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From Seoul to Gaza
How a Grassroots Coalition Is Rewriting the Politics of Solidarity
Korea is not a country known for its multiculturalism. But the Palestinian movement is rewriting what solidarity looks like here.
Most Koreans didn’t know much about Palestine when Nareman moved from Bethlehem to Seoul in August 2023.
“Oh, you’re from Pakistan?” Koreans used to ask, brows furrowed. It was not a question designed to offend, but instead reflected a deeper reality: South Korea’s distance from the Middle East, geographically, politically, and imaginatively.
“No, from Palestine,” She would repeatedly correct. It wasn’t long before she grew resigned to the fact that her homeland barely existed in Korean public consciousness.
Then came October 7. And suddenly, everyone had an opinion.
Overnight, the anonymity that had once alienated her – but also shielded her – evaporated. Now, her homeland was thrust into the spotlight, but she felt more misrepresented than ever. Instead of “Pakistan,” the new response she heard was, often tinged with fear or distrust: “Hamas.”
Like much global media coverage since October 7, Korean news substituted “Palestinian” with “Hamas,” collapsing a people into a faction. An early survey in November 2023 showed that the Korean public was more than twice as likely to blame ‘Hamas’ for the war.
Alone in a foreign country, disconnected from other Palestinians, she felt alone and terrified.
Now, she hesitated before answering the question, Where are you from? One day, out of panic, she answered, “Egypt!”
But just a week later, something shifted. She found herself standing at one of Seoul’s first pro-Palestinian solidarity marches after October 7. There, in the streets, she saw other Palestinians and Arabs – students, workers, families – many meeting one another for the first time. She felt something she hadn’t felt since leaving Bethlehem: she wasn’t alone.
That protest would become the seed of a movement.
A Country Not Known for Multiculturalism
South Korea is one of the most ethnically homogenous societies in the world. Koreans routinely call their country danil minjok – one people, one ethnicity. While that identity has shifted in recent years, the myth still shapes social attitudes, particularly toward Muslims, Arabs, refugees, and migrants.
Public discourse is dominated by anxieties about multiculturalism, demographic decline, and cultural purity. Islamophobia remains widespread, reinforced by sensationalist news coverage and limited exposure to Muslim or Arab communities.
Before October 7, Palestine was barely part of Korean political vocabulary. As activist Irang Bak recalled, previous “one-off” mobilizations were often symbolic gestures, often organized by Koreans, in which Palestinians were invited only briefly to speak.
The events of 2023 changed that.
The birth of a coalition
What began as a handful of scattered activists – Korean leftists, Egyptian refugees, a few Palestinian students – grew into what is now called the People in Solidarity with Palestine, a coalition of over forty-five organizations.
In the earliest days after October 7, two communities were already mobilizing: the Egyptian community in Seoul, many of whom had fled persecution under the Sisi regime, and Korean activists long rooted in anti-imperialist and labor struggles, especially members of the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM).
Irang Bak, a member of WSM and one of the coalition’s core organizers, said that previous campaigning created the common ground to come together. “We had already organised with the Egyptian community before around refugee and migrant rights – so when October 7 happened, we called them and they called us.”
On October 11, just four days after the attack, they held their first march, a modest but defiant gathering on a tense political landscape. Korean media accused them of “supporting Hamas,” an accusation that revealed the public discourse in the country.
But something happened that day that changed the direction of the movement entirely.
During that march, a small group of Palestinian students approached the organizers.
“We want to organize the next protest together,” they said. And so, Palestinians joined the coalition alongside the Egyptian and Korean activists.
This shift, from having Palestinians as symbolic presences to having them as co-organizers, became foundational.
Irang remembers that moment clearly. “Before, Koreans organized and Palestinians came as guests to speak. But now it was a movement we were building together. We were learning in real time.”
Left to right: Sihun Lee, co-founder of Subak Student Group at Seoul National University, Nareman Samir, Palestinian organizer, and Irang Bak, Korean organizer.
Centering Palestinian Voices
Centering Palestinians became a core part of what set the coalition apart.
Sihun, another key organizer of People in Solidarity with Palestine and co-founder of the Subak (Watermelon) Student Group at Seoul National University, explained it this way:
“Having Palestinians as agents, not guests, changed everything. We support Palestinian resistance because resisting colonization is a universal right.”
In a society that often valorizes Korean perspectives above all else, this approach was radical. Many organizations, Sihun noted, feel pressure to frame issues in “Korean terms” to attract media coverage or political attention. But the coalition rejected that.
“We try to avoid making Korea the center,” he said. “This movement is not about us.”
For Palestinian members like Nareman, this was transformative. “People in Solidarity with Palestine trusted our voices, and supported our narrative – which has historically been overlooked. That’s why I’m still with them,” she told me.
Within a month of attending her first protest, she was invited to become a representative. In the process, she met other Palestinians. “It became a community for us,” she said. “A place to find other Palestinians, to organize, to breathe.”
This may seem small, but for a diaspora as dispersed and fragmented as Palestine’s – especially in a country with a tiny Palestinian population – it meant everything. The movement created an infrastructure of belonging.
A Different Kind of Solidarity
In the time since October 7, People in Solidarity with Palestine organized teach-ins, marches, vigils, art builds, public discussions, film screenings, and student actions across Seoul. At first, the crowds were small but they were consistent, and the crowds began to grow and relationships started to deepen.
Today, they have organised over 110+ marches in Seoul, nearly every single week since October 7, helping raise visibility on Palestinian issues. Now, they are one of several different coalitions and organising blocks in the wider Korean Palestinian movement, such as Urgent Action by Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Palestine and BDS Korea.
Activism was also being revived on university campuses. At the second protest, Sihun met a fellow student at Seoul National University, a third generation Palestinian. “Let’s start a club,” she said. And so they did, naming it Subak, which is Korean for watermelon.
By spring 2024, the ripple effects of U.S. campus encampments were spreading globally. When students at Columbia University erected tents demanding divestment, Korean students watched closely. Sihun and his co-organizers decided: If they can do it, so can we.
At Seoul National University, South Korea’s most prestigious campus, they launched a solidarity encampment that lasted six weeks. It was the first of its kind in the country.
“At first it was mostly international students,” Sihun said.
“But then more Koreans began joining too.”
Tents multiplied. Discussions grew deeper. Faculty began stopping by. Students who had never attended a protest found themselves sleeping on the ground for Gaza. Soon, other universities also started following suit – with encampments popping up in other top tier institutions Korea University and Yonsei University.
What emerged was not just solidarity with Palestinians, but a reawakening of Korean student activism itself, something many organizers hadn’t seen since before COVID times.
Whether in the campuses or on the streets of Seoul, for many Koreans, it was the first time they had encountered Palestinians not as headlines on the news, but as classmates, neighbors, and fellow organizers.
For many Palestinians, it was the first time they felt seen without having to justify their existence, or explain their grief, or sanitize their political demands.
The People in Solidarity with Palestine coalition’s intentionally Palestinian-centered approach became a quiet form of political education. Koreans learned to follow rather than lead.
A Cultural Shift in Public Opinion
Even as the Korean government maintained close military ties with Israel, public sentiment has shifted dramatically. A 2024 survey showed a steep decline in Korean favorability toward Israel, moving from slightly negative to overwhelmingly negative – a bigger drop than in many wealthy countries.
This wasn’t only due to global media coverage. It was also the product of grassroots education. Korean organizers translated Palestinian testimonies into Korean. They held weekly street marches. They brought Palestinian speakers into classrooms and union halls.
For the first time, Palestine became part of Korean political consciousness.
But what’s happening in Seoul is not just about Palestine. It’s about the possibility of building movements that are transnational, multilingual, multiethnic, and deeply collaborative even in a society that is not known for multiculturalism.
And it’s about recognizing that communities living far from each other can still shape each other’s survival.
Coalitions like People in Solidarity with Palestine are far from mainstream. But its impact, and its approach, offers a model for what solidarity can look like in countries where diaspora communities are small, where misinformation is widespread, and where geopolitical narratives feel distant.
A year after arriving in Seoul, Nareman can answer the question “Where are you from?” without hesitation. She now says “Palestine” with the confidence of someone who knows she has a community behind her.
She is one of the coalition’s most active organizers, helping shape actions, messaging, and marches. The movement has not erased her grief, nothing could, but it has given her belonging.
“We need Palestinian voices,” she told me. “And here, we’re leading the movement.”
That is the quiet revolution unfolding in Seoul.
In a city thousands of miles from Gaza, activists are building a new politics of solidarity, one rooted in trust, relationship, and collective liberation. One where Koreans, Egyptians, and Palestinians fight not just for each other, but with each other.
And in that world, Palestine is not far away at all.
{
"article":
{
"title" : "From Seoul to Gaza: How a Grassroots Coalition Is Rewriting the Politics of Solidarity",
"author" : "Joi Lee",
"category" : "essay",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/from-seoul-to-gaza",
"date" : "2026-01-27 11:59:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/0E89D45E-03BB-47EC-BFC6-6DF3F851FCA3_1_102_o.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Korea is not a country known for its multiculturalism. But the Palestinian movement is rewriting what solidarity looks like here.",
"content" : "Korea is not a country known for its multiculturalism. But the Palestinian movement is rewriting what solidarity looks like here.Most Koreans didn’t know much about Palestine when Nareman moved from Bethlehem to Seoul in August 2023.“Oh, you’re from Pakistan?” Koreans used to ask, brows furrowed. It was not a question designed to offend, but instead reflected a deeper reality: South Korea’s distance from the Middle East, geographically, politically, and imaginatively.“No, from Palestine,” She would repeatedly correct. It wasn’t long before she grew resigned to the fact that her homeland barely existed in Korean public consciousness.Then came October 7. And suddenly, everyone had an opinion.Overnight, the anonymity that had once alienated her – but also shielded her – evaporated. Now, her homeland was thrust into the spotlight, but she felt more misrepresented than ever. Instead of “Pakistan,” the new response she heard was, often tinged with fear or distrust: “Hamas.”Like much global media coverage since October 7, Korean news substituted “Palestinian” with “Hamas,” collapsing a people into a faction. An early survey in November 2023 showed that the Korean public was more than twice as likely to blame ‘Hamas’ for the war.Alone in a foreign country, disconnected from other Palestinians, she felt alone and terrified.Now, she hesitated before answering the question, Where are you from? One day, out of panic, she answered, “Egypt!”But just a week later, something shifted. She found herself standing at one of Seoul’s first pro-Palestinian solidarity marches after October 7. There, in the streets, she saw other Palestinians and Arabs – students, workers, families – many meeting one another for the first time. She felt something she hadn’t felt since leaving Bethlehem: she wasn’t alone.That protest would become the seed of a movement.A Country Not Known for MulticulturalismSouth Korea is one of the most ethnically homogenous societies in the world. Koreans routinely call their country danil minjok – one people, one ethnicity. While that identity has shifted in recent years, the myth still shapes social attitudes, particularly toward Muslims, Arabs, refugees, and migrants.Public discourse is dominated by anxieties about multiculturalism, demographic decline, and cultural purity. Islamophobia remains widespread, reinforced by sensationalist news coverage and limited exposure to Muslim or Arab communities.Before October 7, Palestine was barely part of Korean political vocabulary. As activist Irang Bak recalled, previous “one-off” mobilizations were often symbolic gestures, often organized by Koreans, in which Palestinians were invited only briefly to speak.The events of 2023 changed that.The birth of a coalitionWhat began as a handful of scattered activists – Korean leftists, Egyptian refugees, a few Palestinian students – grew into what is now called the People in Solidarity with Palestine, a coalition of over forty-five organizations.In the earliest days after October 7, two communities were already mobilizing: the Egyptian community in Seoul, many of whom had fled persecution under the Sisi regime, and Korean activists long rooted in anti-imperialist and labor struggles, especially members of the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM).Irang Bak, a member of WSM and one of the coalition’s core organizers, said that previous campaigning created the common ground to come together. “We had already organised with the Egyptian community before around refugee and migrant rights – so when October 7 happened, we called them and they called us.”On October 11, just four days after the attack, they held their first march, a modest but defiant gathering on a tense political landscape. Korean media accused them of “supporting Hamas,” an accusation that revealed the public discourse in the country.But something happened that day that changed the direction of the movement entirely.During that march, a small group of Palestinian students approached the organizers.“We want to organize the next protest together,” they said. And so, Palestinians joined the coalition alongside the Egyptian and Korean activists.This shift, from having Palestinians as symbolic presences to having them as co-organizers, became foundational.Irang remembers that moment clearly. “Before, Koreans organized and Palestinians came as guests to speak. But now it was a movement we were building together. We were learning in real time.”Left to right: Sihun Lee, co-founder of Subak Student Group at Seoul National University, Nareman Samir, Palestinian organizer, and Irang Bak, Korean organizer.Centering Palestinian VoicesCentering Palestinians became a core part of what set the coalition apart.Sihun, another key organizer of People in Solidarity with Palestine and co-founder of the Subak (Watermelon) Student Group at Seoul National University, explained it this way:“Having Palestinians as agents, not guests, changed everything. We support Palestinian resistance because resisting colonization is a universal right.”In a society that often valorizes Korean perspectives above all else, this approach was radical. Many organizations, Sihun noted, feel pressure to frame issues in “Korean terms” to attract media coverage or political attention. But the coalition rejected that.“We try to avoid making Korea the center,” he said. “This movement is not about us.”For Palestinian members like Nareman, this was transformative. “People in Solidarity with Palestine trusted our voices, and supported our narrative – which has historically been overlooked. That’s why I’m still with them,” she told me.Within a month of attending her first protest, she was invited to become a representative. In the process, she met other Palestinians. “It became a community for us,” she said. “A place to find other Palestinians, to organize, to breathe.”This may seem small, but for a diaspora as dispersed and fragmented as Palestine’s – especially in a country with a tiny Palestinian population – it meant everything. The movement created an infrastructure of belonging.A Different Kind of SolidarityIn the time since October 7, People in Solidarity with Palestine organized teach-ins, marches, vigils, art builds, public discussions, film screenings, and student actions across Seoul. At first, the crowds were small but they were consistent, and the crowds began to grow and relationships started to deepen.Today, they have organised over 110+ marches in Seoul, nearly every single week since October 7, helping raise visibility on Palestinian issues. Now, they are one of several different coalitions and organising blocks in the wider Korean Palestinian movement, such as Urgent Action by Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Palestine and BDS Korea.Activism was also being revived on university campuses. At the second protest, Sihun met a fellow student at Seoul National University, a third generation Palestinian. “Let’s start a club,” she said. And so they did, naming it Subak, which is Korean for watermelon.By spring 2024, the ripple effects of U.S. campus encampments were spreading globally. When students at Columbia University erected tents demanding divestment, Korean students watched closely. Sihun and his co-organizers decided: If they can do it, so can we.At Seoul National University, South Korea’s most prestigious campus, they launched a solidarity encampment that lasted six weeks. It was the first of its kind in the country.“At first it was mostly international students,” Sihun said.“But then more Koreans began joining too.”Tents multiplied. Discussions grew deeper. Faculty began stopping by. Students who had never attended a protest found themselves sleeping on the ground for Gaza. Soon, other universities also started following suit – with encampments popping up in other top tier institutions Korea University and Yonsei University.What emerged was not just solidarity with Palestinians, but a reawakening of Korean student activism itself, something many organizers hadn’t seen since before COVID times.Whether in the campuses or on the streets of Seoul, for many Koreans, it was the first time they had encountered Palestinians not as headlines on the news, but as classmates, neighbors, and fellow organizers.For many Palestinians, it was the first time they felt seen without having to justify their existence, or explain their grief, or sanitize their political demands.The People in Solidarity with Palestine coalition’s intentionally Palestinian-centered approach became a quiet form of political education. Koreans learned to follow rather than lead.A Cultural Shift in Public OpinionEven as the Korean government maintained close military ties with Israel, public sentiment has shifted dramatically. A 2024 survey showed a steep decline in Korean favorability toward Israel, moving from slightly negative to overwhelmingly negative – a bigger drop than in many wealthy countries.This wasn’t only due to global media coverage. It was also the product of grassroots education. Korean organizers translated Palestinian testimonies into Korean. They held weekly street marches. They brought Palestinian speakers into classrooms and union halls.For the first time, Palestine became part of Korean political consciousness.But what’s happening in Seoul is not just about Palestine. It’s about the possibility of building movements that are transnational, multilingual, multiethnic, and deeply collaborative even in a society that is not known for multiculturalism.And it’s about recognizing that communities living far from each other can still shape each other’s survival.Coalitions like People in Solidarity with Palestine are far from mainstream. But its impact, and its approach, offers a model for what solidarity can look like in countries where diaspora communities are small, where misinformation is widespread, and where geopolitical narratives feel distant.A year after arriving in Seoul, Nareman can answer the question “Where are you from?” without hesitation. She now says “Palestine” with the confidence of someone who knows she has a community behind her.She is one of the coalition’s most active organizers, helping shape actions, messaging, and marches. The movement has not erased her grief, nothing could, but it has given her belonging.“We need Palestinian voices,” she told me. “And here, we’re leading the movement.”That is the quiet revolution unfolding in Seoul.In a city thousands of miles from Gaza, activists are building a new politics of solidarity, one rooted in trust, relationship, and collective liberation. One where Koreans, Egyptians, and Palestinians fight not just for each other, but with each other.And in that world, Palestine is not far away at all."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Renaissance Renaissance’s Cynthia Merhej on Why Fashion Is Always Political",
"author" : "Cady Lang",
"category" : "interviews",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/renaissance-renaissance-cynthia-merhej-interview",
"date" : "2026-01-28 11:42:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cynthia-Merhej-Portrait---November-2024-by-Michele-Aoun-3.jpg",
"excerpt" : "The Beirut designer talks making sustainable clothes in a fast-fashion world and NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji’s inauguration coat.",
"content" : "The Beirut designer talks making sustainable clothes in a fast-fashion world and NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji’s inauguration coat.Photo Credit: Michele AounFor the Palestinian-Lebanese fashion designer Cynthia Merhej, fashion is both an art practice and a way to honor her family’s legacy. A third-generation couturier and the founder and creative director of the Beirut-based brand Renaissance Renaissance, the Central Saint Martins-educated designer makes clothes that speak to the duality of the modern woman. Her designs are experimental yet rooted in tradition, unapologetically feminine but gender-bending, and playful yet elegant: in any given collection, you could find dreamy tulle skirts and sweet bows alongside meticulously constructed jackets and crisp shirting. It’s all part of Merhej’s design philosophy, which is rooted in sustainability, craftsmanship, and a healthy dose of tenacity—creative pillars she learned as a child, while observing her mother, Laura, at work in her own Beirut atelier. These were also lessons passed down from Merhej’s great-grandmother, Laurice Srouji, who opened her own successful atelier in Jaffa, Palestine in the 1920s.While Merhej first debuted Renaissance Renaissance in 2016, the label has been generating lots of buzz of late—getting shortlisted a second time for the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2025, and in January 2026, making headlines around the world after New York City’s new First Lady, Rama Duwaji, wore a striking chocolate brown fur-trimmed coat from Merhej’s F/W 2023 collection. When it came to Duwaji selecting Renaissance Renaissance for this historic occasion, Duwaji’s stylist, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, explained on Substack that this too, had significance. “On her first official day as First Lady of New York, Rama is wearing a small, independent woman designer from the Middle East,” Karefa-Johnson wrote. “That representation resonates. It reverberates. Because fashion communicates. It sends a message.”Merhej spoke with writer Cady Lang about carrying on her family’s fashion legacy, creating timeless clothing in a fast fashion world, what it feels like when your designs make international news, and why fashion is always political.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.How are you? How are things for you right now in Beirut?It’s good. I mean, at the moment, there’s a threat of escalation of violence from Israel, but they’re bombing in the south of Lebanon, which is not very near where I work. It’s about two hours away, so we don’t really feel much here. But they’ve been threatening to escalate for the last three months. So who knows? You just live your life.It’s crazy to think that you’re designing under these conditions, with the world being in the state that it is.Yes, I think [it is] for everyone, not just me, because I feel like the whole world is in turmoil at the moment. The fashion world, particularly, has been imploding for the last four years. I think everyone is generally trying to find steady ground in this current environment.I want to talk to you about how you started your brand, Renaissance Renaissance; you are a third-generation couturier, and your great-grandmother and your mother were also fashion artisans. Can you share your earliest fashion memory?In the beginning, my mom’s atelier was also a shop. The front of the atelier was the store, and the back was the atelier. My earliest memories are being shuffled from the front to the back, depending on if a client was there. That’s probably one of my earliest memories in general, because my mom would take us to work with her. She has three kids, so after daycare or after school, we would usually be there with my mom in the space, but we didn’t get the chance to do much [with the atelier] because she was working. I actually had to learn a lot when I started my brand. All the technical things, like making patterns and sewing, I didn’t know at all.Are there lessons that you’ve learned as a designer from your great-grandmother and your mother?We don’t have anything left from my great-grandmother, unfortunately, because the 1948 [Nakba] happened, and they had to leave everything. But there’s this very strong and inherent influence that comes from just being around really strong women who taught themselves and had dreams. They taught themselves everything, and most of their teams were also women. I think the influence is in the way we design and the way we look at things, without a doubt. I don’t want to say it’s more pragmatic, but it definitely is—there’s a closeness and a compassion to the people you are addressing, because we’re living it as well.It’s definitely a legacy. Do you see a dialogue between your brand and their work?I’m very proud to be a part of this; I think if I didn’t have this legacy, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what I did. But I had this precedent, two amazing women before me who made me realize it’s possible to do it, and that’s huge. I don’t want to gender things too much, but in the way I’m designing and the way I’m approaching clothing, there’s always this inherent, constant intuition on how to approach the female body—how I dress her and how I want women to feel.There’s another whole aspect with the quality of the clothes and how we approach that. My mom was sustainable before sustainability was even a thing. Her mantra is always working directly with the client, really going out of her way to source the best fabrics, to make sure the finishing was perfect, always taking that extra step to make sure the garment will last. And they have lasted, some over 30 years.Renaissance Renaissance’s SS26 Collection “La Touriste.” Courtesy of the designer.On the topic of sustainability, when talking about the brand, you’ve said your goal is to “create garments that can transcend time.” In a world of fast fashion, how do you design pieces to be timeless?It’s always thinking about the woman, about her body, asking myself, “Is it wearable?” All those things, like adding pockets or making sure the length is right, making sure structurally it will last. In terms of the design, I’m not looking at what’s trendy at all. Of course, I’m looking at the street and what people are wearing in their day-to-day lives. But I’m not looking at what this designer is doing or what influencers are posting about. It’s about following my instinct and my intuition, rather than doing something just because it’s trendy or it’s cool.The funny thing is, you start like that, but then it becomes a trend. I guess that’s the normal cycle of fashion. You start off making a garment, and you’re scared because it doesn’t look like anything else out there. And then three or four years later, you’re going into Zara or any fast fashion website. You see your design, that thing that wasn’t cool, is now copied. It’s like life and death. You have to accept this is the rhythm of life in fashion. In a way, it sucks, because indirectly, it’s like I’m contributing to it. It doesn’t make me sad that they copied me, but what does make me sad is like, “Fuck, I’m giving them more things to copy, giving them more ideas to steal so they can keep this horrible business going.”In light of that, how do you continue to feed your creativity as a designer and keep up the energy to create?It’s not difficult to stay inspired. What’s really difficult is when you have an independent brand, there’s no money, and you have to do everything yourself. Burnout is a constant thing for me. It’s very difficult because if I’m in a good state of mind, and I have a little bit of stability, a bit of money in the bank, and I know I can relax for a week, then I can come up with a collection in a week. It’s tough to have your own business and to deal with admin stuff all the time because every day, there’s a problem…But I’m also noticing this pattern with other designers where we’re finding our own way to do it. We’re not going to try to compete with big brands, not going to try to compete with fast fashion, because it’s just literally impossible. It’s exciting to find alternatives.Renaissance Renaissance’s SS26 Collection “La Touriste.” Courtesy of the designer.To return to the brand for a moment, could you tell me more about why you founded Renaissance Renaissance and how the name came about?I started the brand because I wanted to be a creative director, and I thought the best way to do it was to start my own brand because at the time and still now, we don’t see people like me, Arab women, in these positions. The name came about because I like the idea of duality and also of cycles. I like the idea that a woman can constantly have many lives in one lifetime. And it’s the same idea with clothes as well. A garment can come with you through the different stages of your life.2026 has just started, but your designs have already been in the spotlight this year, after Rama Duwaji, the new First Lady of New York City, wore a Renaissance Renaissance coat to the mayoral inauguration. Your designs have also been garnering a lot of industry attention; you were shortlisted for the LVMH Prize in 2021 and again in 2025 and won the 2023 Fashion Trust Arabia Prize for evening wear. What does it feel like to have your work be recognized at this scale?It’s amazing. It’s amazing because we work our asses off—me, my mom, and our seamstresses, all the factories and artisans we work with in Lebanon, plus so many other people like [my publicist] David and his team, and our commercial director, Rodrigo. Of course, it feels really good when the work gets recognized, because it feels like it’s for something—maybe we are not making millions, but at least, people are getting it, it means something to the world…It doesn’t change the reality of being an independent brand, and it’s not changing the day-to-day reality of things. But it definitely feels really good for everyone, not just me. It makes me feel like we’re going in the right direction.In the week following the inauguration, a lot has been made about the symbolism of what Rama wore to the ceremony. Your collections have never shied away from finding the political within the personal. What does it feel like to see your clothing now being a catalyst for larger discussions?When you’ve been doing this for the last 10 years, sometimes you think you’re fucking crazy because you’re doing something that’s meaningful in an industry that doesn’t usually value it. I think if you look at the last decade of fashion especially, it’s been a lot of irony—this idea of quiet luxury. I feel like sincerity was looked down on. Femininity was looked down on. So it’s very nice, because I haven’t changed what I stand for, but people caught up.I don’t know how long it will last, but for me, these are my personal values, the things I always believe in. It’s not going to change now, because other people are writing about it, but it is nice to know that I’m not just having the dialogue by myself or with the wall anymore.Why is fashion political? And what do you think the role of fashion is in this moment?Anything we put out in the world, including fashion or any art you do, is going to be interpreted in the context of whatever is going on. [Rama Duwaji’s] coat is an amazing example, right? There was such a crazy reaction to it, and it was just a coat, but it’s about the meaning and what it stands for and what it symbolizes. Fashion is really important in that way. It helps express ourselves outwardly, and whether we put meaning to it or not, someone is going to put meaning to what we wear. Fashion will always be political. I think it’s very political now because it’s becoming so inaccessible. This is something I’m really thinking about, and I really want to work on in the next year with my brand, because when you’re selling a bag or a shirt for like, $1000-2,000, what are you trying to say with that? Our whole world right now is becoming more and more polarized because of economics, and fashion is no stranger to that.That’s why it’s so important if you have a brand today and if you are a small brand, you can’t afford to not be political, to not take a risk. And when I say political, it’s not necessarily about doing posts about whatever is going on in the news. I’m looking at pricing, how people are shopping, or what they can’t access. I’m looking at how the system treats independent designers. Even with my heritage, to be able to say I’m a Palestinian-Lebanese designer in the U.S. press, for me, was something I could not imagine reading when I was growing up. I couldn’t even imagine it five years ago. To make a decision to be in Beirut, to produce here, was a message. I want to find my own way of living sustainably in a way that benefits mental health and our well-being. I want to make clothes that are great, beautifully designed, but are not going to cost $20 billion unless they’re justified. All these challenges are happening now, and these are all very political. It’s all tied into what’s going on, the bigger picture."
}
,
{
"title" : "Hala Alyan: What Motherhood Taught Me About Allyship: An Invitation to Be Bound to One Another",
"author" : "Hala Alyan",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/what-motherhood-taught-me-about-allyship",
"date" : "2026-01-27 09:03:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Motherhood_R2.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "Illustration Credit: Chantal JahchanOne of the most endearing things about being human is that when we have a pivotal experience, it becomes the benchmark and metaphor for everything that follows. Motherhood has given me a new lens, and I now, often tiresomely, see nearly everything through it.Parenthood has made certain questions unavoidable. Teaching a small child that other beings have interior lives, emotional and physical, is intimate, tedious work. It happens in fragments: explaining why someone cried, why an animal recoiled, why harm does not disappear just because it wasn’t intended. It is a slow education, delivered through repetition rather than revelation. I am teaching empathy not as instinct, but as practice. And in doing so, I am relearning it myself—daily, imperfectly. Each explanation is an invitation to remember that the world is crowded with feeling.Life is full of these bizarre invitations. The other day, my daughter called me over to her with great urgency. “Don’t be sad,” she told me. “You can blow my nose.” Bodies are nothing to my daughter. She is constantly leaning against me, touching me, inserting herself into my space. When we sleep in the same bed, we are a tangle of limbs, indistinguishable. So compelling was the entreaty to blow her nose that I obeyed.I keep thinking about invitations, especially those issued under conditions that should never have existed. I’ve written elsewhere of the particularly devastating one issued by Palestinian children in a press conference held in late 2023.Maybe it’s because a new year—constructed or not—is an invitation to take stock and try something different. One of the most devastating features of the last two years has been the unanswered invitations. Palestinian officials’ entreaties before the United Nations. Children explaining their amputations, screaming for mothers and the world to help them. The letters from doctors, the legal briefs from human rights organizations, testimonies smuggled out of siege, journalists speaking into cameras knowing they may not live to upload the footage, pleading for safety.To ask for protection, for safety, for recognition is not a mark of fragility. It is an act that transfers responsibility outward. An invitation that creates obligation.What is motherhood, for instance, if not an invitation—to proximity, to inconvenience, to being needed in absurd and total ways? What is living if not an invitation to submit to the mundane tasks that tether us to one another? To be willing to be marked by living. To be willing, sometimes, to be undone by it.The last few years have sharpened my thinking about what kind of ally I want to be, which is inseparable from the kind of mother I want to be. What I am training for, ultimately, is the conversations I hope to spend the rest of my life having, especially with my daughter. Conversations about selective justice. About how true liberation does not arrive with conditions. Because when liberation means comfort for me, safety for me, resources for me, at the expense of others, what we are really talking about is supremacy. And I’m not interested in that. What I am interested in is a practice of living—of resolve—that invites us all to be bound to one another.The truth is that, for people on the ground, Palestine is no more materially liberated today than it was before October 7, 2023, though it certainly is in many more people’s imaginations. Someday, in the not-too-far-off future, I’ll have to talk about Palestine with my daughter, about the Nakba, about both her history and the concerted efforts to distort and erase it. And when that day comes, that collective imagination is going to be a lifeline.Of course, there is a temptation to protect tenderness by narrowing its scope, to reserve care for what is closest, most familiar, most legible. I feel that pull constantly. But my attachment to my child doesn’t render her more deserving of safety than children under rubble, or children sleeping in ICE detention centers, or children separated from their parents.Accountability that does not alter behavior is ornamental. It soothes without disrupting. We see this constantly: officials who “acknowledge suffering” while authorizing weapons shipments; administrations fluent in the language of compassion while expanding detention and surveillance. These gestures rely on the assumption that memory is short. Resolve is what interrupts that assumption. It is the discipline of returning, again and again, to the same demand, the same unanswered invitation.And what is resolve if not an invitation for devotion?The devotion in mothering. Devotion in love. Devotion in causes. Devotion to the dead, to their voices, their stories, their unfinished sentences. For the onus is not on the dead to keep reminding us to return to the just. That responsibility belongs to the living.In the end, we are marked by what we tether ourselves to—be it mothering, human solidarity, the values we refuse to abandon. By the calls we choose to heed. The true task of living is to allow oneself to be changed by it, to let it reorganize your time, your priorities, and what you owe. To have endless conversations with a toddler about why, yes, we have to wash our hands again, and why, yes, other people’s feelings matter, and why, absolutely, we are responsible for the ways we affect other people, even if we can’t see it.This is the beautiful tedium which becomes practice. This is what accountability looks like when it is alive."
}
,
{
"title" : "The “Modern-Day Columbus”? Or, What Lies Behind A Bread Culture",
"author" : "Paulina Odeth Flores Bañuelos",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-modern-day-columbus",
"date" : "2026-01-23 08:39:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/El-Cid-Resort---mexicodesconocido.com.mx-d08814.jpg",
"excerpt" : "If you’re not Mexican, you might’ve missed one of the latest insults aimed at our country. But it hasn’t been long since a renowned British baker decided to comment on Mexico’s lack of bread culture and informed the international community (via podcast, because of course) that he planned to open the “best bakery” in Mexico City—a claim that, in a city grappling with gentrification, isn’t just arrogant; it’s political.",
"content" : "If you’re not Mexican, you might’ve missed one of the latest insults aimed at our country. But it hasn’t been long since a renowned British baker decided to comment on Mexico’s lack of bread culture and informed the international community (via podcast, because of course) that he planned to open the “best bakery” in Mexico City—a claim that, in a city grappling with gentrification, isn’t just arrogant; it’s political.Richard Hart, the baker in question, is now the not-so-proud founder of Green Rhino, which opened in the widely gentrified Roma Norte neighbourhood of Mexico City back in June of last year. Hearing Hart’s entire tirade against the “ugly”, “cheap”, “completely highly processed”, and “industrially-made” bread we Mexicans eat, you might be tempted to take his expert opinion at face value and think nothing more of it. But beyond the rudeness of his commentary, there lies an insidious cultural delegitimisation that paves the way for invisibilising the produce of his host country and attempting to replace its “better” version.In reality, what lies behind Mexico’s “non-existent” bread culture is a rich tradition that has learned and thrived from adversity—from the conquest period, when European ingredients like wheat were introduced into the land by way of a violent colonisation that killed thousands of natives and effectively disappeared a number of their customs, to this day.Take the bolillo, the main subject of Hart’s harsh criticism, for example. While he dismissed it as a “white ugly” roll, the bolillo has become a staple in Mexican cuisine. And it wasn’t because it was perfect according to European techniques or because its preparation relied on the highest quality ingredients, but rather quite the opposite. The bolillo was made to sustain the masses, the mostly poor, rural population that comprised most of Mexico’s inhabitants until relatively recently in the country’s history. Thus, Mexican bakers made the most of the affordable ingredients within reach to feed the population.Today, the humble bolillo knows of no social class and is enjoyed by rich or poor alike.It is so much a part of our culture that it is used as a home remedy for bad frights, or sustos, believed to cause a number of maladies according to popular wisdom, from paralysis to diabetes. This belief is so ingrained in Mexican thought that bolillo sales in Mexico City go up after one of its all-too-common, but no less frightening, earthquakes.Pan de muerto (bread of the dead) is yet another example of how deeply ingrained bread is in Mexican culture. This beloved item is central to Day of the Dead celebrations, whose origin can be traced back to pre-Hispanic times. Its mere existence is a testament to the natives’ resilience in the face of genocide and religious suppression. Its elaboration, despite what Hart would have us believe, is far from being cheap or simple. There are, in fact, 12 different varieties, each differing widely in terms of ingredients and preparation. The latter is also far from being a purely industrialised process, as many families and communities still come together to make it at home the traditional way each year, despite it being readily available everywhere—from small neighbourhood bakeries to big supermarket chains.Nowadays, with gentrification (the process in which wealthier newcomers displace the local population of cities) being a very real issue affecting Mexico’s major cities, Hart’s comments are not to be taken lightly in view of his bakery’s recent opening in the heart of Mexico City. Rather, it begs the question as to whether Mexicans should be expected to finance a foreign business built on disrespect for local tradition, all while local businesses are driven out of the up-and-coming hubs?And what does he mean when he says his will be “the best bakery in town? Does “the best” simply mean more European? And is this just another form, or at the very least a remnant, of colonisation?Going back to Richard Hart’s main statement, who determines what counts as bread culture or not? As we should know better by now, a culture is a culture, whether someone at the (white European) centre says it’s good or bad, cheap or not. Further yet, if we go deeper into this last point, we might discover that most world cuisines, even those considered more refined and superior, were born out of the creative utilisation of rather undesirable ingredients, as these were simply fairly accessible to a wider population and prone to more creative approaches to make them not only edible but palatable.And far from being simple, the shortage of high-quality, and hence more expensive, flour in Mexico is a rather complex economic and political issue that can be traced back to the country’s changing agricultural policies and its commercial agreements with other foreign nations. For example, Mexico is nowadays the main importer of basic grains from the US, much to the chagrin of local producers. This comes as a direct result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, now replaced by the USMCA), owing to which Mexico is forced to import up to 80% of its wheat—the main ingredient in bread— from its neighbour to the north. According to experts in the field, this puts the country’s agricultural sovereignty at risk to the detriment of local producers and the national economy at large.Notwithstanding all of the above, Mexicans have continued to thrive with what they have at hand, from the earliest years of the colonisation of the Americas to the full implementation of NAFTA. Overall, Mexico has adopted, adapted, and fully developed multiple varieties of bread throughout its relatively short existence as an independent country. Nowadays, the different types of bread are counted by the thousands. According to national studies, there were 60,000 bakeries spread across the country by 2023, 97% of which were small, mostly family-owned businesses.Despite being marked by resilience, austerity, and scarcity for perhaps most of its history, Mexico’s bread culture is very much alive. IT exists not only in the panaderias and inside people’s home, but in songs, movies, video games, you name it. Trying to invisibilise it or flat-out deny its existence with little to no context only perpetuates a dangerous trend: that of upholding white European standards as superior, as the norm, as the ultimate goal."
}
]
}
