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Direct action is a strategy that has been utilized for a very, very long time by the left, as a way to achieve their goals— from all tendencies: anarchists, socialists, to communists. Direct action can take a wide variety of forms, from the forest protectors doing tree sit-ins in Atlanta’s Weelaunee forest as part of the Stop Cop City movement, to residents of the Bay Area congregating early in the morning at the port of Oakland to stop a boat carrying weapons for Israel from leaving the dock.

From climate change to police brutality to Indigenous resistance against pipeline companies, direct action has been used over and over to stand up to individuals, institutions, and state actors of all sorts. In this Patreon episode, we’re going to take a deep dive into direct action, focusing on how this strategy has been deployed here in the U.S. and in the U.K. in the context of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people.

Max Geller is a public-facing member of Palestine Action in the UK who has been working with Palestine Action for about three and a half years, and has been doing pro-Palestine, anti-zionist work for many years with organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the National Students for Justice in Palestine Steering Committee, and with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, or BDS, movement.

In this conversation we explore the work that Palestine Action is doing both in the U.K. and in the United States, we talk about direct action as a strategy and compare it to some other forms of action, we talk about some of the repression that activists have been facing—particularly here in the U.S. where anti-protest laws are beginning to become more and more common, we talk about Elbit Systems—which Palestine Action has targeted due to their prominent role in supplying weapons to Israel, and we explore Israel’s role as a major arms exporter to the rest of the world.

Further Resources:

• Palestine Action