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As this episode goes live, seven people are facing felony conspiracy and false imprisonment charges–and up to fifteen years in prison–for having been among the 26 Bay Area residents who, in the early morning of April 15, 2024 (tax day), took the extraordinary step of protesting the U.S.-funded Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza on the Golden Gate Bridge. Holding a banner stating, “Stop the World for Gaza,” these courageous protesters used their bodies to block the southbound lane and in so doing disrupted business as usual in the imperial metropole. Animating a long Bay Area legacy of queer direct action, they intervened against the lethal Zionism of U.S. foreign policy after having exhausted every option available to ordinary people to halt the genocide. In this episode, we speak with two of the Golden Gate 26 (GG26), Rosita, a healthcare worker, and Jordan, a law student, alongside Oakland civil rights attorney and lifelong activist Walter Riley. We discuss what it means to organize against imperialist genocide within the belly of the beast and why–no matter what the outcome of the trial–the GG26 have prevailed over those who would repress them by unapologetically materializing solidarity with the Palestinian people, demonstrating how U.S.-funded genocide boomerangs back here, and enacting radical care for each other and the world in which we live. As is clear from the conversation, the activist community that formed in the crucible of repression, far from bowed, is more durable, tenacious, and fierce than the state violence directed against them. 

Links:

Golden Gate 26 Solidarity Committee (Instagram)

Golden Gate Defendants

Oakland People’s Arms Embargo

Stanford 11 Action Kit

Civil Rights and Structural Attacks: Conversations with Walter Riley (AK Books).