Jan Haaken talks with Claudia Ortu about Italian organizing for Palestine, philosopher Sally Markowitz explains the racial-gender binary-ideal, and host Frann Michel notes that March is Long Covid Awareness month.
Italy for Palestine: Claudia Ortu is a senior researcher in English Language and Translation at the University of Cagliari, Italy. Her research interests include Critical Discourse Analysis and the interplay of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses, with a focus on Neoliberalism and Trade Unions. She is active with the Rete Ricerca E Università Per La Palestina, which works for an academic boycott of Israel, and with the Al Ard Film Festival, where she met Jan Haaken who was showing her film The Palestine Exception.. They talk here about the festival and the role of film in the Global Palestine movement as well as the organizing of recent general strikes in Italy in support of Palestine. Their discussion considers policing strategies tested on Palestinians and used against activists in Italy and the USA, parallels and connections in work for Palestinian justice and against ICE, lessons of the Holocaust, students' demands for justice, dignity, and human lives rather than fpr narrowly careerist self-interest, the effective actions of Italian dockworkers refusing to handle weapons, use of the Italian constitution and involvement in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the wisdom of Antonio Gramsci.
The Gender Binary and the Invention of Race: In her book The Gender Binary and the Invention of Race (Routledge, 2024), philosopher Sally Markowitz argues that "the practice of first dividing people into the sharply binary categories of male and female, and then judging how well they conform to those categories, has served as a crucial anchor for an idea of Whiteness and the racial hierarchy that it establishes": systems of racist ideology have historically been constituted through the idea that supposedly more advanced races are more gender dimorphic. In this segment, Dr. Markowitz talks with Frann Michel about this co-constitution of categories of race and sex/gender and the ways the racial-gender-binary has been manifest historically and in current racism and sexism. The book is available in paper at Powell's, as an e-book through the Multnomah County Library, and via open access.
Long Covid Awareness Resources:
The COVID-19 pandemic at 6 years: Mass death, debilitation and media silence (WSWS)
Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (estimates of current levels)
Long COVID in Young Children, School-Aged Children, and Teens
Long Covid News from The Sick Times
Reasons to wear a mask in 2026
Covid News Roundups from Violet Blue
The Covid-Is-Not-Over Newsletter