Taryn Thomas

exhibition that is exhibit and that is that in the united states i know it was in england right now is it coming back to the united states it might i'm not sure i'm not one of the organizers but it will likely come back um soon but yeah right now it is in england um until july 6th

Thank you for having me.

Yeah.

So I think it,

starts before October 7th, that I used to be a Black Lives Matter activist.

Like when I'm 16 years old, this was like during quarantine, 2020, right after George Floyd got killed.

And I remember seeing like Palestinian flags, like at our Black Lives Matter protests.

And so when I saw this, I would ask our leaders like, you know, why, you know, or why are Palestinian flags here?

And they would say that, you know,

for us to be free, Palestine has to be free.

And they would utilize the same words, even now we're seeing the same language of apartheid, dispossession, colonization.

And it kind of struck me as like a black woman.

And I think more so just because of identity politics and kind of like, I like mistook that familiarity for understanding this conflict and had some intellectual shortcuts

when it comes to like understanding this like very complex and nuanced history that, and just like compressing into like an oppressor versus oppressed, you know, narrative.

Yeah.

And so then, um, I would want to say like, give context on what had happened on Stanford's campus, because like, I think that led me to pull away from the movement itself was specifically after October 7th, um, by October 20th, Stanford already put up its encampment, uh, sent in to stop the genocide.

Um, this is before the finish, the families had even finished identifying its dead.

This is a week before a single soldier had even crossed into Gaza.

And so we were already labeling it a genocide.

And so we knew how the story was going to end.