Seeds From The Rubble — with Reem Assil

Join host Zahyr Lauren – aka The Artist L. Haz – as they talk with Palestinian-Syrian culinary phenom and social justice warrior REEM ASSIL about harnessing community power for protection, standing firm in the stories of her people, and food as a force for liberation.

Based in Oakland, California, Reem is the founder of nationally-acclaimed Reem’s California, a bakery and restaurant that builds community across cultures through the warmth of Arab bread and hospitality. She has garnered an array of top accolades in the culinary world – including James Beard finalist for “Outstanding Chef” (2022) and semifinalist for “Best Chef: West” (2018 and 2019), Thrillist’s 2018 “Chef of the Year,” Food & Wine’s “Top 10” list, and many more. 

Reem was featured in an episode of Rosario Dawson and Offside Production’s scripted series Normal Ain’t Normal, and the same year released IACP award-winning cookbook Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora.

Before dedicating herself to a culinary career, Reem spent over a decade as a community and labor organizer. 

→ Follow Reem on Instagram – @ReemsCalifornia – and check out the gorgeous zine 18 Million Rising just released: Food is Resistance: For the Love of Bread with Reem Assil 

→ Join us in supporting the Palestinian-led, community-based work of Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity –  with whom Reem works closely

→ See our site for links to the people, places, and resources featured in this episode

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TheSolidarityIndex.com

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CREDITS
THE SOLIDARITY INDEX podcast is produced by State of Mind Media
Hosted by Zahyr Lauren aka The Artist L.Haz
Created and produced by Jen Bell, Shalva Wise, Stina Hamlin, and Zahyr Lauren Audio editing and production by Stina Hamlin
Audio mix by Matt Gundy and Raquel Saldivar
Logo and identity design by Marwan Kaabour
Art direction, website and additional design by Jen Bell

THEME SONG
Until Everybody Is Free by Bella Cuts – featuring the voice of Maya Angelou
Released on Common Groove (2023)
All proceeds from download/streaming go to the Dr. Maya Angelou Foundation...

Transcript

SEEDS FROM THE RUBBLE – with Reem Assil
[The Solidarity Index – Season 2 – Episode 4]

[WAVES SURGING THEN CRASHING]

[00:05] REEM
People always call me an activist-turned-chef and/or an organizer-turned-chef. And it's always quite silly to me because once an organizer, always an organizer. I just happen to use food as my tool for gathering community, and hopefully making some magic happen.

[MUSIC] “UNTIL EVERYBODY IS FREE” BY BELLA CUTS, FEATURING THE VOICE OF MAYA ANGELOU
The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free. No one of us can be free – until everybody is free. Free… free.

[00:58] ZAHYR
Welcome back to The Solidarity Index. Today we talk to Palestinian-Syrian culinary phenom and social justice warrior, Reem Assil. Reem shares the origins and impact of her Arab street corner bakery, Reem's California, and she talks to us about harnessing community power in the face of racist threats, and standing firm in the stories of her people. Reem's story gives us a window into her experience as a person in the Palestinian diaspora, and reminds us of the power of food as an activating force for liberation.

[MUSIC] “UNTIL EVERYBODY IS FREE” BY BELLA CUTS, FEATURING THE VOICE OF MAYA ANGELOU
Free, free, free.

[01:41] ZAHYR
We're excited to be here with you, Reem.

[01:43] REEM
Hi there.

[01:44] ZAHYR
Go ahead and introduce yourself.

[01:46] REEM
I've been living here in Oakland, California for almost 20 years now, and I founded a bakery called Reem's California – which is an Arab street corner bakery and restaurant whose mission is to build community across cultures and experiences, through the warmth of Arab bread and hospitality. 

Prior to having a professional culinary career, I spent many, many years as a community and labor organizer. I did some union organizing, fighting on the front lines to ensure that particularly working class, poor Black and brown communities had access to or a say in the decisions that were impacting their lives, right? Whether it be affordable housing or living wage jobs. So in a way, now I’ve created a food institution that helps facilitate that work.

[MUSIC] “AH YA HILU” BY CLARISSA BITAR

[02:54] ZAHYR
So what union were you with? I organized with Unite Here.

[02:58] REEM
Oh, cool. Right before I officially, like, ended my full-time job at a nonprofit here, (I call myself a nonprofit refugee), I worked at the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which actually came out of Unite Here. [Z: Really?] Local 2850. Yeah. I was officially an organizer with SEIU at the time, 1877, which was, you know, most famous for its justice for janitors campaign across California. I organized airport workers and service workers. So Unite Here, though, that's the hospitality… and that is very intersectional with the work that I do now.

[03:46] ZAHYR
Absolutely. Right on. Yeah, I did back of the house staff at casinos. We were in Erie, Pennsylvania. At least that's where they sent me. First of all – they said they were sending me to Philly, okay. I just would like to say this. And then, yeah, they bait-and-switched me and they're like, well, you know, Kentucky first. And then Erie – Erie, Pennsylvania. And then they sent me to Biloxi and Tunica, Mississippi. 

[04:16] REEM
Ohhh… Biloxi is quite an interesting place. I remember back in my organizing days, we organized Vietnamese communities in that area.

[04:25] ZAHYR
Yes, indeed. Yeah. Biloxi was fascinating. This was right after Hurricane Katrina. Probably like a year after. And so, you know, we're driving through these areas, particularly Biloxi, and you still see just cement steps that led up to where houses used to be. It was it was intense. I do very much value my time in Unite Here, because I met so many organizers who were from the place, and in particular, the Black elders taught me so much. You know, I'm in my early 20s and I've got an elder whose parent picked cotton calling me California. “California, get over here!” Because that's where I'm from – I'm from San Jose. So we have that in common. That's that's amazing. I learned a lot, for sure.

[05:10] REEM
When did you get out of organizing? Or “once an organizer always an organizer.”

[05:16] ZAHYR
Yeah, I would say exactly that. That's just in my bones. But I left Unite Here to go to Georgia to be a human rights investigator for the Southern Center for Human Rights. And so I was in prisons and jails in the South for about three and a half years, doing death penalty cases as well as impact litigation cases, talking to the family inside, trying to bring class action lawsuits and and stuff like that. And then I went and got my JD and I am a recovering attorney doing defense work. So yeah, that's that's been my journey. I see how you smooth with the switch… See we was interviewing me and now we getting back to you! It was smooth, though.

[06:02] REEM
[LAUGHTER] Yeah, well, it's all interconnected. 

[WAVES SURGING THEN CRASHING] 

[06:15] REEM
What is really special to me about the work that I do now as a food justice warrior, whatever you want to call it, it's not It's not separated from, you know, my work or organizing background, or the work that I do on Palestine. And if there's anything that's really wonderful about Reem’s, it's a space where it's a culmination of all of my identities and things that matter to me. So it's it's always good to hear the stories because all of it just sounds so familiar, like we all have shared stories and struggles.

[06:57] ZAHYR
Absolutely, indeed. And so speaking of Reem’s California – I saw that you have, I'm not sure what they would call or what you would call them for your restaurant, but there are these images on the tables. But one of the images, I believe, is of Rasmea Odeh. And when I saw that image, immediately I thought of Assata Shakur and their similarities in terms of being classified as terrorists, being pinnacles of these struggles that are so parallel – Black and Palestinian struggles – being women, being leaders, being exiled essentially from their own place. And I was wondering for you, what makes it so important to have Rasmea’s image in your restaurant?

[07:47] REEM
Well, for context, you know, Rasmea Odeh, um, at the time that we opened up our first brick and mortar in Oakland, California, was being made basically an example by our U.S. government of what will happen to you if you speak out for justice or you, you know, speak truth to power, basically. And in 2014, after yet another ‘mowing of the lawn’ campaign that the Israelis had done to Gaza – you know, leading up to this genocide that was the most atrocious and outright campaign, they were just testing the grounds. It's like an Olympic sport for them – every four years they go and they call it ‘mowing the lawn,’ that's literally the name of the military campaign. So there was a lot of outrage during that time. At that time, I was starting my business. We were out on the front lines trying to do anything we can to stop what we thought at that time was an accelerated genocide. And Rasmea was one of those amazing activists who was an elder in our community. She was the director of the Arab Cultural Community Center, the A-Triple-C. She had been in this country for almost, at that point, 15 or 16 years as a citizen, running these amazing programs for women, touching issues that other people might have thought were taboo around domestic violence, and really empowering women to be deciders of their own fate in this country.

[09:34] REEM
She had a committee of like over a thousand Arab women. She was really an amazing leader and an example to many of us younger Palestinian women activists, like myself. And after a lot of that activism had kind of erupted, the government went after what they called the Midwest 23, and they subpoenaed – they, like, raided people's homes. They were not able to find anything. And so then they found documents of Rasmea in, um, for her immigration papers that said she didn't check a box to say that she was once – that she's been to jail, and used that as a way to open up this whole crazy case to not only imprison her – this is a 75 year old woman, right, who is like the most amazing – she was the life of the party – like, you know, hold her in solitary confinement, if you will, this American citizen. And then basically say she lied on her immigration papers, and deported her, and made an example of her. I was devastated as I was opening my restaurant against this backdrop. Everybody from the ACLU to NLG were on this case, and we thought it was impossible. And and yet the American government did. 

[10:57] REEM
So I wanted to put a big ass mural on my wall [ZAHYR: Oh woww.] that showed the mural was an intersection. So my first restaurant was right below the platform where Oscar Grant was killed. And in a primarily Latinx neighborhood that had nonprofits and and activists and organizers that came from, you know, the farm workers movement. So what we did was put a mural of her – I wanted an elder woman, like, I definitely wanted someone who I could look to that that would remind me not to be afraid – so we put her front and center. But on her, she was wearing a pin of Oscar Grant in solidarity because Rasmea was the first to be on the front lines with Black and brown communities in Chicago, where she lived, you know. She knew the importance and the intersections of our struggles. And then on the backdrop is the Palestinian embroidery with the like, farm worker logo basically embedded into it. And that was a big statement that we made that, you know, our struggles – yes, they're distinctly different, but the root cause is the same.

[12:22] ZAHYR
Is the mural still up?

[12:24] REEM
The mural is not still up. When we opened in 2017, we experienced a tremendous amount of backlash from right wingers, from Zionist forces who were bent on trying to put me out of business. They doxed me. They harassed me. I, you know, one morning woke up with 800 1-star reviews on my Yelp and Facebook. Yelp had to shut down my page. The next thing I knew, there were posters of me, calling me the butcher, the baker, the, you know, terrorist supporter. There's blood in my food. I mean, really atrocious, if you think about the kind of outright racism. And they would show up to every event that I had. They, you know, at that time, Reem’s was gaining some recognition, and they were really bent on trying to paint me as this terrorist or terrorist supporter. The beautiful thing about that time was how the community came together. I don't think they realized they were dealing with an organizer! But community groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Critical Resistance and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which I was a member of for a very long time, all came to my aid and created these community defense pods, if you will, and did sit-ins and created buffer and trained in de-escalation. And it created more PR for me than anything else, even though it was scary. And, you know, at that time I was coming up in the food scene, which was a lot more of a mainstream, and I knew that I was going to be somewhat on the fringes because I was the first person really calling my food Arab or Palestinian. And I had a politic. And I knew that you can't separate the food from who we are as a whole, right? You can't take one part of it and leave the other. And so I already knew that that was going to be an uphill battle. But this was in my first year of opening. And, you know, Food & Wine had named Reem’s its top ten restaurant of the country at the time. And yet the Zionists, you know, writing to Food & Wine and New York Times and anybody that would cover me to depict me as this sort of rogue character in those beginning days. 

[15:10] REEM
I think a lot of the advice I was getting was from people who didn't really understand, this is what it's like to be Palestinian, and we've had to do this all our lives. They were like, just pivot away from Rasmea, you know, talk about the food and the joy. And I'm like, yeah, I can talk about that and talk about Rasmea. Like, she's a big picture on my wall – I'm not gonna pivot away from her. And so I chose to double down. And I think that worked out for me. You know, the mural that we had of her legacy and her story didn't have any plaque on it. And then when people were starting to ask, like, What's this all about? that made us write a plaque that talked about the injustices that happened to her. She was a political prisoner. She was sexually coerced into a confession for a bombing when she was 17.

[16:08] REEM
Everybody who gets swept up by the Israeli army, it's a 99.6% guilty rate. You know, everybody is guilty. So the joke that I would start to make on panels was that this was not the first time I was called a terrorist, it probably won't be the last time I'll be called a terrorist. Just standing firm in stories of my people. And I think that all justice loving people see right through that, and saw the craziness and the racism of, you know, these these folks who are trying to make life really hard for me in those first years. And then unfortunately, you know, um, my Oakland restaurant, we decided to end the lease at the five year mark in the middle of the pandemic. And it was a really, really tough decision because I didn't want to get rid of that mural. I wanted to memorialize it because it became so famous. I mean, people all over the world were writing about it. I had gained so much attention, um, for, for this. And – but luckily I was able to pass on my restaurant to an Indigenous chef who has a beautiful mural there about Land Back, so it's in the same vein. I passed the torch to exactly the right person to be able to continue the legacy of folks in that neighborhood, in particular in Oakland, that really understand why art in food spaces can be so powerful and also so threatening to people who are, you know – I just kept saying, look at all these people all over the world that feel so threatened by our existence.

[MUSIC] “AH YA HILU” BY CLARISSA BITAR

[18:05] ZAHYR
Yeah… I think art, when you make it irresistible, it lends itself to just causes for those who would seek to destroy people and movements. I appreciate you sharing so much about the auntie, because she really does give me in terms of solidarity with black struggle. I have that feeling about Assata.

[18:29] REEM
We had a big picture of Assata also on our window.

[18:32] ZAHYR
Yeah.

[18:33] REEM
We see those images because, yeah, they're not much different.

[18:37] ZAHYR
Yeah. And I think it's super important too, for people who are listening to understand that you are living and breathing. You're not one of the folks who are long gone. You're not an elder. You're living and breathing in a younger space. And you were targeted in this way, right? Because I think a lot of people tend to see this as a, you know, happened a long time ago, Cointelpro was over here, and you know – this is not going to affect us… But you are us. We are all here. This is happening now, and it continues to happen to people now. 

[19:10] ZAHYR
You talked about Land Back and, uh, the Indigenous folks who are in that space now and their mural. And I wanted to talk about Yousef and his use of land and what land means to the culture, what he means to the culture and to the people.

[19:33] REEM
First off, any Indigenous people understand in their blood what what the land means to them. Like our land in many ways is our haven, right? It takes care of us, and that's why we take care of it. There's this very symbiotic relationship to the land, and you can see that in the history. What the colonizers do to the land versus the people who are Indigenous to that land take care of the land, because we understand that if we take care of the land it takes care of us. It provides us sustenance. And for us as a rural people, you know, our food comes from our land and our food connects us to our dignity, to our culture, and not just our sustenance, but a big part of our culture is the hospitality piece, is the community building piece. And so that's – if you sever us from our land, you're severing us from those foodways and vice versa. You know, I talk about that being in diaspora, that I have to create a home away from home. And the best that I can do is be in solidarity with respecting the land here and respecting place in the way that Indigenous people have for generations, and combating these forces of capitalism.

[20:59] REEM
That is a very, very integral part of Palestinian culture and identity. Um, everything is a gift, right? We take nothing for granted. That's why we forage. That's why we have medicinal value. And it connects us also to the people who came before us, who taught us. All of this is in our both oral traditions, but also working the land. To answer your question about Yousef. Yousef Abu Rabee was a farmer in northern Gaza who had a very large farm. And if people are watching in the news now, they know that it is being ethnically cleansed, which was always the plan. And he was martyred. Myself and many folks on the ground, in particular here in the diaspora – Laila El-Haddad, who is the author of The Gaza Kitchen – we had been working with him in his beginning days of the genocide to figure out how to stay on that land, how to, I mean, he was literally like – huge swaths of his land were, um, decimated, right? And he was taking seed from the rubble and growing seedlings. And then we had this idea of like, how do we move from the day after, right? How to move away from relying on aid – because obviously they're trying to starve us from the outside – to feeding ourselves with our food.

[22:36] REEM
So he was distributing these seedlings to families to grow gardens on their own. Whatever plots of land that people can find in their homes, in open spaces. And he was one of many people who are doing this. But the tenacity of Yousef, you know, he was in Beit Lahia, which – he was literally martyred distributing seedlings. I mean, that's the ultimate martyrdom, right? That you would risk it all, that you would go out – and not leave your home and stay to feed your people to keep them from starving – was the ultimate testament of just how how sacred life and creation of life, even in the midst of so much death… He he stayed on his land and he was distributing and cultivating plants till the end. It has been very devastating. It's just hard to watch. Those of us who are trying everything we can, from every angle to create life, to create that sumud – sumud is the steadfastness that Palestinians have. And, you know, there's this rabid force that is trying to kill all of that. And it won't. As we know, seeds that are buried deep in the ground literally will pop up for generations to come. So… 

[24:06] ZAHYR
Oh, yeah… Mhm. Thank you for sharing about Yousef and his work. To me, he is the epitome of the power of youth, the power of culture, and the power of the land. He was using that all together in such a revolutionary way, as you said, to be distributing seedlings until the end, until you're killed by an occupying force. And Yousef was 24. He was 24 years old. So again, for folks who are listening, you know, this is this is happening to all of us, all generations. It's happening now. And I didn't know about Yousef until I saw him on your page. And when I looked into him more, I just thought, what a brilliant light – I mean, in this man's eyes.

[25:08] REEM
And, you know, Yousef is part of A whole generation of young folks who don't expect to live long. I mean, that's the reality of what we're facing right now, not to be morbid. But if we're if physically we're not going to live long, then we got to make sure that the legacy of Palestinians and our will to live and create life and offer humanity a different life, worth living, lives beyond our physical bodies. I'm really inspired by the many fearless young people on the ground who are continuing to do that, and knowing that death very well may be imminent for them. You know, it's it really takes a different kind of spirit to do that. And, you know, that's not to negate the trauma and the many generations of trauma… Especially when we end this genocide. What will happen after that? But right now, in this moment, there is this real will to create a life worth living for the generations after us.

[26:31] ZAHYR
And Yousef's work and the destruction of his land is also a testament to the fact that this genocide is also an ecocide.

[26:40] REEM
Exactly. And the targeting of anybody who creates life – I mean, that's why they're targeting children. You know, they're trying to exterminate and ethnically cleanse. And food has been at the center of this battleground, right? There are people who are fighting with the sword, so to speak. There are people that are fighting with the pen. And there are people fighting with the food. You know that resistance, that defiance of like – we're going to find the seed that's growing through the rubble and propagate it and grow it. You can't get rid of life here even in the midst of this destruction. That's really defiant and quite revolutionary.

[MUSIC] “AH YA HILU” BY CLARISSA BITAR

[27:54] ZAHYR
For you, how can folks show solidarity in action? And when I say for you, I mean for you, but the broader Palestinian community. How can we show up in this moment?

[28:08] REEM
I think that there are a variety of ways. The idea of solidarity to me is somewhat convoluted because you're not like – you're you're showing solidarity with someone and you're a supporter, if that makes sense. So you're like a, uh, outside party to the cause. Sometimes I think people see solidarity in that way. And I think solidarity goes both ways. So we as a Palestinian community and, you know, other folks who come from legacies of oppression and resistance need to be – [ZAHYR: Lockstep.] Lockstep. Exactly. We know that we are not exceptional in the history of genocide, unfortunately. But also we know that in the longevity of our history, or in the continuum of our history, that empires have crumbled. And the way that that happens is when we see our destinies intertwined. And I think that particularly Black and brown communities, immigrant communities, working class communities here in the U.S. need to see this as their struggle because they're testing how accelerated the genocide can be over there. It's going to come for us.

[29:36] ZAHYR
Absolutely.

[29:36] REEM
It already has, right? We see cop cities. We see the militarism. So we need to act with that urgency to disrupt every system that is violently destroying our communities. So that doesn't mean it's just like I'm posting something in solidarity with Palestinians. That means you're fighting for abolition, right? That means you're disrupting, you know, not feeding into the common narrative that we keep hearing of the lesser of two evils. It's demanding something different, right? If we're in the medical sector, it's disrupting that system, right. Just to really call to attention the killing of healthcare workers and the demanding that our money not be invested in bombs and instead in healthcare for all. Right. So every frame, every fight, you can't have reproductive justice here without talking about how we are killing a whole entire generation of babies with our tax dollars, right? So there are a lot of ways that you can connect the issues of Palestine to the issues here. It's not just divest, but invest, right? Not just invest, but divest – in order to invest in healthcare here. We need to divest our monies from militarism, from war, from policing of our communities. So, yeah, I think whatever platforms we have – if we are influencers, so to speak – being able to bring in, to conjure up Palestine. Right? [ZAHYR: Absolutely.] What is happening there, and having people be able to see that. 

[31:35] REEM
The other way is obviously with our dollars and our choices. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was integral to the fall of apartheid South Africa. We know that these politicians pontificating about this and that, as if they know what's best for – no, the people are the power, right? Power never concedes power. You know, the people have to demand it with our purchasing power, with our dollars. And so we need to not normalize apartheid, not normalize Zionism in any of our spheres. So what that means is not doing business with anything that is complicit in this genocide, right? If we are consumers, it's not purchasing from places that are sourcing from apartheid and occupation, or complicit with, right – or profiting off of. So there are a lot of resources out there in our daily lives. 

[32:31] REEM
But then also we just need to organize. We need to do this in community. We need, you know – there's like the individual acts we can do, but I think the best way to show up is to find organization and to find community, um, that is struggling in the same way, that that sees these struggles as interconnected. Because we have to overthrow the systems here if we're going to get anywhere. Because really the fate of all of the Arab peoples, unfortunately – I mean, I heard them talk about how they want to replace the Lebanese president, right? They have a master plan for how they want to carve out the Arab world to serve their agenda so that they can further suppress people here. So we need to see our fates as interconnected. So the best way is to weaken the structures right here in the belly of the beast.

[33:28] ZAHYR
Absolutely. Yes, indeed. I always say, for me, it's about one blood, one love, one people. So solidarity is it is accepting that, and accepting that we are here and we are going through this on the same planet. We're going through it together. We're going through it in lockstep. And as you said, there are so many parallel struggles that we can share and educate each other on, so that more and more folks can identify with the fact that when it happens somewhere, it will happen everywhere.

[34:03] REEM
We're not even talking theoretically. We have, you know – Cop City is built off of the training that police forces have gotten from the IDF, right, from the IOF as we call them.

[34:15] ZAHYR
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, when I'm in conversation with folks and I'm like, if you can't see that in every disaster in this country, natural disaster, the people in the cages of this country have been left to die. If you can't see the ways that we murder our own civilians, and how that is going to be exacerbated by the proliferation of these so-called training facilities that are really just, you know, mass oppression centers for these people to be trained – then you can't see the humanity of folks who are not in what you feel is our so-called country, on these lands that somebody else has drawn.

[34:55] REEM
And I'll take it one step further, because I do think we're in a different, unprecedented moment. And, you know, I take hope from some of the young people in our country who are putting it all on the line. I mean, you have these like, college students who understand their their diploma doesn't mean shit in this country, right? Like, they're like – I'll get expelled, I'm willing to put it on the line. We need to give some privileges up. Nothing compares to what Palestinians are facing on the ground. You know, they're – the process of decolonization is painful. It's going to cause us to be uncomfortable. And we're dealing with that discomfort now, all of us, right? We're we're in the heart of capitalism. We have our things. The disruption is going to cause some upheaval, even for us individually. And how do we how do we be prepared for that?

[35:50] ZAHYR
I think that preparation comes back to community.

[35:53] REEM
Exactly. It's going to push us. If we don't have community, we're probably going to sit in paralysis. And I think a lot of people in my community included, and I say I have many communities, but I'm particularly disappointed with people in the food space, which I'm – you know, I would think would be front and center in this fight, and have not been. I think many of the people might regret, you know, when the history books are written about this, what side of history they were on, because of that paralysis.

[36:28] ZAHYR
And through the art that is food, all things organizing can come.

[36:32] REEM
People always call me an activist-turned-chef and/or an organizer-turned-chef. And it's always quite silly to me because once an organizer, always an organizer. I just happen to use food as my tool for gathering community, and hopefully making some magic happen.

[36:54] ZAHYR
Right on. That's how I feel about the art that I create – just doing my best to use it as a tool to build community, create solidarity across imaginary boundaries and borders. Thank you so much for being with us.

[37:08] REEM
Thank you.

[MUSIC] “AH YA HILU” BY CLARISSA BITAR

[37:17] ZAHYR
Thank you, Reem, for spending time with us and for demonstrating the power of telling our stories through our gifts and celebrating life in culture as a form of resistance. 

The Solidarity Index podcast is a production of State of Mind Media – created and produced by Jen Bell, Shalva Wise, Stina Hamlin and yours truly, Zahyr Lauren. Audio editing and production by Stina Hamlin. Audio mix by Raquel Saldivar and Matt Gundy. Logo and identity design by Marwan Kaabour. Art direction, website and additional design by Jen Bell. 

Our theme song, Until Everybody Is Free, by Bella Cuts, is out everywhere you listen to music. All proceeds from streaming and downloads go to the Doctor Maya Angelou Foundation. All the music selections can be referenced in the show notes. 

And I'm your host, Zahyr Lauren, aka The Artist L. Haz. We appreciate you for listening! Peace.

[MUSIC] “UNTIL EVERYBODY IS FREE” BY BELLA CUTS, FEATURING THE VOICE OF MAYA ANGELOU
The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free. No one of us can be free – until everybody is free.