"Ukraine has provided us with, I think, the most striking, the most rapid, the most swift and complete legal offensive or lawfare strategy that has ever been implemented."

In this episode
🇺🇦 Ukraine's aggressive lawfare strategy
⚖️ International justice finally comes for the West
🤐 Why former great powers can't cope with their colonial crimes
🇫🇷 Reckoning with the Algerian War
🇨🇩 The DR Congo schools us on prosecuting environmental destruction
🇨🇴 Transitional justice lessons from Colombia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and more
🕊 Restitutions, reparations and truth commissions – justice beyond the courts

Show notes
[00:00:16] Intro
[00:01:42] "There is a before Ukraine and an after Ukraine"
[00:07:18] "Justice has become the third weapon of Ukraine's strategy"
[00:11:46] Is lawfare a communication tool?``
[00:15:39] The slow wheels of the ICC
[00:18:43] Justice gets much more pragmatic at the local level: the example of environmental crimes in the DRC
[00:25:52] A renewed interest in justice for indigenous people
[00:28:58] Colombia, a case study for all-encompassing transitional justice
[00:30:14] Why are some countries better than other at looking into their colonial past?
[00:32:26] The restitution of pillaged objects
[00:34:28] A generational reckoning with colonial crimes: the French Algerian war
[00:40:13] Statues, history vs memory and the new frontline of transitional justice
[00:42:53] Outro

🌍 justiceinfo.net
📚 The Master of Confessions, by Thierry Cruvellier. Ecco Press. 2015. Find it here.

🧬 Check out The Guardian's Science Weekly podcast, where I'm executive producer for the next few weeks.

A decade ago, journalist and "American without papers" Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in a national magazine. Today he works with Hollywood and TV studios to humanise the immigrant story through pop culture.

In this episode
📺 Trafficking in empathy and the power of story to change minds
😢 Why he regrets his mom sending him away to the US
🇺🇸 Reaching America's "moveable middle"
💸 How the economic argument for immigration backfired
😰 Why progressives abandoned the fight
📖 Stories as the last place for nuance and complexity

Show notes
[00:00:16] Intro
[00:02:27] "Home is where I can do my work"
[00:04:05] "Being a journalist is the identity I figured out before all others"
[00:05:22] "All definitions are suspect"
[00:07:28] "Why is it that only a certain portion of the population gets to be an activist?"
[00:09:52] "Legalizing pot is a higher priority than legalizing people"
[00:10:33] "Imprisoned by the language we use on immigrants"
[00:14:09] "We can call immigrants essential labor, but we don't think of them as essential people"
[00:16:16] "Storytelling is trafficking in empathy"
[00:18:09] "The only time many white Americans meet a person of color or an immigrant is through the media they consume"
[00:24:51] "We work on shows that reach the movable middle"
[00:28:23] "We have yet to find some sort of language that talks about how borderless business and money is and how people are still very much, you know, locked up by these borders"
[00:32:55] "If I had a say in the matter as a 12 year old, I would have told my mom, don't do that"
[00:35:39] "That's the power of story"
[00:37:51] "Narrative is not a slice of the pie. It's actually the pan."
[00:39:39] "Storytelling is the only place where nuance can happen"
[00:42:38] "White is not a country"
[00:49:05] "I traded a life of being in the closet as undocumented in limbo to being a public undocumented person whose life is still in limbo"
[00:52:46] Outro

Jose Antonio Vargas's works
🇺🇸 Define American, a culture change organization that uses the power of narrative to humanize conversations about immigrants.
📚 Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen (2018, Harper Collins). Upcoming: White is Not a Country (2023, Pantheon Books)
🎬 Documented: A film by an undocumented American (2014, CNN)
🎭 What the Constitution Means to Me, a play by Heidi Schreck (producer)

Works referenced
📚 Beloved, Toni Morrison
📺 Superstore (NBC)
📺 Roswell, New Mexico (CW)
🎬 The Lost Daughter (Netflix)
🎬 Drive my Car

It starts with unauthorised migrants and doesn't end there. Filmmaker Sonita Gale follows professionals, students and British citizens whose lives were upended by the UK's immigration system.

Sonita Gale is the director and executive producer of Hostile, a documentary film about the UK hostile environment, now in cinemas.

Show notes
[00:00:09] Intro
[00:03:54] "The home of my parents is the home of the migrant story."
[00:07:29] "A film about the migrant struggle"
[00:13:08] "Different experiences, all interlinked by the hostile environment"
[00:16:27] "People will start having more empathy, love and understanding"
[00:21:04] "Where have you been the last 20 years?"
[00:28:30] “I started to question whether that hostile environment is going to turn on me”
[00:32:10] Where to see the film
[00:33:21] Outro

🌍 www.hostiledocumentary.com
🐦 Follow @hostiledoc on Twitter
📷 Follow @hostiledoc on Instagram