A Palestinian you should know: Lara Kiswani
Lara Kiswani, Executive director of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)
Palestine in America (PiA): What balad(s) is your family from?
Lara Kiswani (LK): My father is from Beit Iksa (district of Jerusalem), my mother is from Aqir (Ramleh district).
PiA: Was there a moment(s) that drove you to begin your career?
LK: Doing community work as my day job was never a career choice. My commitment to movement building has continuously led me to be part of organizations. After going down a path of teaching, I realized I wanted to use my skills and experience to contribute more directly to the lives of poor and working class Arab youth. Working for an Arab base-building organization, felt like the right move. And I was fortunate enough to be trusted with leading AROC and being part of an organization I have a history with, and one that aligned with my political principles and values.
PiA: What is your earliest memory of participating in political work?
LK: My earliest memory of engaging in political work was going to a vigil against the sanction on Iraq at Union Square in San Francisco in the early 1990’s. I grew up in a community with a weekly Arabic school, which was essentially Palestine school. It was a community-led space for young Arabs to come together to learn Arabic, about Palestinian history, dabke, and find community in an increasingly alienating society. It was also a space to organize our community to take part in vigils, protests, and other efforts to support the struggles for self-determination of Arab people.
PiA: How does Palestine play a role in your work?
LK: As an Arab organization committed to anti-imperialism, internationalism and cross-movement building, the liberation of Palestine is at the core of our values.
We see the US and Israel as partners historically and contemporarily as settler-colonial projects. So, we take on campaigns that seek to make a dent in US imperialism by exposing this partnership and stripping away its power. If we understand Israel as a tool and partner to US imperialism, then we understand our struggle for Palestinian liberation as a struggle for everyone’s liberation.
Anti-Zionism is important to anti-racist theory and practice. Understanding how different racist ideologies are mobilized and connected is an essential part of developing strategies that lead us toward liberation. Just as Zionism helps to facilitate some of the most violent and oppressive global systems of oppression, fighting it provides us with new possibilities for social and political development, justice and international solidarity. The fight against Zionism and all forms of racism is a fight for freedom for us all.
PiA: What’s a Palestinian adverb quote/person/poem/song that you often reflect on in this work?
LK: A poem that I often reflect on to help ground me in my work is The Will to Life by Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi. The Tunisian revolution, and subsequent Arab uprisings across North Africa and West Asia continues to inspire so many of us. As we approach the 10 year anniversary, and reflect on the contradictions, advances and setbacks, this poem serves as a reminder of people’s revolutionary potential. I learned about this poem during the Tunisian revolution, when so many of us were signing the Tunisian national anthem all across the world alongside our Tunisian siblings. The powerful final two verses are from al-Shabbi’s poem and stuck with me ever since. This is one of many translations: “If, one day the people will to live, then fate will answer their call. And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall.”
PiA: What do you hope to achieve in your line of work?
LK: I hope to make material gains for our people. I hope to continue to build on decades of internationalist organizing, win local campaigns, build power amongst working class communities, and contribute to our broader movements for self-determination.
PiA: Many times, Palestinians endure marginalization on all sides of the aisle -- what obstacles do you face/have you faced, and how have you overcome it?
LK: Anytime you engage in Palestine solidarity, particularly in the US, you are taking a risk. That is because the potential of Palestinian freedom and liberation is a threat to settler-colonial state of Israel and US imperialism. Myself and my organization have faced intense repression, attempts to smear and discredit our work, and verbal and physical threats to our wellbeing. This is most felt in response to our successful campaigning. It does feel like things are shifting in that regard. It is becoming much more difficult for pro-Israel and other rightwing forces to succeed in their efforts, as they become more exposed for their racism and Islamophobia, particularly in progressive spaces. Our work with the Drop the ADL initiative is a testament to that.
PiA: What’s your advice to folks looking to deepen their political journeys?
LK: Study and practice. And get involved in an organization. Doing so helps us better understand what needs to be torn down and what needs to be built up.
PiA: How do you see the Palestinian diaspora intersect with issue based work amongst other communities?
LK: We have a long history of engaging in cross-movement building in the US and across the world. Our elders took part in the struggles against apartheid South Africa, supported Central American struggles against US imperialism, worked alongside AIM, SNCC, and BPP to build solidarity. Our connections with other movements and issues was never about nor is it now just about the parallels and comparisons. It’s about our shared visions and liberation projects.
We know that the violence of racial capitalism we confront today has its foundations in the historical exploitation and dispossession of Black and Indigenous people. We know that working class Black and Indigenous communities still face some of the most violent expressions of this system. And of course, even within our communities, we don’t experience these systems the same. That’s true for any community. Many Palestinians in diaspora face some of the same issues as other working class, immigrants, Black, Brown and Indigenous communities and engage in work from that positionality. Taking into account the nature and logic of the class project of racial capitalism, we better understand why upper class Arabs don’t experience policing the same way as a working class Arab immigrant and how Afro-Arabs experience racism differently than other parts of the Arab community. This is all part of the system we are confronting. Understanding these systems helps us truly understand why and how we participate in racism and other hierarchies of power whether that be class, gender, or sexuality. And that understanding allows for deeper solidarity and joint work.
We simply cannot fight for Palestine and against settler colonialism, militarism and imperialism abroad without fighting its domestic manifestations - violence against Black, Brown and Indigenous people here in the US.
PiA: How would you define solidarity?
LK: Solidarity is about our joint struggle and liberation. African anti-colonial fighter and
leader in the liberation of Mozambique, Samora Machel said” Solidarity is not an act of charity, it is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains towards the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.”
Samora meant something different when he said ally than how we might be hearing it today. Samora’s allies were fellow militants in struggle. I worry that today’s “allyship” can mean something passive, something separate, something bordered and bounded by social constructs and problematic ideologies.
Key in Samora’s definition is the concept of different terrains. We don’t want to flatten out experiences. While we all have shared histories and legacies or revolutionary struggle, we also have varied experiences. Our task is to figure out how to be in joint struggle with one another.
This type of joint struggle work continues to inspire so many of us, to shape our visions of what is possible, and shape how it is we should continue understanding our shared legacies of resistance, revolution and struggle as a place of hope and possibility for us all.
PiA: What do you want people to know about you/your experience as a Palestinian in this work?
LK: Being Palestinians is one part of my political identity. I am also shaped by my upbringing in a working-class immigrant family, by my experience as an Arab and Muslim woman. All of that coupled with being Palestinian helped teach me very early on about the need to challenge systems of oppression, and erasure. It taught me to understand collective liberation as part of my own history.
PiA: What does a free world mean to you?
LK: A world where people can live in dignity, free of exploitation, and towards their fullest potential.
PiA: Was there a moment that made you consider leaving political work? What was it and what kept you working in politics?
LK: Everything is political. The question is how you choose to engage in it. It happens to be part of my work. And even if it wasn’t related to my day job, I would still be involved in organizing and movement building because I believe our future depends on it.
