Memoir and the Missing
Sep
14

Memoir and the Missing

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Memoir and the Missing” here

This workshop considers unavailable archives and missing evidence in life writing. How to write what’s not seemingly there, what’s not known or knowable? How do we make memoir from personal and historical absences? Through facilitated discussions, writing exercises, and sharing of resources, we will contemplate the limits of the memoir genre and explore strategies for working through, around, and against its conventions.

Kyo Maclear is the author of Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation (Scribner, 2017), Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets (Scribner, 2023).

Vinh Nguyen is the author of the speculative memoir The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse  (Counterpoint, 2025) the academic monograph Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience (UC Press, 2023).

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Poetry for the People: A 6-Session Writing Workshop
Sep
16

Poetry for the People: A 6-Session Writing Workshop

Step 1: Donate to Khalil’s family here (sliding scale $40-$100).

Step 2: Register for “Poetry for the People” here.

This writer's workshop series offers a respite for reengagement and rediscovery of our internal monologues; a space to unplug from the noise to (re)learn how to listen deeply to ourselves and the world through poetry and prose. Participants will read the works of Leanne Simpson, Fady Joudah, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Mohammad El-Kurd, and many others across across themes of identity, homeland, decolonialism, reclamation, indigeneity, and transformation.

Across six 2-hour sessions, participants can expect a no-frills, rigorous environment where we will read, discuss, and critically engage with powerful texts meant to break us open. Expect plenty of individual and group writing using different styles and structures of creative writing, including responsive poetry, ekphrastic poetry, concrete poetry, elegies, odes, song lyrics, and improv.

​​Shaira Chaer is a multi-hyphenate creative born and raised on unceded Lenape land in the Bronx, New York. Their visual art, research and writing practices are informed by blending the living archive, autoethnography, queer radical futurity and the wisdom of their ancestors across Kiskeya-Ayiti and the Levant.

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Storytelling Out of Your People and For Your People
Sep
17

Storytelling Out of Your People and For Your People

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Storytelling Out of Your People” here

Join novelist Chantal James in a generative workshop for fiction writers of all levels to think about writing in the role of griot or cultural worker--one who owes something to the community they come from and who writes out of that community.

Chantal will share from and discuss her novel NONE BUT THE RIGHTEOUS along with selections from other writers who seek to hold cultural memory in their work. We will discuss what drives us to write out of who we are and where we come from. Writers of all levels can expect to come away with ideas for new work, drafts, and projects to play with.

Chantal James lives in working-class Black Washington, DC, and has been published across genres—as a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and book reviewer—in such venues as The New Republic, Catapult, Paste Magazine, Harvard’s Transition Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, Obsidian, and Callalloo. Her honors include a Fulbright fellowship in creative writing to Morocco. Her 2022 novel NONE BUT THE RIGHTEOUS from Counterpoint Press was one of Kiruks' 10 most anticipated books of its year and a nominee for the John P. Leonard Prize for Best First Book from the National Book Critics Circle.

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Cryptids and Creatures: Mythology in Poetry
Oct
4

Cryptids and Creatures: Mythology in Poetry

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Cryptids and Creatures” here

What role do cryptids and creatures like the Minotaur, the Mapinguari, or the Little Mermaid play in a poem? What do they allow writers to communicate about the myriad costs of being in this world characterized by colonial violence and slavery?

This workshop engages works by poets like Traci Brimhall, Natalie Diaz, and Summer Farah, whose mythical creatures unsettle understandings of loneliness, intimacy, sacrifice, and our relationships between past and present.

This will be an interactive space, where participants will write and share poems as cryptozoologists, architects, and memory workers. This workshop benefits the Sameer Project's North Gaza campaign.

Maya Salameh is the author of HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found at @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.

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Writing Alongside the Nonhuman
Nov
15

Writing Alongside the Nonhuman

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Writing Alongside the Nonhuman” here

It is one thing to write about animals, plants, and other non-human beings, but what would it look like to write with them? In this workshop, we will explore how we can write towards a better understanding of non-human experiences while still respecting the gap between us. We will unpack anthropomorphism and imagine an ethics for our writing that extends beyond empathy, discussing work from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, and others.

Sabrina Imbler is a staff writer at Defector, a worker-owned site, where they cover creatures and the natural world. Their first full-length book, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (Little, Brown, 2022), won a Los Angeles Times book prize in science and technology. Their chapbook Dyke (Geology), was published by Black Lawrence Press, and selected for the National Book Foundation Science + Literature Program. Sabrina lives in Brooklyn.

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A Furious Blooming: Writing into Personal and Collective Grief
Sep
13

A Furious Blooming: Writing into Personal and Collective Grief

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “A Furious Blooming” here

Grief is a door into a different world where we are never the same. How do we write from these new selves? How can we lean into our writing practice to not only survive the storms of grief, but also the storms that are unleashed in those who we grieve alongside? In this workshop, we will find inspiration from writers who’ve broken through the boundary of the wordlessness to write of their grief.

Bushra Rehman is a writer, teaching artist and cultural activist. Rehman’s latest novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion (Flatiron Books, 2022) is a coming-of-age story about growing up Muslim and queer in NYC. Rehman co-edited Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Seal Press, 2019) and is author of the poetry collection Marianna’s Beauty Salon (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). Her first novel, the dark comedy Corona (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013), was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. She was awarded the Queens Public Library Award for contribution to literature on Queens and is founder of the community-based workshop ‘Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction.’

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Annah, Infinite: Burning Colonial Visual Cultures of Disbelief
Sep
3

Annah, Infinite: Burning Colonial Visual Cultures of Disbelief

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Annah, Infinite” here.

Khairani Barokka's book ANNAH, INFINITE translates a painting of a child into long histories of colonial disbelief with regards to global majority people and non-normative bodyminds. This workshop will be a guided discussion about this speculative nonfiction book's ideas, disability justice, and the ways each reader can take these concepts and apply them to everyday resistance.

Khairani Barokka is a writer and artist from Jakarta, based in London. She holds a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, is the author of four acclaimed poetry books, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, and access as translation in her work; among her honours, in 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards, and longlisted for the Loewe/Studio Voltaire Awards. Okka's speculative nonfiction debut, ANNAH, INFINITE, is a translation of a painting from a disability justice perspective, out with Tilted Axis Press in June 2025.

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The PFLP and the Japanese Red Army: An Alliance of Militant Liberation and Revolution
Aug
27

The PFLP and the Japanese Red Army: An Alliance of Militant Liberation and Revolution

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “The PFLP and the Japanese Red Army” here.

This workshop will explore the rise of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as the premier Marxist-Leninist faction within the Palestine liberation movement during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly their alliance with the Japanese Red Army (JRA). We will discuss how and why a Japanese student group chose to ally themselves with the PFLP and fight for the liberation of Palestine to a degree not seen by other non-Arab movements. Jeremy will also discuss his research on the history of shared actions between the PFLP and the JRA and how this created a new paradigm for Palestine liberation, while also challenging more moderate factions of the movement.

Jeremy Randall, Ph.D. in History, is the associate director of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He was recently the residential postdoctoral fellow at the Orient Institut Beirut.

He is a historian of leftism in the Middle East with a focus on Palestine as well as leftist critiques of sectarianism and capitalism in postcolonial Lebanon via intellectual and cultural productions.

He is currently preparing a monograph on the alliance between the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine with counterparts in Japan, Europe, and Latin America as an example of internationalism and solidarity with the Palestinian revolution in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Stop Cop Cities Everywhere
Aug
26

Stop Cop Cities Everywhere

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Stop Cop Cities Everywhere” here

Join organizers from struggles against cop cities and carceral infrastructures in Atlanta, GA, San Pablo, CA, Charlotte, NC, and New York City to learn about what organizers are doing locally and how you can resist a cop city that might be coming to your city. Following the publication of No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement, this workshop will zoom out to share lessons, insights, and challenges from organizers across the U.S., discussing tactical diversity, organization, and repression of movements--and how we can combat it.

Mon M (she/they) is an organizer at Community Justice Exchange (CJE), who have recently published “If They Build It: Organizing Lessons & Strategies Against Carceral Infrastructure.” Mon was a founding coordinator of the No New Jails Network, a national network of campaigns fighting new jail construction and to close old jails, without expanding supervision and social control.

Juan has been involved in the movement to Stop Cop Campus in the Bay Area since it launched. He currently organizes tenants to protect each other against their landlords and the police in the Bay Area as member of Tenant and Neighborhood Councils.

Micah Herskind is an organizer, writer, and law student who is active in abolitionist movements against police and jail expansion. He is the co-editor of No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement (Haymarket Books, 2025), and has written for publications including New York Magazine, Scalawag, MSNBC, Prism, Teen Vogue, and Race & Class.

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Writing Liberatory Futures
Aug
21

Writing Liberatory Futures

Step 1: Donate to Gazan refugees in Cairo (sugg. donation $40)
Venmo @honeylocust1312 with the note “groceries”

Step 2: Register for “Writing Liberatory Futures” here

What if we won? Premised on the belief that social movements need to imagine liberation in order to work toward it, this workshop will lead participants through writing liberatory speculative fiction in a near future. We will discuss different short story structures and create characters and story arcs collectively.

Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, organizer and writer based in Chicago. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, a revolutionary sci-fi novel published in 2022 with Common Notions Press. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is a columnist at In These Times magazine where she writes on the Palestine Liberation movement and American politics. Eman organizes with the Salon Kawakib collective, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago, Scholars for Social Justice and other formations.

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Pedagogy in Pandemic Times
Aug
18

Pedagogy in Pandemic Times

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Pedagogy in Pandemic Times” here

This workshop offers practical tools and strategies for adult educators of all kinds interested in the transformative potential of online teaching. How can we steward and hold trauma-informed learning communities without the sensory input of an in-person space?

What does anti-colonial education mean in a "landless" modality that relies on global and local infrastructures of extraction, exploitation and death? Together, we will consider the radical possibilities and profound dangers of online education in times of mass disablement, pandemic erasure, technofascist surveillance, and climate catastrophe.

griffin epstein (they/them) is an educator, researcher, poet and musician in Tkaronto who has been building community and organizing for Mad liberation, disability justice, and harm reduction for 15+ years. As a white settler living uninvited on Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and Mississauga land, they aspire to be accountable to their treaty responsibilities. Since 2020, they have been running community arts programs, stewarding participatory action research and teaching in the post-secondary system exclusively online.

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Students Not Soldiers: Demilitarizing Our Schools and Communities
Aug
16

Students Not Soldiers: Demilitarizing Our Schools and Communities

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Students Not Soldiers” here

In this workshop, organizers from the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD) and Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO) in San Diego will share about their long-standing struggle of resisting militarism and military recruitment in schools and their communities.

COMD and Project YANO have fought for decades against the military’s predatory recruitment tactics. In the 2000s, they were part of the San Diego Education Not Arms Coalition that successfully campaigned to remove JROTC shooting ranges from San Diego schools. Since then, they have continued to fight to restrict JROTC on campuses and other facets of militarism that prey on their communities.

In this moment of hyper-militarization and authoritarianism, their work is crucial to making young people aware of how, as recruits, they could be used to carry out deportations, suppress dissent and terrorize communities, and enforce Trump’s threats to intervene militarily in places like Gaza, Panama, Mexico, and cities across the US.

Join us to learn about COMD and Project YANO's past and present struggles in San Diego, and discuss strategies for combating militarism in schools and communities where you are.

Oren Robinson is a tech worker, learner and educator based in Kumeyaay land (San Diego). Oren serves as program coordinator at Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD), and its sister organization, Project on Youth and Non-military Opportunities (Project YANO).

Davíd Morales is an educator and counter-recruitment activist rooted in San Diego. Since high school, he has organized with COMD and Project YANO to challenge the U.S. military’s predatory recruitment of racialized and working-class youth. His work is informed and inspired by global struggles against empire and militarism.

Ana Yelí Ruiz is a research analyst and activist with roots in Mexico and raised in the midwest. At 18 she joined the Marine Corps where she completed 4 years of active duty and walked away with military sexual trauma (MST). She currently resides in Chicago, IL and practices research and operations on county courts. She volunteers with COMD and Project YANO in her free time.

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Kanafani and the Spectre of Palestinian Statehood
Aug
15

Kanafani and the Spectre of Palestinian Statehood

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Kanafani and the Spectre of Palestinian Statehood” here

In this workshop, scholar and translator Hazem Jamjoum will offer a genealogy of the project of Palestinian statehood through the work of Ghassan Kanafani, focusing in particular on The Revolution of 1936-1939 as well as "The Specter of the Palestinian State," an article Kanafani wrote around the same time.

Hazem will discuss the process of translating Kanafani's text into English, presenting an in-depth overview of how the concept of Palestinian statehood has fit into Zionist colonial strategies since Kanafani's death, as well as how his analysis helps us understand the current moment. Participants will be asked to read both texts beforehand and arrive ready to engage and discuss.

Hazem Jamjoum is an educator, archivist and translator living in London. He is the editorial lead of the newly established publishing house Safarjal Press.

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Pedagogy of the Dysphoric
Jul
20

Pedagogy of the Dysphoric

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Pedagogy of the Dysphoric” here.

This workshop is for teachers, writers, and artists who have been depleted of connection to their bodies, imaginations, and voices.

Dysphoria describes the feelings of separation, grief, anxiety and disembodiment plaguing most people today attempting to live ethically and with joy under capitalism, changing climates, multiple genocides, and a rise in global nationalism.

How to embody learning when the ground, the body, is dysphoric? When it resists embodiment? How can sensuality and connection encourage learning when the present moment is unbearable?

This workshop will be a horizontal space in which mindfulness and reflection, and somatic exercises in combination with writing prompts and discussions will encourage participants to reflect on how their teaching and learning can engage with dysphoria.

Callum Angus is a writer, editor, and publisher of smoke and mold, a literary journal invested in the narrative possibilities trans lives bring to our changing nature-culture. His first story collection, A Natural History of Transition, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and an Oregon Book Award. His work has appeared in many publications, and he writes the newsletter Sex Weather Climate Death, monthly(ish) meditations on a body and the planet in transition. Based in Portland, Oregon, he teaches independent workshops online & through Corporeal Writing.

LA Warman is a poet, death doula, and principal of the independent Warman School. She is the author of the poetry collection Dust, and the erotic novella Whore Foods, which won a Lambda Literary Award.

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Craft Day for Gaza: Basics of embroidery
Jul
12

Craft Day for Gaza: Basics of embroidery

Step 1: Donate to the Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Craft Day for Gaza: Basics of Embroidery” here.

This workshop will cover basic embroidery skills and teach a number of beginner stitches with all supplies provided. Participants will learn using a sampler in the shape of the Palestinian flag, which they will be able to frame in a hoop and take home. After the workshop, participants will have enough knowledge to continue to craft embroidery pieces on their own. The project will take most folks less than the allotted time - feel free to arrive late, leave early, or hang out with us until the end!

All materials will be provided. This event will be indoors in a fully accessible building. KN95 or N95 masks are required and provided as well.

Noa Samson (they/them) is a NYC-based embroidery artist who has been hand-stitching for 7 years. Their specialty work includes thread painting and stop motion embroidery animation. They are the founder of Queer Craft Club, a covid-conscious meetup group that has hosted over 70 events since 2021.

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Light from Deep Under
Jul
3

Light from Deep Under

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Light from Deep Under” here

We are honored to host a special online reading and discussion of a powerful new poetry collection written by Shukri Abu Baker, a Palestinian political prisoner who has spent the last 17 years unjustly incarcerated, and who remains behind bars today.

His daughter, Nida Abu Baker, a nationally known speaker and advocate, will read and share select poems from her father’s collection while also speaking about the Holy Land Foundation (then and now) along with reflections on her father’s life behind bars.

Nida will also speak about how this book became her father’s way of coping and surviving, as well as his way of sharing his message with the world. These poems are more than words; they are resistance, memory, and love in their rawest form.

Nida will be joined in conversation by scholar and writer Zarefah Baroud. Join us for an evening of truth, art, and the enduring power of the human spirit as we reflect on Nida’s father’s words and raise funds to support Palestinians in Gaza

Nida Abu Baker is a nationally recognized speaker and advocate. Bold, driven, and unapologetically creative, she channels the fire of being a Palestinian political prisoner’s daughter into a force for justice. Now a nationally known speaker and advocate, her voice carries the weight of lived experience and the power to move hearts. Her story weaves resilience, activism, and purpose into everything she does. She’s dedicated her life to making sure her father’s voice reaches far beyond the prison walls built to silence him.

Zarefah Baroud is a PhD Candidate at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, where her research examines the application of carcerality under colonial and settler-colonial formations in Palestine. Baroud’s writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, Mondoweiss, Middle East Monitor, CounterPunch, The Palestine Chronicle, and other prominent outlets.

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Fund Abortion Not War
Jun
30

Fund Abortion Not War

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Fund Abortion Not War” here.

In this workshop, three reproductive healthcare providers who have been silenced in their workplaces for speaking out about the Palestinian liberation struggle will discuss what it means to practice medicine ethically in the midst of imperial wars.

Fund Abortion Not War is a campaign and intervention of the repro world that seeks to connect the global anti imperial movement to the movement for reproductive autonomy: <https://fundabortionnotwar.org>

Rachna Vanjani (they/them) is a physician, reproductive justice advocate & community organizer whose work focuses on upholding the tenants of reproductive justice and dismantling systems of oppression. they are an all-trimester abortion provider & birth worker currently focused on the integration of indigenous medicine with their allopathic training to create a supportive environment of healing and liberation for patients.

Dr. Sabrina Das is an OBGYN specialising in high-risk pregnancy, at Imperial College Healthcare in London, UK. She is also an abortion surgeon with Marie Stopes International and is currently the UK Harkness Fellow 24/25, based out of New York and being hosted by CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Healthcare Policy, studying the abortion access landscape in Post Roe USA. She was volunteering in Gaza in March 2025, before and after the ceasefire ended.

Umaymah Mohammad is a Palestinian organizer, artist, and MD/PhD candidate in Sociology with over a decade of experience building movements for justice. Her work spans grassroots mobilization, arts-based organizing, and the development of organizational infrastructures at the national level. She has organized against state violence in its many forms, including the colonization of Palestine and anti-Muslim racism. Currently, her doctoral research centers on decolonial medicine, health justice, abolition, and Palestinian freedom—grounded in a vision for collective liberation.

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Pan-Africanists for Palestine
Jun
29

Pan-Africanists for Palestine

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Pan-Africanists for Palestine” here.

This workshop will identify and analyze the support of 20th-century Pan-Africanists like Kwame Ture, Malcolm X, and Walter Rodney for Palestinian liberation. Together we will explore the ways Pan-African thinkers mobilized solidarity, political education, and writings to defend Palestinian liberation and self-determination and linked the fate of Africa with that of Palestine.

Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is a professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and a member of Black Alliance for Peace.

Dr. Layla Brown Layla Brown is a professor of Anthropology at Northeastern University and a member of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party- GC.

Dr. CBS and Layla are the hosts of Life Study Revolution podcast about the realities of life, the importance of study, and the politics of revolution.

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Proposals for Life Against the Fourth World War
Jun
28

Proposals for Life Against the Fourth World War

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Proposals for Life Against the Fourth World War” here.

According to the Zapatistas, the 4th World War is underway, a war against humanity. What constitutes this war? What are its defining characteristics? In this workshop, renowned journalist Raul Zibechi will provide an overview of the Zapatistas' framing of the 4th World War. We will also cover the ways in which pueblos or peoples throughout Latin America and forging new pathways for life in the face of the 4th world war.

Raúl Zibechi is an Uruguayan writer, popular educator, and journalist. He writes for La Jornada, Desinformémonos, and NACLA Report on the Americas, among other outlets. Zibechi has published numerous books, including Dispersing Power, Territories in Resistance, and Constructing Worlds Otherwise.

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Parables and Palestine
Jun
22

Parables and Palestine

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Parables and Palestine” here.

This workshop is designed to analyze and apply Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents to the Palestinian liberation struggle and our daily lives. We will begin by mapping the context of the original parables of Jesus, then Octavia's parables and their parallels with Palestine, then each person will reflect on which parables resonate the most with them.

We will end with each applying our selected parable and "The Social Change Ecosystem Map," by Building Movement Project and Deepa Iyer to our lives for sustainable political organizing. Attendees should plan to read Octavia Butler's two parables before attending.

Tramaine Suubi is a multilingual writer, editor, and teacher from Kampala. They are a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and have published creative writing in over fifteen literary anthologies, magazines, journals, and reviews. They are the author of phases (Amistad, 2025). Tramaine works towards the total liberation of all oppressed people by any means necessary.

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Forgotten Pages from the History of the Palestinian Resistance
Jun
21

Forgotten Pages from the History of the Palestinian Resistance

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $60)

Step 2: Register for “Forgotten Pages from the History of the Palestinian Resistance” here

Over the course of three sessions (June 14, 15, & 21), this workshop will explore some of the lesser known episodes of the history of the Palestinian Resistance.

The first session will explore the early struggles that the Ottoman Palestinians and Arabs waged against the Zionist project as early as the first Zionist settlement, recognizing how the years 1878-1920 shaped the contemporary Palestinian struggle.

The second session will explore the history of Fateh's "Student Brigades," its trajectory in the "Jarmaq Battalion" and later the Islamic Jihad Brigades.

And the final session will focus on the internationalist dimension of the Palestinian struggle. While emphasizing the imperialist nature of the Zionist movement (relying mainly on Kanfani's study of the 1936 uprising) the session will revisit the history of the "external operations" and the careers of internationalist individuals and groups that dedicated their lives to the Palestinian aspect of the anti-imperialist struggle.

Ahmed Diaa Dardir is the co-founder of the Institute for De-Colonising Theory (IDCtheory); he holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from Columbia University.

Majd Khalid Darwish is an instructor, researcher, and editor at IDCtheory; he holds an MA in International Law from SOAS.

Ameed Faleh is a researcher at IDCtheory, and a fellow with the Good Shepherd Collective; he is a graduating senior at al-Quds Bard.

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Organizing Fundamentals
Jun
17

Organizing Fundamentals

Step 1: Donate to Momen’s family here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Organizing Fundamentals” here.

This workshop will introduce participants to the basics of community organizing, including: the organizing cycle, base building, and structure. Participants will draw on personal experiences and examine historical examples of organizing as the basis of our learning. As we look to strengthen our movement and collectively develop the skills necessary to build power, this workshops offers a place for people who want to get active to learn the fundamentals of organizing.

Ari (they/them) has been active in community organizing in Brooklyn for over ten years and involved in several different campaigns related to housing, divestment, and raising awareness around intimate partner violence. They are a part of G-REBELS a grassroots organization which is currently working on their People’s Power Network, which offers material aid, political education, and childcare to local community members. They meet bi-weekly at the Central Library in Brooklyn.

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Kashmir's Freedom Struggle
Jun
12

Kashmir's Freedom Struggle

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Kashmir’s Freedom Struggle” here

This workshop will delve into Kashmir’s long-standing freedom struggle, rooted in resistance against occupation and oppression. We’ll trace the historical betrayals and ongoing injustices faced by Kashmiris, including the intensification of India's settler-colonial project in the region since 2019. The discussion will expose state violence, media silencing, and the broader implications of militarization in the region. Together, we’ll explore how global solidarity and sustained activism can support Kashmiris in their fight for dignity, rights, and self-determination.

Hafsa Kanjwal is an associate professor of South Asian History at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on the history of the modern world, South Asian history, and Islam in the Modern World. She is the author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press, 2023), which examines how the Indian and Kashmir governments utilized state-building to entrench India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir in the aftermath of Partition.

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Reading Against Empire: A Reading Group
Jun
7

Reading Against Empire: A Reading Group

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $35).

Step 2: Register for “Reading Against Empire: A Reading Group” here.

How has our world been narrated to us by empire, and how can we speak back against those narratives? What anticolonial strategies for reading, writing, and being do these works cultivate in their attention to British, American, and Japanese imperial projects?

Join scholars Sam Ikehara and Nozomi Nakaganeku to read and discuss Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes (April 5), Dionne Brand's Salvage: Readings from the Wreck (June 7), Crystal Myun-hye Baik's Re-encounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique (Sept. 6), and Wendy Matsumura's Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan’s Empire (Dec. 6).

Participants will meet online across four sessions to discuss these books with one another, though there is no requirement to join every session. They are also encouraged to purchase copies of the texts from the Workshops4Gaza bookstore, where all proceeds are donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.

Sam Ikehara was born and raised in Oʻahu. Her research and activism emerge from her family's histories and experiences across multiple wars and empires in the Pacific Ocean, particularly the U.S. military occupations of Hawaiʻi and Okinawa.

Nozomi Nakaganeku-Saito is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies at Amherst College. Her research focuses on the impacts of US militarism and Japanese settler colonialism on Okinawa and the role of literature and storytelling in (re)shaping relations to land/air/sea by centering Indigenous perspectives.

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Resistance Literature Now!
Jun
7

Resistance Literature Now!

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Resistance Literature Now!” here.

The late activist-scholar Barbara Harlow’s foundational text, Resistance Literature, first published in 1987, was just republished this year due to popular demand. She opens the text as follows:

"The term ‘resistance' (muqawamah) was first applied in a description of Palestinian literature in 1966 by the Palestinian writer and critic Ghassan Kanafani in his study Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948-1966."

Harlow builds upon Kanafani’s theoretical work by collecting a wide range of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial poetry and prose produced in the 1960s through the early 80s alongside national liberation movements in the Global South.

In this 2-session workshop, we will first read the introductory chapter as well as the one on Resistance Poetry, then the related folio of poems, broadening and deepening our understanding of resistance literature.

We'll discuss the poems within their revolutionary contexts, and consider how we might apply Harlow’s framework to our contemporary moment. No experience with poetry or literary criticism required!

Jaime Shearn Coan is a writer, educator, and organizer living in NYC whose work centers on the role of literature and performance in social movements.

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Writing to Remember: Intro to Flash Prose
May
25

Writing to Remember: Intro to Flash Prose

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Writing to Remember: An Introduction to Flash Prose” here.

Flash prose, whether fictional or non-fictional, is characterized by its capacity to tell an unforgettable story in very few words. In this workshop, we will approach flash prose as a self-contained window onto socio-historical processes that emerge from our most specific lived experiences and in particular, memories. We will gather tools from poetry, political organizing, and how memory itself works to write a flash prose piece that sheds critical light on systemic forces through autobiographical examples.

Tala Khanmalek (all pronouns) is a queer writer, editor, and scholar of Iranian descent. They hold a PhD in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley, where they were a student activist in SJP.

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On the Memory of Water
May
18

On the Memory of Water

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “On the Memory of Water” here.

This workshop explores the profound connections between water, memory, and resistance from the perspectives of poets of color. Water serves not only as sustenance but as a repository of our collective memory and cultural survival, witnessing and recording histories of colonization, resistance, and renewal across generations.

We will analyze the craft of those the water remembers, including poets such as Ariana Benson, Banah el Ghadbanah, Camonghne Felix, and Nizar Qabbani. From the protection of Indigenous Filipino reservoirs to the militarized borders of the Mediterranean, this workshop invites you to listen to the stories that water has to tell.

Maya Salameh is the author of HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found at @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.

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Against these Walls: Disrupting the War Machine from Sonora to Gaza
May
17

Against these Walls: Disrupting the War Machine from Sonora to Gaza

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Against these Walls” here

The world’s deadliest land migration route--the Sonoran Desert--is a land of open graves. Shared between Palestine and the Sonoran Desert are patterns of social ordering and othering, circuits and flows of surveillance, the siphoning of pasts and the denial of futures by settler colonial thieves.

Against the constellation of violences of the US/Mexico border, it is necessary to untangle the coded language of slaughter, technologies and intricate web of stakeholders, as lifeblood of the border-military-industrial complex.

Ultimately, the security regimes operate in the interest of ceaseless shareholder profits; the Nakba is always ongoing. In this workshop, we will work to better understand this imperial insatiability, and, co-conspire forms of resistance to the war machine.

Danika Cooper is Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where the core of her research centers on the geopolitics of scarcity, alternative water ontologies, and designs for resiliency in the global aridlands. She earned an MA in Design Studies and Master of Landscape Studies from Harvard University.

Taylor Miller is a researcher and writer based in Tucson, Arizona. She earned her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Arizona and is a university lecturer and a research fellow with the London-based Corruption Tracker/Shadow World Investigations, documenting the violence of the global arms trade.

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The Workers Love Palestine
May
15

The Workers Love Palestine

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “The Workers Love Palestine” here.

In this workshop we will read and discuss the poem “The Workers Love Palestine” by Zaina Alsous together with an excerpt from Blood in My Eye by George Jackson to consider language and labor as tools of struggle against imperial and colonial power.

We will grapple with what these texts clarify and complicate about the relationships between capitalism and imperialism, poetry and politics, revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice.

Following our discussion, we will engage in a short somatic activity and collective writing exercise, a collaborative “fumbling toward an otherwise” as an experiment in cultural production that engages many voices and our whole bodies.

The Daybreak Poets Collective are poets committed to anti-imperialism. The collective is named after June Jordan’s INTIFADA INCANTATION: POEM #8 FOR b.b.L., and the line—NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK! The Daybreak facilitators for this workshop will be Jody Chan and Furqan Mohamed.

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How to Write to Political Prisoners 101
May
14

How to Write to Political Prisoners 101

Step 1: Donate to Kojo here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “How to Write to Political Prisoners 101” here.

In this workshop, writer and former political prisoner Eric King will guide us through the 101's of how to write to political prisoners, and why supporting and communicating with prisoners is such an important and overlooked aspect of our liberation movements.

Maybe you've seen calls for supporting political prisoners or letter-writing sessions, but have felt unsure how to get started? This workshop is for you! No prior knowledge or experience needed!

All proceeds from Eric’s workshop will go to Kojo Sababu, a political prisoner who needs ongoing support for commissary and medical funds.

Eric King is an anarchist and anti-fascist writer and organizer who spent ten years in federal prison for acting in solidarity with the Ferguson uprising. He was released from the Federal Supermax prison in December 2023. He is the co-editor of Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners (AK Press, 2023) and his memoir, A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon (AK Press, 2026) is forthcoming.

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Theories and Practices of Childhood Liberation
May
12

Theories and Practices of Childhood Liberation

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Theories and Practices of Child Liberation” here.

"This is a genocide of children," said the sociologist Heba Gowayed about Gaza in 2024. And just as children in the West have long resisted settler-colonial, patriarchal, familial, cissexist, racial, and adult-supremacist domination - sometimes via explicitly Youth Liberationist platforms, sometimes not - Palestinian children today are not exclusively victims of annihilation.

As Mira Mattar contends, they are agents of anti-Zionist resistance, too; "the authors, carriers, and distributors of collective memory." In this workshop, we will explore scholarship on Palestinian children's theorization of their oppression as Palestinians and as children, drawing connections between their struggles and the buried histories of child liberationism in the West.

Sophie Lewis is an ex-academic independent scholar living in Philadelphia, working on a book called The Liberation of Children. She is also the author of Full Surrogacy Now, Abolish the Family, and Enemy Feminisms.

She teaches short courses on critical theory online for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and her articles appear everywhere from the London Review of Books to Harper's magazine. You can find all essays and speaking future events listed at http://lasophielle.org and support Sophie's free-lance writing, if you wish, at http://patreon.com/reproutopia.

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Guidance for New Growers: 8 Steps to Starting a Small Farm or Large Garden
May
11

Guidance for New Growers: 8 Steps to Starting a Small Farm or Large Garden

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Guidance for New Growers” here.

In this workshop, the lead farmer of SisterLand Farms will teach participants how to create the foundations of a sustainable farm, garden, or homestead. Jenson (they/them) will break the process into eight steps that will inform vegetable and herb growers of most scales and answer questions like: "What can be grown on rented land?", "What tools do I need to start?", "What are the most common setbacks and pitfalls?"

By the end of the workshop, you will have a general idea of how to prepare growing spaces, how to crop plan, how to sow and transplant, how to mitigate organics waste, what you do (and do not) need to have on hand for success, the basics of harvesting and storage, and how to prepare your space for the following growing season. This workshop is ideal for new gardeners, those curious about starting market farms, community gardeners, and homesteaders.

Jenson (they/them) is a farmer and educator working on the Olympic Peninsula. With over a decade of organic farming experience, Jenson now manages SisterLand Farms, which has won three Farm of the Year awards since its founding in 2018. They specialize in small-scale farming, regenerative agricultural practices, and diverse crop planning. They passionately advocate for dignity in farming and manual labor, and believe that strong communities will always require strong food systems.

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Palestine 1492: A Report Back - The Making of an Autonomous Book
May
10

Palestine 1492: A Report Back - The Making of an Autonomous Book

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Palestine 1492: A Report Back - The Making of an Autonomous Book” here.

Join Linda Quiquivix, author of Palestine 1492: A Report Back, to learn about the making of the book from start to finish, including the writing process, working with an autonomous press, as well as the design and visual messaging. Palestine 1492 is a book of history, geography, theory, memoir, and art that provides a “report-back” on 500 years of global struggle through words, maps, and images. It is written for a world in which all worlds fit, sharing the lessons Linda has learned from the teachings of Palestinians, Zapatistas, Panthers and jaguars.   

Linda Quiquivix is a geographer and popular educator of Maya-Mam roots raised by Palestinians, Zapatistas, Panthers, and jaguars. She has a BS and MA from California State University Northridge, a Ph.D. in Geography from UNC Chapel Hill, and a Certificate in Middle East Studies from Duke University. She also held the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Critical Global Humanities at Brown University. Learn more about her and her work at https://quiqui.org/

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Written in Blood and Ink
May
9

Written in Blood and Ink

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Written in Blood and Ink” here.

In this interactive workshop, participants will close-read letters and poetry from political prisoners across the globe—from Palestine to Congo to the U.S.—to explore the profound moral and political clarity of their writing and scholarship.

We’ll discuss why our political prisoners deserve our love and solidarity, and why they are the north star of our struggle.

A letter has both a sender and a receiver: what is our political duty as the inheritors of these political missives and directives? We will end by leaving time at the end for participants to (voluntarily) write a letter to a political prisoner of their choice.

Sarah Hassouneh is a mother, doula, writer, educator, philosopher, and cultural worker who theorizes around birth, death, gentrification and colonialism, and synthesis-building. Descended from Palestinian and Egyptian lineages but raised in NE Portland, her work is rooted in transnational solidarity. She is the co-founder of Hurriyyah Collective, an anti-imperialist Muslim organization based in Portland.

Jamila Osman is a Somali writer, multimedia artist, and educator. She has taught creative writing from Portland to Palestine, from summer camps to juvenile detention facilities. She is the winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and is the author of the chapbook A Girl is a Sovereign State (Akashic 2020).

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Birdwalk for Gaza
May
4

Birdwalk for Gaza

To register, venmo @baum-kirshenhan in advance or when you arrive with description “birds.” All proceeds will be donated to the Sameer Project. Cash also accepted!

NYC Queer Birders is excited to make our annual birding and social gathering event a benefit for Palestinian mutual aid! As ecocide and genocide continue to intensify in Gaza, we’ll pledge our resources to support Palestinian life while appreciating the natural world around us.

We will meet at McCarren Park at 11:30am for a delightful bird walk around the park. We'll end the walk at Sprtizenhaus33, where we'll gather at the long tables and share drinks, snacks, and a beautiful time getting to know each other.

All are welcome regardless of prior birdwatching experience. We’re expecting to see bluejays, robins, mourning doves, and nesting red-tailed hawks!

Accessibility Info: McCarren Park’s Driggs/Lorimer entrance is located 0.5 miles from the Bedford Ave and Lorimer Ave L train stations. It is 0.2 miles from the Nassau Ave G station. We will be walking for about 0.5 miles for the duration of the walk and it will take about 1.5 hours. There are 2 public restrooms in the park (903 Lorimer, and McCarren Pool & Play Center). The entrance to Spritzenhaus33 has a staircase of 5 steps to enter.

NYC Queer Birders started in February 2020 as a way to cultivate community and explore the natural world of New York City with LGBTQA+ bird-lovers. Queer Birders hosts birding events all year round, in all 5 boroughs. If you love birds, meeting new people, and spending afternoons outside in a queer-friendly setting, we would love to have you join us! We welcome all bird enthusiasts, regardless of experience.

Find out more about our past and upcoming events on Instagram @queerbirders or send us an email and be added to our list: queerbirders@gmail.com.

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