Queers Go on Trial for Protesting Gaza Genocide; and Queer Writers' Resistance

On February 2, 2024, in Louisville, KY, 14 activists were arrested for blocking the offices of munitions manufacturers Raytheon/RTX and BAE Systems due to their complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The five remaining defendants -- three of them queer -- are taking the case to trial next month to challenge the criminalization of protest. They want to lift up the idea that "it is our responsibility to take action when our government is complicit in committing war crimes and genocide." Out-FM's Bob Lederer speaks with one of the protesters, Sonja Wilde-de Vries. 
 
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Queer Writers' Resistance

Out-FM's John Riley attended and recorded several panels from this year’s Rainbow Book Fair. The Fair's theme, “Queer Resistance!,” provided an opportunity to think about how to deal with and fight back against the ongoing attacks on queer and especially trans and gender non-conforming people. Drawing on the knowledge of activists of different generations and struggles, this panel looked back on successful strategies for resistance and imagined how we build power for the future.

Samiya Bashir, poet

Samiya Bashir is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poetry maker whose work, both solo and collaborative, has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, and experienced from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome, and across the United States. Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Award’s Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Her fourth collection, I Hope this Helps, is forthcoming soon from Nightboat Books.

Ariel Friedlander, artist and activist

Ariel Friedlander is a femme dyke artist living in Brooklyn, New York. As a community organizer, she has worked within ACT UP/NY, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Gender Liberation Movement to build intersectional movements through mass mobilization and arts engagement. She is also an arts educator, drag queen, and lover of the color pink.

Lori Perkins, writer, publisher, activist

Panel moderator Lori Perkins has been a newspaper editor, literary agent, book editor, professor and author for four decades. She considers herself a “word-slinger” because words are the ammunition that we all have.  She encourages you all to use your power and fight the good fight. Perkins founded the L. Perkins Literary Agency in 1988, which she still runs, and Riverdale Avenue Books, an award-winning indie publisher 13 years ago.  She is also the author of 30 books (both fiction and nonfiction), including the just published THE BOOK OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE, which is free to download