town, Al Grove, many families lost not only one family members, like some lost ten family members, some lost 70 family members, like one of arab American elected, actually members of the school board. Vasimukara lost over 70 family members in Gaza here in Sacramento. So it is something that we go and we talk to our elected officials and we let them know our personal story, especially those folks that lost directly. I lost a friend of mine that was a professor in Gaza that came in here to Sacramento, actually, and gave a speech, a very educated young man, and he blessed his soul.
So everyone, a palestinian activist knew someone that actually recently got killed during the bombardment of folks indiscriminate bombing in Gaza. And some of it, I won't say indiscriminate, sometimes targeting hospitals. And they say, well, Hamas using a hospital as an operation base or there is a tunnel underneath a hospital. They did not find any evidence of that. And they're still targeted in hospitals like babies in incubators.
Who does that? That when people see these images, and not only our community, anyone, these are terrible images of not war, of organized genocide against an entire people, an entire population. And we heard that from the right wing folks in the government, from Itmar Gavir and his supporters.
They were reciting some verses from the Old Testament calling the people of Gaza, the Amaleks, and unquote, don't show know, basically kill all of them, the young, the old, the woman. And this is the kind of government that's right now running the state of Israel and calling on the war is the folks that are very right. The folks are again reciting verses from the Old Testament or genocidal war against an entire population. And that's something that President Biden need to listen to the base of the democratic body, listen to the folks that are activists within the democratic body. Listen to the arab american community who send him a message through the uncommitted votes recently on.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: I would just let me jump in there and say that in terms of the opposition to Biden's approach or a movement within, amongst elected officials, elected Democrats or parts of the policy making apparatus, I think there are people who have realized that things have shifted in the base, that things have shifted on the ground in Palestine. And I think Biden came in wanting to ignore the Middle east. He doesn't like it. He's not interested in it. And then these things keep happening that are like, hey, it's still here and it's still a conflict zone and it's still important and there's still human beings involved.
And there are, I think, people, I wouldn't say it's a majority, but I think there's a big significant plurality even amongst leadership or elected officials at least, that are like, bro, this is not 1997.
And I think you see that. If you want to see a map of that congressionally, look at where APAC and democratic majority for Israel are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the outcomes of democratic primaries, to influence local elections, to influence internal democratic party discussion, all of that, and have been for years. And they're ratching it up, I think in large part because they know that. I think starting with the last Gaza war, public opinion and just the sort of perspective of the world, the perspective of the average citizen has shifted. It's very different. And just the long overdue promise of a palestinian state that is just the clock has been ticking on for so long. All of those things, I think, have led to the fact that there are voices in Congress, voices in the Senate with both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and others who are saying things about Israel, about our relationship with Israel, about Palestine, about the war in Gaza, that would not have been said 30 years ago because they've recognized this shift. Sorry, Ada is very upset about the horrible discourse amongst the elites in the United States in general.
But yeah, I think it's taking a bunch of cold showers for Biden to even see it. And lastly, I'd say I don't make too much of the meeting between the vice president and Benny Gantz because I think what we definitely know is that Barack Obama and Biden, they hate Netanyahu. I mean, there's no love there. And ever since the Republicans had Netanyahu come and speak to Congress and made this very partisan, they don't like him. It's like obvious they don't trust him, et cetera, and that they want him replaced the administration would like to see regime change in both the Palestinian Authority and Israel in that sense. Right. Whether or not Gans is the real change is a different.
But anyway, I think that was all very choreographed and so forth, all of that. Like, it may well be that Kamala, as someone who's not an octogenarian, who doesn't care about the Middle east and is sort of on his way out of everything like that, she's more forward looking about it than the president. Yeah, that's totally possible. But I don't think she's like a champion for peace or palestinian rights or anything like that. I just think it's gotten so bad that there's some parts of it. But again, go and look at that APAC map. Look at what they're spending against the entire squad. Look at what they just spent in this race in California, down in Orange county to go after Dave Min for seat. You know, they spent $4 million plus attacking, not even. And they lost, which is a great sign. Absolutely. But he's not even super much a champion. But they have the money to burn to try to micromanage who the democratic caucus is on their one issue, which is the interests of a different country. I mean, it's very weird. It's all very strange when you sit back and think about it. Anyway, that's my two cent about that. What I'd like to hear a little bit mo, before we wrap up from, you know, can you tell people a little bit about that fight within the Democratic Party, like in primaries, in our conventions, in our meetings and so forth and the sort of. Yeah.
What are good examples of where that fight has been maybe constructive or something? What kind of role do you think these very well financed, pro Israel sort of organizations and networks, what role do they play? And then what kind of role does things like your club that you're part of or the palestinian Democratic Club? What kinds of things you need? Does a club like that need to try to turn the tide or turn the discussion?
[00:41:26] Speaker C: That's a good question. Yes, definitely.
Our main goal is to go and actually engage in conversation and not to have a one sided conversation on the issues that pertain to our people and our cause. And we've been very successful in doing such. And as you mentioned, there's a lot of well funded organizations. We're not a well funded organization. We're grassroots based. And right now, hopefully, we can make that organization a statewide that's chartered by the Democratic Party of California. So we're working on the ground to set that as I mentioned during the convention, we organized that rally outside the convention and was very well attended with over 3000 delegates and non delegates that came into that rally, including elected officials from the Sacramento county community that attended the rally. And the message was clear.
We send the message and most of the delegates, and I can tell you right now that the majority of the delegation, the majority of the delegates elected delegates through ADeM or center committee, they are in support of not only ceasefire and a solution, they're supportive of our cause of a just solution for the palestinian people. The delegates are appointed by elected officials. That's a different story as we know how they usually vote and basically they're boss. But we, the elected folks, we're not boss. We're unbossed and we follow what is right. And I think the majority of the democratic party delegations are such. The thing is the leadership and certain leadership do not have that ear to listen, unfortunately. And we're working on that. Once again, one of the things that we've been building is our relationship with great people like Duraka, for example, great leader that we miss dearly on the Democratic Party leadership. And he was part of the resolutions committee where he championed our, elevated our voices and it was very well appreciated. So that's a battle that we actually took. Like for example, a resolution committee were setting up rules on the fly to try and block resolutions to avoid us talking about the issues pertaining to the human rights of the Palestinians. And anything that comes in, they're trying to go and bury it in a consent calendar or set up some rules or dig up any rules to prevent us from actually talking about it. Not just debacle resolution, even to talk about it. So that's an unfortunate reality that we were dealing with. But we overcome that. We organized, we gathered more support and we still engaged. If you try to go and disengage us, they actually gave us motivation to be more engaged and more involved in our activism and to talk about the issues that actually important to us and people like Duraka that we call an ally. And Duraka is somebody that actually can work with everyone. And he even tried to go and mediate one time in a resolution where we actually agreed on some language and we adjusted some language just to go ahead and show that we came in in good faith to go ahead and be able to talk about the issues that, pertaining to our cause and actually bringing some awareness.
That's usually like for example, I just mentioned the ceasefire resolution of the central committee here in Sacramento. I was willing to go to negotiate it. But hey, we have three major things. One, a ceasefire to the war that's happening next. We're going to go to negotiate an exchange of the hostages for the palestinian prisoners. And again, that's up to the folks on the ground to going to be able to do that. And also a bastard humanitarian aid. And these are three nobody disagreed on. And it passed, again, unanimously on the Senate committee. So, yes, we usually try to organize. We go against big funded organization, very well organized. But I'm not going to say our activism ten years ago is the same as today. It got elevated, we got more ground support, we got more folks engaged, and we got more young people are in the forefront on carrying the torch for our activism, though, when we started. And that's something we will continue to do as long as there's an activation, as long as there's an apartheid like system on the ground in the Holy land.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: Dick, do you have anything you want to.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: No, I just wrap up with. Maybe our vibrations are going to reach the president as he gets ready to speak on the state of the union. We'll see. I really appreciate the chance to get to know you, Mo, and really appreciate the work that you do.
And what you had to say with us here is a very clear message. And it's inspiring in a way, given the grimness of everything, to think that maybe what you're articulating is actually the basis of a lot of coming together of people at the grassroots that will help bring about something, a semblance of a humane outcome, a democratic, small d democratic outcome of this horrible moment that we are in. But thanks for being willing to come with us tonight here.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks so much.
[00:47:10] Speaker D: If any song could bring us together across the planet that gave us birth to act as one bring peace and justice all around this shattered earth if a song could take down borders take down fences make them fall liberate all those imprisoned kept behind the ghetto walls if any song could stop the bombs so the next might be the last if a song could change the future so it won't be like the past if a song could be a missile fired from the iron dome if it could protect the children, keep them safe within their homes if baby song could raise an army and transport it on command take us all to Palestine, mind, to defend the holy land if a song could be concrete and put to use to be built if it might turn back the clock if.
