”Up the Rebels” session 1

Today I did a live broadcast which will be the first of a series of online concerts I plan to do about resistance.

Whether we're talking about armed uprisings, mass civil disobedience, or actions carried out by much smaller groups of people, current events and history are full of stories of resistance.

"When you fight, you win" may not quite be actually true, even if it's a good slogan. But even if making the effort doesn't always get the desired results, resistance in its many forms often leads to positive changes that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

The themes I explore in this episode include:

• When the Ottoman Navy rescued as many as 800,000 Spanish Jews in 1492
• The Merthyr Rising in Wales in 1831
• The Rent Strike Wars in New York State in the 1840's
• The resistance to British occupation by the Irish Republican Army in the 1970's and 1980's
• The blockade of Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1993
• Muslim-Christian solidarity on the Kenya-Somalia border in 2015
• Palestine Action's continuing resistance to Elbit Systems' efforts to supply the Israeli war machine with weaponry
• The resistance of Ansar Allah, aka the Houthi Army, in solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza on the Red Sea