 Hello, everyone who has just joined us. This is Nisrin Hossein. I'm lecturer in contemporary theatre at Mid-Six University based in London, and I'll be the chair of the event today. And I'm very pleased to introduce the first event in the Artist Ideas Now, which is a series of artist-led conversations looking at some of the major issues facing us and the world today. The series respond to the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival's broad themes of climate crisis and its impact in the Middle East and North Africa, and the series is curated by or in collaboration with Creative Destruction Initiative. So today's event specifically reflects on democracy and citizenship in the face of the climate crisis, asking what can we do as citizens in order to affect a meaningful and large-scale change in the broader systematic structure of the world and the various levels that govern and the shape of the crisis. And the challenges surrounding the climate crisis, and it also asks how can we activate ourselves and our communities engaging with these processes and these conversations. And with us today, we have three wonderful speakers to lead the conversations, and they are artists and activists who are actively engaged in these questions and wider ideas, and who are working on projects that heighten the awareness of the climate crisis and that activate wider communities around the challenges surrounding the current crisis. And I have the honour to introduce our speakers today, starting with Majid Majid. Majid is a British Somali climate justice activist and writer, and he's the youngest and first Green Party councillor to hold the role of Lord Mayor of Sheffield. He's the founder of Union of Justice organization that is dedicated to racial justice and climate justice. Then we have Samah Al-Shaibi. Samah is a Palestinian Iraqi conceptual artist whose photographs and videos deal with spaces of conflict and explore subjects of war, exile, power and survival. And last but not least, Akram Salhab was a filmmaker, activist and organizer working for London based charity Migrant Organize. He is a campaigner for refugee rights and Palestinian rights, and Akram recently presented a very powerful short documentary for Channel 4 in the UK that deals with the silencing of Palestinian voices in the UK. And now I'd like to hand over the space to the speakers to introduce themselves and to speak a little bit about their work, starting with Majid. So if you can unmute yourselves. Brilliant. Thank you so much for that very warm introduction Srinan. It's a real joy and privilege to be sharing this space with so many amazing, wonderful people doing incredible things. And just to kind of elaborate a bit of what you kind of touched upon in terms of the work that I do. And I mainly kind of look at the intersection between climate and race. Because like the reality is that there is a clear and crucial connection between climate and race because we can't talk about the climate crisis without also recognizing that it is an inequality and race issue. Because the effects of the climate crisis everywhere are massively unequal and unfair was frustratingly something that was created by the privileged few people mainly those living in the global north but it is hitting ethnic minorities and marginalized communities the hardest here in the global south, mainly in the global south. And honestly without some sort of radical and rapid change of course like this unjust trend is kind of adds itself to all the other, you know, profound historic injustices black and brown and across the country and across the continent across the world already face. And just to kind of give some examples of this. And from just even from a very close to home UK and example is the tragic death of Ella Kissie Deborah, who are the age of nine years old from south London died from air pollution and this is just one example of many of how poor communities, which frequently are also ethnic minority community and often concentrated around main roads and major cities suffer the consequences of decisions made by people who often have absolutely, you know, no idea of their plight, and they've got the dirtiest industries in their backyards, and many of their children and young people as a result get asthma as well. And even if we really look at like, for example, green spaces, like, as we know like green spaces should be accessible to as many people as possible and it's been proven for a long time that you are more likely to visit green spaces. You do not have to travel ridiculous amounts of distances to reach it. And I'm sure like you all know the benefits of having green spaces. Of course, sadly, it's something that's not accessible to many marginalized communities. And it's been long said that someone's postcode is a better predictor of their health than anything else. And if we really deep it and kind of look into it where people live has been shaped by a long history of racial discrimination both explicit and implicit. Our national government in the UK as well as local governments have really often should we say invested heavily in improving a neighborhoods by planting trees, building parks, beautifying the areas by at the same time completely neglecting other areas and class also does play a big role in it. As is the nature gap is directly correlated and to the wealth gap and that's just, and one example and it's very kind of it's mirrored a lot across Europe as well. And the work that I do and with Union of Justice, and is an organization set up with so many of the incredible people. Union of Justice is that we're a European independent and people of color led organization that is dedicated to race and climate justice. And of course we maintain that there's a clear and crucial connection between between both of them, we're a team made up of community activists, researchers, artists and elected representatives from across Europe all working towards building a European world that is equitable just and sustainable. So what we do is we're like, we've got three pillars, the first thing that we focus on is empowering others. So at the moment we're kind of building a vibrant people of color network across Europe are equipped with the skills and the knowledge to bring about changing their communities. The second pillar is influence. As we can proudly say we are not a neutral organization, nothing we can afford to be neutral. So we'll openly and proudly advocate for positions and policies that in any way promote racial equality and climate justice. The third pillar is change, because like campaigning is campaigning for radical change is that the heart of what we do of course it's the, as we say it's a source of engagement with the public and the jail. So we're kind of connecting each of our operations from local campaigns within specific regions and national campaigns and to shift policy within the European Union, merely currently looking at the European Green Deal but not only that also looking at climate reparations is the big campaign that we're actually doing leading up to COP 26. I've basically stopped there before, and I kind of waffle on too much and I'm looking forward to kind of delve into all the topics of democracy and what it is that we can all do to kind of play our role. Thank you very much Majid and thank you also for bringing up this quite rightly this interconnected between the issues of racial justice, social justice and environmental justice and this something that I would hope that we can unpack further later on. If you can please introduce yourself a little bit further I've given a very brief introduction initially so I hope that you can expand more on on yourself and on your work. Thank you so much in the stream. It's such a pleasure to be here with everybody today and what a powerful start to our conversation I'm going to be sharing my screen to show a bit of my work. And some of the major themes that I talk about through my put my my conceptual art, my photography and my videos and installations and hopefully you can see all that. And. Okay, so I'm a Palestinian Iraqi whose family was exiled from two homelands. My formative years migrating across several Middle Eastern countries as a political refugee. My photographs and videos and installations link the physical and psychological dispossession of the body in relationship to land resources and identity. The political realism and fictional portraiture are prevailing genres that guides my artistic production. I use their transformative and temporal qualities to construct hypothetical narratives concerned with the actual current social political and and environmental upheavals, and specifically those relating to the already displaced, while also drawing attention to the impending uprooting of people. The project between two rivers. This is an older project of mine implicates Western imaginings of Middle East and North African women's actual struggles which are obscured behind the singular preoccupation with the hijab. The obsession around the politics of bailing in relation to Muslims women's bodies and so called freedom continues in contemporary Western media imagery today photographs are weaponized to justify wars and occupation. Visualizing Middle Eastern women's empowerment should be measured in terms of social, political and economic rights such as access to jobs, education, and healthcare, and the critical importance of women's physical security in order to safely access those rights. So my work resist this conflation of Middle Eastern women's equality and empowerment with the exportation of Western democracy justified through instrument instruments of us led wars. My most recent installation as a session aims to call attention to the invisibility of Iraqi women who have disappeared or been assassinated during the US led war in Iraq, and it's aftermath, the lack of official investigations has resulted in the ongoing targeted violations of other prominent women today in Iraq today. So words and fragmented phrases carved into the vessels are drawn from the compiled assassination lists of Iraqi academics, particularly focused on the women that were assassinated. And also another sort of aspect of my work I often look to the natural world for a context that can articulate communal structures that are under threat. In several my projects I visualize the real world epidemic of the colony collapsed disorder amongst the honey bees as a symbolic of our delicate coexistence with ecosystems and one another and relationships that are gravely threatened under our common struggle for survival. So in this project exodus a large scale wooden vertebra skeleton of a human form is attached to a collapsed metal beavings. The central sculpture surrounded by fleshy resin cast of hollyhock plants. And it's a round which are Iraqi Lullabies, and it's against a backdrop of a projection running of a river that slowly is tainted by an irrational spilling of red. In 2009 and begin a project in search of the counter narrative that would forward a shared common identity amongst our regions inhabitants, one that wasn't defined by war necessarily or rooted in national nationalism. The Arabic word for link is a multimedia project produced over eight years and remote natural locations in the Middle East and North Africa. My original aim was highlight the land and resources like desert and water in a shared continued continuum of time place and culture. This was the first project I made that were climate change intersects my concern with migration. Back in 2007 really or 2008, my work involved because of my continual exposure to the effect of water stress on natural spaces and its contribution towards straining the economic social conditions of the region of the places I lived amongst to make the work. My method of production was based on the journeys of the 14th century explorer been back to the who traveled 75,000 miles after initially setting out to perform Islam compulsory has pilgrimage to Mecca, and this is home in Morocco. I applied his book or the travels as a practical guide and locate locating territory of historical importance, but then I was also enacting my own journey as a metaphor of migration across territorial boundaries that erases nationhood. Yeah, it's estimated that there is less than 800 square miles of fresh water left in the semi-arid lands worldwide the worst stress all being in the Middle East and North Africa 80 to 100 million people in the Middle East and North Africa region will be water stressed, or water displaced by the year 2025. And so like oil waters and essential to all human activities but of which no sustainable alternative exists. Water scarcity is not needed the region with the ability to actually respond effectively is protracted not only by climate change, but also because of this disintegrating management amongst a rapidly growing political unrest. So everything from droughts to rising sea levels water contamination the certification and water territorial disputes is exasperated by by these wars and conflict where there's no cooperation to make things work. The colossal eco refugee populations and mass migrations are an imminent reality. And I think I'm running out of time so I will just let this last few images show. Basically I'm just suggesting in Celsula that survival is only possible through mindfulness, human interdependency and ecological coexistence. And that's the very hard of my project my work, linking bodies histories and struggles and recognizing our position within it. Thank you. Thank you so much summer and it's such a privilege to have an opportunity also to see images of your work and the powerful image where your body is placed as a site of performance which in itself is a form of creative disruption in terms of of engaging orientalist views of the Arab woman or the body of the Arab woman that an interview that is often channeled through the colonial gaze. So thank you again for sharing your work. And so, if you can turn on your camera please and if you can share a little bit more about yourself and your work. Thanks Neslin and thanks for Liverpool Arts Festival for organizing this really wonderful panel. I'm my name is Akram I'm Scouse Palestinian so very happy to be on this panel feel right at home in the city of Liverpool talking about Palestine. What I really talk about is kind of, I try and talk about my own experience and how I ended up doing the work that I was doing and what I think that says about specifically the state of democracy in Britain at the moment. And I really congratulate the organizers of the event because I think the question was perfectly pitched. And, you know, this is about democracy. And as I grew up in Palestine and partly in the UK, I came to see that many of the things that we took for granted. The desire for freedom, the desire for rights, desire to live in a way with dignity and with justice was something that was completely misconstrued in the Western media, in terms of terrorism and hatred of the other and religious fanaticism and what have you. And growing up with a complete contradictory explanation of the same situation was what really. And I think for a lot of young people, young Muslims you can say in the UK was something that was a real spark for a lot of anger and frustration. And I came to the UK in 20, the last time I moved was 2013. The other thing I found was that there was a very, there's a big contradiction. Well, there was, there was a system of colonialism which we as Palestinian study from when we're very young, you know, we know Britain's role in in Palestine and what they did in terms of handing over our country. But most people in Britain don't know about this colonial legacy, and they don't know about his active manifestations today. And when I began obviously doing the work I do on Palestine, you know, arguing for Palestinian rights, advocating for organizing among students, raising awareness. I found that there was a lot of overlap with the other area of work that I began to undertake around migrant justice. And the common theme and the common thread throughout what I could see was happening was that the way the British policy was arranged whether from the hostile environment, it was named to prevent migrants from integrating into British society, or the prevent legislation which targets and criminalizes, particularly Muslim communities, but also others who are politically engaged in opposition to injustice and colonialism was the British political structure was constructed in order to alienate and prevent minority communities from articulating what we can call a broadly anti colonial politics. So as one of the, one of the events I organized as a student was about the uprooting of olive trees in Palestine, millions of trees have now been uprooted in Palestine citrus trees olive trees and others. And we were saying that the indigenous struggle with the Palestinian people is intimately tied to that to questions of the environment. When we were told that this was an unacceptable event to be running we were shouted at and harassed by others and the student union. But the point I'm trying to make is that there's an it the only way you can continue with this very abnormal situation in which the destruction of our environment and colonial occupation of other countries. The question and suppression of communities here is if you create a, if you create silence around the issues that matter to us, and that anti colonial agenda is latent and a lot of the politics that we see around us as young people growing up in minority communities in the UK, or growing up here in Palestine, but they're, they're, the political sphere is constructed so that there isn't democracy for this portion of the population. And that part of what is not understood. It's not that everything is not that necessarily in the constitution you have a separate set of rights, but the hostile environment and prevent and and the what's happened around Palestine in the past few years, they all serve in a role work in a pre criminal space, they prevent you living a normal life, they place barriers, if not strict laws they place barriers to you entering the public sphere, articulating what you believe and participating in society more fully. And I think the, what we're coming to understand and that's is why, you know, measured and other people's work is so important is that the struggle for racial justice struggle against colonialism is intimately tied to the struggle for climate justice. When we, when we think of the movements we want to create and we think of the moments that we see unfolding as we try and bring about an end to this, you know, rapid destruction of our habitat on earth. So one of the key staging points in that will be the dismantling of the silencing the structures of suppression, the structures by which entire communities are removed from the political map. And so I think that in that understanding we can really begin to articulate different kind of environmental politics, one which is intimately tied with the kind of struggles that we are undertaking in an everyday sense. And I think that, you know, a lot of the work that I see politically going forward is that we have to find moments where we can open up that space, liberate different spheres for people to organize and work in, and that's a big part of the movements we need to go going forward. And I'll stop there, I think that's my five minutes, but thank you everyone. Thank you, Akram. And thank you for raising these crucial and important points so persuasively and it's very important how you started your brief presentation by problematizing the notion of Western democracy or how that notion is is currently applied or understood or influenced in the UK. And this is something that I hope also that that we unpack further later on. And it's also exciting to see that the different resonances and the connections between the different practices coming from a different perspective on different backgrounds. I'd like to go back to Majid's discussion around Union of Justice, the independent European organization that is led by a people of color and that's dedicated to issues of social justice and environmental justice and the interconnection, as you all said in various ways between those issues. People of color haven't only been disadvantaged in terms of environmental policies and in terms of access to green spaces and natural spaces, but there is also a disadvantage in the level of representation. When we look at a broader activist movement and environmental movements, especially in the northern hemisphere, they tend to be predominantly white. And I wonder if this is something that is intently tackled by the organization and and if so how how did you address these disparities the imbalances in the presentation in the broader environmental movements. And thank you very much. Yeah, 100% right like it's from the main actors to the whole climate movement to climate organizations has inherently and being led by white people. And of course it's been so amazing work done by of course by Greta Thunberg, like Sir David Attenborough and they've all played really important kind of key roles in that, but just by solely can always pushing their voices. It kind of completely ignores and kind of like tells one story of the climate crisis, even though we know it disproportionately affects black and brown people mainly in the global south, and kind of things. So it's, it's been a long ongoing mission. I think lots of organizations and people are kind of really starting to kind of first of all really understand the intersection between climate and race. And I think we're all kind of trying to do something about to whether that be. And I think this way story telling really really kind of comes in because it kind of like, it says a kind of powerful narrative. And because stories kind of just not only kind of shape the narrative but kind of really create that kind of sense of urgency for people to kind of be like, oh wait a minute, like climate isn't just a middle class issue, which we always kind of feel like it is because the people involved are blacks or white people, even when we look at the whole climate strike youth, youth climate strikers, and in Sheffield and other places predominantly white young people white students were predominantly involved. And so to say, black and brown ethnic people don't care about the climates, and it could be further from the truth. It's even my mom, her relationship to the climate is talking about in Somalia how her family and the droughts and basically affected the camel grazing and all aspects of it. So it's the kind of real and kind of real big ship also you kind of link kind of like colonialism that because of course like throughout the 19th and like 20th century like nation states I mean like mainly countries in Europe, and who are of course like the world's biggest emitters of carbon pollution, and as a result I kind of have really become some of the world's kind of biggest wealthiest and countries as a result of that. And I guess the relations got to the kind of global south is that it largely sadly happened at the expense of countries in the global south. And as a result of colonial and post-colonial relations that still kind of ongoing today because it's still when we think of colonialism we kind of think that it's something that happened years ago and it's still not kind of going until it's still happening today on many like in kind of lots of different forms kind of thing. That's why myself and many other kind of people believe, I guess like Europe and kind of Europe like has got a moral obligation and to kind of compensate those countries and those communities negatively impacted by the climate and crisis due to, should we say like our global dots kind of collective failure to kind of take reasonable steps to kind of limit our emissions past and present. I think what we must, I feel like, especially with my kind of COP26 kind of hat and coming and leading up to COP26, what we kind of like really need to do is compensate countries for past wrongdoings through reparations that kind of unlock funds and resources to the benefit of like those frontline communities affected and by centuries of colonial rule and legacies of extraction and exploitation it kind of left behind and I think a real first step and an essential step which will be amazing towards repairing kind of this historic and injustice is for countries. I look at Europe and North America as a whole to kind of countries, those countries, those countries that kind of colonised and kind of immediately kind of have some sort of wide ranging programme of debt cancellation. I think that will be a real good start because just to at least break and one link in that long history of extracted exploitation basically, so that's basically ideally what we would love to kind of do. In that sense, I think the organisation is really uniquely positioned is that it has this huge capacity to mobilise wider communities and to engage more black members of the community and people of colour. And as a way of facilitating and fostering a space that is more inclusive around issues of climate, the climate crisis. And I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about some of the examples of how you approach and engage with wider communities in ways that activates member of the public and and motivates perhaps younger people or different generations to engage with these issues more. Yeah, of course, so I guess, first and foremost, I would say it's just a case of firstly, because I would say because a lot of a lot of people say a lot of black and brown people of colour basically, people of colour, don't engage with climate and because they've got the traditional live in shall we say more socially deprived communities were directly affected by the climate crisis and it's hard for people to think about what's going to happen in the future rather than what's happening in the present. And like even for example in Sheffield, Sheffield, London, Birmingham and Manchester have been simultaneous campaigns, for example that look at air pollution, because like just I think in Manchester alone air pollution contributes to 700 early days. So there was kind of campaign and where I kind of like, which was a people of colour led campaign that basically went to run schools to kind of make sure that cars that were idling outside schools or kind of and turned off for example. But also even like honestly like storytelling has also been a big part of it where there's been and a series of kind of levels that be literature video campaigns in regards to sharing stories with people that live in the UK linked to their and countries where they've kind of originated from or their diaspora to link in the kind of relationship between climate back where they their families from linked to kind of where they are. But even honestly there's been many cases where mosques have taken a real kind of and and and lead on what you call it. There's a kind of climate where Friday sermons, like there's a specific campaign that's trying to get Friday sermons, and which is the Friday prayers, which is, and the Muslims kind of like Holy say the week to basically deliver have a sermon dedicated to the climate the crisis. And of course there's many things that the Quran and says that we're custodians and on this earth that we need to protect them. So there's there's a kind of like the religion kind of like there's a kind of faith based campaign that's also happening. And I think we really need to tackle it from as many different places and possible, also just from what I see from the UK across Europe which I know well is a lot of the kind of key people who are those who are. People are forced to come to the climate movement, not necessarily because it's something that they were learned about all. And they got asked to do a lot of people of color in the camera movement from my because it's because it's their neighborhoods that are under attack, due to what you call it and fracking taking place there. Water conditions are terrible air pollution is terrible. And I think we're really starting to see a lot of which was actually at the moment like a lot of kind of people of color led organizations activists are really to take each other take the handle of things. Excellent. Thank you magic. And, and finally, magic you you write a lot and engage with what you describe as the art of destruction. And also I should point out your incredible position as not just the youngest but also the first Muslim British Somali former refugee mayor of Sheffield which is an incredible achievement and I don't even where to start in terms of unpacking the complexity of that position. But one thing that is really obvious to me is that that position in itself is an act of destruction in new case political spaces. And I wonder from your point of view, when you talk about the art of destruction or creative destruction. And what does it mean how can we creatively disrupt and and why is it important. Yeah, I'd also say just to kind of add to that and I was also elected and representing in the member of the European Parliament, and as well, and in Brussels which represent in York from the humble which of course is a whole different But I guess, honestly, I think one way we can have the first one is, it's, we've kind of shall we say like, we've kind of been socially conditioned to believe that elected representatives come from a specific background and looking for a specific and type type of way so when somebody who's black brown or somebody different kind of comes and takes that space, it kind of becomes a bit of a shock to a lot of people. And it's so when I kind of really took up those spaces, it was a real struggle but I kind of really got a lot of conviction being like unapologetically myself and I think one really big part of disruption is being authentic to who you are not necessarily to fit them all the kind of really like fit some sort of tradition because it's sort of like traditions everywhere and one of the things I say is like tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. So it's also kind of really create our own traditions kind of sour on path so it's, it's, we've got no alternative if we really want to have a healthy democracy where our elected representatives reflect the people that they represent. We have to kind of put ourselves forward as candidates support other people, because also is you don't, you don't have to have a fancy title like a mayor council or an MEP to bring about some sort of change but it's important that you do engage that you're involved in that process in some capacity shape in some capacity or not kind of thing. And of course it's going to be difficult is it's going to come with its own challenges. Like you'll have you'll suffer from the impossible syndrome and at times but it's, I guess I like take comfort and on solace from the people that believed in me like whether that be my mother who sacrificed friends who granted me because you don't realize that you don't do things by yourself. I've kind of like got this belief that God gave us two hands one to climb and other to lift people as we're climbing. There's also incumbent upon us to kind of make sure that we're giving space to other people as as much as possible so that's why I've always mentored lots of kind of young people of color and trying to navigate the space of politics and want to kind of get elected out of that so it's, there's a lot that we can do, there's a lot that we could be doing a lot more as well but it's, we can't afford to be indifferent basically. Thank you Magid this is usually inspiring and also how you actively shifted the narrative and took up space in an otherwise inaccessible spaces beyond the current established and fixed structure in the British political scene so thank you very much for your insights on that. And on that note around creative disruption, Salma also in your work you did disrupt as I said earlier, fixed narratives and ways of framing and representing the Arab female body. And you, and by using your yourself and your body as a site of performance and as a way of tackling issues around war and displacements. You also navigate issues surrounding your own body as the object of the artwork. So I wonder what kind of questions you are also engaging with or if you can if you can unpack the questions surrounding the presence of your body as as the subject of the work itself and how it is a subject but at the same time it is also the object of the piece and I wonder if if you can share more around how you are tackling these complexities and the paradoxes of the presence in of your body as at the center of the work. Sure, thank you. So I've always, I've been long interested in the image of the female figure, because it's a representation of the female figure in art. It dates back to Palestinian, it's not the only country that has ever used the site of the female body as nation, but it also plays into nationals policy national struggles and how the physical representation of the mother land is made through the female body and this I think is very tuned to an early understanding of how the East, the so called Middle East and North Africa understood how the West was depicting their inferiority through orientalist colonialist images of the woman so that the early renderings whether it be painting or drawings but I'm primarily interested in photography and images. These kinds of images that were made and they were sent and peddled back in the in the West and Europe in the United States objectified and sort of painted Arab women, Middle Eastern North African women as primitive as docile, lacking social context, and the other right. And so it sort of presented a backwardness and I'm studying photography and looking how the image history how it. It has new forms in contemporary media today where it's the, it's, it's either the oppression of Arab women or it's the terrorist body. And so there's other ways of excluding and flattening that complexity of our experiences and our histories through the instrument of a camera and image. And so I think that's primarily where it arose that I would use my own body is as a symbolic container to this representation, and that I would be able to perform through costume site. I would use the scarification on the body to these issues in a contemporary way, but, but pointing back to that image history that historical imagery, where photography rose the technology photography rose with the, the rise of imperialism on an on an international scale. Did I answer all the questions. Thank you. So going back to that piece between two river where you are depicted depicted in the project. And you've mentioned briefly earlier that it's, it addresses the views of women as as being liberated through war under the guise of democracy. So I'm interested in also learning more about what inspired you to create that piece, but also in terms of how the body itself is presented and how the surface of the body itself is is disrupted through the scarring the different forms of scarring and wounding on the surface of the body of the skin. So I'm also fascinated in here you commenting on that. And, and what it represents in the wider scheme of that project. Okay, so it's I'm going to have to try to enter that through three or four different directions and keep it succinct. First inspired obviously looking at the imagery that was. I will say first just being really disgusted by the way that the conversation when the United States was starting to lose the war and lose the narrative right that this unpopular immoral illegal war was happening and that Iraqis that didn't just basically lay roses down on the feet of the US soldiers, and it wasn't just a, you know, a successful mission that was wrapped up in a few minutes. And so this Bush administration basically in concert with the US media and international Western media. The media was embedded with with the Americans. And at that time, started to describe this war through terms of women's oppression. And that's why I had those little photos of all of the women with the purple finger stained right next to the image that I made right so those are. I'm showing some examples of the kind of propaganda imagery that was aimed to sort of pull up the heartstrings of, of, of women's rights and women activists and feminist worldwide everybody right basically saying oh look at this women are going to vote for the first democratic vote. And that's the purple stained fingers. And, but the truth is that Iraqi women always voted I mean under the back this regime said I'm saying there was really only sit down to vote for but, but they always voted and they're and their rights and protections were enshrined in constitutional Iraqi laws, and the personal clause article clause that that governed their social sphere as well. And just as a quick context into sexual political violence against women, such as rape, sexual assault is is is not unique to Iraq, under war, those are the conditions of war, where the veneer or the sort of stop gap of the acceptability of rape culture gets removed right and so that's definitely a certain part of it, but really that the power and the regime that the United States help usher into power that those who they helped bring into power because they were losing that war. We're actually attacking women's historic rights and protections. And so that these are multiple things happening war violence, these are spaces that make women's lives, everybody's lives insecure but women are especially vulnerable in these situations. And then you have an assault on the constitutions and then you have this conflation of democracy and that we're actually improving women's lives, where the whole erosion of women's social public experience working, having a judicial process through the courts or through the criminal system, all of that was eradicated after this war. And so, I wanted to bring the that language of violence but I was also in this is a sort of backstory maybe a little less important but I was really kind of taken by this, this, this article I read about the rise of tattooing in Iraq, in this very main period of mass bombings in the marketplace, you know, inability for the, for identifications of the bodies because there were so many of them and there was so widespread. So, and then this was the same time there was so many kidnappings right and these kidnaps kidnappings were aimed at extorting money from, from various groups and families who would pay massive ransoms to free their family members which often work but those family members were indeed dead, because it was a killing. These were the kinds of extortions that were happening, which we call the vultures like they're not actually killing the individuals they're just taking advantage of a situation where chaos prevails and the tattooing became a way of Iraqis to resist through the body to an individual struggle to actually have an identity marker on them that that the kidnapper would have to basically speak to the family and say what it was and where it was and converse and so that became a strategy of resistance which I found really powerful and also became a means for for identifying dead as well. And, and it, you know, there is a long history of identity identity markers trial through the tattooing in Iraq, traditionally, before Saddam at some point sort of outlawing outlawing the tattooing to appease the religious, his religious base. So, yeah, that's the sort of origins of that project. That's hugely fascinating summer and I already have loads of more questions for you that hopefully I can bring some of them in the Q&A later. But I'd like now to move over to you Akram and given your incredible and courageous work and I'd like you to unpack more on something that you've mentioned earlier quite briefly which is how the climate crisis affecting Palestine as a place that is experiencing the consequences of colonization and apartheid and also is that narrative being also being silenced in the UK? Yeah, thanks Nistrin. Well, I think, yeah, the situation here is really that I'm in Palestine at the moment. So really in the process of colonization, the Israeli states has tried to utilize any means at its disposal to expel Palestinians from their land and that's the basic dynamic removal as many Palestinians and the acquisition of much of as much of their land as possible. And that's really been the dynamic from, even before 1948 which is the Palestinian Nakbo catastrophe when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from our homes. And the environment is a key part of that principally because 70% of Palestinians in 1948 were farmers. So the relationship with the land was a very intimate one, a very necessary one, and the seasons when things grew, when things were planted, when things were harvested and so forth, were and remain key markers in the year which determined how people lived their lives. So we had a really largely rural peasant population living in Palestine who overnight their lives were completely transformed and they were made into refugees, living in refugee camps. Couldn't see the sky and the accounts of the refugee camps in the 1950s are dire. They had the second highest mortality rate in the world. And it was a really, let's be honest and say, quite a miserable existence that was imposed upon them. And of course, the process of expelling Palestinians from their land is very similar to what others, other native people, you know, some is coming from the United States, what other native people will have experience which is that the hyper exploitation then of those natural resources. And the mismanagement then of the of the environment, you know, and measure was saying before where custodians of this land and really many indigenous accounts, people see that as being the case. But there's also in the in the process of looking at the environment as a means of extraction profit. And you end up in quite ridiculous situations. So for example, in Palestine, there was a swamp land that the Zionist completely drained in the 1950s, destroying the local landscape and they had to reflood it in the 1950s because of the damage that was caused to Lake Rola, which was drained and then reflooded, or that the kinds of trees that are planted by a Zionist organization called the Jewish National Fund. Part of the reasons the fire and resistance of the trees in certain forests is less than it might otherwise be because they're not indigenous, the indigenous. And I think that you end up in a situation where the environment is particularly vulnerable because people know how to sustain and care for it, and have been expelled from that land and another is about the kinds of olive trees are planted here. And you don't water them because it's unnecessary to it's how you terraced the land makes sustainable is ready is ready all of trees made of woods and settlements, you are required to be watered and then they produce fruit twice a year. And earlier about the approaching of olive trees and native trees, which is a deliberate act of destruction. It's a form of ecocide in itself. Yes, certainly. And, you know, that's in the service of also of taking the land and building walls between the farmers in that land so they can no longer access it. So, you know, this is why I think that, you know, when people talk for instance about intersectionality or ways of forming unity of different struggles. It's not that there's a green struggle and then there's an anti colonial struggle, and we need to somehow make them overlap. It's inevitable that if you return people. Or you retain, keep land in the hands of people who know how to care for it, and look after it, and may extract profit in some capacity but direct that land for the use of sustaining and promoting human life and and the environment itself. And then you then you are participating in the green movement or environmental politics or however you might wish to distinguish it. So I think that's really the essence of what what I think about the overlap of the environment and the struggle for justice in Palestine. And in terms of how this narrative is being addressed in political spaces in the UK. Do you think there's also still silencing around issues of crisis climate crisis and how it's affecting Palestine and extension to the other problems around around democracy and censorship and lack of transparency that you've addressed earlier. I mean I don't go too much off topic but you know I read this one of the little things that pop on but Instagram the talk about you know what is gas lighting. And then I read it and it's just struck me that I'm generally opposed this kind of characterization of things, but it struck me that it really described well the British state and the British establishments relationship to colonial history. And first of all, I think it was saying, it didn't happen. And if it did happen, then it didn't matter. And if it didn't matter, then we didn't mean it. And if we didn't mean it. Then it wasn't that bad. And if it was that bad it just like so it just really struck me if you know that's really my experience when I hear people talking about Palestine in the UK which is that it never happened. It never did it's not that big deal. And, and so I think that the moment you really have this sense in the UK and what the prevent legislation other things have tried to really focus on in the US they have CV countering violent extremism is to take Palestine out of a part of this framing of a comprehensible, very normal, very admirable struggle for justice and freedom and to put it into the camp of extremism or potentially extreme views. And the idea isn't to outright criminalize but just say, if you're talking about Palestine you're talking about something that's a bit dodgy. You don't need to monitor it, or you need to think twice about it, or you need to be very careful how you talk about and you better not slip up in any way because otherwise you're, you're a murderous terrorist, or you're an extremist or something. This is systematic act of erasure and complicity. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Akram and we only have about five minutes left and I wonder if there are any questions from the audience or wonderful speakers. Any burning questions that could be shared in the chat box or the Q&A box. You can see Jennifer Tiffles ask what gives you hope. So anyone can unmute them. Yes, go ahead. So, the civil protests of the lab from that started in 2018-19 in Iraq, in the south and in Baghdad, although it was met with abhorrent violence on the part of the Iraqi government and the Iran-backed militias. This is a youth protest movement for social justice. It cuts across class, religions, ethnicities, and gender, and it maintained. Obviously the COVID situation made it much more complicated because it thwarted a lot of the work but it is ongoing and it has put on notice the government of the catastrophes of human rights, but especially the environment and the horrible situation going on in the south with water. 4 million people in Basra with water rights, just the water is completely polluted, it's oil spills in the shop on Arab, the energy crisis, the ways that Iraq's natural resources are being exploited for profit and the corruption on the backs of people, the ordinary people, and that the social protest comes from Iraqis, homegrown, organized together, engaged in conversation through multiple matters from physical disobedience to cooperation to reading chains, it also makes me think of the Great March of Return in Palestine, the social awakening that is grassroots of that region and the willingness to go up against tyranny, that gives me some hope. I just wanted to echo everything that Samar said. I guess what also kind of gives me hope is kind of just realizing and understanding that the problems that we face didn't just come down from the heavens, they're like made by, man made decisions, mainly you can argue mainly by men in suits. So as a result, good human decisions can really change everything for the better. And I really do believe that the recent global events have massively transformed what is possible, whether that be, of course, the global pandemic, the climate crisis and the fight against hand racism, and they've all kind of really exposed not only the deep inequality within our society, but what many people have been arguing for a long time that we are not only as the key of the most vulnerable amongst us, so that means a child in brotherhood has got as much value as a child in Palestine and just kind of understanding that we're all in this together and I think, especially now, it kind of feels like the realms of what can be done have been dramatic issues that expanded over a lot of kind of recent events and I think as a result, you see we're starting to see a lot of people who are seriously considering what's possible and as a result are really demanding a lot more. So that's one of the many things that kind of gives me a lot of hope. And I've got two minutes to sneak in. And I would say that the past period in Palestine is an extraordinary reason for hope because in the space of a few weeks, the political environment and the landscape changed incredibly from protests starting all around the country to the Palestinian refugee camps and exile. And one of the most incredible things that happened was that a general strike was called. I think it was May 18, it was called the day before. And the next day there was a general strike in every Palestinian community in pictures being shared everywhere. And it's one of all the shots of mass non-compliance teachers, hospital workers, builders, everyone refused to go to work and it just shows that in a very short space of time, what we take for granted, i.e. the systems created this dire environmental disaster that we currently live through in a very quick space of time, things can turn around. And so, even though things are very dark at the moment, I never despair. I think that humanity will be able to save itself. It might be at the last minute, but then it will happen and the hope lies in the extraordinary will of people all around the world, particularly in Palestine in my view for justice and freedom. Jennifer sends her thanks for sharing your depth of knowledge and for your leadership. And she sends her blessings. And what a wonderful way to close the event is to talk about hope. And I think it is a responsibility to be hopeful. And I'm very pleased and quite inspired to hear about how you identify where these spaces of hope can be located. And it's very important to try and trace these spaces and try and identify them and celebrate them and highlight them whenever they exist, no matter how small they are. They are really important in the bigger narrative. So thank you very much for the wonderful speakers and for your inspirations, for your insights and for your generosity. And you've left us with so much to think about today and thank you for the audience for your presence and for your participation. Thank you for Liverpool Arts Festival and Creative Destruction for your wonderful curation and organization. And hopefully we might meet again in another event in the series. Thank you all.