"What happens when a government wants to suppress the use of communication tools to formulate dissent, when those same tools are for (many, younger, relatively-likely-to-dissent males) a primary form of entertainment? How do these young males then fill their time?"

"You can always find an enemy. You can always find something you want to go away. I want there to be no more intimate partner violence. I want class exploitation to stop. But we run further and further into what we’re fighting against and we forget hope. We forget what we’re fighting for, let alone in what direction. We forget that thing we’re protecting, or building, because of the endless and often necessary distraction of everything that’s trying to tear it down. Being against all of these oppressions and injustices is important, but I would like to propose a semantic shift as truly meaningful: one where we define what we do by what we love, what we need, and what we hope for, where we center hope rather than the opposition when we talk about our ideals.

What if we could conceive of a post-colonialist movement that isn’t first defined by fighting colonizers, but affirming and supporting indigenous peoples, that isn’t post-horror but pre-liberation?"

"
Woods did his homework. He was able to weave effects of slavery, the colonization of Hawaii, civil rights and the history of surfing into one seamless story. The images of modern surfers and archival footage were used creatively to guide the narrative of the film. Grammy Award winner Ben Harper did the narration along with Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter. The Roots also did the soundtrack to the film.

"This isn't a film about surfing," Woods said. "This is really a film about so much more – a unique way to look at race."

"The ad, paid for by Holocaust denier Bradley R. Smith and his Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, primarily raises questions about then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's account of World War II and the existence of Nazi gas chambers."

"YS: Can you elaborate on the censorship? Why did Arab-American authors have difficulty getting fiction published?

RJ: I think it’s a mixture of ignorance, racism, not knowing how to find an audience for Arab-American stories, an absence of Arab-American writing groups like RAWI. Thirteen years ago, the only contemporary Arab-American novelist on the scene was Diana Abu-Jaber. Now, I can name her, Alicia Erian, Leila Halaby, Laila Lalami, Rabih Alameddine, Alia Yunis, Leila Abu-Saba, myself Mohja Kahf, and more I’m forgetting. Wait, it’s not that Arab-Americans weren’t writing fiction, it’s that they weren’t getting published.

After 9/11, American readers wanted to read more about Arabs and Muslims, and Arab-American writers started to have their say. It’s sad though, most readers still don’t know the difference between Arab, Muslim, and Iranian writers. I think that will change too one day."