{ "article": { "title" : "Yasmin Ali", "author" : "Yasmin Ali", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/global-resistance-art-yasmin-ali", "date" : "2025-02-04 15:33:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/yasmin-ali-walking-dead-1.jpg", "excerpt" : "", "content" : "EIP: Can you share your journey to becoming a costume designer & stylist?YASMIN: My journey to becoming a costume designer and stylist has been deeply intertwined with my identity and heritage. Growing up as a Spanish-born, Palestinian American, I was constantly surrounded by stories, textiles, and cultural expressions that reflected resilience and artistry. My love for fashion and storytelling began early, as I watched my family celebrate traditions through clothing and Tatreez embroidery that carried centuries of meaning.My venture into costume design and styling wasn’t exactly linear. I started working in the fashion industry with brands like Ralph Lauren and J.Crew, but I quickly became disillusioned by the wastefulness and monotony of the industry. It felt like there was a lack of soul and variety, and I craved something that allowed me to express my creativity in a more dynamic way.By chance, I attended a plant medicine retreat in upstate New York, where I befriended a quirky director. Later that year, he hired me to design costumes for RuPaul’s Drag Race Christmas music videos. That project was a revelation for me. It combined everything I loved—creativity, storytelling, and collaboration with bold, inspiring people.I also realized that my ADHD, which can make routine work challenging, thrives in the kind of environment costume design provides. Each project is different, requiring a wide variety of skills and offering endless opportunities to meet and work with fascinating, creative individuals. It felt like I had finally found my calling.Whether working on a film, a theatrical production, or styling an individual, I see each project as a chance to weave narratives through fabric, texture, and form.Over time, I’ve learned to use my role to amplify voices and explore the intersections of identity, culture, and fashion. My goal is always to create designs that resonate emotionally, while also celebrating diversity and creativity.EIP: Over the years, do you have a wearable piece that has become your absolute favorite?YASMIN: One of my favorite pieces is a wrap skirt by the Palestinian brand Trashy Clothing. Their designs are rebellious, playful and impenitently political, blending satire and wit to tackle heavy topics like colonialism and cultural appropriation. What I love most is how they use fashion to tell stories—turning everyday garments into symbols of resistance and pride. This skirt, for example, feels like more than just clothing; it’s a reminder of the power of joy and creativity as tools for resilience. Trashy’s work always challenges conventional norms, and wearing their pieces makes me feel connected to both my roots and a broader, unapologetically rebellious spirit. It’s a piece that feels both nostalgic and contemporary, and it’s such a fun way to celebrate Palestinian culture with a sense of humor.EIP: How has your childhood and upbringing shaped your style and approach to fashion today?YASMIN: I’ve always been drawn to wearing a ‘conversation piece’—something that invites connection and sparks dialogue.Growing up, I was also ridiculed for being different and experimental with my style, so fashion became a way for me to carve out a space where I felt safe and expressed my individuality. I still carry that desire for connection through my style, using it as a bridge to communicate and interact with others in a way that feels authentic to me. I was incredibly protective of my hijabi mother and friends. Going to high school in a post-9/11 world, during the Iraqi war, made me hyper- aware of the xenophobia and hatred directed at Arabs and Muslims. I remember getting into fights and standing up to cis-het white men who bullied me and my Muslim sisters. This fierce sense of protection for my community has always been a part of me. Because of that, I’m so proud to have been part of projects like Ms. Marvel and Ramy, which portray the diverse, multifaceted world of Muslims and the SWANA community and diaspora. These projects are personal to me, as they show that our stories and identities are complex and beautiful, and they push against stereotypes while highlighting our strength and resilience.EIP: Tell us about politics and how it crosses over with your work?YASMIN: Being a Palestinian American designer and stylist intoday’s world has been challenging, to say the least. I took my first trip to my homeland in October 2023, and I landed on the 2nd, right in the midst of the atrocities unfolding. Being there, just kilometers away from the genocide, changed me in ways I can’t fully describe. I’ve always been politically active—so much so that it’s cost me jobs in the past—but witnessing this level of violence firsthand redefined my sense of activism.Fashion and style are a form of expression, but what does ‘expression’ mean when you’re silenced for simply calling out atrocities? For me, clothing is a language. It speaks without words. Just walking by someone wearing a keffiyeh can provoke a nod of approval or a look of disgust. It’s incredible how powerful a single piece of fabric can be.The film and TV industry has faced numerous setbacks, from COVID to the writers’ and SAG strikes, but for me, it became crystal clear that this industry, as it stands, needs disruption. If I’m going to lose opportunities for standing up against genocide, I don’t want to be working with soulless people. I’ve had countless colleagues and friends tell me they sympathize with Palestinians but can’t post anything for fear of losing their jobs. What does that tell you? Who holds the power?So, to be able to collaborate with people and projects aligned with my values has been a blessing. From Mona Chalabi reaching out to create a custom keffiyeh dress, to styling the ‘Gaza is Calling’ music video for Mustafa, working with Bella Hadid, and designing a short film for my friend Laith Nakli, these are the kinds of projects that fuel me. This is why I do what I do—to help my community share their stories, to inspire others, and to unapologetically celebrate who we are and where we come from." } , "relatedposts": [ { "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%20Cid%20Resort%20-%20mexicodesconocido.com.mx.png", "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." } , { "title" : "When the Vessel Overflows: Gham and the Limits of Endurance", "author" : "Helena Aslani", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/when-the-vessel-overflows", "date" : "2026-01-22 17:28:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Helena%20Aslani_00301326_003013260025.jpg", "excerpt" : "There were no nurses at 3 am. Only the creak of tiles and my own hands learning how to measure breaths. In Tehran, caregiving became the final act of bearing witness.  My grandfather’s last words were not private grief; they were an accusation that moved through the house, through walls thin with heat and dust, carrying the politics in his voice before anyone else did.", "content" : "There were no nurses at 3 am. Only the creak of tiles and my own hands learning how to measure breaths. In Tehran, caregiving became the final act of bearing witness.  My grandfather’s last words were not private grief; they were an accusation that moved through the house, through walls thin with heat and dust, carrying the politics in his voice before anyone else did.Iranian life has long been charged by the proximity of gham (غم — primarily means sorrow, grief, or sadness in Persian, Urdu, and Hindi, often appearing in poetry and literature to express deep emotional pain). It is both a prison and a guide, teaching how sorrow wrenches through bodies, homes, and streets. It is something that learns your name and calls you home. The Islamic Republic does not govern only through fear, but by organising sorrow, deciding whose grief is aligned and whose must be carried in complete isolation, always teetering at the edge of overflow.I fed him, washed him, timed his breathing; he re-chimed his little bed clock. Each movement carried the weight of what the state refused to provide. Daily power outages rattled the fragile rhythm of the house for hours at a time, leaving me alone with his final moments, worried that I might not be able to alert relatives in an emergency and be faced with his lifeless body in solitude. He died a week before the twelve-day war broke out in June 2025, his body in soil without a stone while bombs filled the skies. Scarcity had a body. It was ours.At the doctor’s office, awaiting radiotherapy, he told other terminally ill patients that they were all paying the price of Khamenei’s martyrdom, living under sorrow-led beliefs that trained civilians for death. He asked the room how it was possible to be told you were dying of pancreatic cancer and still be sent to radiotherapy and billed for it. Even among strangers, grief carried accusation, precise and sharp.He cursed the leaders, the infrastructure of absence, the hands meant to care and did not. Rage pressed into the air, the walls, my hands. I tried to fold it into ritual, into routine, into care. But the vessel was cracking. Gham could no longer be contained.Time stretched and collapsed. Nights outlasted hours; each hour carried the weight of neglected years. Every cough, every sigh, every small gasp became a rhythm I had to follow. The bed clock chimed again. I counted, measured, adjusted. Care was witness. Care was weight. Care was endurance.Outside, the city pressed on. Hospital corridors closed in on us, bodies leaning against beds, pressed into exhaustion. The air smelled of metal and dust, oppressive and cutting. Khameini’s photographs glared down at the loved ones around me, witnesses to our suspension. I stared back, seeing only a hollow vessel, a beacon of endless violence. Debris showered from a broken air conditioner as it crashed onto the waiting chairs below, striking patients’ loved ones. No one screamed. Someone moved the wreckage aside. We kept waiting.Scarcity pressed against life itself. What I felt in his room, the overcapacity of grief, the collapse of care, the moral failure, was not singular. It was present elsewhere, latent, waiting to spill.Gham is porous.It threads through hands, rooms, households, through air that has learned to carry it. It seeps into the plaster of the walls, presses on floors, saturates spaces. It sits in the shadow of corners, in the pauses between words, in the way certain silences feel thick, inhabited by the suspension of cultivating a full life. Eventually, the vessel gives way, and what was once internal becomes visible, unstoppable.For almost fifty years, the Islamic Republic has relied on a moral economy of sorrow, demanding that civilians endure what it explicitly refused to repair. We were taught how to hold grief before we were taught how to name occupation and power. But there comes a moment when sorrow no longer deepens; it floods. These protests are not sudden. They are hydrological.These eruptions are not only a response to political demands. They mark the refusal to continue containing pain, to perform patience, to translate suffering into virtue. People are letting sorrow rupture form.Gham is not just grief. It is the rhythm of the body learning how much to carry before breaking, the lessons whispered across generations in kitchens, cemeteries, and private roofs. It teaches where sorrow may gather, how loudly it may cry, and the shapes it may take without spilling into accusation. It is a delicate inheritance, breathed in through love, through ritual, through the spaces we inhabit.To bear loss correctly was to belong. To bear it in forms that would not undo the body, the family, or the house was a discipline learned through decades of absence. Gham became the nation’s porous vessel, allowing pain to circulate without overflowing. But now, the vessel has overturned, soaked by decades of state-produced death, poverty and violence. Sorrow has exceeded its use.I stayed in his room, watching his breath, learning the felt measure of human fragility. I understood that every gesture of care was political. Every measured movement, each hand held, each small task of survival was a refusal: of abandonment, of quiet suffering, of a world in which grief could be disciplined.I adjusted his blanket. I refilled his water cup. The bed clock chimed again. Each sound marked the vessel’s tremor. Every gesture carried the memory of absence and endurance imposed by fear and neglect. I felt the sudden jolting of generations in my hands.The vessel has overflowed. Gham creeps, surges, and disillusions everything in its path. No law or ritual can contain it. Once the infrastructure of sorrow cracks, grief no longer educates obedience; it demands reckoning. When sorrow breaks its bounds, it becomes the pulse of collective resistance." } , { "title" : "Beyond Left and Right: Why liberation demands abandoning inherited binaries — even our own", "author" : "Adam Theodor Lantz", "category" : "essay", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/beyond-left-and-right", "date" : "2026-01-22 17:28:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/pexels-steve-1317521.jpg", "excerpt" : "I have been trying to write this for months, but the urgency sharpened recently — watching repression justified in the name of anti-imperialism, dissent dismissed as “counterrevolutionary,” and loyalty to movements confused with loyalty to power. The political moment we are living through demands clarity. Across the world, authoritarianism is resurging — not only from the right, but increasingly from within spaces that call themselves left, radical, or revolutionary. That is what finally pushed this piece onto the page.", "content" : "I have been trying to write this for months, but the urgency sharpened recently — watching repression justified in the name of anti-imperialism, dissent dismissed as “counterrevolutionary,” and loyalty to movements confused with loyalty to power. The political moment we are living through demands clarity. Across the world, authoritarianism is resurging — not only from the right, but increasingly from within spaces that call themselves left, radical, or revolutionary. That is what finally pushed this piece onto the page.I keep asking myself how to write this without immediately being criticised by anarchists or leftists who will say this is just another liberal reflection with no real power analysis — the kind that feels good but leads nowhere near liberation. That critique is already present in my head before anyone else has articulated it. And maybe that alone says something important.Why does this matter?It matters because I use Marxism — not as dogma, but as a tool. A way to analyse power, exploitation, and material conditions. A way to imagine futures beyond capitalism, extraction, and domination. I organise as a leftist. I work in left spaces. And yet, the term the left is not always helpful — especially now.Not because I reject its history of struggle, resistance, and collective gains, but because I increasingly believe that left and right are inherited binaries we also need to escape. They are political shortcuts shaped by modernity and colonial logic — frameworks that flatten complex struggles into a single spectrum and often obscure more than they reveal.When the political horizon is reduced to left versus right, power learns how to survive anywhere along that line. Violence can be justified. Repression can be excused. Authoritarianism can be defended — so long as it wears the correct ideological uniform.And this is not theoretical.We see it when state violence is excused because it is framed as “anti-imperialist resistance,” even when it targets workers, journalists, feminists, or ethnic minorities. We see it when internal dissent in movements is silenced through loyalty tests — where questioning leadership is treated as betrayal rather than accountability. We see it when socialist language is used to justify prisons, censorship, or militarisation, and anyone who objects is accused of helping the enemy.This is where I draw the line.If being a loyal “leftist” means protecting corrupt leaders, excusing state violence, or suppressing critique simply because those in power claim to act in the name of Marxism, socialism, or revolution, then that loyalty is not liberatory. It is authoritarian. And at that point, it becomes structurally indistinguishable from the forces it claims to oppose.Following a revolutionary script without asking who holds power, who is silenced, who is sacrificed, and who benefits is not material analysis — it is ritual. It is faith. When ideology becomes untouchable, when it cannot be criticised or abandoned, it stops being a tool for liberation and becomes a structure of domination.That is why I believe the real divide is not left versus right, but authoritarianism versus liberation.This divide cuts across ideologies, movements, and histories. Authoritarianism can be wrapped in red flags just as easily as nationalist ones. Liberation can emerge in places that do not fit neatly into any ideological category. If we refuse to see this, we are not analysing power — we are defending identities.Communist and anarchist traditions have long warned against this. Communism, at its core, rejects identity as a political anchor. So what is “the left,” if not an identity in itself? Labels carry histories, exclusions, and unspoken rules about who belongs and who does not. There are good reasons why some people refuse the label communist, just as others refuse anarchist. And yet, the underlying commitments — equality, freedom, collective care — often overlap far more than these identities allow us to recognise.Peter Kropotkin understood this when he wrote: “Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality.”Personally, I organise as a communist in left spaces because that is where I find people committed to collective struggle, economic justice, and dismantling capitalism. But I refuse to treat “the left” as sacred. Treating it as immune from critique is not radical — it is dangerous. It mirrors the same logic that sustains white supremacy: the belief that a particular tradition, lineage, or framework is inherently righteous and therefore beyond questioning.White supremacy does not only operate through explicit racism. It also operates through rigidity, hierarchy, and the insistence that certain ways of knowing are universal and superior. When left politics replicate those patterns — when they demand loyalty over accountability, discipline over care, unity over truth — they reproduce the very systems they claim to oppose.If we are serious about collective liberation, then nothing — not Marxism, not the left, not our own political identities — can be above critique.What does that require in practice?It requires organising cultures where dissent is treated as care, not sabotage. It requires refusing to excuse repression simply because it comes from “our side.” It requires building movements where leadership is accountable, power is reversible, and solidarity does not mean silence. And it requires grounding politics not in ideological purity, but in whether our actions expand freedom, dignity, and collective life.Liberation requires movement, not fixation. Humility, not purity. And the courage to abandon inherited binaries when they no longer serve life.That is not liberalism.It is responsibility." } ] }