A Palestinian you should know: Sharif Zakout
Community organizer and membership coordinator for the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC) in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Palestine in America: What balad(s) is your family from?
Sharif Zakout (SZ): My father is from al-Majdal Asqalan and the mother that raised me is from Safad.
PiA: Was there a moment(s) that drove you to begin your career?
SZ:I never saw my drive to fight for social justice as something that I would take on as a “career”. I had come out of my UC Santa Cruz with experience as a student organizer for the Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP, now SJP). After dealing with Zionist attacks, including a federal investigation, I came back to the Bay Area with a strong need to become active in my community. About a year after returning, I had found a position open at AROC as a youth organizer. It didn’t take long to realize that student organizing and community organizing were very different and that I had not fully realized what I had gotten myself into. I decided to stick with it and learn, and now here I am over 7 years later.
PiA: What is your earliest memory of participating in political work?
SZ: Growing up I had always enjoyed having debates about what was happening in our world, even though my analysis at the time was severely lacking. As a high schooler I volunteered as a poll worker but I always felt that my political awakening really started when I began organizing around Palestine in college. Some of my earliest memories were making mock checkpoints, visual art constructions, and participating in actions on campus that exposed the viciousness of the occupation. I recall one time when several members of our student group decided to do a spontaneous sit in in the campus quad to expose the brutality of the occupation.
PiA: How has/does Palestine play a role in your work?
SZ: Palestine shows up in all the work that we do. As an organizer at AROC, one of our core principles is a commitment to Palestinian liberation and that is demonstrated through our campaign work. In 2013 we co-founded the Stop Urban Shield coalition to put an end to the largest war games training program and weapons expo in the country that took place in the Bay Area on the weekend of 9/11 each year. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Urban Shield also brought law enforcement agencies from apartheid Israel to train with local law enforcement and emergency responders. We organized for six years to not only challenge policing and militarism, but also expose the relationship between that and Zionism. And we won. We have also led BDS campaigns such as Block the Boat where we worked with International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 to boycott unloading the Israeli Zim ship at the port of Oakland. This was in solidarity with a call from the Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions. And even when our work doesn’t directly involve Palestinian solidarity, we face Zionist backlash. Our youth organizing for instance, has been targeted by pro-Israeli interest groups for fighting for Arabic to be taught in public schools.
We are also a service agency, providing direct services to support poor and working class Arab and Muslim immigrant communities. That entails us addressing the conditions that force those communities to need these services, namely US imperialism, and forced migration. The occupation of Palestine is central to that analysis, not only for our region but for the rest of the world.
Currently, we are a leader in the CA statewide Save Arab American Studies coalition, where we are fighting to defend the inclusion of Arab American Studies and Palestine in CA Ethnic Studies high school curriculum. Ethnic Studies as a whole is at risk and has been attacked because of the inclusion of Palestine in the initial draft of the curriculum. All of our work serves to uplift the Palestinian struggle within wider cross-movement building. Our love for our people and our deep disdain for colonialism makes clear the intersections with other communities struggling for self determination against the same forces.
PiA: What’s a Palestinian adverb/quote/person/poem/song that you often reflect on in this work?
SZ: I would say I often reflect on my Palestinian family and comrades. I try to stay grounded in why I continue the work that I do and it always brings me back to the people that I love in my life. My siblings, my AROC family, the brilliant elders and passionate peers in my community. Although I have deep respect and appreciation for the Palestinian resisters, intelectuals, and organizers who came before me, it is those around me that I continue to fight for.
PiA: What do you hope to achieve in your line of work?
SZ:I hope to build more power within my community. I firmly believe that we have the biggest impact to make changes when working on building power on a local level. I envision a world with a free Palestine, and free peoples globally. I believe in abolition and working with my community to address issues of harm internally and externally. Overall, I believe we’re working toward that vision, but we’re just a smaller piece of a larger movement.
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?
SZ: As an organization that builds power in our community, we’ve seen waves of rightwing backlash both from individuals as well as various local and state institutions. Several years back our organization’s youth program was attacked by Zionists because of the work we had done around Palestine. Effectively, the local school district put our youth program on hold for three years. As the only organization that had been in the school serving our community specifically, it was our youth and families that were impacted most. As an organization that is in The Mission, a district of SF facing some of the heaviest forms of gentrification, the murals our communities make are meant to reclaim space and community. They are constantly defaced for their political content, especially those in solidarity with Palestine. The students that we’ve worked with are constantly attacked virtually and physically for uplifting Palestine, especially within the colleges. Additionally, I’ve seen vulnerable youth in our community targeted by entrapment, policed, and murdered by law enforcement. I believe that our ability to overcome these issues require long term organizing and building deep solidarity with other communities impacted by the same systems of power. I encourage everyone to organize and build power amongst those most impacted.
PiA: What’s your advice to folks looking to deepen their political journeys?
SZ: You’re going to make a lot of mistakes. You’re never going to have a perfect outcome, and this work is often thankless. I keep doing it however, because I strongly believe in my organization’s principles and the larger movement we are a part of. This is hard work, building relationships is necessary and oftentimes it requires us to work with a wide array of political beliefs and personalities. It takes time to develop community, and to develop yourself. Even though rare, the wins for our community and the amount of love and support we build to reach those moments are all worth it. Those good days make up some of my best memories.
PiA: How do you see the Palestinian diaspora intersect with issue based work amongst other communities?
SZ: Our work at AROC understands the occupation of Palestine as central to understanding how global systems of power work together to repress movements and manage people, and expand global capitalism. Internationally, Palestine is a literal testing site where the state of Israel can develop surveillance technologies, crowd control tools, and test weaponry on Palestinians, to then sell to repressive nations all over the world. Speaking specifically to the US-born diaspora, we are literally coming from stolen land to live on stolen land. The foundation of this country mirrors the country that oppressed our own people, and we still live in a society that uses white supremacy and conservative theology to prioritize the needs of the wealthy and elite over the needs of the masses. We draw on the Black radical Black tradition. Our material conditions, wherever we may live, will always impact the other communities around us and will always be tied to the level of power we’ve built amongst ourselves. As an organization, our efforts are directed to cross movement work that uplifts and empowers our community. Our role is to address the root causes of our people’s suffering so that we can achieve actual progressive actions that improve our collective material conditions.
PiA: How would you define solidarity?
SZ: Solidarity isn’t transactional, it’s something that’s deeply felt. To be in solidarity is to embody, understand, and show up for that struggle. Deep solidarity is recognizing that our struggles are inextricably linked, as well as our freedom.
PiA: What do you want people to know about you/your experience as a Palestinian in this work?
SZ: As honored as I was to be asked to be featured on this article, I also want to recognize that there are many amazing and passionate organizers out there who deserve just as much support and attention. I appreciate and have hella love for our sister organization, the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) and the work they do in Chicago. Similarly I feel that deep appreciation and gratitude for our comrade organizations in the Bay Area and all over the world. I especially want to recognize and appreciate my AROC family who took the time to develop and teach me. All of the work that I’ve done has been a collective effort, and I’m proud and incredibly blessed to have such an amazing community.
PiA: What does a free world mean to you?
SZ: To me a free world is one that prioritizes our basic needs (food, shelter, and security) and allows us to live our fullest selves in dignity.
PiA: Was there a moment that made you consider leaving political work? What was it and what kept you working in politics?
SZ: In my low moments, leaving does cross my mind. But when I go back to why I’m here, I remember what’s at stake and the importance of our work. I’m committed to our movement work.
