Greetings, friends. My name is Jess McLean, and I'm here to provide you with some blueprints

of disruption. This weekly podcast is dedicated to amplifying the work of activists, examining

power structures, and sharing the success stories from the grassroots. Through these discussions,

we hope to provide folks with the tools and the inspiration they need to start to dismantle

capitalism, decolonize our spaces, and bring about the political revolution that we know

we need. I know a lot of you are going into this election feeling defeated. Maybe you

feel a bit of relief that a conservative win is less likely at this point, but I don't see

many of us looking at a liberal win as any kind of victory for the people or the movements

we talk about here on Blueprints of Disruption. No, this election is another example of picking

the least worst option. And with so many disappointments out there, even that's proving harder to do

than usual. Particularly if we're thinking about the Palestinian question, as we should be.

We know where some of the usual suspects sit on the issue, but for the most part, politicians

have been happy to stay off the record in regards to the genocide in Gaza. So how do we know

who to vote for? If anyone? Palestinian youth movement is in the middle of a campaign right

now to force candidates off that fence they've been sitting on, while making it easier for

you to find like-minded people in your riding to organize with. They've launched the Vote

Palestine campaign and website and the response has been impressive. If you've not heard of

it, Yara, our next guest, will tell you everything you need to know. But we don't just talk about

the Palestine platform that's on the website and the pledge they're asking people to take.

We get into the strategies PYM is using to achieve their long-term goals of return and liberation,

how they're continuing to mobilize power, and how they came to decide to intervene in the

2025 Canadian federal election in the first place. Good morning, Yara. Can you please introduce

yourself to the audience? Hi, Jessica. Thanks so much for having me on the show. My name

is Yara and I'm an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. based in Toronto, Canada. And

the PYM is a transnational youth organization. So we exist in just over 15 cities across Canada,

the United States and Europe. And we're a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Arab youth

who have been organizing for many years now, although certainly very intensely for the

last 18 months in service of the Palestinian National Liberation struggle. And PYM does

all kinds of various sorts of work. Of course we organize and have been organizing protests

and days of action and so on. We're also heavily engaged in media campaigns and battle of ideas,

which is particularly important here in the West where... so much of what we see around

us is advancing Zionist ideologies. And we also, of course, engage in local community

work in order to offer education and culture and various kinds of events and programming

for our own communities, but also in partnership with other joint struggle and solidarity organizations.

In the last couple of weeks, we've also been engaged at least here in Canada, in something

that's slightly electoral, which is the vote-president campaign. And that's what we're going to spend

the bulk of our time talking about. Folks may remember, if you've been long-time listeners,

we had the two representatives from the Palestinian youth movement on back in 2023. and they really

did a deep dive into all the cultural activities that they do on top of the advocacy. So I'll

link that so you can hear, you know, what they got to spend a bulk of their time on prior

to October 7th. But I imagine you have been just so incredibly busy. We've covered a lot

of the actions that the PYM has been involved in. We do appreciate what you folks are doing.

And yeah, this crowd that's listening will be curious to hear how you folks kind of settled

on the votepalestine.ca campaign. That is obviously linked in the show notes as well. Folks can

look there and get involved. But how did you decide on how, I mean, you couldn't do nothing.

Not doing anything during the federal election just wasn't an option. I mean, nothing new,

right? You had to approach it with something. How did you decide on this particular tactic?

Yeah, I mean, you said it exactly. We couldn't do nothing. Like, the last 18 months have been

a huge reckoning for so much of the world. And certainly in Canada, we've seen people

pouring out into the streets for Palestine in the hundreds of thousands. Like, we're talking

about just a month into the genocide in November of 2023. where we called for a national march

on Ottawa with over 100,000 people pouring into the streets on a single day. And that kind

of energy has continued throughout the course of the 18 months where people have taken on,

you know, all kinds of, whether it be mass mobilizations, right, joining protests, those mass mobilizations

then acting as a window into political organizing for a lot of people, right? So they go out

to protest many people for the first time in their lives. And now, you know, 18 months later,

they're participating in political organizing for Palestine. We've been, you know, working

on challenging political candidates, right? Because we know Canada, of course, we like

to say, well, look, you Canada is not as bad as the United States. And look at how much

how many billions of dollars the US sends to Israel, et cetera, et cetera. And of course,

like we live in an era where the United States is sort of at the center of of world imperialisms,

like the level of alignment with the US and Israel as an imperialist project is different.

But in Canada, we also have weapons contracts, which allow for Canada to send weapons to Israel,

but also allow for Canada to purchase weapons from Israel that are tested on Palestinian

people. And all of this is further kind of heightened through what's called the US loophole.

And what we've seen in the last 18 months is this huge, so much energy developed in Canada

around an arms embargo specifically. Now, of course there's other demands, right? Like

for a while we were calling for a ceasefire for Canada to just say the word ceasefire.

And that took a while, but you know, then, and of course there's like a lot of other details

around Canadian complicity, whether it relates to, you know, Canada's diplomatic record, the

United Nations, or the trade that Canada does with Israeli settlements and Israeli corporations,

different companies that are invested in Israeli genocide, like for example, Scotiabank. So

we've seen all of these kinds of different campaigns pick up over the last 18 months,

many of which are really targeted against or focused on this question of Canadian complicity.

And in these last 18 months, we've seen people who, you know, we've been within our own communities

who've maybe like, never have historically kind of felt like proud Canadians, or maybe

even like they want to be at least good Canadians, right? Even though they understand that Israel

is committing genocide and occupation and so on, but there's a bit of a difference between

how they might see Israel versus how they might see Canada. And in the last 18 months, we've

seen people for the first time ever reckon with Canada's role in genocide. And I think so...

you know, this has kind of been like there's been sort of this mass reckoning, I think that's

taken place, some of which is within the Palestinian Arab and Muslim community, but others which

are also much more broad than that, right? Like, of course, we know, like within the labor

movement, within other joint struggles, but then also within broad Canadian society where

like, people are like, attending protests for the first time, people are learning about Palestine

for the first time. And then these people are being moved into action. And many of them

are getting involved in some way around the question of members of parliament, right? And

we saw this really clearly with the arms embargo campaign, where if you go to the arms embargo

campaign's website, you can actually see a list of candidates who have pledged onto arms embargo,

something like 22 NDP, or sorry, not candidates, members of parliament. So something like 22

NDPs, 23 maybe, or 22 liberals, and two green. And what's interesting about this is like,

this didn't happen overnight. This happened through sustained organizing at the level of

writings, at the level of the streets, the grassroots constituents calling those members

of parliament, demanding meetings. mean, there was a protest that was organized on Thanksgiving

outside of Arif Farani's house on the premise that he hadn't yet signed an arms embargo.

And the demand was like, we don't want to leave until you meet with your constituents. You've

refused for months to meet with your constituents who are demanding that you support an arms

embargo. And so this kind of like reckoning to let the election just happen without finding

a way to bring this movement and have it interact with a period of time, which we know the elections

are not some kind of like tool for liberation. Like we have no disillusionment about what

Canadian elections represent, but it's also a window. It's a window where people are super

activated, they're mobilized, and it's a window where these candidates who have been ignoring,

some of whom have been ignoring us for the last 18 months are knocking on our doors, coming

into our community spaces, our churches, our mosques, you know, all of these places, our

neighborhoods trying to ask for our votes. And so to not find a way to bring this mass movement

into the election would have actually been, I think, a huge oversight, you know, in terms

of our organizing. And so you mentioned or I mentioned earlier, the PYM has chapters across

the world and that includes in the United States. So we witnessed some of this in the United

States with the uncommitted movement. I mean, despite how it ended, we did see that there

was something interesting that could take place if you could actually mobilize people in a

way that promotes community power, that strengthens organizing and the prospect of future organizing

and bring that into an election period. specifically to create crisis for the political system,

which is sort of how we as PYM, you know, kind of think about this sort of stuff is what

is our role here in the diaspora when we're talking about having complicit politicians,

when we're telling them you can't knock on our doors, you can't come into our communities

and fundraise, you know, without being disrupted. Justin Trudeau, every fundraiser that he had

that we got windowed, if we were protesting outside and blocking the entrances and so on

and so forth. That was a reflection of us basically leveraging community power, saying we've built

a mass movement and we know that hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions in this

country, support the Palestinian struggle. We're not going to allow for business to go on as

usual, for politics to go on as usual without this movement having to be reckoned with. And

that was really the thought process going into this election is we're not going to allow

Palestine to brush under the rug. while the terrafore and whatever else is being focused

on, we want to put Palestine at the center of the election. Like I think anybody can realize

that no politician, when listening to their advisors, would go and put the Palestinian

question on their pamphlet. They're sitting there at their debates just praying nobody

asks that question, right? They want to talk about maybe for lucky housing, but really we

saw them talking, wanting to lead with military spending. almost the opposite of the arms

embargo approach. know, absolutely that would have been what they would have taken hold of

and all the other silly nonsense that they're getting away with. And I'm encountering people

daily, constantly, especially because I do shit on electoral politics a lot. And I can't

advise anybody who to vote for. I'm just sitting back. I don't want to focus on that. have

my own niche, okay? And I don't answer that question for anybody. But I'm asked it a lot,

you know, you don't like this, you don't like this politician or that party and that party,

who do you vote for? And some for some people right now, the bare fucking minimum is going

to be how they answer some of the questions that you have on the pledge that you're asking

candidates to take. One of the tools that is on the website is quite literally a gallery

of candidates who have signed on to the pledge as well as the pledge itself. You can use your

postal code and look up and see if your candidates are on there. If they're not, they've got an

email and all these questions ready to go if you want to go ask them where they stand on

it or show up at a town hall and blast them with one of these questions. But it is going

to be a tool at the... The bare minimum of it is to find where some of these folks lay

now and hold them to these positions later. But I'd like to talk about the strategy of

building in this moment while people are paying attention because it's funny for me for people

to be now looking at their politicians seeing where they're at, but they should have already

been doing this, right? Because we've asked people to go to your MPs, go to your MPPs and

push them on an arms embargo now and now they're wondering where they're at. So that tells me

there has been another awakening, not just from the over the 18 months, but now they're faced

with this moment of time. And I imagine you said 15 cities you're based in, surely you're

making contacts in all these ridings. And what is it? 338 ridings? I always forget. I imagine

this has the potential to network. in this way, right? So do you want to hit on the other organizing

tactics that are being employed now that go beyond whatever the politicians decide to do?

Totally. Yeah. So, and like you said, just like the premise sort of at a really high level

of the campaign is like, there is a personal pledge, which allows for me as like a voter

to go and put in my postal code and my name and an email gets sent out. to the candidates

who are running in my riding, basically letting them know that like, Palestine is a key election

issue for me and I'm watching, I'm looking out for their positions on these five demands.

And the five demands that are outlined on the website are what we call the Palestine platform,

which are arms embargo, a full two-way arms embargo with the closing of the US loophole

to be specific. You know, not the fake arms embargo that the liberals keep saying they've

implemented, which they haven't. The second demand is to stop trade, Canadian trade, whether

it's cultural, economic or academic, with illegal Israeli settlements. The third demand is around

Palestinian or the protection of Palestinian freedom of speech and the implementation of

anti-Palestinian racism as a formal policy. And this is really important because in the

last 18 months, we've really seen heightened repression against the Palestine movement on

so many levels. The fourth demand is a recognition of Palestinian state. And the fifth demand

is the funding of Gaza rebuilding efforts, but specifically, like including UNRWA, which

we know from Pierre Pelliev's discourse that he wants to basically ban as like a terrorist

organization, despite it being literally a UN institution that for a long time has been playing

an important role in funding efforts, despite actually some criticisms that we may have coming

from the left of UNRWA. And so these are these five demands and basically, This pledge, this

individual pledge allows for an email to go to the candidates, letting them know, hey,

I'm looking out for your position on this. And on the flip side, the candidates can then indicate

their position on this. And of course we know that candidates don't just do that necessarily

out of the good of their heart. They do that because they're receiving thousands of emails

about this. They do that because people are showing up at their canvassing offices, because

people are sending them you know, doing phones apps and all of these kinds of things. We

launched on March 11th and since then more than 240 candidates have pledged, the bulk

of which are NDP. So 162 are NDP, 65 are Green, I think 15 are Liberal and we have got one

bloc with a quah on there and unsurprisingly zero conservatives. But it is open to any

of these five major parties. And so basically like, but the, like you said, the key thing

is like this question of organizing. So, you know, when you go on and you pledge, you then

get contacted. So it's not just that you're pledging in an email that goes to your MP,

but actually you then get contacted with all kinds of different tools that you can do to

organize in your neighborhood around vote Palestine and the election. So people got an invitation

to town halls that were taking place within their cities. So I think to date there's been

something like eight different vote Palestine town halls, which are obviously different than

the election. the town halls that are run by the candidates, and they're meant to be town

halls about how are we going to organize around Palestine this election. And people get to

network and they get to meet other people. In a lot of these cities, there's writing groups.

That's where you show up folks to then plot on how you can show up at the other town halls

together too, right? And maybe set an agenda there. Exactly. Totally. Yeah. And actually

today, the day that we're recording, which is April 15th, is actually a national day of

action or day of camp. We've called it like a day canvassing where we basically said put

Palestine in every corner and we set up an action network tool to basically, you know, we put

out this blast calling on people to pledge or to sign up to go out in groups of friends and

either poster in their neighborhoods, put do canvassing in their neighborhoods or flyering

to talk on social media about why they're why they care about Palestine for this election

and to do that in groups of of friends or comrades and so on. And the idea is like, you we know

that the debate is taking place this week. We've already basically been told that Palestine

is not going to be an agenda on the debate. And so it's like, OK, well, if Palestine is

not an agenda in the halls of power, it's an agenda out in the streets with the masses of

people. And we have over 700 people signed up to go out in groups of friends and comrades

and communities all across the country just today. You know, that's incredible. It is.

we we actually shared that action on our live the last two Friday lives. We kind of have

calls to action. And we know we've got comrades, you know, example, like at Fairview Mall handing

out leaflets. And we reminded people you can print out the leaflets themselves are available.

But usually the supplies are all there. You get to meet a comrade in that area. And we

interviewed a kind of a group. I think there was maybe five or six of them. from a couple

different Palestinian locals in Toronto. So was Egglington, Don Valley. I can't remember

all the groups that were on that particular episode, but they had participated in the

weekly marches and whatnot and looked into that window you described at the beginning.

And then, you know, that's an episode full of all the local actions that they're able

to facilitate, you know, separate from PYM, but in conjunction with at the same time,

you know, and I can only imagine this is going, like this type of campaign is going to replicate

that again and again in writings that haven't yet quite built up capacity on this item. And

they go on to do incredible work, like on Palestine, obviously, that's, but just mutual aid and

community building as well. It's been quite beautiful to see that happen on a local level.

So, but I know you definitely, have heard the criticisms around a campaign like this. You

you mentioned there being 15 liberals on there and you know, I don't even, I can't even talk

about the liberals. I feel changes happen in my body. I get really angry. I know we would

be in a way worse spot had we had conservatives. Like the audience is not oblivious to that

at all. But you know, what do you have to say to presenting politicians that have really

not even done the bare minimum? No, for sure. mean, I think a few things are worth mentioning.

So like, we made sure that the campaign is not endorsing. Like we're nonpartisan and there's

no endorsements taking place. So we're actually, like the Vote Palestine project is not engaged

in any kind of endorsements. And that was very intentional, right? Because there's sort of

what feels like, guess, maybe to within the broader sort of Palestine periphery or terrain,

I'm going to say, there's a few different political kind of approaches to the election. So you've

got some people who are like, we need to punish the liberals. Okay. Like they were at the

helm of this genocide and we need to punish them. And we saw that in the U S right. We

saw this idea of a punishment vote. And then you've got people on the other side who are

saying we need to do strategic voting. So we need to go online and we need to figure out.

And you know what, actually I wish that was the case. Most people who call for strategic

voting actually haven't are not actually looking at like, is strategic voting? Cause in some

writings actually it's probably more strategic to vote MDP maybe. They just think it means

vote liberal. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so you've kind of got like these two different

orientations. Like we're not really necessarily trying to intervene in either of them directly

because we're not telling people how to vote, but we're trying to say, there are candidates

who are in your writing that are coming to you to ask you for votes. And part of the vision

here is like, let's kind of flip things on their head where it's not like, okay, once

every four years, we're like, oh, who's the best on the issue that I care about? I'm gonna

go out to the ballot box and I'm gonna check next to their names, right? Like, generally

that's how we think about informed voting, right? And some people don't even maybe don't engage

in informed voting, they just vote to vote. But generally people are like, oh, informed

voting means like you do a little bit of research, you think about the issues that you care about.

and you actually just check off that candidate's name. But there's something really passive

about that because it presumes then that candidates come to those political positions on their

own. Right? That like, and that's also where like, you know, identity politics starts to

go in because then you're like, oh, well, if this candidate is maybe like Palestinian or

if they're Arab or if they're Muslim, that probably means that they're going to care about the

issue that I care about. Right. When there's actually like certain, you know, there's there's

people of color who run in within the conservatives, right? Like, you know, you're trying to find

a nice way to say that, right? Right. There's some class traitors in the room. Not this

room. Not this room. Yeah. And so, you know, and so basically what we're actually trying

to say is like, we don't want to be passive. We want to actually be active and organize

in our communities around the election. And so, yes, that does mean listing, for example,

that a liberal candidate has pledged onto the platform, right? In the same way, for example,

that the arms embargo website lists these 22 liberal MPs that pledged onto arms embargo.

But when by doing that, we're acknowledging one, there's mass mobilization and community

pressure and significant organizing that needs to be done in order to force the hand of a

candidate, you know, just to be really blunt, to basically feel like, okay, if I want to

get elected, if I want to have to go out and canvas in peace and fundraise in peace and

you know, there's some writings where like, you know, the wonderful kind of groups that

were organizing that you mentioned, just like these groups that were organizing for Palestine

in their writings, like, you know, they did not give those candidates or those MPs like

a day of quiet, you know, every time that MP was seen in their neighborhood, it was like,

why haven't you pledged unto arms and work? Do you support the killing of Palestinian children?

Like it was relentless, right? And so you have this kind of movement that's taking place where

people feel like they have a say and they get to exercise that say and they get to do that

with, most importantly, with other comrades who think the same way and that builds organizations.

And then by putting that list out, right, by having that list, it also then allows for us

to think about organizing after the election, right? Because if a liberal candidate, let's

say in that particular writing, who pledged on to vote Palestine gets elected, well, you

have now a network of people who are connected to each other. who have basically built out

infrastructure in their local writing level. And now they have a long task ahead, which

is to continue to hold that candidate accountable. I definitely, know there are some people who

are like, we're not gonna vote for liberals no matter what, et cetera, et cetera, that

sort of punishment vote kind of idea, or maybe no vote at all. And the great thing about

Vote Palestine is even though the name suggests that we're telling you to vote Palestine, actually

nowhere on the website does it tell people to vote. meant to be a tool to get people organized

and to basically bring the kind of political agency and force that we've been able to create

over the last 18 months into the election. A little bit of heat at the the feet of our our

politicians. I whether you go vote or not surely you know to pester them. You talk about candidates

not getting to this position on Palestine on their own and I mean the five pledges should

be easy for any politician. I imagine some of the problems you're having with getting some

of the NDP candidates on board is like logistics, like some of them are just paper candidates

and they're just like floating in the wind somewhere, struggling to even do a campaign I've spoken

to a few. But we don't really get official platforms anymore anyway. We get politicians

not even showing up to debates. So and they've been dodging their constituents, like you said,

for 18 months. So Save for like if you're in Jolie's writing or some of the usual suspects,

you probably don't know what their position is on Palestine because they have been locked

down from HQ, from headquarters, right? Like you don't talk on this unless you're, that's

in your portfolio. There's a handful of NDP MPs that seem to be allowed to speak on it.

Everyone else is just like, meh. And so it's making them take a stand now and not just not

answering your emails anymore. Like you want on this list. And I think it's important for

some of the progressives to get on this list, you know, with the bare minimum. can you imagine,

you know, let's say we're in a position where the conservatives are in power or have some

power and they suggest defunding UNRWA. You have a... 240, well, you know, they're not

all gonna get elected, but you know, out of that 240 people that have already signed on,

hopefully there's some names that are there that you can draw on and say, okay, I already

have your position on this, let's go. Exactly. Right, let's move. I don't need to start that

work of where are you on this? Where are you on statehood? Where are you on funding? Where

are you in anti-Palestinian racism? Like that's a lot of people on record that weren't, that

definitely weren't already. Have you thought of publicizing any negative responses? Like,

did you get anybody that replied with a hell no that they deserve their own little post,

perhaps? You know, definitely who not to vote for? Have you thought about that approach or?

So I think there's just been a handful of people who've responded with an abstention against

like one of the points. And when they do that, that's listed on the website. So it'll say

like, checkmark to arms embargo. abstention to, you know, blocking trade with illegal Israeli

settlements, check mark on this, check mark on that, check mark on that. Ooh, that's interesting.

What's the most one that, what's the hardest sell out of those five? You know what's interesting

is actually, think that everyone who's responded has positively responded to arms embargo, which

really, when you think about it, like that is one of the most important asks. Like that

is like so concrete because we're like, If we can disrupt the flow of weapons during a genocide,

that is critical. I think the one that I think made me saw potentially one or two abstentions

on was around settlements, around blocking trade with illegal Israeli settlements. And I think

that one is to be expected in a way because we've got on there financial, cultural, and

academic exchange. we know how universities, for example, freak out. It's BDS, right? Like

you're not saying it, but it is. Right. It is. Effectively. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, you

know, for example, like, you know, the University of Toronto has a partnership with, you know,

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is like on stolen land. And the students have

now launched a campaign against that. But like during the encampment period, this was like

a big taboo. Like you don't touch this partnership, you know, because there is this kind of idea,

oh, well, academic and cultural that these are like somehow. they transcend politics, which

is not true. But even that demand, honestly, the people who are responding are supporting

it. Now, we're not getting people who are responding with negatives, it's that people aren't responding.

And that is something that we need to see as a negative, right? Like the fact that there's

zero conservatives tells us that this platform is antagonistic to the conservative platform.

And I we know that anyways, like Pierre Pelliev is out in the streets calling himself a Zionist

and talking about wanting to ban UNRWA and wanting to deport people and students and so

on, like, you know, very much taking up that Trump language. So, I mean, we didn't really

need this survey to tell us what he's telling us on TV. like when you go on the tool and

you search up your writing, if you don't see your liberal candidate on there, it means that

your liberal candidate saw this survey and made the choice to ignore. And they saw this survey

potentially hundreds of times in their inbox, depending on how many people in your writing

pledged. Same with your conservative candidate. And, you know, same with in the writings where

the NDP or the Greens haven't pledged, or the writings where the Bloc de l'Equat haven't

pledged. Nobody in my writing has pledged. Oh, really? I mean, our liberal candidate

is real piece of shit, and I don't expect anything from him at all. But, or the cons, obviously.

But the NDP one, I believe, is in one of those candidates I was talking about in You'd be

lucky if they have an email address, you know, available, I think. So I'm not worried about

who to vote for in this election at this point. I'm just really upset with all of the parties,

but I can see you feel that. Like it's, we're all kind of in the same place, but people

are often faced with this time where they feel like they don't know where to put in, right?

They definitely don't want to organize behind a candidate or... or get into those spaces.

And we've been encouraging people, like whether it's on the Palestine issue or whatever issue

that you've already kind of been focused in on or passionate about, and you can press an

issue rather than cheerlead for a party that kind of limits you in so many ways, right?

Like when you cheer for your team, you don't like to shit talk in public, right? You say

that for private and some of that's not very constructive. So I love the idea of this just,

this just being another tool to kind of press not just one, right? You don't just have one

MP right now, you've got four people or sometimes, I mean, I wouldn't bother emailing the people's

party candidate. I mean, you could, but just knowing that there's so many different pressure

points now as well, and it's encouraging people to kind of put this on the agenda wherever

they're at. Because I know there's people out there organizing their own town halls. Like

a lot of social organizations do that now. not just chambers of commerce, thankfully. So you

can put it on the question. Try to push the issue in so many ways. This is a great time

to do it. Totally. Have you had any surprising responses? You mean in terms of candidates?

Sure. I'll say, I'll speak for myself here for a second and just say, I was personally

really surprised when, you know, within like, two weeks of launching, we were nearing 200

pledges. I was like, what? The vote passed and actually was formed in 2021. The idea then

was a bit more around, let's get positions out of candidates, right? Because like you said,

Jessa, there are many candidates who aren't even giving us positions, our platforms, right?

They're not listing them, they're just, and... The party platform is confusing because sometimes

they don't address these things directly within the party platform. And sometimes they do

address it correctly, but then some people just like break from the party. And so it's like

the idea back then was like, let's send the survey out to candidates. And this is really

common. Like I think a lot of organizations in different struggles will send out these

surveys. I've been a candidate. You don't know. the MS foundation, the gun owners association,

all your local environmentalists will send you one. It's actually overwhelming sometimes as

a candidate. You have to just pick and choose because some of them are lengthy questionnaires.

Like they're not just do you agree with this vibe? No, exactly. So yeah, it's like this

it's really common to do that, to try to basically say, look, like we want your platform on something.

So, you know, that was kind of the thought process then in 2021. And what's interesting is back

then, there were no liberals. It was all just NDP and Greens. I could probably pull up the

demands, but the demands were not even, like it was like around, the one on Israeli settlements

was there. There was one on, I think, anti-Protesting and racism. And then if I'm not mistaken, there

was one on like the upholding of international law. Well, that should have been a red flag,

people. Not to you, but like, yeah. Right. I mean, and I think at the time, It was probably

likely that the liberals were instructed not to sign. Like, you know, they probably got

instructions. I'm speculating here. They got a memo. They got a memo probably from headquarters

saying like, you know, no, you do this. Actually, I was instructed during one campaign by NDP

headquarters to send them all of the surveys that they got so they could pre-approve them.

So that kind of handling likely exists in all the parties. Totally. Yeah, 100%. And so like,

you know, I mean, I think I was really shocked on this question, like what surprised me? I

was surprised to see how many candidates, of course, like I said, major overrepresentation

in the sense that the bulk of them are NDP and Greens. still, within the first few weeks,

we had hit 10 or 11 liberals. You feel like in that moment, you're like, okay, things are

changing. The needle has moved. It's not like the needle has just moved because it's like

we made the needle move. And also like, just to be like really honest, like it hasn't moved

enough. Like let's just also speak really frankly here. Like we're talking about a genocide where

over 160,000 people have been massacred where 85%, if not more now, of Gaza's infrastructure

has been destroyed. Israeli officials have gone on live TV and spoken openly about their

interest in destroying. and uprooting the Palestinian people. On the one hand, you're

like, okay, well, yes, the needle has moved. There's been this mass movement that forced,

like, this is maybe the more optimistic side of the discussion is like, we've been able

to change the discourse on Palestine. On the other side, you're like, how many Palestinians

have to be murdered in the last 18 months? But the one thing that I will say is, I think

one of the outcomes of the last 18 months, Aside from the fact that there has been this

mass movement that has been built in North America, I think is that Israel's reputation has been

completely decimated. There is no going back for this genocidal regime. You've got world

leaders who are not even revolutionary by any stretch, basically saying if Netanyahu comes

into this country, we're going to have to abide by the permit to arrest him. You know, and

Israel knows that. I mean, like I I read recently that Israel's planning to allot like something,

I don't know, however many hundreds of millions. on a focus on, you know, ideological propaganda

work. It's not working. It's not working because it's always going to be just supposed to what

we can actually see with our eyes. Why won't they learn that? I think that's a huge testament

to the work that you folks and others have done in the Palestinian solidarity movement, because

I am surprised that more liberals now, even though the genocide, like even though they're

seeing this, but the the atmosphere in which the Zionist lobby seems to dominate mainstream

media, legacy media, and throw away claims of anti-Semitism that are just used to silence

politicians who are, you know, abnormally susceptible to that. You know, a lot of us can be like,

fuck off, I'm looking down range still, like, I'm not going to let that bother me right now.

But politicians, oh gosh, that's like the worst thing. that could happen to them. And right

now it just seems so heightened, not just anti-Palestinian racism, but the Zionist narrative, like Justin

Trudeau standing up there, like some of his parting words, like, am a Zionist and making

space for that. So I thought it would be a really hard environment for liberals to sign on because,

you know, from a resistance perspective, like those five demands don't explicitly call for

an end to the occupation, although it'd be hard to maintain an occupation without weapons.

However, they would say like that doesn't go far enough, but you know to the Zionist

lobby, signing on to any one of those gets you a label, gets you targeted, an email campaign,

phone campaign, like if nothing, those shits are organized as well, right? Like they do

generate a lot of noise to these folks worried about their egos in their campaigns. So that

pressure, but then also kind of, guess you do have to reward when we get some movement

from these politicians. We always want to say like, that's not enough, right? But there's

the other side of making space for people to change their position. Totally. And I think,

you know, you, of course, like, for example, as PYM, like our vision as an organization

is to mobilize our communities in the fight for Palestinian liberation. complete and total

Palestinian liberation from the rivers to the sea, right? We're very aware that these demands,

the demand for an arms embargo is an important demand, really stand by that, right? mean,

but at the same time, we know that there's a long struggle that we have ahead of us to

liberate Palestine. And so we're certainly under no illusion that these five demands somehow

are going to bring about Palestinian liberation. Just like you said, for example, an arms embargo

demand, If you asked me six years ago, do I think an arms embargo demand would be a popular

demand that people are shouting from every corner of every country and that politicians in imperialist

Western nations are advancing? I would have said, no, absolutely not. But here, now we're

here. And so we need to try to consolidate around this particular demand. But like you said,

I saw the most interesting crazy thing, which was like, Ryan Lilly, conservative right wing

commentator, whatever. He still comes on my feed. I'm sure I have him blocked, but I still

have to see his stupid tweets. think people are quote tweeting him and I'm subjective to

him. I know exactly who you mean. So I mean, he shared, I'm pretty sure it was him. I need

to probably verify this, but he shared some kind of tweet where it showed the 12 liberals

that had signed at the time. And basically, either he said it or he was quote tweeting

a tweet that said it. which called them the Hamas wing of the Liberal Party. And it's like,

you I think this speaks to your point of the absurdity. Like these demands, like for the

Palestine movement, we see these demands as like pretty like, you know, low bar, if you

will. Although I do really stand by this idea that arms embargo is a key demand. They're

triggered by the flag, Yara. Like some people are just triggered by the flag. Right. I mean,

and it just shows like how even kind of taking the most simple stances to say, you know, okay,

yeah, like we need to limit Canada's involvement in this war, will get you labeled in a particular

way by the Zionists, right? Which just goes to show like just how much pressure exists

in this country. And also like how much like has been built around this narrative that like

even the smallest bit of Palestine organizing. can get you sort of attacked or whatever. And

we saw that again with Mark Carney, you know, with that statement, where, you know, he's

asked this point about genocide, you know, there's a genocide happening. He responds and

says like, you know, I'm aware. It wasn't clear, like, was he saying I'm aware and that there's

a genocide happening? Was he just saying I'm aware? Like, it wasn't like he said, I'm aware

there's a genocide taking place. So it was a very lukewarm kind of statement to clearly

a moment of. pressure that was taking place at the level of his constituents or his prospective

constituents. And then we have the prime minister of Israel going on Twitter and tweeting at

Mark Carney to retract his statement. And I was just looking at this. I think Eve Engler

maybe put out a commentary on this. But I was just looking at this and I was thinking, do

people in this country? You know, who are all like, Canada first, Canada first, like all

of this kind of stuff. Like this reactionary, you know, whatever. Elbows up. Do people in

this country, yeah, do they realize that you effectively have a foreign prime minister who

is wanted by the criminal courts for war crimes, trying to decide what Canadian politicians

can and can't say about Palestine and Will Canadian politicians, this election, like I this is

a question I have, will they listen to, you know, Israel and this foreign prime minister

and the scientists lobby and so on and so forth, or are they looking outside and seeing, you

know, millions of people across Canada who are calling on them to take action to stop the

flow of weapons? I think this is actually a question. I think we probably know the answer

to that, but it's still So when you kind of put it in these terms, like this is the difference

on the one side, you have the demands of people. And on the other side, it's the demands of

the Israeli state, Canadian corporations and profit and, you know, the, the Israeli lobby.

just, some of their positions defile logic. Like we, it's been really hard to predict

politicians behavior in the last little bit because we had like a formula and You know,

a certain amount of noise and pressure and this need to be reelected. You could factor a lot

of things into it. And even now, you know, in this by Canada moment, it's still, it

puzzles me. But I think then I go back to the discussion I had with a few people, but Tyler

Shipley wrote about Canada's colonial imagination and It really explains, especially like settler

mentality and we are obviously mirrored there in Israel, right? That is a similar project

as Canada. It helps explain why our government holds on to the position that they do. They

don't want us to be too reflective on this occupation and the forms of genocide that they're

using, right? Because we'd have to look at our own history and our current treatment of indigenous

people here. But it still, you know, really flexes with that identity that you talked about

at the very beginning where we like to think of us as the good guys or as the better version

of the Americans or less hostile. But, you know, there's so many examples as to where we actually

solidify the colonial project even more so sometimes. We know our police work together on top of

all of the other kind of collusions that you were talking about earlier. So, yeah, it's

So it'd be interesting. I wonder if you've gotten any sound bites or any clips from folks

getting the Palestinian question into a town hall, forcing that maybe on all four candidates,

because that would be good viewing. haven't seen any. I know I've for sure seen people

going into... maybe like campaign protests, rallies, or, you know, like focused on one

candidate. But I haven't seen anything within the town halls, although I don't know, who

knows? I know today a lot of people have pledged to take action. So maybe at the time that this

is released, who knows? Maybe we'll have some of those sound bites up on the Vote Palestine

Instagram. Well, yeah, I think yesterday on the 14th, I guess it was, or maybe the 13th.

No, it probably the 14th. Folks were occupying a liberal candidate's office. demanding that

and I'm sure I'm sure we will get footage of someone finding somebody today and pressuring

them and Likely because of the tools that you folks have been able to provide Going through

the website right before we talk for real entry-level stuff too for people Kind of the basics of

organizing so get on there take the pledge obviously obviously But take a look at what they're doing.

Look at look at their strategy, look at the way they're plugging you right into your community

and then making contact with those in power around you. You can replicate that model. You

know, it takes a little bit of tech savvy to do it the way that they're doing it, but you

get the idea behind it on top of obviously understanding the issues behind the arms embargo and why

we're pushing on federal politicians during this time. mean, Yara, thank you so much for

coming on, I'm sure. Like on a day of action as well, I thought I was catching you in a

lull, but because you know, there was just the march on Ottawa with tens of thousands of people.

And so she catches her breath. She jumps in the studio and on with a day of action. We're

only by the time you listen to this, it's a week until the E-Day basically. So again,

all hands on deck. Just when we were all very exhausted and doing everything we could, you

guys added a whole new project to the agenda somehow. But even I remember interviewing

folks back in 2023 and they just kept listing all of the things they were doing. was actually,

I was so impressed by how much they did with the small team. I don't remember the number

of people that were working on a time, but I was like, that's not possible. Like, where's

the rest of you? And it's like, well, there's volunteers, but it's, it's an organization

to watch and how they replicate people's energies and get you done. So yeah, you guys are doing

really good work. We love covering your actions on the show. You give us endless things to

talk about. And now we finally got to get you in the studio. So I appreciate your time,

Yara. Thank you so, so much, Jessa. And yeah, hoping we'll get another chance to join you

all again soon on the show. Like you said, there's always... so much work taking place, but

it's like, think it is, it is our duty here in the, in the far diaspora, especially as

Palestinian Arab youth. And so we've been really just like, yeah, overwhelmed also by the amount

of support we've been receiving from so many people from all walks of life, from our own

communities and really feel like we were building something that's really, really critical. And

so, yeah, thanks for giving us a chance to be on the show today. I'm just talking, platforming.

the recent project. That's the least I could do, Yara. Thank you. Please share our content

and if you have the means, consider becoming a patron. Not only does our support come from

the progressive community, so does our content. So reach out to us and let us know what or

who we should be amplifying. So until next time, keep disrupting.