Avi Chomsky: And Warren, why don't you come up, and I'll just quickly introduce you to Joe as we're getting started.
Joe Sacco: Okay.
Avi Chomsky: Howdy.
Joe Sacco: Hi!
Avi Chomsky: This is being recorded.
Avi Chomsky: I'm gonna take the participants away.
Avi Chomsky: Not the meeting away, just the participants away.
Avi Chomsky: This is Warren Backman?
Joe Sacco: I wore.
Avi Chomsky: Amanda. Hi, how are you?
Joe Sacco: Hi, Amanda.
Avi Chomsky: You know?
Joe Sacco: Good to meet you guys.
Avi Chomsky: Meet you also.
Joe Sacco: I like your fashion.
Joe Sacco: profession.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you.
Joe Sacco: Warren.
Avi Chomsky: Classic academic.
Avi Chomsky: Iconic.
Joe Sacco: Thank you, thank you.
Derek Barr: Avi, would you like to… Start?
Avi Chomsky: Should I start, or are you going to?
Derek Barr: I… I'll do it.
Avi Chomsky: Yeah, you do it.
Derek Barr: Okay, and…
Avi Chomsky: Then that thing will disappear?
Derek Barr: Correct. We'll go live in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Avi Chomsky: Thanks, Darren.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you. Thank you, Derek.
Avi Chomsky: Okay. All right, so I want to thank you all for coming here, and if there's anyone who's joined virtually, thank you for coming in a way that you were able.
Avi Chomsky: So I'm Warren Backman, I'm a current Salem State, master's student, in history. Oh, sorry, and I'll be, one of the folks, emceeing this event, along with… do you want to come up, Nadash? Right.
Avi Chomsky: Hi, I'm Amanda. I'm an alum from the History Department, 2003 graduate, and really excited to be here. Right, fantastic. And also, just briefly, I'm a really big fan of your recent publication on the riots in India.
Joe Sacco: Okay.
Avi Chomsky: I've worked for a bit, living in New Delhi and a Pakistani restaurant I would frequent has since been burned down in riots, so it was very impactful reading those.
Avi Chomsky: that work from you. So thank you for writing that, kind of micro-history.
Avi Chomsky: Sure. Alright, so now to begin more formally, with the introductions. Joe Sacco is a journalist, author, and comic artist whose work has highlighted large and small-scale inner and inter-communal violence, giving voice through his reporting and image through his art.
Avi Chomsky: to those facing erasure, pogrom, and genocide. His work has highlighted the life of Bosniaks prior to and throughout the Bosnian War, with vignettes that demonstrate the trauma of not just life during genocide, but after.
Avi Chomsky: Saku's work on India, which I just made reference to, has used large and small-scale… has used small-scale communal violence between Hindu and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh to approach a wider conversation of how violence became so widespread between communities who used to live side by side.
Avi Chomsky: Whether focused on Dine Northern American Indigenous folks, Indians, Bosniaks, and Palestinians, Sacco's work has highlighted how colonial systems enforce particularity, developing a language whereby systemic violence becomes incredibly personal.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you.
Avi Chomsky: So, Jose Palestine was originally published in 2001, with the new edition being published in, 2024.
Avi Chomsky: And…
Avi Chomsky: It is more relevant than ever right now, which is a truly awful thing, and it's in many ways disturbingly prophetic when you read about these characters facing issues that have
Avi Chomsky: Become very common to… to hear about today.
Avi Chomsky: we see personal stories of Palestinian people living under occupation, and in this graphic novel, they reflect a broader historic reality. But the format, specifically, of the graphic novel, I think, is an incredibly accessible way, for people to
Avi Chomsky: grasp that history, grasp these personal stories in a way that might, you know, a textbook or a monograph, they might not
Avi Chomsky: they might not reach that. And, I think, like, it introduces scenarios that people who don't even have a lot of background makes them want to kind of ask questions and know more about it.
Avi Chomsky: So my litmus test for the effectiveness of this graphic novel format, sorry, is my son, who goes to an alternative school in downtown Salem, where some kids have never read a book before. This is true, actually. And one of my sons, said, oh yeah, we have that book in our humanities classroom. Pierce teaches it. So, so it's, you know, reaching a broad audience who might
Avi Chomsky: not have ever really heard about Palestine.
Avi Chomsky: And I feel like one of the things it really does is, you know, the… kind of the small hope we have over the misery of the past two years is that, particularly among the youth.
Avi Chomsky: awareness of Palestine and the history have led to collective action, and in this way, your work really, I think it combats the attempted erasure of the Palestinian people, and really contributes to the ongoing struggle for liberation and justice in Palestine.
Avi Chomsky: And in a preface to Joe's 2001 Palestine, the fantastic scholar Edward Saeed said of the work, there's no obvious spin, no easily discernible line of doctrine in Joe Sacco's often ironic encounters with Palestinians under occupation.
Avi Chomsky: No attempt to smooth out what is for the most part a meager, anxious existence of uncertainty, collective unhappiness, and deprivation.
Avi Chomsky: And especially in the Gaza comics. A life of aimless wandering within the place's inhospitable confines, wandering and mostly waiting, waiting, waiting, with the exception of one or two novelists and poets. And again, that was written of 2001, over two decades before October 7th.
Avi Chomsky: Sacco has since returned to the study of Palestine with his 2024 on Gaza.
Avi Chomsky: where he concludes.
Avi Chomsky: with the, quotation, which, Avi's got a… there's a copy of the book, on Gaza here that's being handed out in person.
Avi Chomsky: Sorry, one second, because only a poet can conjure up an inferno fitting for those who incited and armed a genocide, and Gaza's dead must surely know that the only justice they can count on will remain in the province of fiction.
Avi Chomsky: A brutally honest continuation of that which Edward Said described, a blunt depiction of deprivation and dispossession, wherein the only respite seems to lie within the realm of poetry and fiction.
Avi Chomsky: And on that cheery note, we would like to begin the questions. And so I'm gonna bring up here Max Kingsbury, another student who's helped to organize this Against Erasure event.
Joe Sacco: By the way, thank you for that kind introduction.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you for being here.
Joe Sacco: Victor. Hello?
Joe Sacco: Hi, I'm Max Kingsbury. Hi, Joe. For those of you who don't know me, I am a student here at Salem State University. This is my senior year, and I am in a class called Intro to Museum Work.
Avi Chomsky: And as a class, we worked together to create this, exhibit as a group, and we're very proud of it, we're very excited for you guys to see it, and I'm very excited to ask you some questions.
Joe Sacco: Okay, I look forward to it.
Avi Chomsky: Awesome. Once again, thank you so much for coming to speak with us. So, the first thing I want to ask you, just dive right in, was there a pivotal moment that led you to the creation of these graphic novels to communicate, kind of, these stories of war and violence? How did journalism and art kind of come together for you?
Joe Sacco: Yeah, well, the, pivotal moment, was Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Joe Sacco: and the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra Shatila, refugee camp in Beirut.
Joe Sacco: By allies of the Israelis, Christian phalangists.
Joe Sacco: So a lot of Palestinians were killed, and
Joe Sacco: I just sort of had this thought.
Joe Sacco: Well, I thought the Palestinians were the terrorists.
Joe Sacco: Because, to be honest, that's how I grew up. I grew up… thinking of Palestinians as terrorists, And…
Joe Sacco: that event…
Joe Sacco: opened my eyes that something else was going on, or that I didn't really understand what was going on.
Joe Sacco: So, I had to sort of interrogate myself as to, why that was. And I just got out of,
Joe Sacco: the University of Oregon, I had a degree in journalism, and I wanted to be a hard news writer.
Joe Sacco: And I began to think about what I learned in journalism school, and what I learned was to be objective, that there were sides of the story, you had to get each side, blah blah blah.
Joe Sacco: So the question I had in my mind is, so why did I… but why did I think Palestinians were terrorists when they're being killed here? And as I began to learn some of the history, I thought, well, why didn't I know this?
Joe Sacco: And I realized…
Joe Sacco: that every time I heard the word Palestinian in a news broadcast or read it in a newspaper.
Joe Sacco: It was side-by-side with the word terrorism, or terrorist.
Joe Sacco: So, why was that? I mean, reporters were reporting, let's say, facts, objective facts, about what had happened, Palestinians attacking a bus, or hijacking an airplane.
Joe Sacco: But I never learned what else was going on, and I began to realize that you can present facts, but they can be curated to present
Joe Sacco: A picture that is… Inadequate, at the very least.
Joe Sacco: So I began to… I began to,
Joe Sacco: think about that, and I began to slowly educate myself. And it took… it took some time, because when I was…
Joe Sacco: Starting out on this kind of journey, there weren't many books.
Joe Sacco: About the subject. One of the first ones I read was The Faithful Triangle.
Joe Sacco: Noam Chomsky's book, and that was… that was the book that really, sort of, helped.
Joe Sacco: Make me understand how the media Had been portraying this issue.
Joe Sacco: So, I mean, to make a long story… I'm making a long story quite long. To make a long story shorter,
Joe Sacco: at that point, I couldn't really get a job as a journalist. Whatever journalism jobs I had were really not what I imagined they should be.
Avi Chomsky: And so I fell back on drawing and cartooning, which is something I'd been doing as a child.
Joe Sacco: And I was living in Germany at the time, doing rock posters and album cover art and all that kind of stuff, and I thought I should go see what's going on in Palestine for myself.
Joe Sacco: And I thought, I'll do a series of comics about my experiences. And as odd as that sounded.
Joe Sacco: I just…
Joe Sacco: went there and began looking around and talking to people, and then I realized, you know, this whole journalism… the journalism I'd studied sort of kicked in, so I was interviewing people and trying to find…
Joe Sacco: different facets of, you know, the occupation, and putting it all together. And so it became…
Joe Sacco: It became a journalistic comic.
Joe Sacco: or a series of comics, but it wasn't like I had a big theory about how to meld comics and journalism. It just sort of happened quite organically, and I learned as I went along.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you.
Avi Chomsky: So, to kind of follow up on that, your comics, they're extremely accessible to a wide audience. It's a great way of meshing together, you know, more recent events to an audience that normally wouldn't really interact with that.
Avi Chomsky: Was that your, initial intention when you were creating these comics through, this kind of journalistic lens, or what was your intention for the original audience?
Joe Sacco: The original audience was, I wanted to write a comic and write and draw a comic that I wanted to read.
Joe Sacco: And I saw there were very few comics that got into deep political work.
Joe Sacco: And that was my impetus. It wasn't… I wasn't trying to sort of come up with a way of presenting difficult material to a wider audience. That really wasn't my thought.
Joe Sacco: The truth is, if I was a filmmaker, I would have tried to make films about this issue. The issue itself mattered a lot to me. I just happened to be a cartoonist.
Joe Sacco: So it was more a matter of,
Joe Sacco: just writing through through the lens of a car… writing and drawing through the lens of a cartoonist. Not really thinking about the wider audience, except myself. I always kind of write for myself. I want to write something that…
Joe Sacco: If I read it, I wouldn't feel like I was being talked down to.
Joe Sacco: That it would be… and I use this word…
Joe Sacco: cautiously, but it would be entertaining. And I mean that in the sense that I wanted people to be pulled along with the narrative. I wanted to write well.
Joe Sacco: A lot of my,
Joe Sacco: Sort of, examples were journalists of the new journalism era.
Joe Sacco: People like Hunter S. Thompson, Michael Herr,
Joe Sacco: people who knew how to write, and I kind of… that was sort of the model. I wanted to… I didn't want to just have a bunch of facts and overwhelm
Joe Sacco: a reader with facts, I wanted to…
Joe Sacco: Pull the reader along, and… and sort of…
Joe Sacco: I wanted them to be introduced to the people that I had met.
Joe Sacco: And to show the people, like, to go into their homes, to sort of bring the reader along into homes, not just have…
Joe Sacco: on this day, this many olive trees were cut down. I mean, all that stuff's very important, but I also wanted to, connect as a human being with Palestinians and reflect that in the work.
Avi Chomsky: Yeah, when you're kind of reflecting, human beings in that work, it can be hard kind of finding a balance between storytelling and journalistic integrity. Did you have difficulties with that when you were initially starting this, or did it kind of just flow easy?
Joe Sacco: On some level, it flowed easy, because I was basing what I was doing on interviews I'd conducted.
Joe Sacco: And on the journal entries I was doing every night while I was there.
Joe Sacco: So… I was trying to keep to a certain journalistic standard, And… and… Trying to quote people accurately.
Joe Sacco: But as I was doing it, I realized there was a sort of a tension between the journalism…
Joe Sacco: The accuracy of, let's say, the quotes or the facts.
Joe Sacco: And of course, the very subjective nature of drawing.
Joe Sacco: You know, obviously, Another artist would not draw the same thing in the same way.
Joe Sacco: a photographer wouldn't take a picture in the same way, so I realized that, in some ways, I'm composing stories, and I'm also… I'm also…
Joe Sacco: Composing stories… Where I wasn't there, where people are reflecting on something that happened. Let's say being…
Joe Sacco: being interrogated by Israeli authorities, being tortured by Israeli authorities.
Joe Sacco: One of the strengths of doing the drawing was I could actually
Joe Sacco: Put the reader in the room with that person.
Joe Sacco: I could draw that. On the other hand.
Joe Sacco: it's… I was… I was… they were describing what was going on, but of course.
Joe Sacco: it's my depiction of what's going on. So that's what I meant by there's a tension between sort of the subjective nature of drawing.
Joe Sacco: And the journalistic…
Joe Sacco: attempt to get facts and quotes right. But, you know, I'm gonna live with that tension.
Joe Sacco: Movie makers do it all the time, of course, and
Joe Sacco: So… but it's one thing to always consider when you're doing this kind of work.
Avi Chomsky: I want to move on to a couple of questions that are kind of about public perception. Palestine has been a… your book, Palestine, has been a very, influential book in raising awareness about the Israeli-Palestine conflict. How has the reception of this book evolved since it's come out?
Joe Sacco: Well, I mean, when I started out, I thought it would be commercial suicide.
Avi Chomsky: Because…
Joe Sacco: I mean, a lot of this stuff was, you know…
Joe Sacco: At that time, comics, they weren't graphic novels, they were floppy comics, and they were in comic book stores.
Joe Sacco: And of course, my sales were incredibly low, because most people were coming into comic book stores to buy Superman and Batman stories. I mean, it must have been odd for the… forgive me for all the comics fans out there, for the typical comics nerd of the day, to see a comic called Palestine.
Joe Sacco: So the sales were incredibly low, and there were 9 issues that came out every few months.
Joe Sacco: And by the end of it, I think I was selling less than 2,000 copies in North America, and by all rights, my publisher should have canceled it. But they sort of believed in the project, I think politically they believed in the project, so…
Joe Sacco: Eventually, bookstores started buying Comics when they were bound as books.
Joe Sacco: And that's when it did well. It started to do well…
Joe Sacco: really when my book on Bosnia did well. Then people began to sort of look at my previous work.
Joe Sacco: And I'd say over time, the reception's been good. Universities have taught it.
Joe Sacco: It's… it's… I think it's always been my… long-term, it's always been my best-selling book.
Joe Sacco: And, of course, after October 7th, it… The sales went up again.
Joe Sacco: Which, as was mentioned, it's sort of a sad commentary on how the book still has a relevance.
Joe Sacco: I mean, I think the level of violence is really much, much, much greater. I mean, it's hard to have even… to imagine… I mean…
Joe Sacco: The difference between
Joe Sacco: what was happening in the First Intifada, and I was there sort of at the tail end of the First Intifada, people being shot.
Joe Sacco: By live rounds, rubber bullets, being interrogated.
Joe Sacco: You know, the… but the number of dead was in the…
Joe Sacco: In the thousands, and low thousands.
Joe Sacco: Now, you know, with the genocide, obviously the level of violence has ramped up to a…
Joe Sacco: Kind of an unbelievable level But I think the… the main points… Of the book.
Joe Sacco: are still relevant. The idea that, really, it's… a lot of it is really about land.
Joe Sacco: And how land was expropriated then, it's expropriated now. Settlers were attacking then, they were attacking now. Olive trees were being bulldozed then, being bulldozed now, so… and there was violence, of course, all ramped up.
Joe Sacco: But those things remain. In fact, I think what wasn't mentioned is that in between
Joe Sacco: after I did the… the book Palestine, I returned to the… I returned…
Joe Sacco: to the Middle East. I did a book called Footnotes in Gaza.
Joe Sacco: which was sort of a historical book that took place during the Second Intifada.
Joe Sacco: And it was a look at massacres that took place in the 1950s in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers came through
Joe Sacco: and, shot Palestinian civilians, Palestinian men, literally lined them up and shot them.
Joe Sacco: And so… What you're seeing today, is… was…
Joe Sacco: Has been germinating and has already been made real in other events.
Joe Sacco: Yeah, to me, it's sad. It's actually sad that the book still has a relevance. I thought, you know, when I was doing that book.
Joe Sacco: It was around the same time. As I was doing it, Camp David… there were the Camp David Accords, and it seemed that maybe something had shifted, that maybe there was a road to Palestinian statehood, and even Palestinians I knew, they were ready to sort of say, okay, maybe this is a new chapter.
Joe Sacco: But, that… it didn't turn out that way, obviously. So the book still has a salience.
Avi Chomsky: I see. Have you encountered any strong reactions or criticisms from, those who have been directly involved in the conflict? And if so, how… what is your response to that?
Joe Sacco: You mean those involved, you mean…
Avi Chomsky: I'm sorry, yes, not Israelis, from… well, Israelis and Palestinians, people who've read the book who are involved in the conflict.
Joe Sacco: Well, when you say involved in the conflict, I don't know if you mean, like, militarily involved.
Avi Chomsky: In any way possible. People who live there, people.
Joe Sacco: Anyone who lives there.
Avi Chomsky: involved.
Joe Sacco: everyone who lives there is involved in the conflict, Palestinian and Israeli, on some level.
Joe Sacco: I've had… Israeli press has interviewed me.
Joe Sacco: And I'd say half the time, the interviews are… I won't say hostile, but suspicious,
Joe Sacco: Pushing at me in a certain way.
Joe Sacco: Because I think their viewpoint is quite different than mine. But other times, even recently, I've talked to Israelis
Joe Sacco: who… or I had an interview with an Israeli journalist who basically was all but saying to me, you know, we can't really say this, but if you say it.
Joe Sacco: it's different. I'm reporting you saying it, but I can't really say this myself, so…
Joe Sacco: There's that to consider, too.
Joe Sacco: The books have been, when possible,
Joe Sacco: distributed. I know, I know the book is sold.
Joe Sacco: or in the… in East Jerusalem. I can't remember the name of the bookstore, there's a well-known bookstore in East Jerusalem that sells
Joe Sacco: Books about… the Palestinian… the Palestinian situation, and it's sold there.
Joe Sacco: I think the reception from the Palestinian side has been generally good. I think it's been…
Joe Sacco: you know, now there's a lot of discourse about appropriation and why you're telling other people's stories, but I've never felt that from Palestinians. I think they see me as someone who, has tried to understand, and I think they've appreciated the work.
Joe Sacco: Of course, I had been called an anti-Semite.
Joe Sacco: By some, but that sort of just goes with the territory.
Avi Chomsky: So you said that you wanted to move away from graphic novels. Are there any lessons from that work that you carry into your more recent projects?
Joe Sacco: Well, it's not so much I want to move away from graphic novels, I still want to do those. I kind of want to move away from journalism.
Avi Chomsky: I see.
Joe Sacco: Because it's, over time, doing a series of books about…
Joe Sacco: I didn't mean it to end this way, but it just… it ended up… I sort of ended up in this sort of eddy of…
Joe Sacco: Reporting on violence.
Joe Sacco: And, over time, that's just worn me out.
Joe Sacco: I… I wanted… I want to do books about,
Joe Sacco: I want to do books that maybe are a little more…
Joe Sacco: I sort of developed a taste for doing sort of editorializing in that book that was mentioned, The War on Gaza.
Joe Sacco: But I also want to do things that are a little more philosophical, that are perhaps talking about some of the exact same topics.
Joe Sacco: But not through the lens of journalism.
Joe Sacco: But… mainly essay. Comics essays, let's say. I don't know if I'm answering your question exactly.
Avi Chomsky: Yeah.
Joe Sacco: Okay.
Avi Chomsky: You know, you talk about, kind of not expecting this to become, what it is now, you know, not expecting the comics to be as big as they are now. And I'm curious to know if you think that the role of graphic novels like this in educating people who would normally not see it, do you think that's…
Avi Chomsky: Perhaps gonna become a bigger thing, as we kind of move forward in history, or do you think that this maybe was just, a one-off or a fluke?
Joe Sacco: I don't think it's a one-off. I know there are a lot of other cartoonists that are working in the field of nonfiction, and even journalism.
Joe Sacco: And I know that comics are now being introduced into curricula.
Joe Sacco: Around the country, I've spoken to a lot of universities, for example,
Joe Sacco: I guess I think that's a good thing. I'm glad people are introduced to these subjects, but I always hope that people don't stop there. I mean…
Joe Sacco: what I hope… You're not gonna get…
Joe Sacco: a complete representation of what's going on in the Palestinian territories, or any subject, really, from one book.
Joe Sacco: There are many others to read, and I would always encourage people to read prose, also.
Joe Sacco: to get another… Some other… some other perspective, or some other form of the depth.
Joe Sacco: Of course, I'm trying to be as deep as possible, with my own work.
Joe Sacco: But, of course, I've learned so much from nonfiction prose that I wouldn't say, oh, let's just read comics and that's gonna be enough. But I do think you're right. I think it's going forward.
Joe Sacco: I hate to say it, but it seems like we're getting to that…
Joe Sacco: As some people have said, post-literate stage, where people just don't read that much.
Avi Chomsky: That, to me, is really…
Joe Sacco: Unfortunate.
Avi Chomsky: Well, that's all I have for questions for you, so we're actually going to turn it over to the crowd to ask a couple of questions, so thank you so much.
Joe Sacco: Thank you, Max.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you so much for, meeting with us.
Joe Sacco: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure.
Avi Chomsky: All right, and thank you again for that. And so we're encouraging students to ask questions before we, take questions from non-students. What was that? Oh, sorry.
Avi Chomsky: Build that up a little bit. And so, if you have a question, either you can come up here and ask it on screen, or I could try to reiterate it for you, whichever you prefer. So, does anyone have a question?
Avi Chomsky: In the audience.
Avi Chomsky: Let's talk about the people first. Okay.
Avi Chomsky: Well, it seems like while folks are… are pondering their questions, Avi, has one.
Avi Chomsky: I always have a question while everyone else is thinking, so please, be thinking of what you want to ask. But I just wanted to thank you very much, but also, I was so struck by the way you described your, coming to consciousness on this issue, because I felt like you were speaking for me!
Avi Chomsky: the summer of 1982, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Sabran Shatila massacre, and the questions you were asking yourself of
Avi Chomsky: okay, where am I? Who am I? What can I do? And I was at Berkeley at the time, and we were just like, okay, we have to develop a course on Palestine. We… we have to have a citywide initiative, for,
Avi Chomsky: for divesting from the settlements. And yeah, that feeling at that moment that a two-state solution was still really possible, and that focusing on the Israeli occupation was the thing to focus on because a two-state solution was possible.
Avi Chomsky: But the other thing I was thinking about as you were speaking is, you know, you said, well, of course I've been accused of anti-Semitism, it goes with the territory, and I was thinking of that over the long period of time as well.
Avi Chomsky: And something I've been asking myself constantly is where we are at the current moment, because it's both
Avi Chomsky: in terms of how support for Palestinian rights is understood in the United States, and how it's manipulated, how it's been manipulated.
Avi Chomsky: how anti-Semitism has been manipulated, because in some ways, I feel like it's just more of the same, but in some ways, I feel like we're in a kind of a evolving era with respect to that. So I just wondered what your take is on the current moment in terms of the U.S. and the question of Palestine in the U.S.
Joe Sacco: Okay, thanks, Avi. I get the impression… That, especially the younger people,
Joe Sacco: have a quite different take. The generations have sort of changed, and I think the young people…
Joe Sacco: I think it's because of the phones.
Joe Sacco: They were able to see
Joe Sacco: You know, whatever you can say about phones, what it… it was sort of this,
Joe Sacco: raw feed of what was going on in Gaza.
Joe Sacco: And I think… People had a visceral reaction to that.
Joe Sacco: And I think having that visceral reaction, just sort of saying, this can't be true, it can't be right, it's just so… it's so repulsive.
Joe Sacco: I think there was a visceral reaction, and then maybe a desire to learn. So I think…
Joe Sacco: younger people especially, but also I think it seems clear that the population in general in the United States has shifted their views
Joe Sacco: on the issue, And I think…
Joe Sacco: I'm not sure if there's any going back from that. I think what Israel has done now has really… they've painted themselves in a certain way, and that's going to be very difficult
Joe Sacco: to change. And I think what we're also seeing is because the narrative has changed so… so much.
Joe Sacco: The effort, then, is… to… Not to have a…
Joe Sacco: Not to compete with the new narrative, But to shut down.
Joe Sacco: the new narrative. I mean, that's what's obviously been going on in universities.
Joe Sacco: It seems like the Academy in general has failed.
Joe Sacco: Students in this regard.
Joe Sacco: And you see now, with the takeover of certain news organizations and social media platforms.
Joe Sacco: It's a realization that they can't really counter the narrative, so control…
Avi Chomsky: Everything that delivers a narrative.
Joe Sacco: And I think, ultimately, scare people.
Joe Sacco: Using the force of the state.
Joe Sacco: To shut people up and intimidate them.
Joe Sacco: I mean, the Academy was doing that, to some extent, but… Just the fact that…
Joe Sacco: People are being arrested, foreign students are being arrested for what… for, what they're saying about the issue.
Joe Sacco: is… I think it's meant to intimidate
Joe Sacco: American… American citizens also. We're… I think we're no longer… clear about what… what… Citizenship or residency.
Joe Sacco: in the United States actually means.
Joe Sacco: So… It's a scary moment.
Joe Sacco: It's a scary moment.
Avi Chomsky: All right, thank you. And, does anyone else have a question? All right, we have a couple. I will call… would you like to say it from there, or come up here?
Avi Chomsky: I agree.
Joe Sacco: It's nicer, you know, it's nicer if they come up, because it's Look at a blank screen.
Avi Chomsky: Hi. Hi. My name is Andrew, I'm a student here. And you mentioned that there was, like, the strength of drawing was the ability to put the reader in the room, with the person that you were interviewing.
Avi Chomsky: And I'm just wondering, like, on a technical craft level, did you do sketches, on-site, in real time, or did you do some of them at home, like, at home later from your notes? And do you feel like there was any sort of, like.
Avi Chomsky: I guess, emotional difference for you while you were doing those kind of bigger sketches on-site versus away from the actual site of the interview?
Joe Sacco: Oh, that's… that's an interesting question. It's Andrew.
Avi Chomsky: Yes.
Joe Sacco: You know, I'm not much of a sketcher.
Joe Sacco: So, I would take photographs. I would ask if I could take a photograph, and then I would use that photograph as a reference.
Joe Sacco: because I was trained as a… I was trained as a prose, as a print journalist, I always thought in terms of just interviewing, interviewing, and interviewing, and just taking notes, and just being kind of present.
Joe Sacco: Other cartoonists I know who do work that's similar, they sketch as a way of starting conversations with people. But there's… everyone's different in that regard.
Joe Sacco: But, yeah, not so many, not so many sketches.
Joe Sacco: I've learned to sketch things that it might be, problematic to take a photograph of, like checkpoints.
Joe Sacco: Where it's a military position, and you're not allowed to take a picture. If you're in a taxi with other people, these shared taxis they have there, I'm not gonna raise my camera and take a picture and maybe endanger everyone in the taxi.
Joe Sacco: So, I would sketch, things like that.
Joe Sacco: As far as the drawings, to be honest, the drawings are actually… it was harder… it was harder to work on these off-site, even…
Joe Sacco: Years or months later than it was to be there hearing these stories and seeing these things.
Joe Sacco: When you're interviewing someone, you're really… you're trying to get a story. You're trying to sort of…
Joe Sacco: find out
Joe Sacco: Something about their experiences, and often what people do, they get distracted, they drift into another story, and you're kind of hurting the person.
Joe Sacco: along the lines that, you know, this is… well, I want to find out what happened to your olive trees.
Joe Sacco: But if they're talking about something else, you might want to get to that later, but you need to sort of control the situation in a certain level. And so it becomes kind of a…
Joe Sacco: a cool science, if you want to call it that. Journalism, practiced that way, sort of a cool science, and I'm okay with it. But when you're drawing, you suddenly have to inhabit
Joe Sacco: the experience Of that person.
Joe Sacco: you have to think about what they… what they really felt when that was going on, and you have to… you have to get more into the emotion. You're… it's… it's a warmer medium, in a way.
Joe Sacco: And so it's more difficult. That's one of the reasons I mentioned I'd like to get out of it, because…
Joe Sacco: After a while, it just burns you out, or burned me out.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you very much.
Joe Sacco: Sure, sure.
Avi Chomsky: Wonderful. And, other questions, in the back?
Avi Chomsky: Oh, we have a follow-up first, sorry, we'll get to you afterwards. This one's directly related.
Joe Sacco: Okay.
Avi Chomsky: Hey, Joe, I'm Margot Shea, I'm a faculty here in the History Department.
Avi Chomsky: students put together the exhibit. I was, like, interested in this idea of burnout. There are some panels
Avi Chomsky: in Palestine that I kind of see when I wake up in the middle of the night, and some of these characters are living with me. I think of a woman who, her husband died, one of her kids died, and then her other son was in prison. It was really hard for her to get to, and you, like, you created this scene
Avi Chomsky: Where she's alone in a room, right? And it was so at odds with how Palestinian people live.
Avi Chomsky: Right? Like, there's so much about your book is that people are in community, and these, like, these spaces of loneliness and absence and isolation was such a, so different from what we would have seen in the news, even while following the first and second Intifada.
Avi Chomsky: And… and there are some times in your book where you, you know, you hook up with the Japanese photographer, and you make a friend, I can't remember if he was Scottish or Irish, but you kind of, like, make some buddies along the way, and so you're building these communities
Avi Chomsky: And then there are times where it really feels like the work of what you just said, of inhabiting
Avi Chomsky: These… inhabiting people's stories is exhausting.
Avi Chomsky: And you're only there for 2 months, and you don't know if maybe you might have to leave sooner, right? Or whether or not you'll be able to come back. And it's like, it's such a woo-woo question, but it is an important question, like, how did you take care of yourself
Avi Chomsky: Both in community and in solitude, in order for you to process everything that you were doing in a way that created something that was both so immediate
Avi Chomsky: And so reflective.
Avi Chomsky: Like, that to me, seems like the magic of what you do, and also it seems like you could just open up your vein and be like, here, this is my life force. So, I'm just curious about that, and also, like, extremely grateful
Avi Chomsky: for the amount of yourself that you've put into your work, because it is so apparent, and it is so, like, it's not really talked about that much when I read interviews and stories about you.
Joe Sacco: Oh, well, thank you. Thanks very much, Margo.
Joe Sacco: Well… You know, comics, drawing… Is a very solitary…
Joe Sacco: thing. I mean, I actually don't want people around me when I'm doing the drawing
Joe Sacco: As hard as it has been, to… to…
Joe Sacco: do the work. And I have to admit that at the very beginning, for, like, let's say the first 10 or 15 years I was doing this sort of thing, I was really okay. But over time, it just got… it just got more and more difficult.
Joe Sacco: But… As hard as it's been, it's also been an enormous Privilege.
Joe Sacco: To be honest, to… People have told you these stories.
Joe Sacco: I mean, to me, that's why I was pulled toward journalism, because people would just tell you things. You could speak to a general, you know, some high politician, and you could be in a hut.
Joe Sacco: in… you know, with Dalits. It's like, you're moving back and forth
Joe Sacco: along this whole spectrum of humanity, and I can't think of a better…
Joe Sacco: thing to be able to do, and I feel so lucky to have seen so much.
Joe Sacco: And… So these people have given me their stories.
Joe Sacco: And it's a privilege and a lot of responsibility. Maybe that's a big part of it, too. It's not just the drawing of violence, it's the responsibility.
Joe Sacco: Because I want to get it right, I want them to recognize themselves, I don't mean the drawings of themselves, I mean they recognize their experience.
Joe Sacco: And… That's… maybe that's difficult?
Joe Sacco: Just as it's also… Yeah, an honor.
Joe Sacco: Right now, I'm working on a book with Chris Hedges, the journalist Chris Hedges, who's a friend of mine. We're doing a book about Gaza. We were in Egypt interviewing Palestinians who got out of Gaza.
Joe Sacco: And I'm working with,
Joe Sacco: I'm only working on one story. We've interviewed a lot of people, but I decided to focus on just one story, and I'm in communication
Joe Sacco: with this man in Egypt who tells this story about what happened to his family in this latest period.
Joe Sacco: And… It's… it's…
Joe Sacco: he's very helpful, he's very generous with his time and with his answers, but I'm asking him about… really…
Joe Sacco: difficult things, I mean, because I'm going to draw some… you know, a writer can say a bomb fell and his brother was killed.
Joe Sacco: But if I'm gonna draw that, and I have to sort of understand a little more about what happened, and to probe people in that way.
Joe Sacco: is difficult, especially when he still has people in Gaza.
Joe Sacco: And there's still a lot of pressure, you know, for him.
Joe Sacco: So…
Joe Sacco: I don't… you know, and I don't have, like, answers for this. I'm constantly trying to negotiate these things myself, every single day, and every day it's sort of a… it's a bit different.
Joe Sacco: There's also vodka martinis on Friday, Saturday, and.
Avi Chomsky: It's another…
Joe Sacco: That's another part of it.
Avi Chomsky: Yay.
Joe Sacco: And I've got good friends, I mean, I've got good friends… you know, I try to… I try to… decompress.
Joe Sacco: And I, you know, honestly, I try to laugh, I try to find ways of making my own life, relatively pleasant.
Joe Sacco: Otherwise, I just don't want to sink, you know? I want to do some good work. I want to do some good work.
Avi Chomsky: Well, that's probably the best advice you could give to all the students in the room on how to do this for the long haul. Thank you so much.
Joe Sacco: Thank you.
Avi Chomsky: We have another question person coming up now.
Avi Chomsky: Hello, hi. My name's Zach.
Avi Chomsky: I know this question might not be as,
Avi Chomsky: heavy hitting, or… I don't know the word, but I guess just… we'll go with heavy hitting for now, as any of the other previous questions, but…
Avi Chomsky: Is… is there anything in… is there anything in particular that's…
Avi Chomsky: That, that inspired you to…
Avi Chomsky: You know, start doing, like, illustrations and graphic novels and whatnot.
Joe Sacco: you know, if… if I had got out of… I got out of university with a degree in journalism, and if…
Joe Sacco: things had gone the way I had hoped.
Joe Sacco: I wouldn't be doing this. I would be…
Joe Sacco: probably working on a newspaper some way… somewhere with… I have to… hate to say it, with probably some of the same…
Joe Sacco: Prejudice… prejudices and preconceived notions of any institutional newspaper.
Avi Chomsky: Hmm.
Joe Sacco: In some ways, it was really lucky for me that I didn't get a job
Joe Sacco: right out of school in journalism. I worked in fact… I had to work in factories for a while.
Joe Sacco: And, later on, when I did get a job in journalism, it was a very commercial enterprise. Anytime someone
Joe Sacco: An ad salesman would sell an ad, he'd put a…
Joe Sacco: Business card on my desk and say, this guy bought an ad in the newspaper, so maybe you want to write a story about his business.
Joe Sacco: And that's not what I got into journalism. So, in some ways, I… I drifted away from it, and trying to… I tried to find my footing doing art. And I mentioned I was in Germany, I was in Berlin doing, like, you know, rock posters, album covers, just trying to draw.
Joe Sacco: But… but I was also trying to do comics.
Joe Sacco: So it wasn't like some epiphany made… led me to doing comics in this way. I've been drawing since I was a kid.
Joe Sacco: It was something I fell back on because I was just not satisfied with… what I, you know.
Joe Sacco: with the results of my university degree in journalism, it wasn't going the right way.
Joe Sacco: So I just found another way, and I'm really lucky it turned out the way it did.
Avi Chomsky: Great, thank you.
Joe Sacco: Thanks, Zach.
Avi Chomsky: You're very
Avi Chomsky: All right, thank you. And, before we get to other questions, I have a quick follow-up question on some of the, on a number of the answers, that you provided. The conclusion
Avi Chomsky: to… on Gaza, and the, preface that I referenced by Edward Said to Palestine, Carry with them…
Avi Chomsky: This kind of… almost… Inescapable feeling of hopelessness.
Avi Chomsky: Right? There's this conclusion that
Avi Chomsky: the only justice that the dead of Gaza could imagine seeing still lies within fiction and poetry.
Avi Chomsky: And as these narratives about Palestine are… as people understand them in America and the West, are shifting.
Avi Chomsky: Slowly to being more…
Avi Chomsky: sympathetic to Palestinians, encouraged by smartphones, and the fact that we are seeing it livestreamed every day.
Avi Chomsky: As that popular opinion shifts, The genocide is still happening. Dispossession is still…
Avi Chomsky: ongoing in the West Bank, as well as Gaza, how do you… maintain a…
Avi Chomsky: a will to keep working for this, when it starts to feel almost like popular opinion here doesn't
Avi Chomsky: isn't changing anything.
Joe Sacco: Well, I… I basically do it because I have to do it. There's just something inside me that tells me this is the right thing to be doing, it's the right thing to be speaking up.
Joe Sacco: what I…
Joe Sacco: what I try not to consider, because I think it's kind of a fool's game in a way, is what impact I'm gonna have.
Joe Sacco: In other words, I don't say, well, if I do this, it's gonna shift the equation. I mean, talking to your class, the fact that you've read my books, people there have read my books.
Joe Sacco: I realize I am part of a, let's say, an educational process, but I also realize it's… I'm a very small part of that, and it's taken… it's a lot of other people doing the work, too, and maybe the narrative has shifted, and I think it has.
Joe Sacco: It's hard not to sort of look at things very realistically, though, and see what really matters is what power's going to do.
Joe Sacco: I mean, that's… I think one thing we… one thing you realize in the scheme of what's going on
Joe Sacco: You know, we say we live in a democracy.
Joe Sacco: And we say we have agency, or there's some level of agency in a democracy, well, what is our agency here?
Joe Sacco: I mean, all you can do is get together with your friends and do what kids have been doing, students have been doing in, universities.
Joe Sacco: you know, I'm doing what I'm doing, everyone's working towards something, perhaps, but it's all with… because that's what we can do, but you…
Joe Sacco: this whole… Thing has made me… Question even more, the very framework of… Our institutions, our government, or…
Joe Sacco: Or how we categorize ourselves as a democracy.
Joe Sacco: So, it opens up other cans of worms.
Joe Sacco: Like, if it's very clear that the people are against something.
Joe Sacco: And you're gonna do it anyway, so well, who's actually pulling the strings? Why is that?
Joe Sacco: And to me, it's not just a question of, let's say, no kings.
Joe Sacco: I think we have to also really look at our representatives.
Joe Sacco: You know, it… Or even the very nature of representative democracy and how it's played out.
Joe Sacco: So, there are such big forces at play right now.
Joe Sacco: I've decided for myself, I'm just gonna try to keep cracking away at it in the way I do.
Joe Sacco: Maybe, at some point, something does change.
Joe Sacco: And maybe it doesn't.
Joe Sacco: But I'm just trying to do the right thing. I mean, it's just as simple as that. It's a moral impulse.
Joe Sacco: And you… you have to follow the moral impulse, whether you're coming up against a brick wall, or you're with a million other people, too, and you're also coming up against a brick wall. You just… you just have to follow the moral impulse.
Joe Sacco: That has its own value. That has its own value.
Avi Chomsky: Indeed.
Avi Chomsky: And other questions in the back.
Avi Chomsky: I think she's introduces the skills.
Avi Chomsky: Mr. Sacco, thank you for joining us here. My name is Colin Barreth. I'm actually a staff member here at the university.
Avi Chomsky: You say you want to venture into, viewing things with a more philosophical lens. Well, I have a philosophical question for you, so let's test your resolve.
Joe Sacco: -Oh, okay, cool.
Avi Chomsky: No, I, you… I have a question about…
Avi Chomsky: the nature and character of resistance. It kind of ties into the answer you started giving just before.
Avi Chomsky: But… and I don't mean to characterize the inception of your work, it may not be that of resistance, but,
Avi Chomsky: works like this, journalism, have the effect of kind of acting as a set of resistance towards, you know, power or things like that. But then, now, as you mentioned, we've changed the causes of the problem. You mentioned
Avi Chomsky: We read less. You mentioned, we're controlling the spaces under which we… not just giving an anti-narrative or, you know, another narrative, just, actually controlling the spaces where the narratives take place.
Avi Chomsky: You know, maybe more disassociation, more reclusivity. So, my question is,
Avi Chomsky: there is an established element of journalism as a resistance, but I guess
Avi Chomsky: When journalists are, being attacked,
Avi Chomsky: physically, even, killed and things like that. What does the resistance to that look like, to the institution of truth-telling, to making sure that we're not moving too far away from, I think you talk about facts and how facts can be misused, but I guess the… the understanding of an objective truth.
Avi Chomsky: What does resistance look like for journalists in that space, but I guess everybody else who benefits from having an objective truth?
Joe Sacco: I mean,
Joe Sacco: I think…
Joe Sacco: when I got out of school, and when I began to sort of examine what was going on with the Palestinians, and how the media had portrayed it.
Joe Sacco: I began to have a lot less focus on objective truth.
Joe Sacco: I… I do think you can talk about objective truth, but not in the way that journalism schools talk about objective truth.
Joe Sacco: Because journalism schools…
Joe Sacco: Really, the emphasis is on getting, let's say, to make it simple, two sides of the story.
Joe Sacco: The journalist is trying to get to…
Joe Sacco: what actually happened. I mean, the word is sort of loaded, but to the… get as close to the truth…
Joe Sacco: as possible.
Joe Sacco: And…
Joe Sacco: to me, that… that is, in some ways, that's a form of resistance against the dominant way stories are told, or journalism is practiced in the United States.
Joe Sacco: It became very important for me to…
Joe Sacco: really interrogate the word objective as I learned it, and I realized what I'm trying to get at, in some ways, is sort of an
Joe Sacco: an honest perspective on something, so…
Joe Sacco: in the… in my books, I try to show…
Joe Sacco: my own foibles, I want to show how you can be manipulated.
Joe Sacco: In certain situations, people can direct the story a certain way when they're talking to you.
Joe Sacco: I want to show that sort of thing. I want to show the seams of journalism, interrogate my own role.
Joe Sacco: in it. But, ultimately, Ultimately, I do feel like I…
Joe Sacco: Resistance is part of my nature, and resistance is part of what I'm doing.
Joe Sacco: But ultimately, I don't think of myself as an activist.
Joe Sacco: Because… I'm trying to report something honestly, and sometimes…
Joe Sacco: what I'm trying to do is show humans and all their complexity, And show that…
Joe Sacco: People who are, let's say.
Joe Sacco: victims, they're never victims with a capital V. There's… there's much else about them I'm trying to… I'm trying to get there. I'm trying to…
Joe Sacco: interrogate that also.
Joe Sacco: I'm trying to, show…
Joe Sacco: victims… if someone's a victim, they're not necessarily an angel. I'm just trying to show that whole…
Joe Sacco: That whole, aspect of it.
Joe Sacco: So…
Joe Sacco: I don't think I'm… I don't think I'm answering your question exactly, Colin. So maybe I have failed your philosophical,
Joe Sacco: Be a bit more pointed, though. Tell me…
Avi Chomsky: Sure. I… you know, I guess,
Avi Chomsky: When there's an exercise of looking towards history to help figure out how you might act in the future, history may tell us that there is, a kind of resistance, regime that happens when there is, you know, governments or folks in power,
Avi Chomsky: doing things they're not supposed to be doing. And I guess the, you know.
Avi Chomsky: if you were to, you know, characterize that resistance, there's something that happened, right? Some sets of boycotts and sets of a collection of people and things like that. But here, we have, like you mentioned, phones that kind of has an effect on our behaviors and our attention, and, you know, I think we have moved away from, like I say, objective truth.
Avi Chomsky: Only, I say objective truth in the sense that there's something that binds and connects us.
Avi Chomsky: When there's an attack on not just
Avi Chomsky: Journalism, but then there's a tack on the entire,
Avi Chomsky: essence of resistance. What does that look like now, using our journalistic tools, or using any tools that we have?
Avi Chomsky: and we could talk specific against some of the atrocities that we're seeing in Gaza, but I think whatever answer you have may be a framework for a larger set of resistance, you know what I mean?
Joe Sacco: Well, maybe not entirely, but,
Joe Sacco: the way I look at it is, what you do with journalism is you're trying to provide the raw material
Joe Sacco: for people to use, and that's how I've always… I've always looked at it.
Joe Sacco: You really… you really begin to realize it's super important, because it seems like we're constantly in a war of narratives.
Joe Sacco: For example, the Trump administration is destroying
Joe Sacco: small boats in the Caribbean.
Joe Sacco: And they're claiming that these people are narco-terrorists.
Joe Sacco: And… Journalists, what they should be doing is finding out who these people are, but also
Joe Sacco: Questioning the idea of extrajudicially
Joe Sacco: Killing people, even if they're accused of something, or if they've done something that's breaking the law.
Joe Sacco: So… There's a lot that you can do within these, these narratives that are…
Joe Sacco: foisted upon us. And to me, it's… I've almost come to the conclusion that it's all about narratives. It's all about how you spin something.
Joe Sacco: So, narrative stories, at least, at the very least, presenting something in a certain way.
Joe Sacco: Or presenting another viewpoint is, is super important.
Joe Sacco: you know. I mean, we're… we constantly hear things like, well…
Joe Sacco: everyone in Gaza is a human shield.
Joe Sacco: And it's not… it's not a matter of just…
Joe Sacco: Reporting that, and just saying, well, the president says they're human shields, and that's where you end it.
Joe Sacco: It's incumbent upon you to sort of talk about what does that term mean, exactly.
Joe Sacco: You know, who is… and who is using humans as shields?
Joe Sacco: So it's… it's… there's… the narratives always just have to be interrogated.
Joe Sacco: Now, does that get to an objective truth? It's clawing at something that isn't falsehood. It's trying to get away from, at the very least, trying to show a falsehood for being a falsehood. Getting toward the truth is another thing altogether, in a way.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you, that actually does answer one.
Joe Sacco: Okay, fine.
Avi Chomsky: That's very good.
Joe Sacco: Sorry I was so roundabout about that.
Avi Chomsky: Not at all.
Avi Chomsky: We have, one in the back. Here.
Avi Chomsky: And remember to introduce yourself.
Avi Chomsky: Hi, Joe. I'm another Andrew. I teach history at Salem State. I'm currently an administrator. Thank you for your talk, your perspective, your book, and your courage. As you know, we're here today
Avi Chomsky: as part of an honoring of Indigenous Peoples Month, and I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit within the context
Avi Chomsky: of the work that you've done, in Gaza and Palestine.
Avi Chomsky: More specifically, this originally was Native American History Month.
Avi Chomsky: it has changed to Indigenous Peoples Month in order to recognize global connections, and so I'm curious as to whether or not you see connections between the Native American experience and that of
Avi Chomsky: Palestinians.
Avi Chomsky: I would also be interested to know if you see Palestinians as people who are indigenous to the region, and in turn, are Jews in Israel indigenous to the region
Avi Chomsky: And if not, what are they?
Joe Sacco: Oh, God.
Joe Sacco: I mean…
Avi Chomsky: Yeah, that's funny.
Joe Sacco: There was always a… Jewish population in… in Palestine.
Joe Sacco: there's always been the Jewish population in Palestine. I mean, many people left, many people…
Joe Sacco: it was reduced quite a lot, but if you go to… if you go to Hebron, a place like Hebron.
Joe Sacco: there was a Jewish community there until, late 20s, early 30s, when there was a massacre of Jews there.
Joe Sacco: But they were, like, hundreds of Jews who lived there, Sephardic Jews who'd come over in the 1400s.
Joe Sacco: So it's not as if… Jews… weren't Indigenous themselves.
Joe Sacco: I mean, the question could be…
Joe Sacco: are… I mean, the question is, I guess, are people who… Didn't live there for…
Joe Sacco: centuries Indigenous. I mean, that's a complicated one. I think you can definitely say that Jewish people have a connection to that land. I mean.
Joe Sacco: Clearly, they have a connection to that land.
Joe Sacco: But you also look at it through the lens of settler colonialism.
Joe Sacco: I mean, I think you, you have to.
Joe Sacco: You have to… you… you have to look at it
Joe Sacco: Into what actually happened in the 1940s.
Joe Sacco: And you see that… a people's returned, I'll use that term, returned, But in doing that.
Joe Sacco: Others who were indigenous, were displaced.
Joe Sacco: And kicked off their land.
Joe Sacco: So, to me, it's always… Indigenous experiences are always about land.
Joe Sacco: Or… Pretty much, that's the towering thing.
Joe Sacco: And I also did a book about, the Dene people in Northwest Territories of Canada.
Joe Sacco: And it's also about land.
Joe Sacco: It's also about…
Joe Sacco: who controls it? And Indigenous people in that part of the world were of no importance to the Canadian government at all until gold and oil was discovered there.
Joe Sacco: Then they had to formalize who these people actually were, and make clear that they didn't own the land, and that was done by treaty.
Joe Sacco: But as Indigenous people there told me.
Joe Sacco: Sure, we signed these treaties, and the treaties… I mean, if you're a white person, you get it. It's like, oh, yield, give up, surrender, all claim to the land.
Joe Sacco: But, as Indigenous people told me, we thought it was a friendship treaty, and it was…
Joe Sacco: not our land to begin with. We were… we never owned land, we were owned by the land.
Joe Sacco: I mean, that's sort of a deep… that's a very deep connection.
Joe Sacco: But ultimately, it's about… it's about land. Now, in Palestine, the land, it's not so much about resources, I don't think there's much… well, now there's natural gas off Gaza, so maybe that's part of it.
Joe Sacco: But… It's literally about settling land, farming land, Building on land.
Joe Sacco: Now… It seemed that… Whatever there was that was unfair about that situation, where where… Palestinians were kicked off
Joe Sacco: Kicked out of their land.
Joe Sacco: that…
Joe Sacco: there were mechanisms, at some point, it seemed, it was possible, as Avi said, to have a two-state solution.
Joe Sacco: that at some point, the political class of the Palestinians, not all, but the political class would… would,
Joe Sacco: Basically, agree that they would have 22% of what was originally Palestine.
Joe Sacco: But that doesn't seem possible now.
Joe Sacco: You know, that doesn't seem possible now, unfortunately.
Joe Sacco: So I'm not… I don't know if I'm getting at all your questions.
Joe Sacco: But I'm at least skirting around them, somehow.
Avi Chomsky: Is it okay if I ask a follow-up, or should it feed my time? Is it, because we have a hard out in 9 minutes, and there were some other questions… Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, though. Thank you, Andrew.
Avi Chomsky: I did see some other, hands up in the back. Yes, please.
Avi Chomsky: Hello. Thank you for coming. I'm Annette. I'm a faculty member in history. So, I'm gonna make this a question, not a comment, but I want to say
Avi Chomsky: what… so my world is prose, right? I research and write history, and I'm really lost in prose all the time, but in looking at your work, what really struck me and kind of lingers in my mind are the faces.
Avi Chomsky: And so I… you know, I…
Avi Chomsky: there's other things when I think hard, I remember other parts of the images, but I wondered if you could talk about
Avi Chomsky: the faces, and if you also see them as kind of central to your art, and as I reflect on, you know, these faces and how they… they stay with me, I… I think, just to editorialize a bit, that it's kind of… you're giving face to people that oftentimes don't have individual faces.
Avi Chomsky: As we talk about them in the news. So, if you could just carry us into your art a little bit and talk about that.
Joe Sacco: Sure, Annette. Yeah, the faces are central.
Joe Sacco: And you're right, it helps individualize
Joe Sacco: the people. I'm always struck when I read
Joe Sacco: Let's say, historical accounts that have a lot of figures in them, and some recur.
Joe Sacco: Often, I get lost, and I say, oh, it doesn't really matter, this was someone who showed up, obviously, someone who was in earlier on, but I can't really remember what was going on.
Joe Sacco: If I saw a face, I'd probably have an easier time
Joe Sacco: Of keeping the whole arc of their story straight within the larger narrative.
Joe Sacco: I think that's one of… one of the powers of using the faces. It's like you…
Joe Sacco: It helps you keep the story straight in your own head.
Joe Sacco: The faces are interesting, too, because I never… or I try, I really try not to show…
Joe Sacco: too much.
Joe Sacco: expression in the faces if the people weren't being expressive, because I've had many experiences where people…
Joe Sacco: Are telling a story
Joe Sacco: And, like, I remember being in Bosnia and talking to someone, and he had the most horrific story.
Joe Sacco: And he was telling me the story, but it was almost like a deadpan, and with one eye on a soccer game that was going on on a television set.
Joe Sacco: above his head.
Joe Sacco: So… I've always tried also not to overdo the expression on faces, because people often have very flat
Joe Sacco: flat expressions when they're telling you stories, so I… sometimes I try to reflect that.
Joe Sacco: And not… not be overdramatic.
Joe Sacco: In it. So I do take care with that.
Avi Chomsky: Alright, thank you. Maybe that's why your faces feel so real.
Joe Sacco: Oh, good, I'm glad to hear it.
Avi Chomsky: All right, thank you, and do you think we should do the, now it's…
Avi Chomsky: Do we have another question in the audience? A quick one.
Avi Chomsky: Otherwise, we should close so that we get down. Right. And I, our other MC will, help with the conclusion. I have to head out, sadly. I do plan on emailing you a follow-up question, though, if that's okay. Thank you so much for coming.
Joe Sacco: Sure, Warren.
Avi Chomsky: I think that was an excellent conclusion. I feel redundant right now, but thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you, Joe, so much. I think in some ways, what you've talked about has, like, inspired as many questions, judging from all the people who, you know, may be asking you follow-up questions, you know, as many of you answered, and it's just, it's an incredible work, and I think we all appreciate what we're doing.
Joe Sacco: Oh, thank you. It was really a pleasure talking to you.
Avi Chomsky: I just wanted to show you the room. I can do this without unplugging anything, so that you can see all the.
Joe Sacco: Hello, everyone.
Joe Sacco: Nice to see your shining faces.
Avi Chomsky: Good idea, Avi.
Avi Chomsky: Thank you so much, and everyone who's here, please join us downstairs for the exhibit opening and grab some food on your way out, and thank you so much, Joe, and .
Joe Sacco: It was a real pleasure. Nice to meet you virtually.
Joe Sacco: Thank you.
Derek Barr: Take care.
Joe Sacco: Alright, thank you.