Law & Disorder

A New Novel as an Artifact of Palestinian Resistance; Plus, Pro-Palestine Artists Alter Own Works at YBCA

We start today’s show in conversation with two artists who are featured in an exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), who decided together as a February 15th protest to alter their own exhibited works by adding pro-Palestine messages to their own pieces. Since the protest, the YBCA gallery has remained closed. Eight artists participated in the protest, and we have two of them joining us in conversation. Leila Weefur is an artist, writer, and independent curator based in Oakland, and Sholeh Asgary is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary sound artist. 

Then: The Palestinian Youth Movement has published the first English edition of Wisam Rafeedie’s novel, “The Trinity of Fundamentals“. The book is an artifact of Palestinian resistance, both in its content and the story of how it came to be. Wisam Rafeedie was a Palestinian political prisoner held in an Israeli prison after being captured by the Israeli Occupation Forces in 1991. In 1993, he wrote the novel during his imprisonment in 1993, by secretly hand-writing and distributing excerpts of it through a clandestine system of circulation established by the prisoners, which moved materials and information across cells. Various sections were transferred via pieces of bread dough or pill capsules that were thrown across cells. Eventually, his attempts to smuggle his novel out of the prison through this method was thwarted by the interception of the prison guards who subsequently confiscated it the year it was completed – or so he thought. Later, Rafeedie found that pieces of his book had been assembled by Palestinian resistance organizers and distributed to some Palestinian communities.

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After a years-long of effort to bring the book to an English speaking Palestinian diasporic audience, the Palestinian Youth Movement and 1804 Books have published the book in English. We are joined to discuss the book and its story by Danya Al-Saleh, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement based in Seattle, and an editor of the English translation of the book The Trinity of Fundamentals“.

FUND DRIVE SPECIAL – Pledge $100 and receive a black zippered sweatshirt celebrating the first year anniversary of KPFA’s newest current affairs program Law & Disorder – on the front it has KPFA’s logo, and on the back, the logo of Law & Disorder with Cat Brooks & Jesse Strauss, with the show’s tag-line: Expose, Agitate, Build.

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