Season 2, Episode 7: Calgary People's Assembly
with Wesam Khalid
Season 2, Episode 7, features Wesam Khaled, a long-time activist for Palestine, discussing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the broader implications for Canada amidst the 2025 election. Wesam shares his experiences with legal challenges and protests in Calgary, highlighting the systemic repression faced by Pro-Palestinian activists. The conversation also touches on the geopolitical dynamics involving the United States, China, and the Middle East, emphasizing the need for grassroots democratic movements and solidarity across various social justice causes. The episode underscores the importance of continued activism and community organizing to address global and local injustices.
Re-Introduction to Wesam and the Pro-Palestinian Leadership in Calgary
Jenny (00:05):
Welcome to the Gravity Well Podcast. I am your host, Jenny Yeremiy. Here you break down heavy ideas with me to understand their complexities and connections. Our mission is to work through dilemmas together in conversation and process us. I acknowledge that I live on the traditional territory of Treaty 7 and Metis districts 5 and 6. The treaties and self-governance agreements established by indigenous peoples were created to honour the laws of the land and maintain balance with nature by giving back and uphold reciprocal relationships. This knowledge and intention are what guide The Gravity Well conversation. I ask for genuine dialogue, real hearts, and openness to different perspectives. This is your invitation to find common ground with me.
This podcast is dedicated to the natural world, our children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and all future generations. The gravity well is on YouTube and streaming wherever you get your podcasts. Join us thegravitywall.net. Lovely to have you back, Wesam. Wesam joined me last June. We spoke with two others, Beau Shaw and Walaa Katoue, about the ongoing, now we can call it genocide in Gaza and the struggles and the leadership that you guys have both experienced and displayed in this. We’re going to expand on what’s been the story since then, and we’re going to talk about, we’re in the midst of the 2025 election, and Canada is on the line. It’s been clear that we have Canada’s at stake. There’s been suggestion of Canada being annexed by the United States, and so Palestine is still on the ballot as well.
We have not settled the genocide and ended or had a ceasefire, let’s say, in that area. And if anybody knows what’s at stake, it’s Wesam because he has been on the front lines in Calgary and has experienced some issues in terms of coming up against the law. I’m sure you could say it better than me. I’m going to stop there, and if you can just give everybody a reintroduction of yourself we saw and just outline where you’re at, just a highlight of how you see this conversation, what you’re bringing to it today. Thank you.
Wesam:
Sure. First, I’ll just say thanks so much for having me back on Jenny. It’s really important the mainstream media doesn’t talk about these issues the way that they need to be talked about, we rely on platforms like this really to get the word out to people. My name’s Wesam, I’ve been an activist on Palestine and other issues for about 15 years. I have a background in law. My training is in law. I’m a solicitor, foreign trained solicitor, most specialized in criminal defense, extradition defense, and sort of human rights related fields. And since the genocide in Gaza began in late 2023, I’ve been involved here in Calgary with organizing the regular protests against the genocide. And as you say, we’ve had quite a few run-ins with the oppressive state, which does not want us taking that kind of action to prevent Canada’s role in the genocide.
I was arrested first in November of 2023 for chanting the line from the river to the sea. Palestine will be free, which is a long standing chant that has been chanted for decades. But I was arrested for that very quickly. The charges were dropped. It was understood that it was ridiculous. Was arrested again in April of last year for leading protests that marched through the streets of Calgary. And then I was arrested a third time in September of last year after the police went to town on us, and a few other people issued about 12 tickets against folks for protest and arrested me and a couple other people. Yeah, we’ve had a rough time in Calgary and resonates with, like you said, some of what we’re seeing in the broader national and international situation. I’m sure we’ll get to that. But yeah, that’s a bit about me and where I come from here.
Jenny:
Thank you so much, Wesam. Yes. And that protest, there was video footage of it, which by the way, anybody who’s on Facebook or Instagram, apparently you need to download any live footage in the next 60 days, or it’ll be wiped from the internet. Yes, it is very important to take note of those gaps if you have them. But yeah, to me, this is all an example of the hypocrisy of the situation in terms of people being able to stand up for things that potentially are not bringing us together and bringing us in community and people that are standing up for human rights and standing up for what generally serves. All of us are suppressed by leadership that we see in Calgary and that Calgary is the, you and I spoke about this in person last time I saw you, how Calgary is the best and worst of both things. It’s the yin and yang of the situation, meaning yes, we have very strict and severe punishments for people doing this, but there’s also a lot of people willing to do it, speak out against it and lead in this space. You and I spoke about justice for Palestine, Calgary starting here, and this is a nationwide same at the Watermelon Foundation. That’s some of the ways that Calgary is leading in this fight, in the fight against these atrocities. Is that fair? Yeah.
Wesam:
Yeah. I used to be with Justice for Palestinians. They’re a Calgary based group, and they were leading the protests for many of those months. And people have a conception that Calgary is like a conservative hell whole, very right wing. That no one here is going to be doing anything of any significance around these issues. My experience has been the exact opposite. There are many people, hundreds, thousands of people really in this city who’ve shown an incredible dedication to this cause and continue to do so. Shout outs to Calgary man, dark horse of the activist scene.
Palestine on the Ballot in the 2025 Canadian Election
Jenny (06:46):
Yeah, agreed. It’s fascinating and wonderful to be a part of in solidarity with folks like you. The one benefit of this awful situation is coming together with people that are quite inspiring and working with a good heart, let’s say. Okay, who’s important in this issue in Canada? We have candidates right now. I know there’s been an active effort to question candidates with respect to their stance on Palestine. I’ve been very impressed with the NDP and Green Party stance on this issue across the board and some individual candidates that have spoken out. I don’t know if you want to highlight some of that or speak a bit about Palestine in the context of the 2025 election for us, please?
Wesam:
Yeah, sure. Well, obviously we have our unelected Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who is sort of the leading figure in the discourse here. And Palestine did become an issue in some of the leader debates that we saw. Like you said, the NDP has kind of taken the lead on being the party raising awareness about this issue. Jagmeet Singh challenged Carney directly on his refusal to use the term genocide to refer to Gaza. Carney gave a very mely mouthed response that he doesn’t want to politicize genocide as if these issues aren’t inherently political, him being a politician, very bizarre response. But there is that, to be honest, mainstream institutions, including political parties, have really for a very long time, not had much movement on this issue at all. It’s been like banging our heads against a wall. Even the NDP, I will say, is a bit slow coming to this position, very slow actually, in saying, it’s nice that he’s now doing this, but let’s talk about the last 15 months where he’s been.
That’s just the reality though with Palestine, I’m a bit skeptical about elections in general, like you say, there is a lot at stake here in this election, but at the same time, I really think that people power and what we do between elections is as important. That said, yeah, that said, it is not irrelevant. Right now, I’d point people towards things like the Vote Palestine campaign, which is a national campaign. They’ve put forward a platform. Here’s our demands on politicians and any politicians who agree to that platform are endorsed by this campaign. You can find that if you search Vote Palestine, see what candidates you have in your area.
Jenny:
Fantastic. Yeah. I’d like to, if you wouldn’t mind, just expand a bit on your knowledge of the legal situation. There’s a lot of, I would say, ignorance even on my part, on what the selection could mean we’re seeing. If you can do a comparison to where The States are going right now versus what you’re experiencing locally. I know you have some potential upcoming litigation that could be impactful in terms of the direction of the way, maybe you can expand. How do you see it being impactful? I’ll stop there. Thank you.
Wesam:
Yeah, thanks. Well, folks should know if they don’t already, that in the United States, the repression of the pro-Palestine movement has reached pretty unbelievable extremes. They are literally disappearing activists picking them up on the streets or from their homes, a very well-known case of who was one of the leaders around some of the encampment movements at Columbia. He literally was apprehended by plainclothes ice officers at his home, disappeared and remains in custody, and they’re looking at deporting him and he’s not alone. And it’s actually not just in the United States. There’s been high profile cases across Europe. There was even in Canada, Eve Engler, an activist out east, he was charged with harassment and police basically said that his activist work for Palestine was something that they were looking at, and he faced a lot of harassment from the system for that. It is scary because we’re not quite at the point of random disappearances in the streets here in Canada or Calgary yet. But if y’all stop hearing from me.
Jenny:
No kidding. Let’s keep you in the public eye.
Wesam:
I mean, what can you say? The world, this is insane stuff. We’ve never, I mean, this is fascist stuff. This is like plain clothes, people disappearing, disappearing brown folks on behalf of the state for speaking out against a genocide. And so far they’ve been talking about migrants, but Trump said about a week or two ago, he said they’re looking at Homegrowns as well as maybe American citizens will be next. I mean, God knows if we here in Alberta will be Americans this time next year, if that same thing gets applied here or if the conservatives or even the liberals intend to start doing that kind of stuff, we should all be very worried, especially those of us who are concerned about this genocide and have spoken out against it.
Jenny:
Yeah, the thing that comes to mind for me is the thought of people, sorry, I lost my train of thought. I saw somebody ask a question and I lost my train of thought. I’m just going to move forward. Yeah, we talked about your litigation and the knowledge, your knowledge and experience. If you wouldn’t mind just expanding a bit, we saw him on, you have a background in legal, sorry, in England. Is that right? If you can just explain from your perspective of what you’ve seen in the courts here and what you’re potentially expecting for yourself specifically to whatever degree you’re comfortable with, obviously.
How are Pro-Palestinian Protestors Being Prosecuted
Wesam (11:50):
Sure. Yeah, thanks. I mean, it’s interesting being a legal practitioner. There’s what the law says should happen, and then there’s what actually happens. And sometimes they’re not the same. I mean, on an international level, we’re seeing the genocide is the best example of this. Everything is Israel is doing is in complete contravention of the Genocide Convention, the Geneva conventions, the human rights law in its entirety, but whereas the enforcement mechanisms, there’s a case in front of the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide. It is ongoing. They haven’t ruled on whether it’s a genocide yet. There’s a lot of procedure that is involved. And just recently, the International Court of Justice has ruled that they’re giving Israel an extension of time to make their response to the case until January of next year. Israel’s massacring literally dozens of people every day, and they’ve been doing that for 565 days now.
Over 50,000 people are confirmed killed. It’s probably a way higher number actually killed. And yet the International Court of Justice deems fit that Israel should just have almost another year before even having to respond to the case, let alone having the case concluded. That’s an example of the law. Sounds great, but what does it actually amount to? With our cases, we’ve been in Calgary, we’ve been charged with, they’ve said that our protests at Tompkins Park are illegal. I mean, if anyone knows the history of activist movements in Calgary, Tompkins Park has been a site of activist protests for as long as I can remember. But they’re saying that’s illegal. They’re saying marches in the streets are illegal, which I mean, that’s something even in other cities. Some of our folks went up to Edmonton a couple of weekends ago and they marched in the streets, no problem. But the Calgary police are issuing several thousand dollars tickets. I’m quite confident these things will not stand up in court, just like my original charges were thrown out right away. But the problem is the system is so slow and our legal system as well, anyone who’s been through that system knows how decrepit it is. It’s underfunded. Everyone’s overworked.
I was also charged in September criminally, and part of the bail conditions that were imposed on me meant I was not allowed to attend protests. These were the conditions that were imposed and they were enforced. I tried to attend a couple of protests. Cops threatened to arrest me on site, so I had to leave. But we were quite confident that these bail conditions were unlawful, shouldn’t have been imposed, but we didn’t get a chance to actually contest that until six months later. And because of the way the prosecutor’s offices work, they’re all way overworked. The caseload is enormous. The prosecutor doesn’t even look at these cases until maybe the day before. When my hearing came up after six months of me not being allowed to attend protests the day before the hearing, where I finally got a chance to challenge this, prosecutors looked at it for the first time, called up my lawyer and were like, Hey. Called him up the day before and was like, these conditions are ridiculous. We’re not even going to challenge it. The prosecution just totally agreed to it, but that’s six months of me not being able to protest.
Jenny:
Right. Yeah. Well, quite frankly, it seems like a delay tactic. Just to keep you out from it, let’s be clear, your role in those protests were to very clearly outline what was happening for people on a weekly basis and explain what the expectation is that in the courts, what’s the expectation in peaceful negotiations, et cetera, and help us understand how to make sense of the situation. Yeah, somebody says, welcome back. Yeah, very glad to have you back in that space for that reason especially. What can we expect from what’s going on in Palestine? There is, as you said, the atrocities, the water shortages, the things that are happening in ongoing sirens warning people to get out of the area. Obviously just no access to how to cook food, et cetera. There’s so many ways to look at what’s happening there, and quite frankly, a lot of pushback I receive, and I’m not sure what you experienced is people suggesting that this, it’s never going to get solved and that it’s just not going to change. And what is potentially happening in the Middle East to help it stop. A lot of pushback I hear is it’s up to them to decide what to do, what’s happening there. I think there’s a lot of obvious ignorance in that, and I can even say on my part and my ability to respond. If you can just elaborate for people what to expect right now, where are we headed still? And if you can just shape that picture for people as you do well.
What Should People Expect in the Middle East
Wesam (17:54):
Well, I’ll just caveat it by saying I have no idea what’s coming. I think a lot of this, it’s very hard to predict, especially with someone like Trump in the White House. It’s really difficult. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s coming tomorrow. I will say what the situation is now is utterly bearable in Gaza, and it has been for quite a while, just today. Israel killed 28 people in Gaza through airstrikes. That’s just what I heard before I tuned in. God knows if they’ve killed anymore while we’ve been talking. Right? This is 50 airstrikes being dropped on Gaza every day, which is, Gaza is not a big place. Gaza is a very small place. And on top of that, there’s virtually no aid, no medical equipment being allowed in. People are starving. People have medicine. I was reading that some 40% of dialysis patients in Gaza have died from lack of ability to access kidney dialysis.
That’s 40% of the dialysis required population in the strip. I mean, that situation is, God knows where there’s talks of ceasefire negotiations and whatnot, and frankly, Hamas appears to be operating in quite good faith on all of those negotiations. There was a brief ceasefire. It wasn’t really a ceasefire. Israel was still launching attacks during the ceasefire. It was like a one-sided ceasefire, not really ceasefire at all, but Hamas upheld its end of the bargain. It’s been saying from the beginning, Hamas, they took prisoners from Israel. I think these people should be considered prisoners of war. Most of them are soldiers who were literally there stationed to control Gaza and keep Gaza under occupation. Hamas has a lot of these people still in captivity, and Hamas has been saying they want to return these folks in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners. It’s why they took them in the beginning. Israel is not interested in that. Israel really just wants to wipe out Hamas and pretty well to wipe out the entire population of Gaza if they can. They’ve said this openly, so I have nothing positive to report from the Gaza situation. It is dire. It’s dire regionally. It’s really difficult. First of all, people have to understand about the Middle East. I studied Middle Eastern politics at the University of Calgary.
The Middle East is a region that is not controlled by its own people. It is controlled mostly by outside forces. We just saw, for example, the United States topple the regime in Syria and impose a new regime led by sort of cleaned up Al Quadi folks who, I mean, I’m not sure that they are not representative of the will of the Syrian people, but that’s who controls Syria, right? Similar in Jordan, Egypt. You have dictatorships that are extremely repressive people who go there. It’s tough to even talk about Palestine. The repression is unbelievable there. I mean, we’ve dealt with some crap in Calgary, but the repression in those countries is insane. Same in places like Saudi Arabia. There is no space really for average people to act. The very few exceptions are places like Yemen. I have to talk about Yemen because Yemen is a country that likes a law, and the resistance forces there and the government there have openly said that they are standing in solidarity with Gaza.
In fact, they’re the only country in the world that is actually acknowledging their international responsibility under the genocide convention to intervene in cases of genocide. They’ve imposed a naval blockade on Israel. They’re saying no ships will pass through the Red Sea if they’re bound for Israel. And they’re saying, they’ve said very openly, we continue this until the genocide and Gaza finishes. That’s what they’re doing. This is not like some random act of terrorism. And in return for that incredibly principled act, the Americans have decided they’re going to bombard Yemen, and they’ve been bombing it relentlessly throughout this period, and especially recently since the collapse of the ceasefire so-called ceasefire in Yemen, keeping that blockade imposed a few weeks ago, Donald Trump tweeted a satellite image of a bomb going off in Yemen, and you could see people on the ground and the bomb went off, and Trump was like, we’ve neutralized terrorists in Yemen or whatever. And it turned out this was a civilian gathering. The people that were wiped out were civilians. And here’s the president of the United States tweeting about it, saying, we’ve wiped out these terrorists. That’s what Yemen has received.
Jenny:
Yeah. Well, and what’s so hard about this is people who are aware is to watch the constant bombardment and misinformation that’s out there, and people just take it as it is. They don’t look past it and understand that these are outright lies. I was going to ask you, Jeffrey Sachs, I hope I’m saying his last name correctly. He is a…
Wesam:
Jeffrey Sachs.
Jenny:
Yes. From Columbia, right? Columbia University. He’s been calling this out, and one thing he said that I am curious what your thoughts are is he said that if Palestine was given a two-state solution, if they were given sovereignty, it would stabilize the region. Do you agree with that? His logic there?
Wesam:
I’m skeptical of the two state solution at this point,
Jenny:
And maybe I’m not understanding him too, so forgive that specificity.
Wesam:
No, no. I mean, yeah, I didn’t actually hear those comments, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he said that that two state solution is kind of what a lot of folks put forward as a solution. Most people that I know are very skeptical about this, especially on the pro-Palestinian side. But the alternative to that would be like a one state solution where Palestinians and Israelis live in one state together in peace. There may be some, I dunno, but the general point I will agree with Jeffrey Sachs, is that a resolution to the Palestine question and the oppression of the Palestinian people would be a stabilizing force for the region.
But I have to say, not so much for the Americans. I don’t think the Americans would want that because the Americans like a destabilized Middle East. It’s good for their imperial interests. It allows them to go in and take oil and occupy. And I don’t think the Israelis have an interest in either a one state or a two state solution. They say it explicitly, the Israeli government’s position is not even, they don’t even support a two state solution, let alone a one state. Their one state solution is they take all the land and get rid of all the Palestinians, which is what they enact on. That’s Israeli policy. Get rid of Palestinians in this land and take as much of it for Israel. But yeah, I think it would be better for the region if this issue were resolved. Absolutely. It would be better for the whole world. Yeah.
Jenny:
Well, and to me, it’s such a, not to use a cheesy analogy, but it’s the death star-move. If we were to stabilize, it gives me hope that there’s an opportunity to stabilize. But to your point, it all is tied to fossil fuels. And that’s where I come into this view is that this is all about social justice, half of the fossil fuel equation. This is if we do not have a dependency on fossil fuels, Israel doesn’t have a role in the Middle East anymore. And that is critically where this instability is stemming from. If we were to achieve a free Palestine, it would have to be on that basis. Do you agree?
Wesam:
Yeah. I mean there’s all kinds of reasons to lift our reliance on fossil fuels. And I dunno, there are countries in the region, I would say Middle Eastern countries that have their own sovereignty and aren’t controlled by the United States should have the right to use their resources, including fossil fuels. I do think there is something in this debate where western countries need to acknowledge that historically they fueled their development with the use of these sorts of dirty fuels, and it’s now their obligation to cut their use of that. But expecting underdeveloped countries to do it, that is not really going to fly. Just, I mean, how can you ask countries that are destroyed to end their reliance on fossil fuels? When I mean, good luck telling a country like Yemen that has just been bombed into fricking poverty, and they are going to
Jenny:
Thank you for that point of clarity. I mean, I guess when I say things broadly and not think about the specifics, for example, we are in an economic world with the United States, we export 400% of what we use. I mean, to expect Canada to stop using fossil fuels internally is an unrealistic expectation. When I speak in that way, I’m thinking about from a development standpoint, we shouldn’t be developing new fossil fuels towards that future. And then to me, that comes at the expense of the ecology or the annexation of new lands. This is the reality of the situation. I hope that frames my position a little better.
Wesam:
Oh, absolutely. And I don’t disagree with you. And it’s relevant also for indigenous rights here because how much indigenous sovereignty has been sacrificed on the altar of pipelines and so on. And the key question is what are the plans? What is being developed in terms of alternatives, right? I have to say, I know it’s a little out of the remit of what we’re talking about, but the sort of opposition to China and opposition to Chinese tech and trade with China. I mean, a lot of this is rooted in a desire for capitalists in the West to keep Chinese tech and a lot of it Chinese electric vehicle tech out of the western market because the west just can’t compete with China. China’s a powerhouse that they’re not going to be able to, I mean, just as an aside, China last week revealed flying cars. China has flying cars. Guys,
Jenny:
What? Are you serious? I didn’t even know that.
Wesam:
My God, they’ve approved them for consumer use. There was that streamer. I Show Speed was in China for a few weeks and he got in one of them and showed it off. If folks in the west think that we’re living in the most advanced countries in the world, that was true once it is not true anymore.
Jenny:
That’s right.
Wesam:
We need to catch up in our approach to the world.
Jenny:
This all kickstarted, thank you for bringing China into this, and I agree. I want to back up and say, I do agree with you, with your position on the Western world needs to cool our jets. Here we are the problem, we’re not the solution. And being able to look to countries that have been forced to. I want to remind people that I learned that in the 2010s is when China was cut off from US Oil. They had to go back to being more sovereign and using coal more locally because that’s the resource they had. And they’ve led themselves to a place now where they actually just last week announced they’re not accepting any more LNG contracts from the United States. This is a big shift that’s coming in our energy market, and we should be aware of how these things all interrelate and where our time and energy should be spent. Let’s get into that a little bit. Wesam, let’s talk about what we’re doing. You and me. Like I said, I was pleased to see you recently and you were talking about, we were at an ongoing protest. It was, geez, I can’t remember the purpose that day. But yeah, so can you talk about what’s ongoing just for people? And then let’s get into Calgary Peoples’ Assembly. Yeah, let’s start there, please.
Calgary Peoples’ Assembly
Wesam (29:59):
Yeah. Well, I think it’s very important to keep the protest movement going for Gaza in general. And it is continuing in Calgary. There are lots of events all the time organized by many different groups, encouraging people to attend them. This Saturday, Justice for Palestinians is doing an event at Como Se Dice. You can find that information on their pages. We need to keep that in the public eye for sure. But I also think there’s something, you mentioned the Calgary People’s Assembly. I’ll say this is a new initiative that’s being started by myself and others. I’m one of the co-founders. We are working to, the hope is to build a space of democratic discussion and organization for people to come together and organize around issues that affect their communities and affect the world, organizing protests. And also really, I want to find a space for people to express their voice politically.
Because what I’ve learned from being involved in these protests is really people. I think there’s a sense in the West that politics is done by politicians and the rest of us are just kind of passive observers. And actually average people on the street can’t be trusted. There’s that horrendous quote by Winston Churchill, who was a terrible racist and imperialist man, really a monster of a man where he is like a five minute conversation with an average voter is the greatest argument against democracy. Terrible, terrible, elitist, my experience. Yeah. Hey, it’s far from the worst thing. Churchill said, terrible man. But my experience in Calgary has been the complete opposite building with people. As you know from our protests for Gaza, we’ve always run an open mic. We’ve been very open with, we encourage everyone to come prepared with statements or to express whatever their views are.
And honestly, some of the greatest insights that are expressed at our mic are from people that you don’t even know who they are, and they come up and they’re just some average person, and everyone’s always so, oh, I don’t know how to speak and I am just some newbie here. And then they’ll open their mouths and just have incredible insights. That kind of politics is really what I think is [needed] going forward for us. And the aim is to build this kind of a space with the people. It’s an experiment we run. It’s very new. And to be honest, just like I’ve been saying, I kind of want to know what people think about it and actually have people help shape this kind of a space for themselves. I don’t want to be too prescriptive here, but we are starting it, right? We’ve started, we’ve got an Instagram page and a Facebook page, encouraging people to follow it.
Calgary Peoples’ Assembly. And I will say it is inspired from the Gaza movement. It is mostly at this point people who come out of the Gaza protests. And I will say the Gaza protests were also remarkable in the sense that they brought together a lot of different communities and different movements. We had people from the indigenous community offering their support. There were people with a lot of support from the queer community, obviously like the Arab and Muslim communities, members of the Jewish community. A lot of churches were throwing their support behind us. The hope is to build something really broad and inclusive and to have that democratic, that real democratic, because dropping a piece of paper in a box every four or five years is not democracy. That should be the least important political act that you do every four to five years, in my opinion. That’s the idea behind the people’s Assembly. Like I said, it’s an experiment. It’s just getting off the ground. But people get involved at this stage, especially help us shape this thing and help us build it, and let’s see what we can do.
Jenny:
That’s incredible. I’m excited to be a part of it. Just to be clear, I’ve signed my name up. I’m looking forward to this. I agree. We don’t even know what democracy can look like. We’ve had glimpses of it from time to time, and this is something that we’re doing that’s similar, and this is what’s so funny about this work, is we have all of these sort of parallel initiatives. We are doing a bioregional organizing assemblies, a different concept, but land-based organizing and again, trying to build that solidarity around what do we do? How do we organize locally? It’s just so interesting how these democratic groups are forming and taking shape. It’s been tremendous to see these people waking up to the action, and as you said, this is a crisis of leadership. I love learning that people will say, oh, but that’s an ecological problem.
Go away and take care of that for us. Right? No, no, no. This is an everyone problem, which means we need everybody to find their role as a leader in this, right? It’s been really cool. Like you said, you see somebody go on to the mic and you’re this person, it doesn’t matter because they get it and they’re offering that perspective. That’s helpful to bring into this discussion. It’s been phenomenal to see people just speak clearly and from the heart, from whatever their key issue is, because it all fits and it’s all important in moving us together in solidarity, I guess I’ll say. Yeah. Can you talk about how people get involved? You’ve mentioned the Instagram page and stuff, but do you have a plan for the group or are there going to be meeting times? Just give us a little bit of shape. I know it’s early stages, but wherever you’re at with it, thanks.
Wesam:
Yeah, sure. It is very early stages, follow the Instagram and Facebook pages At the moment, it’s mostly what we’re doing is organizing protests also to get people involved and to have them sign up and also to keep the Gaza protest going. I think that’s a priority. And what energy we have, I think should still be spent on that. The hope is to expand, but frankly, Gaza is the heart of everything right now. I truly believe that Gaza needs to be seen as the centerpiece of any progressive movement. But join our protests and there will be meetings. It’ll probably be a few weeks away, at least before we have proper organizing meetings, bringing people in to have these discussions in a more intimate setting. But at the moment, we’re continuing the open protests with the open mics. That is where people, if you’re interested in getting involved right away, that’s where to find us, find our pages on Instagram and Facebook, and we’ll post all the events that we do there. The next protest we’re going to be holding is going to be on Saturday, May 3rd at City Hall at 2:00 PM. Anyone who’s interested, please come along. It will be another protest about Gaza, but please do come along to that.
Jenny :
Fantastic. Yeah, I’m happy to share those events for you as well. Yeah, give me the details of those too.
Wesam:
Very kind of you.
Jenny:
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think it’s just so, as you said, voting every four years is the bonus of the hard work that’s happened over the past four years. To me, this is the real work that’s happening no matter what happens on election day. But I do think that people need to, from my perspective, appreciate that we are being misled in a lot of ways by our leaders, by any party right now under the arm of this direction, through Gaza. Like you said, it’s the central issue if we don’t ever overcome it. It’s interesting, we’re talking about the annexation of a country and its demise, and Canada is literally on the ballot as a sovereign nation. If there is ever a time to draw these parallels now, is it? And to realize that democracy is not something that’s given to us, that it’s something that we have to stand up for. Anything else you want to add before we go? Lots of time here, obviously.
Wesam:
Yeah, well, I’d love to keep talking to you for all the time that we’ve got, actually. Yeah,
Jenny:
Please. Do you offer some more things that you’d like to talk about?
Canada’s Biggest Threat
Wesam (38:12):
Sure. Well, the Canadian annexation thing is really interesting. I mean, the US Empire is in a real crisis, and I think that Trump is frantically throwing everything he can at the situation. Jeffrey Sachs, by the way, talks about this a lot. I do think he’s an extremely insightful source for anyone who wants to follow that stuff. Trump is just desperate because the American capital is in a situation where they’re watching the rise of China, which is like a pseudo socialist country. A lot of debate about what we call it on the left, but it is under the leadership of a communist party. It runs on a different type of system. It actually treats poverty alleviation and ending homelessness. And access to healthcare treats these things as priorities. And actually, one of the things about China is its strength comes from its infrastructure. When you have a lot invested in public transportation, high-speed rail, ensuring all of your people are well fed and housed and have access to the medicine and education they need, that creates better workers.
It creates better conditions under which to run a capitalist industry. It creates a situation where capitalists can transport their goods very quickly, where workers can come into work and they’re not stressed out from a godawful commute where there’s potholes all over the roads. I mean, that actually pays dividends. And these are things that are Western countries just utterly deprioritize. It’s the same in the United States. I mean, my God, if they’ve got flying cars in China, but in the United States, I don’t mean to be humorous about this, it’s not funny, but they can’t even keep their airplanes in the air. They can’t even keep their trains on the rails in Ohio happened a couple years ago. I mean, it’s a night and day difference. And until they start investing in communities and infrastructure and frankly some form of social planning to make societies that work for everyone, they’re never going to be able to compete. Trump is not interested in any of that. His solution is just to loot the world, loot what remains to the American working class in the form of tariffs, and maybe to loot Canada. It’s a scary possibility for us. But I also want to say, I mean, Mark Carney at one of the leaders’ debates was asked, what’s the biggest national security threat to Canada? And he said, what did he say? China, not
The United States, which is actively discussing our annexation. No, it’s China. Okay, well look, God forbid if we get the next, God forbid, I mean if there is resistance to it and whatever the government says, there will be popular resistance to it. There is an outside chance that the United States might do to us what they’ve been doing to every other country in the world, which has settled this question militarily, God forbid. But I also want to point out to people when I say Gaza is important, there’s an outside chance that, for example, Calgary might become a war zone at the hands of Trump, not likely possible. And there used to be rules about what you’re allowed to do in a war zone. There used to be international law that people thought was respected and upheld. And guess what, no longer, yeah, it’s not good to be in a war zone these days. Ask any Arab in the Middle East what it means to live in a war zone. When I say these issues are important and should be taken seriously and people neglect them at their own peril, I mean that very seriously. And I know it is not saying it’s likely that American bombs will start falling on Calgary, but the rules of international engagement have just been utterly destroyed. And now it’s the wild West, right?
Jenny:
And the way that Trump is destabilizing the financial market is very similar too. I mean, even if you don’t want to look at the broader military genocidal implications of this stuff, you can look at it from a financial level and see the very same problem. He’s destabilized the US dollar in less than what it’s been three months since he’s been in office. And this is just the beginning, to your point, it’s like there’s no thought around what the unintended consequences are of these decisions.
Wesam:
And I also think American capitalism really doesn’t have an answer to any of these issues. This is his response to a real crisis that American capitalism is facing, which really is that they cannot compete with China anymore. China, which is like a pseudo socialist country, has a lot of internal planning, which makes it more competitive. Western capital just can’t compete. And if they can’t compete in the market, western capitalism can’t compete in the marketplace with China anymore. Not on tech, not on mass consumer goods, not on finance. China’s offering better deals. I mean the whole IMF World Bank system of offering predatory loans to third world countries, which was such an enormous part of destroying and destabilizing and looting these countries outright looting China is now offering better deals to these countries saying, we’ll, come in, we’ll build a hospital for you, we’ll build. And there’s always issues around sovereignty and stuff like that, and that is inevitable in this kind of finance, but it’s a far better deal than anything the west is offering. If they don’t have that, their economies are shot.
Jenny:
Well, and to your point about capitalism not offering the solution, to me, the comments I hear often is, oh yeah, China’s replacing the US and world dominance. And I don’t like that word. I don’t think it’s dominance, it’s not. It is actual social democracy. It’s an exchange of services and goods. And I’ve, the finance minister out of Greece has spoken about this. You measure a country by their foreign relations, not how they treat their people because we don’t necessarily know how people are treated. We know through foreign relations how the US acts right now outside of the rule of law, outside of international courts of justice expectations. Yeah, you’re right. We’re the, we’ve walked away from the rule of law, but to your point, and I’m curious what you think about the American movement, because there has been this 5 0 5 0 1 movement, sorry, I’m not sure if I’m saying it right, but the people hitting the streets after us, the tariffs have come out people, and I see again a very big solidarity in that there’s lots of Palestinian protestors in those movements.
There’s lots of trends and all other groups I’ve seen in those spaces. I think that the US people have a better, stronger tie to their expectations of holding leaders accountable than Canadians potentially do, or at least that’s what I’m seeing. To your point about the average person going into these meetings with their representatives and saying, there’s no due process here. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if there’s no due process, then you’re operating outside of the rule of law, and we can have that. I’m curious what you think about what’s happening in the US with people. And you can also touch on, if you don’t mind, you guys had that dual process or protest in Edmonton, which seemed like it was quite a spectacular coming together of minds as well. A couple of those things, if you wouldn’t mind.
Wesam:
Sure, yeah. I’ll say I didn’t actually attend that protest in Edmonton. I was sorry to miss it, but there was another event. I had a prior obligation in Calgary.
Jenny:
Fair enough.
Wesam:
Okay. There are networks across Canada that are talking about building this kind of stuff. I dunno about the 5 0 5 0 1 movement in the US. I did see the protests and I did think they could have focused on Palestine a little bit more. I think some of that was a little bit of an AstroTurf from the Democratic party, if I’m being honest, which, but it’s a reflection of the fact that even doing that is a reflection of that. They know that if they don’t do it, somebody else will who might have better politics. Even that is a reflection that people are waking up to this stuff and there are enormous social movements. I mean, Gaza alone, we’ve seen movements across the world that have been unrivalled. I don’t think we’ve ever, in our history as a species, seen a protest movement that has been this global, this large and this longstanding.
It’s like a year and a half now, and it’s still going strong just about all around the world. That is driving it and it is driving people to also talk about these other issues. This is kind of what we saw in Calgary is like you’re talking about the theft of indigenous land by a western backed, basically dictatorship in Israel, a racist apartheid system that is stealing land and not respecting people’s rights and undermining human rights. And then you look in our own backyard and see, oh, homes are being bombed in Gaza. Hospitals are being bombed in Gaza and our governments here don’t care about it. And guess what? Those same governments are underfunding healthcare and they’re doing nothing to resolve the housing crisis. And people on the streets here are struggling and indigenous people here in these countries on this continent are suffering from lack of sovereignty and lack of respect for their rights.
People in these movements, they recognize these issues are inseparable and we have to be drawing these connections and they do it very effectively. I’ve been involved, like I said, in the Palestine movement for 15 years, and the insight that people have in this movement into these issues, it’s unparalleled and they’re always drawing the connections. They even attend. They’ll go to union movements, they’ll go to join the picket lines, they’ll go and support women’s rights movements. You’ll see these Kufiyas at all of these places now, and that’s how it should be. And we hope that it will be reciprocated. Right.
Jenny:
No kidding. Yeah, and sorry, I flashed a comment there. There was somebody highlighting that there were some pro-Palestinian protestors arrested at one of those events. Again, my ignorance there, but yeah, I think it is not necessarily at the pace we want, not necessarily directed in the right ways, but I do think people are at least coming out and trying to get their feet under them in what is all coming at us these days. It is a constant onslaught, unfortunately, of all the ways that we are being not looked after and not expecting to be looked after in society. Definitely there anything else you wanted to highlight, wean?
Wesam:
Well, I might just throw in a bit of an anecdote given that we’re talking about the elections and sort of how we make this change and what democracy means. I just want to talk. George Chahal is my candidate. He’s liberal party candidate. He’s a pretty big figure in the liberal party actually. He almost made it into Trudeau’s cabinet, but then there was this scandal. The folks remember, what was it? He chucked garbage on his neighbor’s lawn or something, and they caught it on video. He got really bizarre, but he’s still the only liberal seat in Calgary and he’s trying to keep it that way. A few months into the genocide, he attended a Palestine event and I spoke to him directly and I told him, Hey, I’m out there leading these protests which have hundreds or thousands of people attending every week. I’m your constituent. Those people, they seriously change from your government on this issue.
You only share power because they were in a power sharing arrangement with the NDP only share power with a party that is better than you, this issue. There’s real change that people want. There’s an enormous movement. Tell me what you need us, and this is how I phrased it to him. I was like, tell me what you need us to do to help you make that in auto on the table in parliament as your constituent. You know what he told me? He told me, “It’s not up to me”, there’s some other council, there’s some group in Ottawa that makes all these decisions I can make. What is it? We live in a democracy. That’s the kind of thing a tax system is constructed and frankly, vote, do what you need to do, get out of your system. But I can’t wait for this election to be that we can get back to, I think the really important work, which is building something that’s just going to circumvent all of this, all of this garbage. We don’t, these career politicians.
Jenny:
Shoot, you’ve cut out. I’m just going to offer while I can. Sorry. I’m sure there were some pieces that weren’t appreciated by some people. What you were saying, you cut out there. I’m just going to offer that. I agree with you. The work has to happen on the ground. We haven’t had real representation in a really long time. We haven’t been expecting leaders to be individual leaders for their communities. You said that major parties are deciding for all of their representatives. This is what I saw locally too. I felt like I ran as an independent in the 2023 election when I thought I was running for a party that was progressive and willing to speak about issues like the climate crisis. These are the challenges we have that the system is not serving us. And I think the less time we devote to that system and instead spend time standing up on our own, the better.
Wesam:
Our absolutely. Well said. Thanks.
Jenny:
Great. I’m glad I could hear you despite what happened with the…
Wesam:
Sorry about that. My internet is, I don’t know, man. I don’t want to be a tinfoil hat theorist. Just bad internet.
Jenny:
Sure. Fair enough. Okay, well thank you so much for your time. This has been great as always. As I said to you earlier, you’re welcome. Anytime there’s something that you think that we need to help amplify for people, and same thing for anybody listening that’s in this group, I’m really glad to be in this space, like I said with you, learning from you and working together to build this democracy and healing relationships, not just with each other, but with the earth and all of the good stuff that comes with that. Onwards and upwards no matter what happens next week. Anything final to offer before we close?
Wesam:
I just want to say thank you so much for making this platform available. Like I said, we rely on this and your solidarity really does make a difference for the cause in Calgary. And looking forward to your contributions to the people’s assembly as well.
Jenny:
Yeah, exactly. And yes, I will aim to be there on the third. I am going to check out the event she mentioned at Como Se Dice this weekend, as well. And yeah, looking forward to keeping in touch. Take care for now. Bye bye.