Background Briefing: November 22, 2023
An Assessment of Whether the Term Genocide Applies to What is Happening in Gaza
We begin with the four day pause in the Gaza war, after which the killing and destruction could go on for months with over two million trapped in an increasingly smaller space as a war rages around them. Joining us to assess whether the term genocide applies to the fate of Palestinians trapped in Gaza is Raz Segal, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies and endowed professor in the study of modern genocide at Stockton University in New Jersey. We will discuss his article at The Los Angeles Times, “Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide.”
Speaker Mike Johnson’s Pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago as His Extremist Views Are Exposed
Then, following Speaker Mike Johnson’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, where he kissed the ring of the former president he “wholeheartedly” supports, who he says had “a phenomenal first term,” we will speak with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications, and her latest book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
An Activist Who Preaches Against Consumerism and Black Friday Shopping
Then, as consumers gear up to storm the stores on the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, we speak with William Talen, an activist who preaches against consumerism and shopping, who is known in the Earth justice community as the “Reverend Billy” the pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping, a group of activists based in New York City, whose main tactic is singing-while-trespassing. The Stop Shopping Choir has staged performances in Walmarts, Disney Stores, Monsanto labs, the roof of Carnegie Hall, and at jails, pipe-lines and JPMorgan Chase lobbies and across five continents. He conducts a weekly service Sundays at the Earth Church, housed in a converted bank in the East Village, and performs at Manhattan’s public theater in Joe’s Pub this coming Sunday.