Queers Step Up for Palestine Solidarity; Katherine Franke on Columbia's Unethical Lawyers

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Published: 12 May 2025

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Out-FM aired on May 13, 2025 on WBAI / NY 

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Top - Kate Raphael at 2024 protest in Nablus, Occupied West Bank;

Bottom - Much earlier photo of Kate, Seattle-based queer novelist, journalist, anarcha-feminist & activist

Queers Step Up for Palestine Solidarity

Seattle Pride Issues Solidarity Statement with Palestine

Kate Raphael is a novelist, journalist, anarchafeminist and queer activist. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in 2024 to help mobilize ​u.s. ​solidarity volunteers to Palestine. She spent six weeks in the West Bank during November and December 2024, after earlier solidarity trips twenty years ago. Kate was a cofounder of the San Francisco-based Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT). Her published work includes the two mysteries set in Palestine, Murder Under the Bridge and the Lambda-nominated Murder Under the Fig Tree, as well as The Midwife’s In Town, a story of underground abortion. She is a producer and host on Women’s Magazine and the Sunday Show at WBAI’s sibling Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley, California.

"There is no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” 
          - Marsha P Johnson, a mother of the trans and queer liberation movement

Resources:

Pride Victories in Raleigh and Seattle - Kate's 3/23/25 article in UltraViolet,the newsletter of LAGAI – Queer Insurrection

More on recent Seattle Divestment victories here. 

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism! (QUIT)
QUIT's Instagram page

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Katherine Franke on Columbia's Unethical Lawyers

Former Columbia University School of Law professor Katherine Franke, an out lesbian, offers a new commentary on the way that universities have received very bad advice from their General Counsels about how to handle students' Palestine solidarity protests and ICE surveillance of students. She breaks down why and calls out some of the worst lawyers who have advised Columbia.

Resource: ACLU's Open Letter to University General Counsels on ICE's retaliatory crackdown against noncitizen students for their First Amendment-protected speech and advocacy.

Katherine is the founding Director of the School’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, an executive committee member of the Center for Palestine Studies and a board member of Palestine Legal. In January 2024, Professor Franke appeared on the Democracy Now! program to discuss an attack on Columbia’s campus targeting pro-Palestinian student activists with a foul-smelling liquid that led to multiple hospitalizations. Based on that appearance, two Columbia professors filed a complaint against her claiming she had created a hostile environment for Israelis at Columbia students; she also became a target by name for Republican lawmakers in Congress, including NY Representative Elise Stefanik. When Columbia’s then-president Minouche Shafik was called to testify in Congress last April about campus protests, Stefanik grilled Shafik about Prof. Franke and two other Columbia faculty members - all three are queer. In January of this year, Prof. Franke was effectively terminated from Columbia.

For context: The first Columbia attorney who Katherine discusses, Roberta Kaplan, is an out lesbian who is a former board chair of Gay Men's Health Crisis. According to the New York Times last year, "Ms. Kaplan and her wife are deeply connected to the Democratic Party and she has been a heroic figure to many liberal activists. In addition to litigating the Supreme Court case that laid the groundwork for the national legalization of gay marriage, she became a leader of the #MeToo movement. Most recently, she represented the writer E. Jean Carroll when she sued Mr. Trump for defamation, resulting in a landmark $83 million verdict against him."

Also, in 2021 Roberta Kaplan was forced to resign as co-chair of the anti-sexual-abuse Times Up! organization after a petition from 151 survivors noting that NY Attorney General Tish James found that Kaplan had weaponized her knowledge of survivors' experiences to help Gov. Andrea Cuomo retaliate against women who spoke out about his abuse of them.

How interesting that Katherine Franke also mentioned that another Columbia attorney, Theresa Trzaskoma -- the one who led the persecution of Katherine herself -- is now representing Andrew Cuomo in suing the women who exposed his sexual harassment of them.

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Pope Francis & the Continuing Sex Abuse Cover-up: Conclave Watch

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Published: 06 May 2025

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Out-FM aired on May 6, 2025 on WBAI / NY 

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On May 5, Out-FM's John Riley spoke with a member of The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. SNAP was established in 1989, and is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization and support group of survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their supporters. It was founded in the United States and now has a worldwide presence. John interviewed SNAP's Media Coordinator, Sarah Pearson, who joined us from Rome, Italy. She is bisexual, with preferred pronouns she/her.

Key members of SNAP's leadership team are in Rome to launch a rigorous review of the cardinals considered contenders for the papacy. While in Rome, SNAP officials, alongside international coalition partners, researchers, and other experts, are focusing on each candidate’s record in handling clergy sexual abuse cases—both in their home countries and within the Vatican hierarchy. The results, including the accusations and photographs of these cardinals, are being posted at https://www.conclavewatch.org/cardinals .

SNAP’s co-founder Peter Isely recently said, “For too long, the Catholic Church has prioritized secrecy and protection of its own over justice for survivors and the safety of children. As discussions about the next pope persist, we are making it clear that survivors and advocates will not accept a leader who has enabled abuse or shielded perpetrators. Any candidate for the papacy must demonstrate a commitment to a universal zero tolerance law for abuse.”

SNAP’s groundbreaking work, in collaboration with the Center for Constitutional Rights, successfully brought the Vatican before international legal bodies like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the 2010s and resulted in the first-ever case against the pope and the Vatican for crimes against children. The ICC declined to bring charges, but said it would reconsider if new evidence was presented.

In the interview, Out-FM's John Riley asked, "In the mass media, Pope Francis was often portrayed as a reformer on a panoply of church issues. How do you rate his policies against sex abuse?" Sarah Pearson responded, "The way that we've characterized his papacy, our group SNAP has called it a tragedy for survivors."

John asked, "There are 17 cardinals in the United States. But because the eligibility to vote stops at age 80, only 10 are eligible to vote. How many of those 10 have problematic histories regarding the cover-up of sexual abuse?" Sarah Pearson responded, "Well, all 10 of them."

John asked, "So would you say that these cardinals should not even vote for the next pope." Sarah: "I think if there were a bar on cardinals voting in the conclave if they had covered up abuse, it would be a very empty conclave, sadly."

Sarah discussed the record of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. "I am pretty familiar with Cardinal Dolan's record because I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before he was promoted to be the Cardinal of New York, he was the Archbishop of Milwaukee. The transfer of funds is a technique that the church often employs to limit their liability. So sometimes, as in the case of Milwaukee, it involved moving funds around, so there is a smaller amount of funds in the central diocean pile of money that is available. He transferred $57 million and put it in the cemetery fund. That's the money that should have gone to survivors' claims and he prevented it."

"As a result, Milwaukee has been known as one of the most difficult, prolonged, and hardest bankruptcies in the country. And the result was survivors got some of the lowest payouts on average in the entire country. I think the only ones lower were in Fairbanks, Alaska. There were survivors who got nothing. We know survivors who got $2,000. So imagine going through years of litigation in this bankruptcy court, back and forth with one of the world's wealthiest organizations [and certainly] one of the wealthiest organizations in your city. And the result of it is $2,000. That doesn't even cover a year's worth of copayment for therapy for most people. To say it's tragic is an understatement. It was incredibly demoralizing to survivors in that city. But that's not all that Dolan is responsible for throughout his career."

Sarah further discussed the other nine cardinals from the U.S. and their misdeeds, as well as the worldwide movement to stop this kind of abuse.

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