Linda Sarsour: Inside and Out

Adrienne, who is associated with Buddhist Peace Fellowship*, hosts a podcast series called “Election Time Series: How to Survive the End of the World“in which she interviews key activists on their involvement in the 2024 Presidential election. In the following episode, Adrienne interviews Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American feminist activist. In 2024, Linda was both a participant** to the Democratic National Convention and a protester with the Palestinian Solidarity Protest outside the Convention Center. Linda was a lead activist in the 2017 and 2019 Women’s March, has organized Black Lives Matter protests, and is a member of the Democratic Socialists Party. As a DNC participant, she worked inside the Convention hall to gather Delegate support for a permanent ceasefire and end to the genocide of Palestinians. Outside the Convention walls, she continued her lifelong activism on behalf of American Muslims and the self-determination of the Palestinian people. Linda talks about the necessity and difficulty of working for liberation in both spaces.

Linda Sarsour points out that while Biden and Harris have persisted in their commitment to sending billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, her group was also able to to get 104 members of Congress to sign a petition for a permanent ceasefire to stop the war in Gaza, an unprecedented level of support. She adds that there was, for the first time, a conference panel on Palestinian Rights at the DNC. Linda asserts that, on the whole, the American people want to end the war in Gaza.

Adrienne, from the interview:

[00:16:50] Part of what I’ve been trying to hold right now is that we have to be able to put pressure on folks who are running for office. And we also have to not put any expectation [00:17:00] on people who are like, I’m grieving family members to try to go and talk about the compromises of this election. Like I feel like we have to be able to hold each other across very different strategies right now and to understand like there’s a reason for each of these.

[00:17:14] There’s a reason where we’re trying to move all these different pieces. So for me that right action has been, I’m [00:17:20] really paying attention to who’s base building, who’s got a following, who’s with working people, who’s with poor people, who’s actually, and also, but trying to avoid the monolith, you know, because I hear people say, well, one Palestinian told me this, and that’s the way, One black.

[00:17:34] And I was like, there’s no monolith. There’s no one Palestinian stance. There’s not one black stance. [00:17:40] There’s not one black women’s stance. There’s none of those things. We get to be multitudinous and complex. That’s what decolonization allows for us to do, even in these moments. But I wanted to ask you about that is basically, there’s so many actions that are possible for people.

You can hear the interview here: Election Time Series: How to Survive the End of the World

There is also a transcript of the interview, available as a PDF here:

HTS_election time with Linda Sarsour.pdf

*I received notice of the “Election Time Series” podcast in an email sent by Buddhist Peace Fellowship. I do not know if Adrienne is an official member of BPF.

**I was unable to confirm whether Linda Sarsour was an official Delegate to the 2024 DNC