Bahareh Alaei (she/her)

a man in a black and white sweater says maybe just a smattering of everything ALT: a man in a black and white sweater says maybe just a smattering of everything

Good morning. What’s on the agenda for today? Bombing Iran? Invading Greenland? Kidnapping anyone with a tan? Tainting elections?

People detained or deported by ICE for participating in pro-Palestinian protests:
• Rumeysa Ozturk
• Mahmoud Khalil 
• Yunseo Chung
• Badar Khan Suri 
• Momodou Taal
• Leqaa Kordia
• Ranjani Srinivasan
• Alireza Doroudi 
• Dr. Rasha Alawieh

This list will grow. Why are so many "allies"🦗

👇🎯 The public isn't going to understand this, unless the presidents of R1 universities around the country <loudly> & <collectively> get out into the public square & start explaining this & calling out the existential threat to the entire 🇺🇸 university system. The silence is deafening right now.

Hey @gavinnewsom.bsky.social. Maybe have folks like this on your podcast instead of the disingenuous asshole trying to deny their existence?

Good morning. The dance, whatever that means to you, is worth fighting for.

“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, protested in the afternoon and danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.

This is the exact moment in history where everyone’s gotta use whatever rando talents ya got to stop fascism

Pt 10 Small steps still take you places. My dad, an attorney back home, served as a social worker until he passed away. My nearly 80-year old mom still teaches non-credit ESL classes. And I'm still trying to create small communities where people can find slivers of joy, dance, and feel safe.

Pt 9 After nearly a year, our asylum case was accepted, and we landed in a 1-bedroom apartment in So-Cal. Our once thriving home had shrunk to a much smaller and quieter existence. But we learned to stretch meals, to spend long days at the beach, and to create communities where we could feel safe.

This is excellent

Pt 8 Eventually, we were reunited with my dad, and my parents tried to rebuild a life for us in Germany. That year, we celebrated our first Christmas in Stuttgart with kind activists who welcomed us into their lives. But we were Auslanders. Economic mobility would be nearly impossible for my parents

Pt 7 My mom created a cocoon for us, befriending anyone who was willing to take the time to get to know us. She organized picnics and danced. She laughed loudly and pieced together moments of joy and mischief. I'm sure all of us on that floor felt less scared because she refused to be.

Pt 6 We quickly learned to focus on the immediate. We had no control over what could happen to us in a month or day. We couldn't decide what we would eat, or when we could leave the building. We couldn't even decide when to take a bath. But we could focus on what was happening in that moment.

Pt 5 In the camp, we shared a single room with a family of strangers. Everyone on our floor, dozens of refugees from various parts of the world, were sharing one kitchen & bathroom. No one else spoke Farsi. We had no clue when we'd see my dad again, if we'd be sent back, or what was coming next.

Pt 4 I'd never seen my mom, a woman who is usually one of the most resourceful and social people I've met, so quiet and unsure. My dad was separated from us - he had to flee the country a few months before us for political reasons.

Pt 3 When we arrived at a refugee camp in Germany, a converted World War II military housing unit, I remember the uneasiness. We'd been lucky. We had the financial means to afford the flight out of the country & all the required fees to file our case. But our immediate resources were now exhausted.

Pt 2 On the day that we had to leave, I remember being heartbroken that I could only bring three toys with me, and that I had to leave behind this blue rocking horse my dad had built for us in the yard. Though there were dozens of people coming and going like usual, it was oddly quiet.

Pt 1 When I was five, my parents decided to leave our home, an elegant 3-story structure with a yard that had robust cherry trees and a flourishing rose garden. I plucked the ripe cherries and wore them as earrings when my cousins came over to play. This home, always brimming with people, held joy.