Category: Articles

By kp

Steve a.k.a. “Jake the Snake” was a people-booster within the radical scene — his focus was on the accomplishments, talents and needs of others over himself. Active in numerous liberation movements over 50 years, he loved dancing, loud flamboyant clothes and hats, and the diverse culture of the Bay Area. He loved his friends, and he let them know. He died May 12, 2024. 

Steve was born in in 1940 in Utica, New York. He was an agitator and a self-described jock from an early age, playing basketball and baseball, and becoming a championship golfer. He got his political education as a teenager from his Uncle Bill, a socialist and a writer. Bill had a vast library of political and philosophical writings, inspiring Steve to visit Cuba to see a “classless society,” and traveled in Central America for months at a time.

Steve moved to Los Aneles in 1964, going to Hollywood parties with Uncle Bill where he ended up teaching some of the stars and political activists golf skills. Steve was very proud of this.

When Steve moved to the Bay Area around 1968, he studied Buddhism and along with his then-wife Florence started a Tibetan Buddhist Center in Santa Monica, and then in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Becoming familiar with the Free Speech Movement and getting to know Mario Savio pulled him into activism. But first came extensive travel, inspired by Keruac’s “On the Road,” all around the US, and then extended stays in a Mayan village in Chiapas, where he developed his affinity, respect, and love for Indigenous people in the Americas.

In the late 80’s, Steve got involved with Earth First!, becoming a videographer, documenting speeches, actions and demonstrations in the Bay Area and Northern California. He rallied support for Earth First!ers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, targets of a nearly lethal bomb attack in 1990. He supported their lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police for violation of Constitutional rights when it finally came to trial in 2002 and won an activist victory over the FBI. 

Steve volunteered with the International Indian Treaty Council, and became involved with a group representing Indigenous people of South America — Aby Yala — and filmed visiting tribal leaders from Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. 

Subsequently, Steve was active in the Occupy Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and several groups organizing against racist police brutality — including the Mario Woods Committee and the Oscar Grant Committee. He participated in support and actions for families who lost loved ones to police violence.

Steve always credited his interactions with Indigenous people and learning about earth-based spirituality and traditions for shaping his activism, sensibilities and ethics, values he held and acted on until the end.

Steve Jacobson 1940 – 2024

By kp

Steve a.k.a. “Jake the Snake” was a people-booster within the radical scene — his focus was on the accomplishments, talents and needs of others over himself. Active in numerous liberation movements over 50 years, he loved dancing, loud flamboyant clothes and hats, and the diverse culture of the Bay Area. He loved his friends, and he let them know. He died May 12, 2024. 

Steve was born in in 1940 in Utica, New York. He was an agitator and a self-described jock from an early age, playing basketball and baseball, and becoming a championship golfer. He got his political education as a teenager from his Uncle Bill, a socialist and a writer. Bill had a vast library of political and philosophical writings, inspiring Steve to visit Cuba to see a “classless society,” and traveled in Central America for months at a time.

Steve moved to Los Aneles in 1964, going to Hollywood parties with Uncle Bill where he ended up teaching some of the stars and political activists golf skills. Steve was very proud of this.

When Steve moved to the Bay Area around 1968, he studied Buddhism and along with his then-wife Florence started a Tibetan Buddhist Center in Santa Monica, and then in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Becoming familiar with the Free Speech Movement and getting to know Mario Savio pulled him into activism. But first came extensive travel, inspired by Keruac’s “On the Road,” all around the US, and then extended stays in a Mayan village in Chiapas, where he developed his affinity, respect, and love for Indigenous people in the Americas.

In the late 80’s, Steve got involved with Earth First!, becoming a videographer, documenting speeches, actions and demonstrations in the Bay Area and Northern California. He rallied support for Earth First!ers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, targets of a nearly lethal bomb attack in 1990. He supported their lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police for violation of Constitutional rights when it finally came to trial in 2002 and won an activist victory over the FBI. 

Steve volunteered with the International Indian Treaty Council, and became involved with a group representing Indigenous people of South America — Aby Yala — and filmed visiting tribal leaders from Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. 

Subsequently, Steve was active in the Occupy Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and several groups organizing against racist police brutality — including the Mario Woods Committee and the Oscar Grant Committee. He participated in support and actions for families who lost loved ones to police violence.

Steve always credited his interactions with Indigenous people and learning about earth-based spirituality and traditions for shaping his activism, sensibilities and ethics, values he held and acted on until the end.

Steve Jacobson 1940 – 2024

By kp

Steve a.k.a. “Jake the Snake” was a people-booster within the radical scene — his focus was on the accomplishments, talents and needs of others over himself. Active in numerous liberation movements over 50 years, he loved dancing, loud flamboyant clothes and hats, and the diverse culture of the Bay Area. He loved his friends, and he let them know. He died May 12, 2024. 

Steve was born in in 1940 in Utica, New York. He was an agitator and a self-described jock from an early age, playing basketball and baseball, and becoming a championship golfer. He got his political education as a teenager from his Uncle Bill, a socialist and a writer. Bill had a vast library of political and philosophical writings, inspiring Steve to visit Cuba to see a “classless society,” and traveled in Central America for months at a time.

Steve moved to Los Aneles in 1964, going to Hollywood parties with Uncle Bill where he ended up teaching some of the stars and political activists golf skills. Steve was very proud of this.

When Steve moved to the Bay Area around 1968, he studied Buddhism and along with his then-wife Florence started a Tibetan Buddhist Center in Santa Monica, and then in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Becoming familiar with the Free Speech Movement and getting to know Mario Savio pulled him into activism. But first came extensive travel, inspired by Keruac’s “On the Road,” all around the US, and then extended stays in a Mayan village in Chiapas, where he developed his affinity, respect, and love for Indigenous people in the Americas.

In the late 80’s, Steve got involved with Earth First!, becoming a videographer, documenting speeches, actions and demonstrations in the Bay Area and Northern California. He rallied support for Earth First!ers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, targets of a nearly lethal bomb attack in 1990. He supported their lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police for violation of Constitutional rights when it finally came to trial in 2002 and won an activist victory over the FBI. 

Steve volunteered with the International Indian Treaty Council, and became involved with a group representing Indigenous people of South America — Aby Yala — and filmed visiting tribal leaders from Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. 

Subsequently, Steve was active in the Occupy Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and several groups organizing against racist police brutality — including the Mario Woods Committee and the Oscar Grant Committee. He participated in support and actions for families who lost loved ones to police violence.

Steve always credited his interactions with Indigenous people and learning about earth-based spirituality and traditions for shaping his activism, sensibilities and ethics, values he held and acted on until the end.

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By kp

Steve a.k.a. “Jake the Snake” was a people-booster within the radical scene — his focus was on the accomplishments, talents and needs of others over himself. Active in numerous liberation movements over 50 years, he loved dancing, loud flamboyant clothes and hats, and the diverse culture of the Bay Area. He loved his friends, and he let them know. He died May 12, 2024. 

Steve was born in in 1940 in Utica, New York. He was an agitator and a self-described jock from an early age, playing basketball and baseball, and becoming a championship golfer. He got his political education as a teenager from his Uncle Bill, a socialist and a writer. Bill had a vast library of political and philosophical writings, inspiring Steve to visit Cuba to see a “classless society,” and traveled in Central America for months at a time.

Steve moved to Los Aneles in 1964, going to Hollywood parties with Uncle Bill where he ended up teaching some of the stars and political activists golf skills. Steve was very proud of this.

When Steve moved to the Bay Area around 1968, he studied Buddhism and along with his then-wife Florence started a Tibetan Buddhist Center in Santa Monica, and then in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Becoming familiar with the Free Speech Movement and getting to know Mario Savio pulled him into activism. But first came extensive travel, inspired by Keruac’s “On the Road,” all around the US, and then extended stays in a Mayan village in Chiapas, where he developed his affinity, respect, and love for Indigenous people in the Americas.

In the late 80’s, Steve got involved with Earth First!, becoming a videographer, documenting speeches, actions and demonstrations in the Bay Area and Northern California. He rallied support for Earth First!ers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, targets of a nearly lethal bomb attack in 1990. He supported their lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police for violation of Constitutional rights when it finally came to trial in 2002 and won an activist victory over the FBI. 

Steve volunteered with the International Indian Treaty Council, and became involved with a group representing Indigenous people of South America — Aby Yala — and filmed visiting tribal leaders from Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. 

Subsequently, Steve was active in the Occupy Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and several groups organizing against racist police brutality — including the Mario Woods Committee and the Oscar Grant Committee. He participated in support and actions for families who lost loved ones to police violence.

Steve always credited his interactions with Indigenous people and learning about earth-based spirituality and traditions for shaping his activism, sensibilities and ethics, values he held and acted on until the end.

By dress wedding

The world and our Bay Area anarchist community lost the feisty and wondrous Dean Tuckerman on May 30, 2024. Born in Philadelphia on March 28, 1952, his mother imparted to him that he should think highly of himself, despite his challenges with cerebral palsy, and not take shit from anyone. Dean moved to New York City in the early 1970’s to join the Yippie! (Youth International Party) at the infamous Bleecker Street household. He installed himself as the greeter, helping new comrades figure out how to help the cause or find their way around town. He was assigned to attaining permits for events, as his inimitable and persistent style left typical bureaucrats racing to find a way to get him out of their offices quickly. He helped organize many Yippie! marijuana smoke-ins on the White House lawn in Washington DC. According to his long-time friend Mitchell Halberstadt, Dean was one of most emotionally and spiritually strong people he ever knew. 

Dean provided decades of legal support, as a contact and a paralegal, whether he himself was in or out of jail. This applied both to political cases and to marijuana cases. He attended numerous National Lawyers Guild national conferences and was likely a member.

When he first arrived on the West Coast in the early 80’s, Dean lived in a variety of SROs in the Tenderloin and the East Bay. After getting his own apartment near Ashby BART, Dean let numerous friends and comrades crash in his living room, some for months at a time. He was a fixture at the Long Haul and at every sort of anarchist and gay political action in the Bay Area. 

Around 2012, he moved to Bellingham to be near his close friend, “movement” attorney Larry Hildes and his wife Karen. Karen died of a brain tumor in 2019, and Larry died a year or two later of congestive heart failure. That left Dean fairly isolated in WA state, living in a studio apartment in a high-rise for seniors and disabled people.

Dean came to the Bay Area last April for the Folsom Street Fair and the Anarchist Book Fair. Finding himself stumbling, he tried to get admitted to SF General Hospital but was turned away. After he fell and hurt himself, he was brought to UCSF in an ambulance and admitted with no real diagnosis and fairly comatose. After weeks of little improvement, the State of California shirked the costly medical expense by having him flown back to Seattle, where he remained in a hospital, away from his community and friends, until his death. 

Presente Dean Tuckerman

What is Remembered Lives!

By Hazel Uber Kellogg

I’ll call it a balmy Berkeley day at the end of August. Balmy like the gentle heat that makes every inch of skin bead with sweat like ointment you can’t get off, balmed but not sweltering. Of course the day was populated with many San Franciscan visitors and companions who weren’t used to making such a distinction, reminding me of my cloud-deprived envy. But for now let’s just say it was balmy during the two-day retreat for student organizers planning their next steps in the fight for a free Palestine and an end to U.S. aid for the genocide.

The first day I arrived late, during lunch and the busy ingestion of lamb and falafel wraps. Those who finished first were in a hurry to roll their own cigarettes. As the day’s trainings and workshops progressed I was impressed by their commitment to smoking at every one of the frequent 15 minute breaks, which were necessary to fight the creeping fatigue of summer afternoons.

It is difficult to describe what happened those two days. In part, because the emotions and the energy of the retreat encompass several competing truths, none of which are overtaken or undermined by the others. On the one hand, gathering as we did was certainly exciting, revelatory even: the distant sparks of more than half a dozen bay area campuses coming together to turn on the light of resistance. I can’t possibly overstate the feeling that permeated the space, that also hung over the encampments last spring. I think I’ll call it purpose, the only thing that could convince so many people to abandon the routines they try so hard to establish just to bash their heads against the wall of an institution that maintains at every level that it is not culpable nor responsible for such “foreign affairs.” At the same time, the retreat consisted of about 18 hours of near continuous exertion, in the heat of the summer and, for many, amidst the frenzy of the opening weeks of school. Between the teeth of wide smiles one could clearly see the wedge of a somber reality: to meet in this way is work. It is not, however, the work of our everyday, to please or satiate the owners of property we all seem inescapably indebted to. It is not the work of wages or hours. It is work of many lifetimes. And you could feel that fact, you could feel the dead scrambling for seats all the way up the walls, our posthumous audience of martyrs and innocents, organizers and agitators — all pretending to hold their ghostly breath, I’m sure — watching us, waiting to see what we can build with the scraps of dreams and poetry they left behind.

The Palestinian Youth Movement grounds us, the world is waiting to see what its students will do. Students are those who study, right? We have combed history, delegates from every school report, hinting at progress from their summer intensives. We all read Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie. Snippets from SNCC appear on the projector screen. The dangerous effects of the Taft-Hartley Act are considered well known, as some matters are settled by a mention of its name followed by a, “well, y’know.” Name an anti-war action from the last century, someone in the room knows about it, even though none of us were alive for it. We have only done our best to do what we have always been told, to keep learning, and never tire of it.

We need to act. Otherwise we cannot continue to learn. The encampments came from that impetus — a tactic we all knew was far from perfect. The camps stretched us to our limits, they made us squabble and lose sleep (although the Arabic aunties and uncles, among others, kept us more well-fed than most college students could ever manage for themselves, and we love them for that). The students’ actions then were surely inadvisable, but they were necessary for what is happening now. They were necessary, in order to speak as organizers involved with the struggle when before we spoke as enraged idealists. We had to act, because we felt to do nothing would be to sacrifice our humanity. What is a humanity that doesn’t keep learning?

Now, as the blur of violence contorts our sense of compassion — holding it in this interminable position of stress like collective, mental sahat al-shabeh — we are also watching the criminalization of houselessness unfolding in our state. The contrast of cold air and warm chatter around the SF civic center at night is now replaced by the wailing of sonic crowd dispersers. The students themselves are watching a new wave of austerity grip their schools with substantial cuts to departments of philosophy, ethnic studies, and art accompanying an ever-rising tuition. At USF, the music classes are being replaced by private tutors that students must pay for out-of-pocket. And departmental cuts go hand-in-hand with the tactics of repression schools are using to prevent another action like the encampments; UC schools now have a system-wide ban on facemasks. Yes, a ban on the very equipment that was mandated not three years ago to combat COVID, despite the fact that COVID is most definitely still here, still infecting people because of our unwillingness to slow or augment our status quo even slightly to allow our old, our young, and our immunocompromised to participate in society without risk of repeated infection.

All these tactics to counter the movement are not lessons, they are more like shackles. But it will not work. Because the Student Intifada understands its role is, and always was to ignite broader resistance, and a new education. This new education the students have formulated does not stay within the walls of any institution, it is public property. It is that which the “owners” of property do not understand. It is the need to live. 

That is why I cherish these sad smiles the students give me, and their tired eyes. Because they understand, or else they would be somewhere else, that what we are doing, as a nation, supporting this or any war is not living. It is not living when a portion of the love we pour into our work must go to putting bullets in the guns aimed at people we have never met. Living is when we can decide for ourselves what work is worthwhile, and not live chained to a job because it pays off that interminable debt we call rent. That is why I trust them, those now experienced idealists, when they say, with the conviction of stone along the faultline, “None of us will be free, until all of us are free.” Because like that stone they see no reason to lie flat when the world is in need of change, but plunge into the sky, immersing themselves in the work of mountains. These are the children of many nations. Above all, they are the sons and daughters America has prayed for — true patriots that do not take this country to be a succulent up on the shelf, good to look at but not to touch. They are the thoughtful ones who see the roots that are decadently rotting, who will give this country and the world fresh, fertile soil to grow in.

If you understand anything about Palestine today, you will understand that these students need your help. They will need the resources you can offer, yes, but more than that they will need your heart to go with them. They will need the wealth and openness of your mind. They will need the fire which only you can kindle in your soul. Because we will free Palestine, and that will only be the beginning of our struggle.

Start now. Talk about Palestine and talk about our country. However much you make this genocide the issue of your friends, family, and co-workers — because it should be the issue of your friends, your family, and your co-workers — talk about America too. Talk twice as much. Talk like I see these students talk: for hours on end, throwing themselves against the wall of divestment, and then go home and talk more about the situation of Congo, Sudan, the Philippines, Utah… And when you are exhausted, eat, and study, and sleep so you can wake up and do it again. Talk about the skills we have forgotten. Talk about the way our isolation from our neighbors breeds redundancy and waste. Talk about how we can begin to take back enough knowledge of the land and ourselves that we can truly begin to take care of each other. Talk about how and why and when you are going to do these things, because if you do not have an actionable plan you are not done talking, and once you’ve carried it out you’ll only have more to do. Talk so that all of us can learn how to talk well enough to cast a vote in a world-wide conversation about what system we truly want to live by.

And then wake up, and do it again. There will be a strike soon. Don’t scab.

By Sirkka and Antonio 

You’ve likely heard the phrase ‘economic growth.’ It’s possible you might even understand it to be, generally, a good thing – if a bit abstract. It seems to have some correlation with the popularity of current political leaders, or something… the rent is still too high, though, and, man, groceries are so expensive these days! Wait, what is economic growth again? 

Well, as it turns out, economic growth – a buzzword that seems to be taken for granted as ‘good’ and ‘correct’ by both blue and red professional politicians – is a bad deal for most of the people of the world. [Don’t just take our word for it: see the resource list at the end of this article.] But we are in luck! There is an emerging framework and movement that explicitly critiques and condemns the cult of infinite growth: this is the idea of degrowth.

‘Degrowth’ is a term that is gaining traction in certain academic and economic policy circles, but the usefulness of the degrowth framework transcends these somewhat insular conversations. Degrowth is both an economic framework which challenges the idea of infinite growth, and also a critique of the ways of lifeencouraged by growth-obsessed capitalism – as such, it presents an opportunity for each of us to reflect and, perhaps, feel empowered to live differently. 

Those in favor of degrowth seek to challenge the notion that economic growth (basically defined as an increase in the rate of production of goods and services in an economy, normally measured as “Gross Domestic Product” or GDP) is inherently positive or, frankly, necessary. Do we need more stuff always and forever? Or is there such a thing as enough? Importantly, degrowth also points to the way that the enrichment of wealthy countries (as evidenced in such countries’ GDP) historically and today is the result of a capitalist-colonial pillaging of the world’s resources and the deliberate impoverishment of the global South. Degrowth is also, ultimately, an ecological critique. It points out that a frenzied pursuit of infinite growth isn’t a sane approach to sustaining life on a finite planet. In fact, this logic of ever-increasing extraction in the name of profit has directly caused the ecological crises we are now experiencing. Human society, if it is to be sustainable, needs to exist within the material limits of the biosphere. 

Building upon these critiques, the degrowth perspective argues that we must reject economic “growth” as a societal goal and think differently about measuring the health of an economy. Further, we must address the inequalities created by historic and contemporary imperialism. In the face of an evident ecological crisis, with the many social and political crises that it spawns, degrowth helps us chart a path forward that actually takes the history of colonial inequality into consideration – that assesses the root of the problem. It is an analysis of the environmental crisis that brings capitalism and imperialism into the crosshairs.

Wealthy countries in the global North, such as the so-called united states, have contributed the most to the climate crisis and environmental degradation and owe a debt to the global South. Calls for debt repayment have been made for decades by movements and scholars of the South, from Guyanese activist Walter Rodney calling out Europe’s “underdevelopment” of Africa, to the 2010 “Cochabamba agreement,” an assertion of climate justice that emerged as the result of 30,000 people from over 100 countries taking part in the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. 

Degrowth is one way to conceptualize the payment of that debt. By degrowing the harmful parts of its own economies, while providing funding, technologies, and other resources to the South as reparations or repayment of that debt, the North can free up ‘ecological space’ so that countries in the global South can adequately respond to the climate crisis. This may look like a self-directed infrastructural, economic, and cultural development to adapt to this new ‘normal.’ 

While some may advocate for this shift through existing policy avenues, we believe, at this point, it would require an end to the u.s. war machine and the economic domination that it upholds. Truthfully, a tall order. But given what we’ve been seeing with the u.s.-israel genocide in Gaza – a deadly demonstration of the u.s.’s stranglehold on global politics – we need to fucking end the u.s. war machine. It is realistically a safer bet for life on earth than waiting for change to come through electoralism or minor policy reforms. Now is not the time to languish within the ‘politically feasible,’ as dictated by our capitalist overlords. 

While the ‘ecological debt’ aspect of degrowth might feel systemic and global, the solutions that degrowth offers at the local scale to reorient economic activity away from extraction and treadmills of consumption are also communal, grassroots, and in many ways anarchistic in orientation. As readers of Slingshot, you are likely already familiar with some of these practices. For instance, degrowth proposes worker cooperatives, urban farming, “sharing” (or “library”) economies, and other things that anarchists already participate in, as a way to slow down commodity-consumption and rethink our economic priorities. 

But what, ultimately, is the economy? It can feel so abstract, but Movement Generation’s “Just Transition” zine provides this grounded definition: “eco” comes from the Greek word oikos meaning home, so “eco-nomy,” they write, “means management of home. How we organize our relationships in a place, ideally, to take care of the place and each other. But “management of home” can be good or bad, depending on how you do it and to what ends. The purpose of our economy could be turning land, life and labor into property for a few, or returning land, life and labor into a balanced web of stable relationships.”¹

We wonder: what would life look like in a degrowth world? How can we imagine our economy differently? How could we tend to our “home” and manage our “resources”? Those in favor of growth-based economics would argue that degrowth would mean a life of sacrifice and self-denial. This is a very unimaginative view, and is based first of all on ignoring the fact that existing wealth and resources are currently hoarded by those at the top, so economic growth doesn’t inherently mean growth for you. But the view also relies on the fallacy that infinite material affluence (more stuff) means infinite happiness, when we know that, past the point of comfortably meeting your life needs, money and happiness decouple. (This has been studied extensively since it was first discussed in the 1970s, for more information look up the “Easterlin Paradox.”²) You don’t need to be an economist or a policy-maker to be knowledgeable about degrowth, or to take action in alignment with this philosophy. If you do things like garden, share meals with friends, dumpster dive, borrow things from the library, host clothing swaps, commute via bike, or even buy furniture secondhand, what you are practicing is part of a degrowth world. Even further, if you suspect that the point of your existence isn’t to work a random job, but instead to pursue a meaningful connection to your community, or get to know the ecological network you live within, or even to have enough time to develop your craft or vocation… degrowth might provide an economic framework to support you in that endeavor. 

As this essay hopefully illustrates, degrowth is a theoretical insight that is encouragingly disruptive. But, ultimately, degrowth has its basis in a fairly common-sense idea: that the endless accumulation of commodity-products isn’t the best or most fulfilling way to live a life. And it reminds us that (at the societal scale) economies don’t necessarily need to be set up in a way that encourages corporations to maximize profit, undercut workers, and destroy the environment. Perhaps most importantly, it suggests that we can act now and in many small ways to build a degrowth world, even if that world’s full achievement would also require a larger social revolution. Let’s try for both!

Resources:

• Article: “Degrowth is Anti-Capitalist” by Nishikant Sheorey, in Protean Magazine
• Book: “The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism” by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan and Andrea Vetter
• Book: “Slow Down” by Kohei Saito

1 movementgeneration.org/justtransition/

2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox

The end of rape is the end of empire
By Y. Cessna

Here in the imperial core, the cascading circumstances of world imbalance ask of us not to turn away. We must, as a point of beginning, bear witness. As such, this piece does include descriptions of acts of sexual violence.

It’s been circling in my head for a long while, I’m pulling down the words. What I choose to place here will be incomplete. Perhaps like many of us, I have read some of the reports of sexual abuse emerging from survivors in Palestine, particularly those outpouring from detention sites, and I am reminded of the necessary work that awaits the movement to end sexual violence. This piece aims to examine how sexual violence is woven into the logic of empire and genocide in the occupation of Palestine, and pose a call that echoes that which has endured throughout resistance movements in and outside of Palestine: to envision the end of rape, we must envision the end of empire itself. 

Sexual violence has emerged as one of the focal points of the morality politics of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. As news cycles place sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women and girls on October 7th above the fold, heads of state in Israel and the United States alike have pointed to these acts to garner support for armed retaliation against Palestinians. Widespread reports of acts of sexual violence committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian men, women, and children, however, have received asymmetrical attention in the media. 

Andrea Smith perhaps phrased it best. Colonialism “is itself structured by the logic of sexual violence.”¹ The history of rape is intertwined with the history of colonization; this understanding has been obscured by its characterization in the antirape and public feminist movements. Dominant discussions of rape, particularly those in the US, which exports its feminisms worldwide (a la “#MeToo”), typically center discussion of rape as an act of the interpersonal, as the realization of patriarchy’s most extreme possibility. Solutions to harm usually turn around a carceral feminist call for rapists to be locked behind bars, a line of thought that falls in line with long-held understandings of rape in a criminal-legal framework. From a historical perspective, rape, for the most part, for most of recorded time, has existed in a legal context; some of the earliest surviving written laws contend with what punishment awaits should an act of rape occur. Such analysis is incapable of contending with the central relationship between rape as a tool of war, as a tool of genocide, as such acts rarely enter the courtroom.

Militaries across context, across time have historically considered rape as a legitimate consequence of war.² One of the first major examinations of rape to gain mainstream attention that dealt in part with this was Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 book Against Our Will, which for our purposes here has two useful takeaways: rape was first conceived in the criminal-legal context as a property crime, usually against the survivor’s father; and rape has long been a tool of warfare that typically escapes documentation but has been regarded as a necessary byproduct of conflict, an act of aggression from the “winning” side against women.³ Angela Davis, in Women, Race, and Class, pushes beyond the limitations of Brownmiller’s work, which has long been critiqued as racist and essentialist, to draw connections between militarized conflict, perceived racial inferiority, and the situating of the rape of women on the other side of conflict as a “necessary military duty.”⁴ It was the U.S. military’s “unwritten policy” to impose a systematic campaign of rape, as rape represented an “extremely effective weapon of mass terrorism.”⁵ Increasingly, rape during armed conflict is understood not as a consequence of war but as a deliberate military strategy.⁶

The question of sexual violence in armed conflict is one that tangles threads of national identity, conceptualizations of property, and enforced ideas of gender forged through the legacies of settler colonialism. But more than one of the mere “spoils” of war, rape is a tool of genocide, and has been deployed as such in countless campaigns of elimination. Sexual violence is employed as an instrument of terror as part of the forced dispossession of lands, as a tactic of abuse against civilians of all genders, and further as an act meant to limit the reproductive potential of a particular group of people, all hallmarks of a deliberate operation of destruction aimed at a particular group of people.⁷ As stated by Palestinian scholar and advocate Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who this year was arrested by the Israeli police for her public condemnation of the ongoing genocide, “our efforts — as feminist activists and as global and local activists — must begin with an examination of global, imperialist, economic power.”⁸

Decades before the state of Israel was founded, Palestinians organized an “overt and explicit” movement of resistance that continues to this day.⁹ When considering the history of anti-rape and sexual violence response work in Palestine, an examination that too deserves a much more spacious examination than provided here, such advocacy has often been tied to women’s movements in some way, which in Palestine date back to at least 1929.¹⁰ While historians differ on exact timelines, national liberation and social liberation have been an intertwined force within the Palestinian women’s movement and anti-rape and sexual violence response work for decades, with organizers pushing for the understanding that the women’s and feminist movements “could not stress national liberation while divorcing it from social liberation.”¹¹ The movement began to more openly deal with sexual abuse beginning in the late 1980s, with more resources routed to support and document instances of sexual violence against Palestinians; the first crisis line to support Palestnian survivors of sexual violence, the Al-Aman hotline, was started by Palestinian women in 1994.¹² While anti-rape work extends beyond the lens of gender to encompass an anti-violence framework, it is crucial to recognize the ongoing legacies of resistance, both within and external to the women’s movement, that have shaped active struggle against the Israeli occupation.

[CW: the following paragraphs contain descriptions of graphic violence.]

The Israeli military has waged a continuing campaign of sexual violence as part of the colonization of Palestine since the Nakba in 1948. David Ben-Gurion, one of the founding leaders of the state of Israel, called for the rape of Palestinian women and girls as part of the process of colonization, and documented such acts by Zionist paramilitaries in his diaries.¹³ The archive corroborates such acts of violence. An eyewitness to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9th, 1948 later reported that “women were raped before the eyes of their children before being murdered and dumped down the well;” Zionist paramilitaries shot a pregnant woman and ripped her unborn baby from her womb with a butcher’s knife.¹⁴ An investigation spearheaded by the British concluded that at Deir Yassin “sexual atrocities” were commonplace during the process of ethnic cleansing, documenting that “many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered.”¹⁵

Many such acts have been documented by Israeli soldiers themselves, though these records are beginning to disappear from state archives as the state of Israel seeks to minimize evidence of the Nakba.¹⁶ Such documents persist, such as this unmarked, undated excerpt that describes the Safsaf massacre, which took place on October 29th, 1948. 52 men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. 10 were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape, one east of from Safed, girl of 14, 4 men shot and killed. From one they cut off his fingers with a knife to take the ring.

The above are fragments of what was a systematic deployment of sexual violence during the Nakba; rape and the threat of rape were used to dispossess indigenous inhabitants of their homelands and contributed to the mass killings and forced exodus of Palestinians in the years surrounding 1948.

In the decades since, the campaign of sexual violence has been unceasing. There exist extensive oral history archives that document a continuing deployment of sexual violence.¹⁷ Israeli soldiers during and after the First Intifada (1987-1993) used rape or the threat of rape to extract “security information” from Palestinian women, a process that has been named Isqat, the “downfall.”¹⁸ Such abuses exist in all corners of the occupation, from checkpoints to house raids to jail visitations to detention sites, and have prompted Palestinians to orchestrate networks of care in response, including crisis lines and shelters to support survivors of sexual abuse. In the commonplace practice of detaining Palestinians, particularly Palestinian men, the Israeli state regularly subjects detainees to a systematic campaign of sexual abuse and humiliation, a practice that stretches back decades.¹⁹As hundreds of Palestinian children are imprisoned in Israeli detention centers, a 2014 report estimated that nearly 40% are thought to experience sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli authorities, with many forced to strip naked while detained.²⁰ At the Moscovia Detention Centre in West Jerusalem, reports emerged that in 2018 an Israeli guard raped a 15 year-old boy with an object before interrogating him for four hours.²¹

In the past year, in the Sde Teiman military base, where thousands of Gazans have been imprisoned, detainees have reported repeated sexual abuse at the hands of prison guards. A group of nine Israeli soldiers raped a Palestinian man, as shown in security footage that circulated in August 2024; another video circulated of a rabbi blessing one of the same Israeli soldiers involved in the group rape. The detainee was hospitalized with lung damage and ruptured bowels, among other injuries.²² Sexual abuse is part of a systematic campaign of violence in sites of detention; at Sde Teiman alone, Palestinians detainees have reported that Israeli soldiers have forced them to strip naked, grabbed and beaten their genitals, and committed anal rape and acts of group rape.²³ An unreleased UNRWA report revealed Israeli guards have raped multiple Palestinian detainees using an electrified metal pole, killing at least one man.²⁴ Such accounts are pouring out of Israeli detention sites. For just as many that have been documented, there remain countless others. 

Such violence has continually been justified as necessary for the creation and preservation of the Israeli state; to give a complete account necessitates a far larger footprint than the scope of this article. Such violence continues to be justified in those ways now. The head of the IDF’s military rabbinate, Rabbi Iyal Krim, has claimed that the Torah permits rape against non-Jewish women in times of war.²⁵ Hanoch Milwidsky, lawmaker and member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, has defended the abuses at Sde Teiman: when asked if it was legitimate to rape detainees, he responded that against the Palestinian resistance, “Yes! Everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”²⁶

Empire is empire; empire is global. The state of Israel is the largest cumulative beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, receiving more than $310 billion from the pockets of the U.S. government, the majority of such aid taking the form of US-produced weaponry and military equipment.²⁷ The United States and Israel have been in lockstep for decades, becoming more intertwined particularly after 9/11, with U.S. president Bush and Israeli prime minister Sharon publicly aligning to counter “terrorism.”²⁸ While the U.S. military and the Israeli military are distinct in many ways, namely that the U.S. military is a voluntary, professionalized force and the Israeli Defense Force is draft-based, the two entities regularly ally to train together. This enduring partnership has yielded exchange of tactics from long-range airstrikes, electronic attacks, maritime strategy, and use of force; some tactics of brutality employed by the cops in the U.S. stem directly from the IDF.^29, 30Particularly since 2022, there has been a strategic focus within U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the linchpin of U.S. military operations in southwest Asia & North Africa, to maintain the “longstanding, ironclad partnership with the IDF,” as stated by U.S. CENTCOM commander Michael Kurilla.³¹ The largest US-Israeli joint military exercise, Juniper Oak 23.2, was completed in January of 2023, with approximately 6,400 U.S. service members training together with 1,500 Israeli troops.³²

The United States and the state of Israel have a distinct but shared history of apartheid and often share logics of control. Both state apparatuses have deployed rape as a tool of genocide since their founding, and continue to enact such abuse on scales encompassing international conflict and as a cornerstone of the domestic carceral systems. The pitfalls of the movement to end sexual violence in the United States merit, and have received, separate examination; still, it is these shortcomings, namely a narrow focus on rape as an act between individuals separate from systems, omission of discussions of rape in the prison system, in which at least 200,000 inmates are sexually assaulted each year behind bars,³³ and the U.S. military, in which U.S. soldiers both rape civilians during armed conflict as well as assault their fellow servicepersons, that prevent us from mobilizing a legitimate vision of the end of such abuses on a global scale. Many have called upon the movement to expand its analysis for decades; this work only grows more pressing. 

At time of publication the Israeli state is continuing its operation of atrocity and terror at Sde Teiman with no sign of ceasing. The detention camp has drawn comparison to the horrors of Abu Ghraib during the U.S.-led genocide in Iraq, where detainees too faced a campaign of sexual violence, including forced stripping and rape, among other abuses. Too often, here in the United States, rape is considered an act between individuals separate from systems. It is this myopia that prevents the movement to end sexual violence from legitimately staking a claim into a liberatory future. As emphasized by many, to end sexual violence on a global scale we must move beyond an engrained sense of violence as only interpersonal; such thinking obscures the role of the state. Crucial is the adoption of the long-held understanding, as stated and theorized by advocates across time, across the world, in and outside of Palestine, of rape as a key tool of settler colonialism and genocide. 

As I write this, it has been 27,866 days – 76 years – of a systematic campaign of elimination waged by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. A world in which sexual violence ends (such a world must be possible, we must believe it to be so) must be in turn a world without empire.

1 Andrea Smith, “Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples,” Hypatia 18, no. 2 (2003): 70

2 Women2000, Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict: United Nations Response Published to Promote the Goals of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action (United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1998),

3 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (Simon & Schuster, 1975), 27.

4 Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (Random House, 1981), 177.

5 Davis, Women, Race and Class, 177.

6 Amnesty International, “Lives Blown Apart: Crimes Against Women in Times of Conflict,” (2004), 15.

7 Jonathan M.H. Short, “Sexual Violence as Genocide: The Developing Law of International Criminal Tribunals and the International Criminal Court,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 8, no. 503 (2003): 509-510

8 Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case-Study (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 109.

9 Ibid., 8.

10 Ellen L. Fleischmann, “The Emergence of the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1929-39,” Journal of Palestine Studies 29, no. 3 (2000), 16.

11 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence, 11.

12 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence, 71.

13 Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian et al., “Sexual Violence, Women’s Bodies, and Israeli Settler Colonialism,” Jadaliyya, November 17th, 2014

14 Ibid.

15 State of Palestine Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, “Gender Based Violence,” The Arms Trade Treaty, n.d.

16 Hagar Shezaf, “Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs,” Haaretz, July 5th, 2019.

17 See: Lynd, S., S. Bahour, and A. Lynd (eds) 1994. Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians. New York: Olive Branch.

18 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence, 15.

19 Daniel J.N. Weishut, “Sexual Torture of Palestinian Men by Israeli Authorities,” Reproductive Health Matters 23, no. 46 (2015): 71. 

20 International Middle East Media Centre, reported via Middle East Children’s Alliance, “Israel: 240 Palestinian Children ‘Sexually Abused’ in Jersualem Detention Centres, Group Claims,” December 2nd, 2014, 

21 Defense for Children International Palestine, “Israeli interrogator sexually assaults Palestinian child detainee,” February 10th, 2021.

22 Lisa Hajjar and Basil Farraj, “State Secrets and Crimes — Rape at Israel’s Sde Teiman Prison,” Middle East Research and Information Project, August 14th, 2024.

23 B’Tselem, “Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps,” B’Tselem, August 2024, 44-62.

24 Patrick Kingsley and Bilal Shbair, “Inside the Base where Israel has Detained Thousands of Gazans,” New York Times, June 6th, 2024.

25 Ferdoos Abed-Rabo Al Issa and Elizabeth Beck, “Sexual Violence as a War Weapon in Conflict Zones: Palestinian Women’s Experience Visiting Loved Ones in Prisons and Jails,” Journal of Women and Social Work (2020): 4.

26 Deborah Patta and Tucker Reals, “Israeli lawmaker defends alleged rape of Hamas prisoner as far-right protestors rage over IDF troops’ detention,” CBS News, July 30th, 2024.

27 Johnathan Masters and Will Merrow, “U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 31st, 2024.

28 U.S. Department of State, “President Bush Discusses Middle East Peace with Prime Minister Sharon,” July 29th, 2003.

29 David Vergun, “Largest U.S.-Israeli Exercise in History Concludes,” U.S. Department of Defense, January 26th, 2023.

30 Jewish Institute for National Security of America, “Law Enforcement Exchange Program Conferences,” (2009).

31 U.S. Central Command, “Press Release: U.S. Central Command Engaged with Israeli Defense Forces,” November 16th, 2022.

32 Vergun.

33 Allen J. Beck et. al, “Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011-12,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013.

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988. 

At a support rally for a prisoner friend, it feels unclear what tone to adopt. Are we getting together in joyous celebration of our comrade? To mourn their captivity? To vent anger with the state? Are we strong or are we defeated? What is the appropriate tone for solidarity? Is this part of how alienation operates; making us feel like we’re wrong to act naturally?

Many times we put these sorts of self-conscious doubts aside and aim our hearts and body to eradicate suffering; towards steady, sturdy, buoyant defiance; seeking freedom for ourselves and others. On this day, however, someone mentions that they feel like they’re at a funeral, gravely powerless over our friend’s imprisonment and potentially lifelong sentencing. How can we honor both our collective strength and solidarity as well as these heavy feelings of grief and hopelessness? We want to be present to it all.

What is the appropriate tone for solidarity? Solidarity is not expressed in affect, but in action. Solidarity is listening, unselfish. We are relentlessly discovering solidarity. We are fighting to stop the construction of cop cities. We are divesting from the nonprofit industrial complex. We are taking back our power from the consumer culture which entraps us. We are naming rape as essential to empire and empire as essential to rape. We are demanding a world without war. We are asking each other to act responsibly, even when we aren’t solely responsible. We are keeping channels of communication open even when we don’t know exactly what to say or how to act.

Finding a rebel community, figuring out where you fit it and doing your part can be transformative. Being on your own is isolating – it’s easy to be self-critical. Capitalism and its media offer consumerism and entertainment to distract you from the real questions that lead to meaning. Joining the freaks can be the difference between creating a sweaty underground festival in an abandoned train station vs. going to the mall or watching TV. Diving into DIY experiences can help change your mood from powerlessness, resignation and just floating through life to being part of something larger than yourself. Realizing your creative potential promotes a focused yet relaxed feeling of possibility, self-acceptance and knowing what your life means. It can be a self-reinforcing process – freeing your time and spirit to work on enhancing community enlarges your scene and frees those around you and yourself. 

Since our last issue, the University of California began all-out construction of a $400 million dorm upon People’s Park after the California Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed to protect the park. Construction is happening within an absurd 17 foot tall wall built out of 160 double stacked shipping containers — a massive show of force demonstrating how scared UC is of protests against the project. The struggle over the park has never just been over 2 acres of land. We maintain our demand for a city and a world that values freedom, beauty, love and the earth — not just obedience, concrete and greed. Fuck the UC and long live People’s Park. 

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers and distributors.  Even if you feel you are not an essayist, illustrator or whistleblower, you may know someone who is.  If you send an article, please be open to its editing. We are a collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Amalia, Antonio, Areden, Cytr, Donna, eggplant, Gabi, Griffin, Harlin/Hayley, Helia, Hank, Jack, Jake, Jesse, Kirsten, Lucie, Matteo, Robin, Sean, Sirkka, Soren, Sylvia & all the authors and artists! 

Slingshot Article Submission Info

We’re not going to set a deadline for the next issue. We encourage you to submit articles for the next Slingshot anytime you want. We’ll make another issue when we feel like we’re ready. Please check the Slingshot website, IndyBay, instagram and facebook for deadline info. We also have an internal email list that will announce the next deadline so please contact us if you want to be added to the list. 

Volume 1, Number 141, Circulation 24,000

Printed October 4, 2024

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