Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - From the Frontlines: State Repression and Anti-Imperialist Organizing w/ Calla Walsh

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

The moniker The Merrimack Four might be something you’re already familiar with—perhaps you saw the headlines in the late fall of 2023 about a handful of direct actionists being arrested on the rooftop of a facility owned by a major weapons manufacturer in New Hampshire. Maybe you heard about the multiple felony charges that were being pressed against these actionists, the concern about RICO charges…or maybe you haven’t heard about any of this at all. Regardless of how familiar you are with the Merrimack Four, you’d be hard-pressed not to be gripped by the story you’re about to hear recounting the events of November, 2023 from someone who was actually on that rooftop facing down US empire.  Calla Walsh is an anti-imperialist organizer and activist who was part of the Merrimack Four—a group of activists who faced severe state repression in response to an action organized by Palestine Action US against an Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire—Elbit is one of the major arms suppliers to the IDF—or more accurately IOF—in Israel.  In this conversation, Calla tells us about the momentous event which changed her life forever. She talks about Palestine Action—an organization who you might be familiar with if you’ve been listening to our series on Palestine—and walks us through the action in New Hampshire, her arrest along with her fellow actionists, and the long and winding journey through the legal system which landed her in jail. We talk about state repression more broadly, looking at what is taking place right now under the Trump administration with abductions and deportations, talk about some cases that haven’t made it into the mainstream coverage, and end with a discussion about why Palestine is the tip of the spear when it comes to the fight against US imperialism.  Further Resources Calla Walsh The case against the Merrimack Three is an attack on the Palestine movement as a whole, Mondoweiss Palestine Action Support Women in Valley Street Jail (GoFundMe) Struggling single mama looking for help (GoFundMe) Capitailsm Plus Dope Equals Genocide Perfect Victims And the Politics of Appeal, Mohammed El-Kurd  Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network #FreeCaseyNow: On Casey Goonan and the Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement  Related Episodes: Palestine Pt. 7: Direct Action w/ Max Geller  of Palestine Action Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl Palestine Pt. 12: Resistance in the West w/ Max Geller and Sanyika Stop Cop City with Keyanna Jones and Matthew Johnson Listen to our 14-part series on Palestine Intermission music: "Erase" by Scary Hours Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

We were arrested on the rooftop at gunpoint by the Merrimack police. We were arrested and held without bail for three days. And I think it worked in some ways and didn't work in others. It did shut down work for the day. It did instill a lot of fear in the employees. I mean, several employees quit after it happened, according to these interviews that we were sent. And they've completely changed all of their security protocol and really heightened all of their security guards and having Merrimack police stations at Elbit constantly and it's really

changed employees behavior too and how they feel about their safety going out in their community or being known for working at Elbit in a really interesting way because this is not this is not like Brooklyn like it's it's New Hampshire this town is mostly veterans and weapons factory workers, but people are scared. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The moniker The Merrimack Four might be something you're already familiar with. Perhaps you saw the headlines in the late fall of 2023 about a handful of direct actionists

being arrested on the rooftop of a facility owned by a major weapons manufacturer in New Hampshire. Maybe you heard about the multiple felony charges that were pressed against these actionists, the concern about RICO charges, or maybe you haven't heard about any of this at all. Regardless of how familiar you are with the Merrimack 4, you'd be hard pressed not to be gripped by the story you're about to hear, recounting the events of November 2023 from someone who was actually on that rooftop facing down US empire.

Cala Walsh is an anti-imperialist organizer and activist who was part of the Merrimack 4, a group of activists who face severe state repression in response to an action organized by Palestine Action US against an Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Elbit is one of the major arms suppliers to the IDF, or more accurately, the IOF, in Israel. In this conversation, Kala tells us about the momentous event that changed her life forever. She talks about Palestine Action, an organization you might be familiar with if you've been listening to our series on Palestine, and walks us through the action in New

Hampshire, her arrest along with her fellow actionists, and the long and winding journey through the legal system which landed her in jail. We talk about state repression more broadly, looking at what is taking place right now under the Trump administration with abductions and deportations. We talk about some of the cases that haven't made it into the mainstream coverage and end with a discussion about why Palestine is the tip of the spear when it comes to the fight against US imperialism. And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support.

There are a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bi-weekly episodes, ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Sign up and find out more at patreon.com forward slash Upstream podcast. And if Patreon's not really your thing, you can also make a tax-deductible, recurring, or one-time donation on our website, upstreampodcast.org forward slash support.

Through the support, you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping keep this whole project going. Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Cala Walsh. Kala, it is a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's been a long time in the making. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm wondering maybe just to start, if you could introduce yourself for our listeners and also maybe talk a little bit about your background and what led you to do the work that you're currently doing.

Yeah, so my name is Calla Walsh. My pronouns are she her. I'm 20 years old. I've been an organizer in various capacities and various movements since I was 15. I can't really summarize all the different things I've been involved in, but I think I'm generally known for having had a political trajectory that is shared by a lot of people my age, political trajectory that is shared by a lot of people my age, which is kind of becoming more radicalized, more politically aware during the first Trump administration. I was 12 when he won the 2016 election and making good-faith attempts to be involved in progressive organizing in the Democratic Party, which is generally what presents itself to young people who want to be engaged and kind of captures that energy and neutralizes it into something,

obviously, counter-revolutionary. And so I was doing a lot of Democratic Party work, working on campaigns, also involved in things like the youth climate strike. And I envisioned my career path would be like becoming a campaign manager or a congressional staffer or something like that for a while. And really what changed that was the uprising in 2020, being in the streets in 2020 and Palestine. Specifically the protests in the US that popped off in May 2021 when there were the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and a siege on Gaza by the Zionist entity that really

radicalized me. And I think that a big reason why the protests in the US were bigger for Palestine than they had been before in 2021, and again in 2023 and onwards, is because of the militancy of 2020. So, like I said, I've, I've been doing a lot of different organizing work. I left all the Democratic Party electoral campaign spaces. I was briefly in DSA. I left DSA as well because of what I saw as their insufficient line on Zionism. And since then really have been focused on anti-imperialist organizing, primarily in Cuba solidarity work to lift the US blockade and challenge US sanctions against Cuba, and then of course with Palestine. And it's not like those are separate issues. I mean, all fronts against US imperialism are connected, but in our organizing often

it's siloed into separate country-specific organizations. And so when the Al Aqsa flood happened, I was working for an anti-imperialist nonprofit and I left my job there because we launched Palaction US, this direct action campaign that really ceased to exist after our arrests in Merrimack in November 2023. It was very short-lived and it really got taken out by repression. And so I'm getting ahead of myself a little, but I will say I have been a very public person for a quarter of my life. I created like a Twitter account when I was 15 and never expected it to become some big public platform.

And that's a huge self critique that I hold. And a lesson that I try to impart to other people is the value of your anonymity and not tying all the political work you're doing to your name and to your face and your your government name and identity. And so I just mentioned that now because I'm no longer really public about the organizing that I am involved in besides, you know, like fundraisers and things that I might post to request help with. I try to keep my work more offline and I think that's an important practice

because social media creates these incentives for your organizing or your activism to kind of become how you personally brand yourself or create your social media aesthetic and it becomes about building your personal ego or brand or media platform, rather than building the movement and killing our individualism for the struggle, which I think is really necessary. Wow. Thank you so much for all of that. And I really appreciate your,

you bring up your trajectory sort of, and I do think it is a pretty common one, right? Like you start out sort of experimenting with liberalism and progressive liberalism and the entryway into the Democratic Party. And then the, of course, the disillusionment that comes with that and the exploration for different organizations and different sort of ideological orientations, right, that go beyond progressive liberalism. I just think what really strikes me for you is that your trajectory is all pushed forward a little bit in time, right?

At age 16, you already sounds like you were grappling with a lot of this stuff, which is quite impressive for like an old grizzled old guy like me, who in my early twenties, I was definitely not thinking with the same clarity, I think, as you. So I really do appreciate that. And I just want to recognize that upfront. And yeah, you talked about pal action, Palestine action, which our listeners should be familiar with at this point.

Of course, we're going to talk a lot more about the actions that you participated with and led with them. But yeah, we've had Max Geller on from PAL Action based in the UK. Max is the best. Yeah, I was just going to say Max is awesome. And whenever he's on, we always have a really good response from our listeners. And the last thing I just wanted to touch on too is the idea of social media and what you're talking about

in that regard. And I couldn't agree with you more. I think that social media can really be a trap and it does have positive elements to it. I think it can be a good starting point. And so many people are online and so many people are in parts of the country that maybe they would not be exposed to certain ideas

if it were not for the internet and social media. But then it turns into a bit of a prison, right? It turns into a trap. And it turns into something that goes much beyond just a starting point. And I think anybody listening to this can relate to any series of issues or problems that they've personally had or that they can see with that sort of social media world in so many different ways. Yeah, like it's both the political pitfalls of social media and the liberal individualist culture it breeds.

and also it's the security pitfalls because our phones are the biggest weapon the enemy has against us. And social media, you're basically handing over to the enemy your entire network map, your entire social circle, all your comrades, everything you're doing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It little bit about the action that you were a part of, the Palestine action that you were a part of in New Hampshire. So I'm imagining some people have probably already come across the stories, the headlines and maybe familiar, but I'd love to just sort of talk about it in a little bit of detail with you and get the story and get an idea of what happened. So you were part of a momentous action in New Hampshire in November of 2023.

And that action led you and your fellow actionists to acquire the label of the Merrimack four and a whole bunch of other events occurred in sort of conjunction with and as the result of that action. So just to start though, before we get ahead of ourselves, can you describe the action, what led up to it and what you were trying to achieve with it. Just paint us a picture of that day, the lead up to it, and what the intentions were. Well, I'll start with what led up to it. The Al-Aqsa flood happened on October 7th, 2023, and revitalized the Palestinian revolution and the global anti-imperialist revolution.

And it put the question of escalated resistance back on the table, not just for Palestinians, but also for people in the US where these weapons being used to commit genocide are being produced in our backyards. And we immediately saw this need to escalate in tandem with the Palestinian resistance. And so launching PallAction US made a lot of sense at that point in time where we were moving with such a sense of urgency and there already existed this international direct action campaign that we

could branch out from because of course virtually every corporation and every institution in the U.S. is complicit in Zionism or complicit in U.S. imperialism as a whole in some way, shape or form. And so just targeting all of these entities were not going to be able to exert the most pressure. And that was the logic behind primarily targeting Elbit, where several of its locations had already been permanently closed down by direct actions in the UK. And of course, Elbit, as I'm sure people know, is the largest Zionist weapons producer. It uses people in Gaza as guinea pigs to test their weapons and then markets them as battle tested to the rest of the world and to other imperialist regimes. And so we launched Pall Action US in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

where Albit had an office space that they called the Cambridge Innovation Center. And the first direct action was five days after the Aloxo Flood began on October 12th and at that action no one was arrested. Three of us locked our necks together with bicycle locks and defaced the front of the Elbit office building and shut down work for the day and escaped without arrest. And I later got some charges for that action because it was posted on social media and I was identified as spray painting, shut Elbit down on the building, but no one was arrested that day. And we got away and I think that definitely gave us

a bit of a sense of arrogance. And we continued organizing direct actions, but moving with like this extreme sense of urgency we continued organizing direct actions, but moving with like this extreme sense of urgency where we really weren't thinking about our long-term political strategy and how we would build out infrastructure that could actually withstand state repression, which inevitably would come down on us.

And actions continued across the U S I mean, mostly in the Northeast. And there was another big action in Cambridge at the end of October, where I was arrested with eight other people. It was a mass rally that kind of turned into a mini riot. And I think that was also kind of a lesson I learned or like a mistake I would acknowledge is that combining mass actions with more direct action or property damage tactics can be dangerous. And sometimes like it works best

to have more degrees of separation between those different activities like property damage would be a clandestine hit and run action and then a mass rally would be that it would be a mass rally. But there were also a lot of successful DRS during that protest and the police reports afterwards showed that the police were absolutely shocked and overwhelmed at the fierce collective resistance of the crowd and how people were defending each other and fighting back. And so I think that's another example. And I know I'm giving a lot of background context to the New Hampshire action, but I think it's important. I think that is another example of how this question

of policing and repression immediately arose when we were attempting these tactics here. Not that the people in the UK are not also facing repression and police brutality, they are. And there's dozens of political prisoners there and people facing horrific conditions and abuses and even terrorism charges. But the nature of policing in the U.S. and the centrality of the question of the police and the role that they play as a domestic occupying force in the prison house

of nations that is the so-called United States. We were confronted with time and time again as soon as we tried to escalate here, and any movement that is resisting the ruling class and the status quo is confronted with the pig foot soldiers of the empire, which are the police. And we continued doing actions. We went to Atlanta for Block Cop City. There was a Pall Action US contingent at Block Cop City because we were really seeing the need to not only pay lip service to the interconnectedness between what is happening in Palestine and what is happening here between the IOF and the American police, between the genocide

of Palestinians and the genocide of Black people and Indigenous people and all victims of US imperialism. There was a lot of lip service paid to those connections, but we were trying, and I mean I would say there are parts of the movement that still are trying to materialize that into a real strategy and Say that these aren't separate movements like these are one in the same and actually We will only win if we look at this as as the same movement and so we marched in in block cop city and same movement. And so we marched in in Block Cop City and then a week after that, a week, exactly a week after Block Cop City was this New Hampshire action. And at that point, I and other

people were banned from the Cambridge Elbit facility and couldn't keep doing actions there. And the Cambridge facility, it was, it was an office building. It was people doing computer work. Pretty much as soon as the actions started there, they sent all their employees to just work remotely and then it permanently closed down. But the New Hampshire facility is huge and they produce a lot of equipment there. They produce screens that are used on vehicles,

for drones, for helicopter parts, technology directly being used to commit genocide. And the action, you know, I don't even really know what people in the public like think happened during the action, cause when I got out of jail, the narrative was that we had fire bombedbed like a small local Jewish mom-and-pop business or a medical facility and obviously that's not the case and I think it's never really been fully understood like what actually happened at that action and it never fully will because there are

things we can never say publicly but I do can I can provide some more context to people. The goal of the action itself, what we were trying to achieve with it. There were a few different parts, and I think it was a bit confused. I mean, we had the goal of causing maximum material damage. We had the goal of creating a spectacle or propaganda effect by having us on top of the building lighting off smoke flares in this signature pile action UK style. We also had the goal of disrupting work and shutting down business for the day and slowing the production of these weapons and finally of instilling fear and

and finally of instilling fear and showing to these people who have blood on their hands that they are not safe and they cannot continue their daily lives as usual so long as they are murdering our comrades in Palestine. So the way the action played out was a sort of tri-pronged attack on the Elbit facility in Merrimack. The state refers to it as a riot and siege, which I think is really funny. I mean, you could kind of call it a siege, but pretty much there were three groups. There were those of us on the rooftop. There were people blockading the front driveway, preventing employees from entering and also delaying the police from coming in and arresting us. And then there was another group of people who entered via the woods. For context, this facility is surrounded on both sides by a

highway, a bigger highway and a smaller highway. People entered from the woods over a fence down this hill off the highway into the Elbit parking lot and besieged the front entrance of the building. They bike locked the doors shut so that security wouldn't come out and detain them. And then they smashed windows, they smashed doors, they threw mason jars full of red paint, they used fire extinguishers full of red paint, they spray painted a bunch of slogans, free Gaza, fuck Elbit, genocide profiteers, and those people all retreated back through the woods and were not arrested that day. And actually only one of them ever was arrested,

Paige, my co-defendant, because she was identified from having been at other actions, actually through her socks that she was wearing, through a distinctive stripe on her socks. That's crazy. I was gonna say, I have seen some images, some pictures taken from that event and everybody looks looks like covered up like your faces and stuff. So that's just really wild to me that they were able to do that through socks. It just goes to show how important it is to keep that in mind. Our conversation about social media, but so much more beyond that. But anyways, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

but so much more beyond that. But anyways, yeah, sorry, go ahead. LSG Yeah, it's really crazy. And so the three of us were on the roof and we were the only three arrested that day. And in terms of what we did on the roof, there were no security cameras up there. So they never actually could identify who did what. But we defaced the who did what, but we defaced the Elbit systems of America sign on the front of the building, covering that with red paint. We lit off smoke flares. We smashed a bunch of skylight windows because there was a big skylight on the roof that was looking down over Elbit's lobby. We damaged HVAC systems and also tried to put some cat food into vents to see if it would get inside and cause a bad smell. Because I think that's something they've done in the UK is using smoke bombs or things to that effect to disrupt the Elbow Work Day.

And I don't actually think that works, but it was funny because in all the police reports, they were like cat food found smeared in the roof membrane. And actually at one point I did not learn this until months after the action in the discovery that we received from the state in the evidence that they sent us that they were using against us everything they had all the security camera footage all the materials that they seized when we were arrested they also had a bunch of interviews with Elbit employees who were there that day during the action that they definitely would have played in court had we gone to trial and not struck a deal. But in these interviews, it's really interesting to listen to.

I mean, I definitely want to find some way to release them or parts of them because it's just such a fascinating snapshot into the psychology of a weapons factory worker, an Elbit worker. Most of these people are US military veterans or IOF veterans. And I mean, the way they were talking about our action and our politics was absolutely insane. But there's one point where a armed security guard at Elbit is interviewed and he says that he drew his weapon on us and almost shot us when we were smashing the skylight windows and there was this crazy line where he's like, yeah, I couldn't sleep for a week after because I couldn't stop thinking about how I almost put a kid in a forever box,

referring to how he almost shot and killed us. But thankfully we didn't. We were arrested on the rooftop at gunpoint by the Merrimack police, and we were arrested and held without bail for three days. We were arraigned and the prosecutors were arguing to hold us on preventative detention, but our public defenders got us bail. Two of us had $20,000 cash bail and the other had $5,000 cash bail.

The reason for ours being higher was that we were already out on bail from getting arrested in Cambridge. And I think it worked in some ways and didn't work in others. It did shut down work for the day. It did instill a lot of fear in the employees. I mean, several employees quit after it happened, according to these interviews that we were sent. And they've completely changed all of their security protocol and really heightened all of their security guards and having Merrimack police stationed at Elbit constantly. And it's really changed employees behavior too and how they feel about their safety going out in their community or being known for working at Elbit in a really interesting way because this is not like Brooklyn, like it's New Hampshire. This town is mostly

veterans and weapons factory workers, but people are scared. And in terms of material damage and creating a spectacle or propaganda effect, we caused over $100,000 in material damage. We also had to pay that back as restitution to Elbit because New Hampshire compels the state to seek restitution for damages caused. And that's a shame. I mean, it's a shame that that had to be paid back to Elbit.

Not that $100,000 is super significant to them in the first place. I think really what wasn't effective about this action, and I say this despite being proud of it, is just that it had a chilling effect on the movement because we got caught and although it was militant and we were going on the offensive, ultimately intentional arrests and like sitting down and waiting for the police to come arrest you I think is pacifist and I'm saying that self-critically because I engaged in that

myself but we can't surrender ourselves to the state. We can't afford to get caught and lose people to the state. And so I don't say that regretfully. Like I would, I would do it again, but I would do it better and I would do it smarter. And I'm glad that it played out because now we can share these lessons to people who might be thinking about taking similar actions in the future. Well, yeah, thank you so much for that. I'd never really heard that story before.

I've read bits and pieces of it, so it's really fascinating. And yeah, I just wanna say thank you for sharing that here. And there's a lot that I wanna ask you, like lots of little things here and there that I could pull on, but I want to just keep moving forward because I think, yeah, we could definitely talk for hours probably about lots of different things around strategy and arresting, like the performative arrests, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I have a lot of thoughts on that too.

But, so like you mentioned, you were arrested at gunpoint, it sounds like after you were also, had guns pointed at you by security officers at Elbit. I can imagine that was just a really intense experience. And then, so after you were arrested, you were charged. And I'd love it if you could talk about that a little bit. The New Hampshire Attorney General charged you with different charges totaling up to 37 years in prison

if you were convicted for them. So that's intense, right? That's your life. And so I would love to hear a little bit about that process, like how that all played out. And then we can talk about what happened after that. But why do you think they slapped you and your co-defendants with these over-the-top charges?

And what was that experience like for you? Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's worth mentioning, like if I weren't a white 19-year-old girl on the roof of that weapons company with a bunch of guns pointed at me, it is probably far more likely that I would be shot and dead right now. And so I think that's worth mentioning and I'm lucky. So we scaled onto the roof with a ladder. It was over 20 feet high. We scaled the roof with a ladder and the police, they came up to arrest us through a hatch in the roof. And so they arrested us.

It was a cold, chilly morning. One of the cops slipped and fell on the roof and he was really mad about that. They were also really mad that they got red paint on their shoes and they brought us down through the building. And so I got to look around inside of an Elbit facility, which was crazy. I remember there was a employee inside the building who was wearing a Trump hat. And I was like, that's an ugly fucking hat you fucking fascist. Because I was just mad that I'd been arrested.

And then the cops were like, shut your mouth lady. You sure have a lot of opinions. And they walked us outside. And I mean, they like searched us and stuff. I had smoke flares in my pocket that they pulled out. And they were like, ooh, the feds are going to love this. And DHS and SWAT and New Hampshire counterterrorism and FBI are all on their way to interrogate you, which didn't happen. But they were certainly trying to scare us and probably scare one

of us into talking, which none of us did. We all were read our Miranda rights and refused to talk. And we were brought to the Merrimack police station and they tried to get us to talk again. My phone was seized. They tried to get me to give my passcode to them. Obviously I did not. We got to make a phone call and we were read aloud the charges. And the initial charges were criminal trespass, misdemeanor, criminal mischief, felony, riot, felony, burglary, felony, sabotage felony. I think those were all of them. And I had no idea what those charges meant or how much time they were. I just knew they were bullshit. And they said we were being held until arraignment without bail and we were being arraigned the next day. And so we got taken from the police station to Valley Street jail, which

I'll talk more about later on when I talk about serving our sentence. But this was our first time around in Valley Street. And I've been arrested a couple of times before, but I'd never been overnight in jail. I'd never been like given an orange uniform before. And so we were. And these few days were just constantly, you know, like, being handcuffed, being shackled, being put in another paddy wagon, being transported place after place, being brought to court, being brought back to jail, being strip searched over and over again. And we got booked into the jail.

We had our arraignment the next day. So we were all brought to the courthouse in Nashua. The action took place in a town called Merrimack. The jail is in a city called Manchester and the court is in a city called Nashua. And all of New Hampshire is really small. And at this point, we were all separated. And we didn't know when we were separated that we were going to get no contact orders, but it was the last time we'd ever talked to each other for like eight months until the no contact orders were dropped.

And so we were each given a separate public defender who read us the charges again, but this time she included how much time the recommended sentencing was and so she read me all these charges most of which had five to seven years in prison but the sabotage charge had a minimum, mandatory minimum one year in prison and something like 10 to 20 years recommended sentencing and so she read those all to me and she was like yeah yeah, you're facing 37 years in prison. You are not going to get bail. You should expect to be in jail until your trial and to be in prison for the rest of your life. And so there was a moment where I had to accept that reality and I think the trumped up charges, you know, the

point really was to scare us and disorganize us and that arguably worked in some ways and it failed in many other ways. Of course we ended up getting bailed out and I was released after three full days in jail. But then, I mean, the state repression, it tore our lives apart. And I'm not saying that in like a self-victimizing way or a fear-mongering way, but that is what the state repression does.

That's what it serves to do, especially no contact orders. It serves to tear your social networks apart. And not only to scare us, but to scare other people in the movement and to create this ripple effect or chilling effect that scared people out of wanting to support direct action or militancy at all. Not only not wanting to do it themselves, but being too scared to even defend people who were doing it and facing consequences for it. But I still don't think it totally worked at scaring us or disorganizing us. I mean, I've never stopped being very loud about what I believe in

my support for the Palestinian resistance and my support for escalated resistance here. It did, however, lead to Pall Action US just totally disintegrating because of the repression. And you know, I mentioned this before we'd been moving with this just like go, go, go mentality. And I think we made mistakes and that we were kind of pushing people to do militancy for the sake of militancy, and we weren't building out a political framework for that militancy. And so it fell into this kind of tactical fetishism, where it's just like we need to do direct action for the sake of doing direct action rather than here's our understanding of US imperialism that necessitates these tactics and necessitates like striking at imperialism and opening up another front here in the US.

And so we had nothing in place that really protected us from the repression and our operational security had been super weak. And I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that. And I think one of them is that we were operating with the legal risk assessment of someone with $700 million and I think it's impossible to explain how Palaction US played out and how it fell apart without explaining Fergie's role in it and the role of his resources which are inseparable from him as an individual person. For people who don't know, Fergie is an heir to the Cox family, which is the eighth richest family in the U.S. And so he cut a deal summer 2023 with his family's company, taking out all his shares. And so he has a total of around $700 million, and he's a self-proclaimed class trader

who's funding the revolution. And so we were going around doing actions as a group with Paige as well. Paige had lived on Cloud Kingdom, his commune in the Berkshires for several years. That's how she was looped in. That's how I met her. And that was a huge part of our downfall. I think having access to this immense amount of resources

and being directly tied to organizing direct actions on the ground was super dangerous and people were rightfully skeptical of working with us for those reasons. Even before we were arrested, I mean, we knew like the feds were watching us because reporters were tipping us off on that. And I think the money made us feel invulnerable and it made us lazy. It made us bypass steps we otherwise would have had to take to build up our legitimacy. And in reality, it wasn't making us invulnerable, it was making us far, far more vulnerable to repression because of how much it put us on their radar and also how the way Rico and financial transactions are being increasingly targeted as we see in Atlanta and the Stop Cop City Rico case.

I think anything to do with money and direct action you have to be so, so careful with. And I hope this is making sense. I mean, I'm speaking about it very vaguely, of course, because this is super sensitive and I'm still trying to be protective of people. But at the same time, this isn't, I'm not revealing anything that the state doesn't already know. And I think when we when we got out of jail, we experienced a bunch of isolation in the movement. And it was hard to separate what were genuine political critiques of our action or of how we'd been moving or of Fergie, it was hard to separate those from this just all out

liberal counterinsurgency against us that was like, no one should do direct action, militancy is bad, pile action is stupid, they should rot in prison. And I got out of jail in total shock and I was just bombarded with this. And honestly, it's something I'm still bombarded with that I haven't really fully addressed publicly till now and till recently.

But all that goes to say is I think the way we were organizing and messaging had been, we'd been also self-marginalizing. And a lot of what I'm gonna speak to in this discussion is I think about the relationship between the so-called above ground and underground. And obviously we're not at the point where there is some fully fleshed out,

active underground in the US like there was in the 70s and 80s. Although there are perhaps embryos of that in some places. But above ground people need to defend militants when they are facing repression. And at the same time, militants and people doing underground or clandestine activity cannot alienate themselves from the above ground, and their actions need to garner their support and express their will. That's the only way we can make a cohesive whole and an effective revolutionary movement. I don't think mass organizing and mass rallies are inherently in contradiction to direct action

or clandestine action and vice versa. The ways that they're playing out sometimes right now are, but I think that was an error we made. The way we were very moralistically appealing for people to put their bodies on the line, I don't think is how you get someone to take risk. Like our messaging was basically like get arrested for Gaza or if you're not willing to get arrested you don't care enough about Gaza and that's just super that's super vulgar. Not everyone can get arrested, not everyone wants to get arrested, not everyone should get arrested and arrestability, willingness to be arrested is not an indication of your militancy. In fact, I think our willingness to get arrested was perhaps an indication of our liberalism.

It was kind of this like, I got arrested for Gaza wearing a badge on my chest rather than building out something that could sustain in the longterm and that wouldn't lose people to the state, if that makes sense. I wanna talk a little bit more though about how the legal process actually played out though. Yeah, that is where I wanna go to next.

I just wanted to, before I jump into that next question, appreciate the degree of like self-criticism that you're able to bring to all of this. And I know you learned a lot of these lessons the hard way, right? Like almost as hard as it could come. Right. And I just want to appreciate that. And that you and your comrades went through that experience, not in order so

that you could learn the lessons necessarily, but appreciating that now you have those lessons to impart to anybody out there, who's grappling with these questions themselves, who's thinking about a lot of the questions that you're bringing up. And just to go back a little bit further in your response, I do remember actually, you talked about the period where you got out of jail

and you kind of came back to see all of this like discussion around you and the action. And I definitely remember seeing posts, accusations of adventurism against you, this idea that the actions that you guys were participating in were really just about sort of your own experiences, like you said, like getting arrested with a badge on you or something like that, and not so much being sort of brainwashed and under the shadow of this wealthy white man, Fergie. So I don't know if there's anything you want to say about that at all. Yeah, totally. I think there's, there's a lot to elaborate on there. I mean, yeah, I don't, I don't feel like I would have the right to be speaking about my action or pushing for more people to escalate if I weren't self-critical about the own mistakes I've made.

And I do feel like I'm someone who has made a lot of mistakes and I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to share them and impart them. I hope people understand I'm like, I'm not doing this interview. I don't do any interviews or anything publicly because I'm like trying to build celebrity for myself or like a media career. I mean, I've kind of destroyed all my career prospects at this point, but it really is because I think these lessons are invaluable. And I'm also going to be very critical of parts of the movement that I see as liberal

or counterinsurgent, but the onus is also on militants and people doing direct action to like get our shit together and make supporting us irresistible. In terms of those other critiques you mentioned, I think there was a very misogynistic counterinsurgency campaign off the bat to delegitimize us by making the story not about the politics of our action or the genocidal entity we were targeting, but to make it about a man. And so people tried to argue that women would only take a direct action if a man groomed us into doing it or was our cult leader and that's bullshit. I mean I took that action out of my own principles and I know the rest of the woman did as well.

Certainly no man forced us to, and we would never blame anyone else for us being arrested. We are proud of what we did, and I think all those arguments just served to try to make what we were doing seem so illogical and crazy. And I do think that's what people largely understood it as until more escalations popped off like during the student intifada and a lot of people were getting arrested and on the front lines at the cop and it wasn't such an aberration anymore or maybe just more time had passed. But I think it was hard to separate the genuine critiques of our action from this counterinsurgency, especially when I just got out of jail

and I had no idea what had been happening in the three days when I was locked up. And so my response, of course, was to double down on defending our action. And I think people largely still associate me with him and have no idea that we're no longer associated with each other. And I think it's like, it's really nuanced. I mean, that someone who I cared a lot about and took risks with and went through the most traumatizing experience of my

life with and faced state repression with. And I think that's also someone who I need to publicly criticize. And that's one of the most important lessons of my experience with Pall Action US is funders should not be the people organizing actions on the ground. But I do think a lot of this comes back to the women's question. I think women and queer people in the context of the movement in the US, of course I'm not speaking to like Palestine or the global south, but especially in the US, women and queer people are doing the bulk of the labor and being on the front lines in the anti-imperialist movement. And I think the way we were completely written off

and brushed aside had a lot to do with the fact that we were women. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Cala Walsh. We'll be right back. Why won't your organization engage in peace talks with the Israelis? with Kala Walsh. We'll be right back. than the neck One way, with their souls who vow to cower in a DURING In a room of blood and fire with the light spray at the back of the horn Making comic conversation with the neck and the sword We change ensigns with the flashback of the map that's drawn And straight into the trap that's drawn A plastic bag, now the family horn

Mosquitium of a nation where the alibi farts Extermination by familiar means The same decades far without my signs The hungry begging for death This is the sound when the oppressor becomes the oppressor The oppressor become the oppressor A world that scatters remains like a moment since the start A sleep in their graves in a cradle of stoning Still led by their chains through ruins of blaze

Refusal to now To win apartheid backed by the West Do we stand up to our people's trust? Can we scream our own doses and fight it with care? We'll stand Take your breath, we can't be slowly spooked Our trust on this Can we stand guard or back resisted? No one like we don't agree one state

Where we can't hold from just or reject If it's too much the right would expect It's all your children, your country, your women You're gone, you're with me God's way out, you're just in You're always on my side The Elf of Disobey The Spirit The Elf of Disobey The Spirit There is no your children, your culture, your women Cause we are the children, your own life, a prison I'm going to be a man. The outcome is always the same The outcome is always the same The outcome is always the same

The outcome is always the same The end of the story of strength The end of the story of strength The end of the story of strength The end of the story of strength The end of the story of strength There's no place for sin There's no god, there's no life, no sin There's no god, there's no life, no sin There's no god, there's no life, no sin There's no god, there's no life, no sin That's all I'm gonna say Say I'm gone That's all I'm gonna say

Say I'm gone That's all I'm gonna say That was Erase by Scary Hours. Now back to our conversation with Calla Walsh. So I know there's a lot more to the story that we haven't really gotten into and I also know that you're in the process of writing more about this experience and some of the challenges that you experienced and I know that you're in the process actually of writing a piece about it. And so we'll definitely throw that piece into the show notes

once it's ready and of course, share about it on social media, et cetera. People should follow you of course, if they're not already on Twitter at Cala Walsh to sort of stay abreast of all of that. And so, okay. so there was this period where you were charged with these felony charges that as we discussed totaled up to 37 years. And that didn't happen overnight, right? Like there was a whole period between being charged

and what we'll get to in terms of what the outcome was with those charges. But I'm wondering, just what was that like for you personally? Where did you get your support from? We've heard sort of a little bit about where there wasn't support necessarily. But where did you get support from? And what other lessons maybe did you learn from that experience? Just anything else you'd like

to share about that period of your life before we move on to your sentencing and the time that you spent in jail? Yeah I think it was the craziest time of my life. I think this period when we still thought we were going to prison for 37 years and the outcome was really unclear and we were also facing federal investigation, which never really stops. That was far scarier than the 40 days we spent in jail because of the uncertainty and the waiting. Something my lawyer has said to me over and over is like, the process is the punishment. The point of the repression is usually not to have the charges stick in the end. It is to drag it out as long as possible to suck up as many of your

resources as possible to scare and disorganize and sow division among people. At the same time, like I was really lucky to get support that I did. I mean, primarily my family was so supportive and not everyone is that lucky. My family is super pro-Palestine. My mom bailed me out from jail that night. It was the night before so-called Thanksgiving. The next day we went to the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Massachusetts, my mom and I. And I think the experience was radicalizing for my whole family. I didn't talk a lot about, I guess, my personal background, but I grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

My parents work in the academy in various roles. And so I have like a petty bourgeois, like, intelligentsia background. And no one in my immediate or extended family that I know of has spent any extended time in jail besides me. And so all that goes to say is I'm really fucking lucky that I got the support that I did from my parents, from my siblings, and that I could go in and live at my family's house. So I guess before I speak to how the legal process played out, the next really jarring thing that happened was that Paige got arrested. Before that, we were called the Merrimack Three, which is not a name we chose for ourselves.

We got out of jail and everyone was just calling us that. On January 24th, we had our first court date and only I had court that day, not the other two. And Paige had been really the core of our support system before her arrest because the rest of us had no contact orders with each other. And she came to court to support me at my hearing and I was already there with my family waiting inside and she texted me that she was 10 minutes away and she never showed up. And I kind of was like, okay, she either got in a car accident or she got arrested. And then she called us from the jail and she had been arrested. She

was walking into the courthouse to come to this hearing and the cops were waiting there for her with like a huge picture of her face printed out. And they arrested her and they took her and they also tried to give her $20,000 bail. And she had to represent herself and her arraignment because all the public defenders had a conflict of interest. And she successfully argued down her own bail to $5,000. And so she got out the same day. And we got a no contact order, which was really devastating because we'd been so close. And I moved back in to my parents' house at that point because I couldn't be living out with Paige, of course. But that was super hard. I mean, not only being isolated from most of the movement,

but from all the people I'd been through the direct action and the state repression with, like I really didn't have many people I could talk to at all. And I certainly was struggling a lot during this time. And I knew it was all happening for a reason. I just didn't know what the answers were yet. But I think what I've realized is that the repression, facing repression has really developed my politics.

And it's led me to the understandings that I have now. In terms of how the legal process played out during this time, we were in ongoing negotiations from as soon as we got out of jail and had lawyers to our sentencing. The first offer we got was in February and it was one to two years in prison and like a year a couple years probation suspended sentence and when I got that I was so

relieved which is crazy because one or two years in prison is still like not good and obviously ridiculous for some broken windows and red paint, but I was relieved because it was so much smaller than 37 years. And the next little win that we had was that they dropped the sabotage charge, the one I mentioned earlier that had a mandatory minimum of one year in prison. They had to drop the sabotage charge

because they could only charge us with that during a state of emergency. And so it wasn't applicable. And then we got the no contact order dropped. We won a motion to block the search of my phone in New Hampshire. And then we were getting better offers over the summer and we made it to like a final offer.

And we went to criminal mediation where the prosecutors sat down with our lawyers and a retired judge mediated. They wouldn't budge on the sentence. So that's what we went with was the 60 days, which with good behavior, we did 40 days in jail. Plus this suspended sentence and restitution and community service. Yeah. Well, thank you for all of that. And I'm wondering in a little bit, I want to kind of bring back the lens and talk a bit about the state repression that you were subjected to in the context of the escalation of state repression that we're currently seeing. But I want to ask you about your experience, those 40 days in prison you had alluded to at jail earlier, and you said you would

tell us a little bit more, I guess, about one of something about that jail, but also just more generally, what was your experience like in jail? And like and what did you learn from that experience and anything else you'd like to share? Yeah, so our first time in Valley Street was those three days in November 2023. And then we served our sentence from November 14th to December 20th, 2024. And in retrospect, like the first three days I did in there were harder than 30 days. And that's because I didn't know when I was getting out. I thought I could be in there forever. And this sounds cliche, but like jail, you definitely never leave jail or jail never leaves you. And that's how I felt when I went back there the second time around, like that I'd never

left even though it had been a year. And it's because I'd been kind of like living in jail that entire year, even after I was released, like I was just, you know, anticipating it the entire time. The jail and prison system in the U.S. is horrific. It's a form of genocide, and that can be true. And I also think the most important lesson I want to impart from my time in jail is that important lesson I want to impart from my time in jail is that more people can survive it than they realize and more of us have to prepare to survive it if we are interested in building resilient movements that can win. Like more of us are going to be facing repression, more of us are going to be facing charges,

more of us are going to be in jail and prison. That is not something we can pretend like is not gonna happen. We have to prepare for it and I mean the reality is doing 40 days in jail is like not super abnormal. Like plenty of regular people, poor people have done that all the time. Like that's not crazy. I think it is more abnormal for political actions and for like a petty bourgeois 20 year old white girl maybe. But yeah, when I when I think it is more abnormal for political actions and for like a petty bourgeois 20-year-old white girl, maybe. But yeah, when I think back to jail, like, mostly I miss my friends. I miss the people that were in there with us. There's so much like beautiful community that people build and support each other. And I think people look at

incarceration as like social death, but there's still a lot of life that persists inside. Actually right before this doing this podcast I was on the phone with an elder who did over 20 years, most of which was in like supermax and solitary for his political actions. And he was making a point that I also make a lot which is that prisoners in the US are not the compass of our movement. We don't center prisoners in our movement in the way that they are centered in Palestine or Ireland or South Africa. And so we do really need to be, you know, like tapped in to what is happening inside

these facilities. And there is so much light and life inside despite the horrors, despite like the constant abuses and medical neglect, women support each other. And I can think of a lot of examples. We did a lot of jailhouse lawyering and informal political education. I mean, everyone fucked with our action

and was down with our politics. When we told people about our action, they were like, wait, you should invite me to do that with you next time. Which was awesome. So then it was just logical. And like people who have just been through like the most horrific things I've ever heard still had so much light and so much love. Like people would make batch, terrific things I've ever heard still had so much light and so much love.

People would make batch, people would make meals from commissary food and share them with every single woman on the unit. And there were only 20 people usually on general population in the unit we were in. So we all knew each other and we're still in touch with a lot of our friends in jail. And we're fundraising so we can send money to their commissary because that really does make a difference. One of our best friends from jail who was our cellmate, she was pregnant the entire time we were in jail.

There was a warrant out for her and she turned herself in so she didn't have to get arrested while getting an ultrasound. And she was held for months longer than us and she faced medical neglect the entire time. You know, being chained to hospital beds, being refused her extra meal trays that she was supposed to have for her baby. And you know, her appointments just being canceled at random. She was sleeping on the floor of our cell and we're fundraising cause she had her baby. She finally got out recently and I had her baby a couple of days later and

we're just like fundraising to support her. So I'd love to drop the link to that in this description. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I struggle like talking about jail because it feels like it was such an experience that impacted me so much, but I also only have the authority to speak on 40 days. I don't really call myself a political prisoner. I was in jail, I wasn't in prison.

There are so many people who've done significantly more time than me, but what I did learn, I want to share. It feels hard to talk about because my friends are still in there and they're not just stories I can package into a sound bite for an audience because they're real people. But I think something that I didn't realize so much before I was in jail that really struck me was how much mass incarceration in the war on drugs is a war on women and their children. And just the pervasive kidnapping, state kidnapping of poor women's children and selling them to rich families had happened to practically

like every mother we met in there. The biggest like request for support we got was like family lawyers to help people get their kids back. And I mean the vast majority of people in that jail in that jail were there for something related to fentanyl meth or crack and like we need to talk about you know the war on drugs as a genocide. I was just reading this this pamphlet the other day written by one of the Panther 21 about the Lincoln Detox Center and like the People's Drug Program that the Panthers won, and it's called capitalism plus dope equals genocide. That's not like a fleshed out political thought, but these are questions I think that like the anti-imperialist movement in the US because of its mostly petty bourgeois class character

is not thinking about enough or is wholly disconnected from. We definitely faced political targeting in jail in terms of the censorship of our books. We were sent hundreds of books and most of them got turned away. Some of them, some of the political books got into us, but I was emailing the mail room at the jail from my tablet because you get tablets and I was asking why my books weren't being let in and so that kind of flagged me and I think that's why they started blocking all my books altogether. I asked them if they could go look at my books and bring the ones that were being held in my

property to me and a sergeant came back and he said that all my books were a terrorist shit. Including just like liberal mainstream novels that family members had mailed me, they were blocking, they were blocking everything. People really hungered for books and newspapers and we were getting mailed so many things that we wanted to share as much as possible but the jail really doesn't want people to read. It wants you to watch movies on your tablet or it wants you to watch TV and in prisons now there are even places that are setting up like video game rooms so that inmates aren't reading. It's really bad. Yeah, I guess there's a lot

more I could talk about in relation to jail, but I think I'll leave it there. I guess I just want to read a quote from Laura Whitehorn, who was a woman, lesbian political prisoner for being part of the M19 communist movement and helping break Asada out of prison. And she did this beautiful interview and it was probably the thing I read when I got out that just resonated the most with my experience, even though she was in there for so much longer than me. But she said, I don't ever want to forget that would be like putting calluses over my heart. It would be forgetting the people I owe something to.

I guess the hardest thing for me about getting out was leaving so many people behind. So if people can donate to those GoFundMe's, we can send money to our friends. Yeah, that would be amazing because they are still in there and we're really lucky that we had the outside support that we did because most people don't. And it was easy to keep our situation in perspective, like when we were getting money sent to our books and we were getting so many letters every day, but most people have no one. And so people should write to prisoners, people should do jail support and not just for like anointed political prisoners but for all all incarcerated people.

I mean on some level, right, everybody in there is in there for a political reason. So let's bring back the lens a little bit. So thank you for sharing about your experience from the very beginning to where you're at now, or at least where you were while you were in jail and getting out of jail. And yeah, let's talk a little bit about state repression against activists in our present context. So particularly pro-Palestine activists in actions. There are just a number of high-profile cases of arrests and deportation attempts against both students and professors, activists, immigrants. We have the case of Mamadou Tal at Cornell and Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia. Ramesa Ozturk from Tufts. Badar Khan Suri at Georgetown. Ali Reza Dorudi from the University of Alabama, just to name a few.

And then there are also some incidents which really haven't hit headlines in the same way, which you may not like here on Democracy Now or whatever, the case of Casey Gunin, for example, which you actually brought to my attention. And so I'm going to throw all of that in your direction and pass the mic over to you so that you can share anything you'd like to about these cases and the relevance to our conversation. Yeah, there's a lot there. I mean, first of all, like we live in the Fourth Reich, people are being abducted and disappeared in the streets. And the pattern is not totally clear

with some of these student abductions. They're targeting people who are very active, publicly identifiable spokespeople, but they're also targeting people who weren't necessarily activists at all. And I think the point is to show that they can and will come for all of us. And I don't say that in a fear-mongering way. The repression is a sign that we are strong and that they are weak. And that is really important to remember. I think first of all, a basic principle is that we should defend everyone facing repression. No one is exempt from critique, but when people are locked up is not necessarily the time to critique their politics. Like an attack on one of us is an attack on us all.

And I think, you know, Muhammad Al-Qurd just released his book, Perfect Victims, and I haven't actually read it. I've read some reviews of it. It sounds fantastic. But I think this concept of perfect victims is really salient right now because of how sometimes the way we defend individuals who are facing repression, the messaging or strategies we use can sometimes be counter effective.

And I'll explain what I mean by that. Like for example, if our defense of Mahmoud Khalil rests on him having a green card and not supporting Hamas, like what does that mean when they take someone who was here illegally without a green card? What does that mean when they take someone who did really support Hamas and the resistance? And so there is a difference between movement defense and an individual's defense. What makes the most sense as a legal defense for an individual is not what the political messaging or strategy of a movement should be necessarily. And that speaks to something I see often and that I really had to grapple with during my

case was that legal advice is not political advice and lawyers are not people without political agendas for better or for worse, but almost always for worse. There are a few lawyers with really good politics in this country, but the practice of lawyering is you swear an oath to uphold the law of the enemy. And so everything lawyers say you should take with a grain of salt. And I mean, good movement lawyers will tell you that when they are giving you advice and be like, this is what my legal advice would be, but I'm not necessarily giving you political advice.

And that's what I was really grateful for that my lawyer did. But we can't operate out of solely a place of fear or solely out of a defensive position. We have to operate out of the place of strength that we occupy because they are coming down on us, because they are weak and we are strong. This speaks to some frameworks that I think are useful to actually define, which is the difference between movement defense, anti-repression, and counter-repression. And these are all important frameworks to understand and to combat repression with. But movement defense looks like, you know, protecting individuals and movements from state repression.

So movement lawyering and community care networks and know your rights trainings. Those are important, but the limitations of this is that it's defensive in nature. It cannot alone stop the repression. Anti-repression is more about minimizing harm and building resilience against state violence. So this means jail and court support, de-arrest trainings, developing our digital and operational security, building up our walls so that the state can get as little information from us as possible.

But counter-oppression, which is the framework I want to emphasize the most, counter-oppression means fighting back. It means not just hiding or retreating or focusing only on defense. It means hitting our enemy back. And that's not revenge. It's not a qualitative balancing of the scales. It is a tactical approach, which means that when we are arrested or when we are doxed or when we are raided or when media narratives come for us, we expand participation in the movement. We go on the offensive with our physical resistance and we actively undermine the state repression

and we show that even though they're coming for us, we will not back down. And I think that is really important right now because people are scared and we can't pretend that people aren't scared. They should have scary. I have gotten used to going to sleep every night not knowing if I'm gonna be raided the next day. Like that's just a reality. And I want to credit that definition of counter-repression

to Atlanta organizers who have faced some of the most repression in the country and some of the language I used I borrowed from their January 18th day of the forest offender communique for Tortuguita who was killed by the police there. But it's a really important example to study of this all-out counterinsurgency that really has come post 2020, post George Floyd uprising, which was extremely militant and terrifying to the ruling class in Atlanta. And it's important to note, you know, a lot of those people facing repression there are anarchists, and it's so important we unite and defend different ideological tendencies that are resisting state violence and facing repression despite what political disagreements we may have

with them. And I want to add on that that definition I was paraphrasing it emphasizes it's a tactical response to repression but it's also political. We have to put politics in command and give people the political framework to understand repression as an inherent and inevitable part of the revolutionary process. And I think few have theorized this better in the US context than George and Jonathan Jackson and the Black Liberation Army, especially militants like Daruba bin Wahad and James Yaqui Sales and Safiyu Bukhari. So I definitely recommend people reading them for this longer term context because what is happening now is a new COINTELPRO and is a continuation of the war against revolutionaries.

And a case study that people may have heard me cite before that I want to cite again is from last year when there were these raids coordinated between the FBI, ATF, Atlanta police and Georgia State Police and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. There were raids of people allegedly involved in stop cop city activism and one person was arrested and charged for arson and that very morning that the raids happened, there was a press conference with Mary Hooks, who is from the movement for Black Lives, a national nonprofit, and she organizes for

them in Atlanta. And she gave this press conference and reporters asked her if she condemned these arsons. The press conference was against the raids, but the reporter asked if she would condemn the militants who were being targeted in these raids for their alleged actions. And she said, hell no, Atlanta deserves way more and this country deserves way more and she said I have a different role and The work that I do I know I can't be the one Going out there and doing that but I said at home and I flick my lighter because I know it's righteous And so I think back to that a lot because we also have to move beyond

non-disavowal to active support for militant actions. And the following day after these raids, another cop car burned in the very neighborhood where the raids took place. I forgot to mention the raids and the arson charges were for burnt cop cars. And so another cop car was burned in this very neighborhood. It was in a police officer's driveway because Atlanta has this Take Home Your Cop Car program for their police department. And that is a great example of

counter-oppression because it's striking back and it's saying that these raids and these arrests and these charges will not stop us and we are still here. And so I think in terms of a lot of the student repression, it has been targeted at speech, that is true, but it is not solely a free speech issue. And so our response to them saying that we shouldn't say we support Hamas or we support the Palestinian resistance, the response to that should be more of us should be louder than ever. Cause actually if we are also saying we love Hamas,

we love the Palestinian resistance, they can't possibly criminalize and come for all of us. And I think, you know, Sami Dune, Palestinian prisoner network and the repression they've faced is a good example of this and a good example of how counterinsurgency and repression is not enacted solely by the state itself, but also it comes from people inside our movements or from liberalism inside our movements. And Sami Dune, before they were ever banned or designated

by the Zionist entity or Germany or Canada or the US, they were isolated and demonized by counterinsurgent groups within the Palestine Solidarity Movement that rejected Sami Des' support of the Palestinian armed resistance and that were fear-mongering everyone not to work with Sami Dunes because of their open support for the resistance. And that is what teed Sami Dunes up to getting this designation and having this chilling effect. And I mean, the reality is Samidun is not designated as a terrorist organization in the US. It has a

very specific OFAC designation from the Treasury Department that designates it as a sham charity. So you can't do financial transactions with Samidune, but it is not illegal to say, I like Sami Dune, just like it isn't illegal to say I like Hamas, which is a designated FTO, Foreign Terrorist Organization. So my point is we need to try to like inoculate ourselves to the repression. And a lot of how the state tries to target us is by network mapping and kind of casting a net and trying to map out who is working with each other, who is the most militant, who they see as the driving force of the resistance that they are so scared of so they can target them and pick them off. And so when people turn against each other in the movement or when their response is to like distance from the people facing repression or treat them as if they are infectious, that's actually really really dangerous and it does exactly what the state wants which is to drive this wedge between the good protesters and the bad protesters and make it easy for them to pick off the bad protesters.

And this was really good advice I got from comrades, not lawyers, comrades, when I was facing my charges, because I had been quite isolated. I really had not been going to political events or spaces at all for months. And I started dipping my toes back in the water. And I was super scared, less so for my own safety and more that I was scared I was going to endanger everyone around me or that everyone would just not

want to associate with me because of the repression I was facing. And what my comrades told me were like, you have to be in as many spaces as possible, associate with as many people as possible. The more we are all constantly doing that and showing up with each other and building a united front, the harder it is to, you know, pick us off. And I think the erasure of Casey Gunin is another good example of like this perfect victim phenomenon. Casey is white and they're a PhD grad, but they are not a perfect victim because they were doing militancy. I mean, they've pled guilty to it now. They were charged for the most escalated actions during the student intifada. They were doing arsons in the Bay Area, targeting police cars, and they struck a plea deal and in this month they are going to be sentenced to federal

prison with terrorism enhancement. So they are the only political prisoner of the student intifada, I mean, in terms of like criminal charges, not people being detained in deportation facilities, although those are also political prisoners. But my point being Casey is probably going to be in prison for a while or they're going to get a long sentence and their name is not known by most people in the movement. They are not mentioned at our rallies. There aren't widespread events to get them support or to send them letters or to help fundraisers for their legal defense.

And so all this repression happening now, I truly think we would be more resilient to it if we had been developing a more serious counter-repression framework when all the repression that was already coming at us was going down. Biden set the stage for all of this. Whether it was the Stop Cop City cases, whether it was banning Africa Stream, charging the Uhuru 3, our case, Casey's case.

Biden really set the stage for it and I think our movement has to be self-critical about how we haven't always shown up for people facing the brunt of the repression and at times have even thrown them under the bus. And if we look at Palestine and how prisoners are a compass of the movement there, we can see a model for our movement here. And I'm not just talking about Casey. I mean, there are hundreds of political prisoners from the revolutionary underground of the 60s and 70s and 80s. There are dozens and dozens of political prisoners from the George Floyd uprising five years ago, and most of us don't know their names. And so what I want to emphasize, though, is we need to defend

people when they are facing repression. And in our defenses, we can't throw militants under the bus. I think there's been, especially with the student intifada, kind of a discursive battle over what it was. And there are some people who want it to be portrayed as this, like we were all making friendship bracelets and holding hands and singing songs on the grass, rather than we were resisting the police. That's why the students in Gaza coined

this name, the student intifada, and honored the students of the US with that term is because it wasn't intifada. There was resistance, and we cannot erase that. AC Yeah, I appreciate you bringing up all of that, especially really emphasizing and underscoring the fact that the repression began under the Democrats. I think it's really easy to get caught up. And I mean, it makes sense. Like you said, what's happening right now is an escalation in many ways, and it's really scary,

or at least it's an escalation in different directions. But I think it was Mama Dutal who actually said that the Democrats painted the target on activists backs and now it's the Republicans who are sort of firing the arrows and there were quite a few arrows being fired last year in the years before as well as you clearly know, but I really appreciate you bringing in that dimension. This is probably fairly obvious to many of our listeners, especially anybody who's listened to the Palestine series that we really dove into last year and a little bit so far at the beginning of this year.

But I'm very curious to know from your perspective why you believe Palestine is such an important focal point for activism here in the United States. I know you mentioned that it was one of the causes of you sort of escalating your activism work and it kind of helped you change directions a little bit in your trajectory as an activist. And so why is Palestine a crucial issue for us to stand up for in the United States and to stand up against the joint Israeli-US genocide here in the United States? I think Palestine exposes the brutality and bloodthirst of the entire imperialist world order. I love the quote from Max Ayl where he says Palestine crystallizes all the world's contradictions because it really does. I think,

especially for those of us in the so-called United States. Palestine is a focal point for activism here because we live in Israel. We live in an Israel 500 years later that is far bigger and far more expansive. There is still, despite much greater consciousness of the Palestinian cause and what Zionism is, there is still this pervasive misunderstanding that the Zionist entity controls the US and not the other way around. It is the other way around. The US controls the Zionist entity. There is one imperialism and it is US led imperialism and Zionism is an appendage of that. And so I think why Palestine, since the Al-Aqsa flood especially, has just heightened consciousness so much and advanced the movement so much.

I mean, we've been through, it feels like so many different stages of realignment within the movement since October 7th at this point. But it's because of the question of settler colonialism in the US. And if we understand what is happening in Palestine, then we understand what is happening here. And we understand what our role is here, which is to resist. I hear people on the US left all the time mock the Zionist

settler protests in Tel Aviv for being futile, which they are. But my question is, why aren't we applying that same analysis here? Because we are also settlers on stolen land and the US is committing far more genocides around the world than just in Palestine, unfortunately. And so I think it calls into question the entire existence of the United States and our role as people within to help bring about its downfall. our role as people within to help bring about its downfall. And I think people support the Palestinian resistance, but they don't necessarily want to talk about our role of resistance here. And none of our support for the Palestinian resistance

matters if we aren't building our own popular cradle of resistance, if we aren't raising our own fight here. And I think a lot of that comes back to the policing question and why our confrontations with the police and with state repression really drove Pall Action US to its end, but also kind of broke us out of this framework that we've been trying to apply in the U.S. We expanded far beyond Palestine. You know, we started talking about Cop City and all these other targets that we saw

as more viable targets here. And it's because we were understanding the police as this domestic occupying force of the black colony and the indigenous colonies within the U.S. and our role to play in the national liberation struggles here. So, I mean, more specifically than just Palestine is putting the question of armed resistance back on the table, it's putting the national question back on the table, and that includes here. And I think historically what revolution has looked like in the US, it has been a unity of the vanguards of these national liberation struggles and also some of the traitors to

the settler nation that have joined with them, whether we're talking about the Underground Railroad in the 1800s, or whether we're talking about the revolutionary underground of the 60s and 70s and 80s, there is a historical through line for what revolution looks like here in the U.S. And I mean, in the 60s and 70 70s and 80s there were all these armed guerrilla groups, the Black Liberation Army that came out of the Black Panthers, the M-19 communist movement that came out of the Weather Underground, the United Freedom Front, the George Jackson Brigade, the armed liberation forces for Puerto Rico, the American Indian movement, and other countries too, but all these groups were working together to open up a front here against US Empire and to play our role

of destroying it from within and from liberating the colonies inside of the US, which inherently means the destruction of the US as we know it and the creation of something new. And all that goes to say is I'm proud of everything we did with Palaction US and Palaction UK has, of course, gone on for many more years and achieved far more material victories than we did in the five weeks or so that we existed. And Palaction has pushed the ceiling higher for tactics in the Palestine Solidarity Movement. It shows we don't only have to march or lobby Congress that we can also take direct action

and sabotage the military industrial complex and build out clandestine networks and infrastructure. Palaction has raised the ceiling tactically, but it is not the ceiling in itself. People's war is the ceiling. And historically, armed guerrilla groups in the Imperial Corps were doing joint military operations with the PFLLP and other Palestinian groups. So we can't put a ceiling on the tactics we are willing to uptake for our collective liberation. And understanding what tactics are necessary for victory is not the same as saying we have to do that tomorrow.

And I think that's a mistake we made is, you know, trying to get people to do escalated action well before they were ready for it. But even if we aren't taking up militancy or starting guerrilla warfare tomorrow, militancy is a political framework and we can still be building towards militancy and creating our capacity for higher levels of resistance through developing militant political

lines, through supporting people facing repression, through going on the offensive with our counter repression strategies, and by refusing to let the state divide us into good and bad protesters. That's all really, really important. And Palestine is the tip of the spear against US imperialism. But it is not going to defeat US imperialism alone. It is going to be because fronts will have opened up against US imperialism all around the world, including here.

You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Kala Walsh, an anti-imperialist organizer and activist who was part of the Merrimack Four, a group of activists who faced severe state repression in response to an action organized by Palestine Action US against an Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Scary Hours for the intermission music. The cover art for today's episode is a photo taken by Mayn Hamad and published in Mondo

Weiss's piece, The Case Against the Merrimack 3 is an attack on the Palestine movement as a whole. Upstream Theme Music was composed by Robert. Upstream is almost entirely listener-funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes,

along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Sign up and find out more at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. And if Patreon is not really your thing, you can also make a tax deductible, recurring or one time donation on our website, upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Through the support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping keep this whole project going. Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And for more from us, visit UpstreamPodcast.org and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, Threads, and Facebook for updates and post-capitalist memes at Upstream Podcast.

You can also subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And if you like what you hear, please give us a five star rating and review. This really helps get Upstream in front of more eyes and into more ears. Thank you. You