thank you very much for coming in spend time with us again this morning thank you good morning so start out for people who are unfamiliar tell us a little bit about the northwest attention center resistance and latino advocacy  that attention center which happened to be very he didn't from public view very little people really knew about it and that idea was to yet highlight these horrible place that existing washington a state and a shouldn't exist but also to join their national campaign of the no one more deport taishan that actually started with young people coming out of the shadows saying i'm  documented and i want to trade in then taking on direct action against the tensions and the protections so once we did that action and that told people inside that there were people outside ready to support them and even ready to be arrested and in some cases the portrait that led to these large large hunger strike two hundred people over two hundred people join in we came back together to support that and we have remained together since then and all of us outside supporting that leadership you know advocacy well so back in the day i got the chance to work with several nonprofits and i got really disenchanted  f the nonprofits system i learned a lot and i decided that the only true change should come from the people not from nonprofits so i came up with the idea that i should be working on the immigration work that i've always wanted to work in the pendant lee in not to rely on on a salary so i came up with the idea of setting up a consulting business and by then i also learn again without depending on anybody salary but then also to utilize the business in whatever shape or form grassroots groups needed so latino workers he became these group that was used by several  was to inform back to those groups in different areas yakima for exploring who are the seattle area bally have to report back and say this is what i learned this is what's happening  i actually refused to call myself a lobbyist for the longest time i just came to grips with lately but that was a lot of the work i did but i also did a lot of support are we all are kind of tools like communications some specific workshops us you know grassroots organizing basic community organizing and so that's basically what latino vote because he has been nice so fourteen other efforts throughout the state that are completely grassroots  and just getting contracts here and there to survive and pay their end so through the umbrella of latino advocacy that you did some arranging community meetings following immigration raid with ice and other local officials well the very first meeting that i helped organize even before latino look a seat that happened between i think that some for maybe two thousand and five where we saw one of the largest raids in south south seattle in that time there was already which is now is still an ordinance in seattle that prohibits employees of the city to collaborate with ice and so that time seattle they do these so i you helped organize that meeting ice came to their meeting they never said anything they never never respond there any or all of our questions but then later on yes i either held organizer participated in meetings for example called community roundtable so homeland security organize they organize them every quarter in different cities and they are organized through the office of civil rights civil liberties so i've got them then a couple of those the border patrol or eyes that are there they get to talk but nobody else gets to talk and when you ask questions they really don't answer our questions so yeah i don't know some of them even before latino and then during latino and after you articles about them reading about you in an in a newspaper up in bellingham oh yeah i mean most definitely they knew about me in february of twenty fourteen when we came out publicly and we decided to actually you know homeland security in their headquarters in washington d c in may of twenty fourteen so when we were calling for that meeting that was actually we got a representative at that missed me to  so yeah they they know me for a long time now so you walked right into the belly of the beast yes yes we were ready to broadly not come out but we figure we need we need to do that right we need to  homeland security officials versus the ice offices now that has change and that's why at that moment we engaged with them because we thought that they could be a possibility of change that they could actually lease and implement some changes but obviously now that's completely different and with the support of adam smith i know you recently were in d c for the state of the union address you had support from maria cantwell bringing you there and it was not pretty to see first of all so many people standing up and clapping for him it was even worse when he was clapping for himself but then people that we could see each other not a stand in it was really important like we felt yes there's there's more of us here than we thought that we're not gonna stand up and we're not going to clap really shocking when he brought people of color in their tragedies to being against each other that was really low i felt like you know how low can this go it's just incredible that you know people of color are being used this way to be against their own communities so i think that's why it's so important that we wear that and there were several of us that actually didn't a stand up and the people that i catch that they're going to stand up and even clap we're all people of color and i was also under a cloud where an elected republican representative had just days before put out the call i believe to have everybody checked to see if their official u s citizens prior to entering yeah i was incredible i got a call from actually from one of the congresspeople saying hey you know just on f y i we don't know how c is but these just came out publicly but the funny thing is that when you get invited there they do a background check on you it's like it's not like anybody just can walk in some matter of fact when you go there you have to have a police every single like you know so many feeds distance and also when you going to the gallery to sit down and wait for the whole event to happen they you have to go through another security like the airport and then you have to surrender your electronics you're not allowed yourself owns this a whole you know process of security so to me that's felt just another you know pandering to their base  kept staring at me for not standing up and clapping and i just look at them i you know i started back at them at the end nobody told me anything i was like i was ready to engage by then i was like ok you want to say something nobody said anything but you know the funniest where you coming from from congress sounds like yeah where you they are at the state of the union and i say yeah he says well do you literally run away from a deal and you say so you're running all the way so he saw me running from the congress all the way to the street where i'd catch several things necessary to show that we we don't agree with happening and that there's a lot of people that don't agree with d c there i think that this idea to intimidate us is actually turning out to be the opposite i think more people are getting more courage to fight back so talk more about the northwest detention center it is something that is unique to the greater seattle area believe it's the only was built by a private subcontractor of halliburton them bought by geo group which is the second largest corporation that leaves of engaging people throughout the whorl about fifty percent of the people that they are not even from this region they're from all other states far away or even from the border a lot of people cross the border and ask for asylum they're sent here so i know there are groups that are calling for the pension problem people have complained about it we had the case of a man with cancer didn't want the night surgery surgery side of the night because i don't want to pay for it although they always has four more budget they just don't want to spend the money on that whenever people get seek are always told to either just drink more water or to just take an ibuprofen i gae recently had a stroke and the guards to more than ten minutes to go to him and see what was going on they didn't have a defibrillator any any kind of equipment for such a situation they mishandled him so much they put him in a wheelchair to take him out into an ambulance that stop he said tired body in and i have the pictures and he said to me it was a stroke why did i end up  him if they had waited twenty to thirty more minutes he could have died and that's just a medical care and food is always been the problem the biggest problem you know food is the basic nourishment the human beings need of plastic or finger fingernails or hairs you name it so their conditions are just extremely horrible and their recent why is because he's a business deal makes as much money as they can they want they want more right they never have enough that's does that over the corporations they greet that they also have limits and where we've seen here with they make money by giving them their worst food they can buy they make money by putting people to work for a dollar a day if saw sometimes they get in a piece of chicken or candy or saw that and they also you know subcontract in other private corporations such as the commissary scaife another corporation that makes money and the communications phone is dell met tell me you know they have video calls that's getting now dot com they e mails they have e mails five hundred not being in the best company to treat their employees so if they treat their employees that way they do in my web kind of food are providing right to the tension centers in this case so yeah it seems that they're utilizing almost the same sort of companies i think th all colluded together right so how do we keep expanding these how do we continue making more money and there is like very limited oversight apparently for these facilities absolutely i mean at the end of the day ice is responsible because they gave the contract t to going into the water because remember building a superfund site too and we have heard the same thing about you know a state agency saying well it's a private corporation only if they let us in so it's again is a perfect six system where they can get away with everything they can get more money out of you and i and everybody else to the level of not accountable to anybody and i can do whatever i want and that's what happened  recently last month when the hunger strike started again on the second day a couple of people joined the hunger strike that started the day before these guys came in and beat up three guys and one of them go center you know vassall happens by a guard to add a person the tane you have to call police you have to call the local police and report it because there's no oversight because nobody's accountable so the only way to actually maybe move something is to file a police report so this guy was able to file a police report and didn't like it i didn't like get in they actually gave him more days in the hole that's why they called solitary confinement a whole and we were able to get  some civil rights lawyers to file a lawsuit and now there's a lawsuit against the pension center for you know these assault in really going against these persons right to you know not eat that's he stright because that's the only kind of tool they have to express their opinion and organize themselves so yeah dation that ice wants us to stop our work and so we decided to come out public in january we we show to the police what's happening i did not expect so much support know man's number of people i was overwhelmed and it felt that our years and years of work have paid off and after that is even more so you know we we had support from not only hearing that contrie but need because we allow them to fight to go against our people just because of anything now they're becoming a fool political repression machine in that's what they're doing against us because we are fighting against the system and we know it's not going to be only against us he's going to be against anybody that the sense from what this government stands for and you had suspected it at the time but it turned out to be true that the department washington state department of licensing was key in turning over information about you oh yeah immediately i realized department of licensing gave my information we got that document now that shows that yes the oil willingly gave my information and that's just one example of how this agency has been collaborating against willingly with ice and we want to find out more exactly how that happened they should be accountable they should be responsible for it and we should also find out what  state agencies have been doing this because i believe it's not only deal all right we are talking with more and more a villa pando and she's with the northwest attention center resistance how can people find out more about  ramzy baroud thank you very much for coming in and spending time with us this morning it's a pleasure thank you for having me so start out tell us a bit about the palestine chronicle well the palestine chronicle is one of few palestinian news platforms here in the united states and in europe that is dedicated to kind of conveying a palestinian viewpoint of the conflict in the middle east in general and palestine israel in particular it's really largely a labor of love that's been around for about eighteen years we have two channels one or two platforms one in english and one in french and hopefully an italian website will be launched very soon in fact we just relaunched the palestine chronicle with a new and exciting format we have a relatively large readership that really most people who would like to see new interpretation of what is happening in the middle east beyond what we as palestinians and rightly so i believe perceive as the bias in mainstream media in general with or fox news or c n n and their take on palestine and israel always been screwed and always been unfair so the best way to deal with it in a sort of complaining for ever is to actually create a channel that brings we hope to carry on until you know the day comes that there is peace and there is justice in palestine all right and what was your motivation in writing your latest book the last  a general that i've been pushing for for some time now i've done my ph d on the subject of people's history i'm really kind of person who just fascinated with how narratives change when when the storyteller himself is you know changes in history or graffiti you know history or graffiti is basically the art of telling his story from different mediums different channels and different historians for example the way that we perceive the vietnam war and what actually happened during the vietnam war has changed about three four times now so there's been the original history and then historical revisionism and a third time and there is a fourth school that's trying to fill even a fourth version and a narrative of the vietnam story now this is kind of my attempt of retelling the palestinian and palestinian history through a different perspective and that perspective is not mine personally in fact i am kind of divorcing the the who intellectual elites thinking of palestine including own and kind of really turning to the people and asking ordinary people from different backgrounds different genders different walks of life to tell us to narrate the palestinians to from beginning to end through their own perspective and through their own life stories and when it's very personal and emotive it becomes far more real and can secure one sial in our understanding of history so the injuries the outcome in my opinion was very successful at least that's the early critics you know have really seen the book and they were very happy with it that it's a whole new way of seeing and interacting with palestinian history but i also have to that i was always fascinated by the work of howard zinn and people's history of the united states my spin on this version of history is slightly different than how doctors indulged with other professors in they'll do with that but it's kind of really more or less it was my own interpretation of his work and i love the idea that we have someone telling us the story of the slaves and the natives and the people who suffered and died and it's the history of pain basically of the united states and that's what i wanted to tell that memory of pain and that history of pain of palestine but also the history of the personal triumphs of individuals it's not only a tragedy because we don't persist and we don't exist based on our ability to cope with suffering we can also triumph over pain and over suffering and we can survive and we can flourish so it's my way of trying to fill that balanced history from a personal point of view and i hope i succeeded in doing so how did you a different people that are included in your book that's a very good question actually there were i wanted this i wanted this to be kind of a community project so we began sending out press releases in english french spanish but also arabic and we made it made this available throughout various media cams we had it translated in arabic and distributed through friends and supporters and  we asked people to share kind of like to answer basic questions that would help us orient their story within the over or music of palestinian history and we received hundreds of responses and that's the thing that i think is even more important than the final outcome is just the process of how we got that we were not appealing to anybody based on ideological or political point of view or even factional we were appealing to people as people muslims christians males females rich poor fiji's none refute is everybody how do you see yourself fitting in this overall palestinian discourse so even though it's stories were you know that's done the find a number of people we selected for interviews and those who kind of you know allowed us to really kind of dilv deeper into their lives and share the kind of details we were looking for then we schedule the second set and the third set in a force that in some instances of interviews and those who were capable of writing we also encourage them to share their poetry is their story is a love story is a family photos so we really wanted to create an environment that is it's kind of family like environment you know to put people at is it's about you telling me the story if the story it's a love it's a love story then tell me your love story if the story is a family of refugees feel obligated to tell us a political narrative either in fact i discouraged the people that we interviewed from feeling that you know you have to be telling you know we don't need slogans we don't need the political discourse per se because it's very obvious the politics of it all we just need to hold different interests to tell the political story but without actually being in politics so the outcome was really it kind of surpassed our expectations in terms of of the content that we gathered know of course the process of how do you tell the story of these individuals or the stories of these individuals without without imposing your own voice on them it was really quite a challenge so the outcome is that you will find that each story even though there is this kind of overlapping that allows the reader to read the book as actually as if it's a novel each chapter has a very unique voice of the individual who is telling that story to give you an example there is this palestinian fighter who pretty much what in every war you can think of including the iraq war he's an very old man now living in  of war and conflict and injuries and loss and and the reason he actually wanted to talk to us there was a bit of a misunderstanding he thought if these guys are doing this project then maybe they can help me find my family in syria and we thought ok we will try to help because now we have this massive network so i wrote his story in english and it was translated to arabic and it was published in various mediums and we urge people if they have any information about his family well to make a long story short the chapter is a very long letter that i wrote with the voice of ali on behalf of ali and i was just telling us basically the letter turned into his way of trying to justify and explain himself to his family in case he passes away without finding them so it in the doing some i think perhaps is the most powerful chapter in the book and it was not even intentional it just really happened by chance just so this is just to give you an idea of how we try to kind of tell the stories without borrowing or imposing our own voice over the voice of the  talk about the importance of giving a platform to palestinians to discuss what is going on in palestine as opposed to so many platforms that are out there who are supportive of  dying and your struggle yet are inevitably outsiders you know making comments right so you know palestine kind of really spurs all sorts of feelings in people  for various reasons and we don't necessarily have to talk about about that but it's either you're pro or against and when you are against you or against with so much fervor and and determination and if you are pro sometimes that zealous see and that's excitement to be you know to emphasize the palestinian position and to express your solidarity with palestinians kind of almost kind of pushes palestinians out of their own story altogether is so and for a long time i feel like as palestinians we kind of sat on the sideline and we kind of cheered our supporters on then and we are course very grateful for all th solidarity but with time i began realizing special as as i start traveling in the world tour with or with my books were just you know to speak to and engage and connect with various communities that palestine has been in many groups of people in many political settings to kind of fit that particular political context but with time it began kind of moving away from what actually the palestinian discourse is all about so for example our friends in britain are engaged in a discussion over britain's responsibility of what's happening in palestine which is very much legitimate  but also palestine became a debate within the labor party and the rise of germany corp and and then it became an issue of debate over what are the limits of anti semitism in britain you know is criticizing zionism a form of anti semitism is criticizing a form of anticipate ism and then you have this whole evolving debate that supposedly sprang out of palestine that is almost completely veered off from what is actually priorities of the palestinian people intact and and and here's a novel idea why not even allow palestinians to actually kill their own story and speak on their own behalf you know maybe at one point in the past say in the sixty's and seventy's there was not a good number of palestinian intellectuals say in the united states who are capable of articulating a palestinian point of view i understand but now we live in a time where palestinians are one of the most educated nations in the middle east and i don't think there is one major american university in which he would not find  or any platform in which you wouldn't find palestinian historians artists and so we are very much qualified and capable of telling the world what our priorities are and how do we want the sort of their attitude to be channeled in order for it to be effective as effective as it was during the anti apartheid struggle in south africa in fact are you cool a few years ago i was in a tour in south africa and i was in discussion with ro cutting the israeli government and settlements in order for israel to feel that there is a price to the con the policies and military occupation that they are carrying out in the west bank and gaza and after assad he turned to me and he said well rhymes i agree with everything you said but here's one little thing that i need you to consider he said during the anti apartheid struggle the message that came out to the world it came out from  c from the african national council came out from us we articulated it we demanded it we had very clear political objectives and we expected it's either you support us or you on but also our message to our friends around the world is really try to align your message as as closely as possible to the message made by our worse of civil society movements for example ten years ago demanding the boycott of israel we have a clear centralized messages coming out from various palestinian communities that are very clear on what we want from the solidarity movement so stay as close movement of new historians and palestine where we are realizing that we got engaged in this endless political discourse about a peace process one state two states and and all of this and in the process of doing so we alienated many people around the world who do not want to be engaged in a put a frivolous political discourse to be entirely honest and they want to actually understand palestine in a more personal more emotive sort of way and that's why we are trying to personalize o so in reclaiming this history what do you foresee in the near future in light of the extra focus that has occurred from donald trump proposing to move the u s embassy to jerusalem for instance right so donald trump's decision to move the u s embassy is not it's not as outrageous as it may seem in the sense that because really they cared so much about palestinian rights in jerusalem because the peace process was the american platform to impose its leadership on the middle east without peace process there's no political radical and you are an extremist now of course it didn't dawn on anyone to think but there is really no peace process so we are really just dealing here with just a notion just a political notion that is there to a very specific political per person with absolutely no relevance to what is actually happening on the ground so what trump has done in his outrageous conduct of political style is like ok that doesn't make any sense we all love israel we all support israel we're all united on israel and he's trying to get some capital from the congress that has been divided over his first year of governing the country or running the country and he wanted to kind of get a moment  peace with mainstream media which loves israel and a moment of peace with the u s congress that is united in its love of israel as well so he thought well what are the can secure onces what could palestinians with their power leadership been you know we don't have that kind of strategic interest with palestinians to care that much so he made that move that resulted in in protests and israeli violence  and over fifteen people were killed so far and hundreds of people injured and nearly a thousand person arrested again not as if that is really a factor that will influence u s foreign policy but i think in some strange way it might have kind of really helped palestinians on the define this this strange bizarre era in u s foreign policy this whole idea that the palestinians are chasing after  process that never was waiting for american handouts to kind of just keep them going you know for slightly longer this is been going on for twenty five years and there is no because whenever palestinians try to unite the u s would say well we will withhold funds the congress will say no money you can starve now so then it's not ok fine then the disunite and so forth and so on we've been in th of arrested development for the last twenty five yards and nothing is happening so maybe in some strange way then though trump had ill intentions maybe this is going to lead to a new discussion in palestine so now what you know the u s is not there with the carrot dangling all the time with a few dollars here and there and maybe it's actually time for us to pay heed to the aspirations of our own people and the future of our own people so in some strange way i think this is a moment for palestinians to really try to reclaim their own political decision making finally and do you foresee that they will i think you there is clearly a discourse now in the media and in in politics where everyone is pushing towards that that end the palestinian authority which has really kind of really survived an american political validation  and handouts is going to resist but i think they have very little room if you well very little political margin to play with so i do hope that the outcome is going to be towards a gre palestinian unity but on the other hand i think if the palestinian leadership refuses to really become more inclusive and unified strang's i think it's really a form of political suicide because there is they have very few options at that point how much influence do people like yourself palestinian we're going outside of palestine have on this right so we as as an individual i  don't have the kind of influence that can make a whole lot of difference but as a member of a movement and by a movement they don't mean a political movement or a faction per se  majority in fact if you think about it every public opinion poll that comes out shows that the current palestinian leadership is absolute minority are struggling and they are again really if it were not for israel support an american hand and political validations they would would have swept away within within days they would have not existed now we are hoping that our voice is clear enough and decisive enough  that will eventually make that cover the difference and you know i think it's we are tired of this whole notion that we are an occupied militarily occupied nation but living with this fake status of ministers and governments  carpets and and you know we are a liberation movement we are a movement that is seeking to liberate our land we are living in refugee camps behind you know checkpoints and apartheid walls and we have no freedom to do anything the palestinian leadership is giving this impression to the international community that there is a state of palestine and there is a palestinian flag and there's a palestinian government but you can't be a true sovereign government if you exist with the support occupation that's the point we want to make very very clear i think so and i think it's becoming clearer right now not just within the region but internationally as well i think it's the us pretty much is the only government really with the supporters you islands in the pacific that are not getting the international community is fit up with this type of thinking and they realize not nothing has been ach in palestine and there is time for the international community to actually do something about that otherwise apartheid is going to paris but she waits in palestine but also the middle east would remain a conflict zone for as long as palestinians are are occupied talking with ramsey barrett he is editor in chief at the palestine chronicle and author of the new book the last earth a palestinian story how can people find out more about the past chronicle and