by Kevin Kudic

 

Abstract

Both Cuba and Palestine share DNA that ties them as comrades-in-arms in the revolutionary struggle against imperialism (Maier, 2025). Cuba has doggedly resisted the concerted efforts of a 60 year economic blockade, along with the continued assaultive policies of the Trump administration, while Palestinian resistance has fought against the genocidal settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel, which seeks to decimate every facet of Palestinian life and cultural identity. As of writing this paper, the illegal abduction of Nicolas Maduro and the craven attempts of the Trump administration to assert dominion over the global south through a “Donroe doctrine” in order to extract the oil resources and infrastructure of Venezuela has left even a deeper commitment to the struggle for independence, sovereignty, and the international right to self-defense guaranteed by all peoples in their struggle against neo-colonialism. This escalation signals a willingness to subject Venezuela as a client state, asserting its own hegemony to destabilize the hemisphere, threatening Cuba’s sovereignty. Many Latin American countries that have expressed support for Palestine are now in the crossfire. With these battle lines drawn, the common thread of support for Palestine from these nations is noteworthy. Palestinian resistance is no stranger to the links between itself and Latin American anti-imperialism, as prominent revolutionaries Ghassan Kanafani and Leila Khaled have noted (Meari, 2018). 

 

Palestine is everywhere

This recent neo-colonial expansion foregrounds my own exploration and inquiry into the revolutionary parallels between the nations of Cuba and Palestine. As an educator in the belly of the beast, I felt it was necessary to experience Cuba with my own eyes. I, along with a diverse group of educators and activists, was part of a culturally immersive trip that focused on observing and understanding the implementation of economic reforms under the shadow of the embargo. On this trip, Palestine was visible everywhere, whether through keffiyehs worn in solidarity or through discussions of Palestinian solidarity within the Cuban activist circles we encountered. Using this as an epistemological and heuristic framework, Palestinian struggle is a struggle for oppressed people globally, and the theoretical lens of counterstory (Martinez, 2020), this paper offers a self-reflexive account of some noteworthy moments during my trip and how Cuba navigates the complexities of upholding the revolutionary spirit while accounting for the sobering day-to-day life for the Cuban people. It also functions as an autoethnography that grounds my commitment to anti-imperialism and solidarity with freedom movements around the world and illuminates some of the contradictions that came up while wrestling with and further understanding of decolonization and the role of propaganda in shaping our political predispositions; especially with how it connects to the further isolation of Latinx diasporas in the North from the indigenous communities still struggling for autonomy and rights in their home countries. 

It is through this process of self-reflection that activists can have a more nuanced understanding of how material realities affect the conditions necessary for true revolution. Learning the histories of people and movements of the Global South can provide context for and clarify a student’s place in the world, demonstrating a continuity that inspires and directs young people as they establish their own identities, interests, and goals.

 

Bridging activist and education spaces

Activist spaces have been crucial in radicalizing educators to view their professions not just as neutral observers doling out depoliticized subject content, but as active participants in upholding democratic values and instilling in their students a sense of civic responsibility (Montano et al., 2002). Moreover, how teachers narrativize and reflect upon their own teacher-activist identities can help root their struggles in systemic injustices (Zaino et al., 2023) Many organizations, such as the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), offer teachers ways to bridge their activism into the classroom through workshops, opportunities to submit papers to conferences, and networking with other grassroots organizations (New York Collective of Radical Educators, 2025). This was especially marked during and after the global pandemic, where students and educators participated in global movements, such as the uprisings that emerged after the murder of George Floyd.

Social movements that are brought to the public eye by activist-organizers shape what and how educators teach in the classroom. Teaching controversial topics that touch on the role of the US and its settler-colonial foundations, and that instill in students a critical eye toward dominant narratives, has been fraught with tension. The mere inclusion of a “social justice” topic is enough to trigger outrage from conservative and reactionary groups, which can result in doxing campaigns as seen in recent educational campaigns aimed at highlighting the Palestinian struggle (Cavallero, 2026).  Across the nation, anti-LGBTQIA+ bills have been introduced that not only target and restrict educators’ and students’ rights to inclusive curriculums and gender and trans affirming care but also seek to create a matrix of systemic erasure, effectively limiting reproductive and healthcare funding and other essential services (“Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights,” 2026). Many of these bills start off as hateful campaigns that, in turn, have institutional power backing them through state-mandated and federal policies whose agendas seek to ultimately erase the existence of BIPOC students’ identities by marginalizing their histories or whitewashing the atrocities committed under a white supremacist institution. Policies laid out, such as in Project 2025 (Walker, 2024), espouse a whitewashed interpretation of history that aligns with the far-right’s reshaping of history; educators who desire to enact a liberatory and Freirian framework of liberation pedagogy are now impeded because of the harm and reactionary policies of the state. It is important to note that this type of landscape has always existed in the policies of education, whether Democrat or Republican majorities in Congress. Inclusions of holidays and eventual tacit acceptance of curriculum modifications that give some sense of context and understanding of American history and oppression are often cosmetic and have no real weight or protection that ensures they are safeguarded from reactionary forces.

Whether it is teaching Black History, Indigenous Peoples’ history, or applying a BIPOC lens to historical moments and events, it is important to understand that advances for educators in broadening these perspectives will be met with a conservative and increasingly fascistic response. This is pointedly even more obvious with teaching about Palestine. What is painful is that it is not only conservatives that are attacking any kind of teaching of Anti-Zionism as antisemitism and thereby conflating any criticism of the state of Israel as hateful and rooted in hatred of Jews, but it is also self-described liberals who have become PEP (Progressive except for Palestine) (Hill & Plitnick, 2021). Examples of this can be seen in the public positions of teachers’ unions, such as the AFT, which were very vocal in their support of Ukrainians when Russia’s invasion began (American Federation of Teachers, 2022). Randi Weingarten (2022) herself penned a blog post stating her solidarity with, yet said nothing, nearly three years into the genocide. This makes teaching about Palestine an exceptional challenge in our current times that needs to be examined more closely. 

My positionality towards a justice-oriented vision of the world, not only as an educator but as someone who cares deeply about my community and sees a vision that is grounded in mutual solidarity and care, led me to take heed in teaching about Palestine. Moreover, learning about Palestinian struggle and resistance led me to explore how decolonization happens in the Global South and specifically on my own upbringing as a second-generation estadounidense/USian from the Peruvian and Bosnian diaspora (two branches of history that have each respectively had their own traumatic fissures in regard to nationalism/ethnic tensions). The opportunity to travel to Cuba and take part in activities and dialogues were meant to strengthen ties between educators and Cubans with an eye on the impacts of the embargo and the bellicose stance of the US towards the Cuban people and their sovereignty. I found myself digging deeper into my own narrative of politicization and reflecting on the propagandistic reactionary narratives of Cuba and of left-wing movements in general, specifically in US Spanish-speaking media reflected in Univision and Telemundo. Teaching about Palestine and learning more about the Cuban revolution informed and expanded my analysis of struggle, liberation, and education. In order to understand this more deeply, it is necessary to give an overview of the terrain in education spaces regarding teaching about Palestine.

 

Teaching Palestine – ADL decision and challenges for educators teaching about Palestine

After October 7th, 2023, the challenge of teaching about Palestine faces a seemingly insurmountable number of obstacles. I was a public school educator during the Russian assault on Ukraine, and it is striking to compare the tenor and rhetoric of schools in the aftermath of that, where there were instant efforts to create solidarity and soothe students who are Ukrainian. In the days following October 7th, while the genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians rapidly accumulated (Law for Palestine, 2024), including the escalating and violent assaults in the West Bank by settlers (AJLabs, 2025), there still was no call to action, or even a sense of urgency for teachers that could be signalled by teachers’ unions in the United States. Instead of support and true restorative justice sessions focusing on open dialogue there was a deafening silence.  

There have been many attempts to censor or outright silence educators who broach the topic of Palestinian national identity and the sovereignty movement (Kirk, 2024). This has occurred in almost every level of education, from K-12 to undergrad and postgrad, including a recent cancellation of a Harvard journal issue focusing on Palestine (Speri, 2025). At Columbia, the pressure of the Trump administration to conform to a constrained ideological interpretation of anti-semitism has led to policies that have restricted the types of speech that are allowed on campus and trickled into the syllabi of instructors. Under these new sweeping enactments, there has been a level of repression that many have compared to a new form of McCarthyism (Rasmussen, 2025).

In the most recent delegate assembly of the NEA, there was a resolution passed to ban the use of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) curricular materials. The ADL, which has long been a default majoritarian voice on what constitutes antisemitism, has recently come under scrutiny for its efforts in reducing any form of criticism of Israel and, by extension, any type of criticism centered on anti-Zionism to a form of antisemitism, conflating the two. However, this resolution was blocked by the leadership of the NEA further highlighting the divide between the general population and the concentrated power of leadership that has seemingly come under more sway to tow the party line (Wides, 2025). In CUNY, the largest public university system in the US, there has been extensive backlash against professors, especially adjunct instructors who do not have the tenure or job security to defend against pressure and public campaigns coming from Zionist institutions. At Brooklyn College, four adjunct professors were fired for their political speech and as of writing this three have been reinstated. Unions and organizations have mobilized to agitate against these repressive forces, but it has not lessened the speed at which these types of acts have been able to be so effective (PSC CUNY, 2025).

The challenge that presents itself is: how do educators fight back against these types of institutional forces, emboldened by Zionist bad-faith actors? Moreover, these institutions have used arguments that teaching Palestine is too political a topic and requires additional expertise that they claim educators are not capable of attaining. One way that teaching about Palestine has been framed is through the lens of conflict resolution. On the UK version of the Teach for Tomorrow website (formerly Facing History UK), there is substantial content on Islamophobia with a dedicated unit plan and a sequence of lessons structured to give a deeper understanding of Islamophobia and how it manifests. However, if one is on the US version of the page, there is no dedicated section on Islamophobia. There is, in contrast, a whole unit section dedicated to Holocaust education and a primer discussing Islamophobic tropes (Facing History, 2024). As necessary and important as Holocaust education is, it is puzzling that there would be no mention of Islamophobia on the US front page. In Teach for Tomorrow’s section on teaching Islamophobia, the issue is framed as “the media and entertainment industry’s long-standing, demonising depiction of Muslims; and spikes in conflict between Israel and Palestine” (Teach for Tomorrow, 2026). Words such as “conflict” are used to describe occupation, apartheid, and systemic erasure of Palestinians, while the term spikes signifies that these are normal occurrences that happen from time to time, like the changing of weather forecasts. It casts the aggressor of Israel and its policies as nothing more than stochastic incidents that have no discernible cause. While other conflicts are described as having a clear aggressor, even though they are not named, it is implied in the framing as “state-led acts of violence – as is seen by the treatment of the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, and Muslims in India” (Teach for Tomorrow, 2026). Yet this same critique is never levied against Israel despite the preponderance of evidence that has been submitted, analyzed, categorized, and even formally recognized by international courts of law in the ICJ and ICC.

The implication of this is that the perspective of Israelis always comes into play, even if one wants to solely focus on Palestinian cultural history. The problem is that this frames the Palestinian experience as somehow existing as an anomaly or an offshoot of Israeli nation-state construction. Another important question to ask about balancing is: who decides how subject matter becomes balanced? Is it when it is done in a top-down manner through an imposed curriculum and one source, the ADL? Does the ADL, which purposely conflates Judaism with the Israeli national project and Zionism, become the sole deciding arbiter on what kind of curriculum should speak to the Jewish experience? The efforts to conflate Anti-Zionism and criticism of the Zionist entity of Israel with anti-semitism have been part of a larger tapestry of laws and prohibitions that were in place for a very long time in U.S. K-12 schools. These are broader attacks on educators and cultural workers who speak up for Palestinians, and these attacks do not exist in a vacuum but are concomitant with other forms of oppressions that include other marginalized groups (Jaffee, 2024). If this were truly in the interests of providing balanced perspectives, then it would let the curriculum decisions be made by teaching faculty, who naturally hold a diverse array of opinions and land on a spectrum of positions when it comes to the question of Israel and Palestine. Instead, balancing perspectives is dictated by a concentrated governing power that has the money and resources to shape dehumanizing and dangerous discourse on the safety of Jewish Americans.

 

Reflections: teacher activism, pedagogy of discomfort, and construction of identity

Creating teacher-activists necessitates that there is a strong principled stance against all forms of oppression. This disposition couples with the necessity of having a strong and formative teacher-activist identity that will bring in the power of counterstory (Martinez, 2020) which can aid in facilitating more agency for students to resist hegemonic dominant narratives. My experience as an educator has brought me into contact with opportunities to travel abroad and find ways of connecting global struggles to the classroom. These types of transnational solidarity trips have always been uplifting and inspiring to me. It offered a practical resource of networks and collaborative experiences that I could draw upon again and again. The framework of these trips always centered on knowledge exchange as a communal process where there was not an emphasis on taking knowledge from an “expert”; instead, we were all present in these spaces to learn from each other and not center our egos or claims of profession and authority. The theoretical underpinnings for how meaning and knowledge production affect the disposition of teacher-activists has been closely correlated through analysis and reflection of teachers in various contexts and by close interrogation of teacher artifacts (Dover, 2015). Additionally salient for educators is the importance of moving beyond the confines of a classroom and venturing into communities where differences in race, socioeconomic status thereby producing discomfort that is productive in order to teach beyond the bounds of what is comfortable for the educator (Riley & Solic, 2017). Moreover, this type of teacher-activist disposition allows me to avoid the trappings of teaching away from the banking model of education (Freire, 2016) and the necessity of teaching to produce critical consciousness. Educators can move away from the banking education model to a more radical, emancipatory, and transgressive teaching model. This, in tandem with Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning, gives a framework and step-oriented process for how powerful transformative and paradigm-changing education can happen (Kitchenham, 2008). 

To present the topic of Palestine in the classroom and to try to instill among students a kind of empathic understanding of history, through the lens of critical consciousness via Freire, requires that they develop the capacity for hearing other perspectives. In Feeling Discomfort, Boler (1999) argues that the emphasis on self-reflection and individualized expressions of empathy does little to correct historical injustices, and “The call for ‘critical inquiry’ in the liberal tradition is easily subsumed within the hollow invocations of values of dialogue, democracy, and rationality. Deeply rooted in Western conceptions of liberal individualism, this common rhetoric threatens to reduce genuine inquiry to an individualized process with no collective accountability (Boler, 1999). Collective accountability, therefore, is the structure that allows for true radical change. Indeed, the tradition of self-reflection and reflexive empathy that is usually practiced in classrooms only serves as a way to minimize the influence of how social dynamics play a role in individual decisions. These decisions are guided by emotions. Emotions are present in our lives and are diagnosed (in the Western framework) as being individualized and originating in biology. In other words, there seems to be an understanding that emotions are a mechanistic way of processing individual experiences. Emotions represent not just an individual response but a particular type of response borne from social conditioning. This conditioning plays into the power dynamics of a society, which therefore can dictate a response that reifies the existing power structure (Boler, 1999).

Using emotions as a way to inform and point to what discomforts and blind spots are experienced as educators can be a powerful vehicle to support teacher autonomy (Riley & Solic, 2017; Walker & Palacios, 2016). Also, bringing educators together in communities who are experiencing a paradigm shift of discomfort can also serve as a vehicle for true liberatory teaching practices. In tandem with the pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999), which emphasizes the importance of teacher affect and emotion in the learning process, this will further delineate the theoretical continuum for incorporating emotion and subjectivity into activist-teacher spaces. 

The trip to Cuba was promoted as a way for activists to learn about the day-to-day realities of the Cuban people under the embargo and blockade by the matrices of laws and frameworks, including the Helms-Burton Act imposed by the US. The economic sanctions, which have cost Cuba up to 5 billion dollars (United Nations, 2023), have been devastating for the island nation and have affected every aspect of Cuban life. The program and itinerary had been planned for us to talk to various community leaders and organizers, along with guided visits to museums, workers’ cooperatives, cultural shows, and, of course, to be able to see and experience for ourselves the daily life of Cubans in primarily Havana. This was my first time visiting Cuba. What I knew about Cuba came in different interpretations and evolved over the course of many years through my involvement in activism and leftist perspectives. I knew about various inflection points and moments in Cuban history, such as the Revolution and overthrow of Batista, and then the so-called Periodo Especial. Growing up with a Peruvian background and the general Latino media outlets, I had always understood Cuba as a place where many people left because of its reactionary politics and the dictatorial ambitions of Castro. 

The period of unlearning for me came during my early years as an educator. First, working through a lens that viewed the education system as a potential vehicle for reactionary and right-wing forces to hijack, and therefore teach students to become complacent, docile, and unquestioning. In learning about educators like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Audre Lorde, and various other anti-racist educators, I then conceived more broadly the role that propaganda had in shaping my worldview of Latin America. This trickled down into learning more about popular uprisings and indigenous “counterstories” of resistance against hegemony and colonial dominion in Peru. Ultimately, this educational unlearning would shape my understanding of Cuba and drive me deeper into a process of self-reflection and unlearning. The chance to actually go to Cuba with other politically aligned comrades seemed like another step in the process. 

My positionality and identity have always been at odds with the limiting structure of white supremacy. I identified as Peruvian and Bosnian because of the strong ties that my parents had to their countries of origin. My mother always identified as Peruvian first and never really emphasized the categorization of Latinidad. At school, because I was white-passing, I found it difficult to fully fit in with peers who generally had a more racialized understanding of what a Latino was supposed to look like. I was lumped in with different ethnically ambiguous categories that assumed I was bi-racial or mixed race. I bring these stories as critical to my identity development and offer this as a counterstory to the idea of ethnic identity being a neutral endeavor. Ethnic identities can easily be subsumed into whiteness, and many times are a way of distancing themselves from any kind of racial categories. Much of the dilemma over the classification of Latinx populations is the preference for using nationality instead of ethnonyms or racial categories. To be Peruvian-Bosnian instead of white can speak to my ethnic identity, but in the structure of power, it still entails the privileges of whiteness. I also bring into the conversation the scholarship of LatCrit theory that notes the intersectionality of the Latino/a/x experience. It is “concerned with a sense of a coalitional Latina/Latino pan-ethnicity and addresses the issues often ignored by critical race theorists such as language, immigration, ethnicity, culture, identity, phenotype, and sexuality (Martinez, 2020).” 

How does this connect to the need for educators to be rigorous in their own identity construction, especially in becoming agents to foster critical consciousness in teaching about Palestine?

 

Reflections on the ground in Cuba

While in Cuba, I noted that we were there as educators bringing our own identities and experiences into a collective experience of political education. Cuba has had many rallies and words of open expression and intent toward the solidarity of the two nations, Cuba and Palestine. I contemplated more on the liberatory struggles of both these nations and realized the intertwined connection of resistance against imperialism and neo-colonial occupation through the Helms-Burton Act, which tightens the economic grip on the island, in addition to the many other byzantine methods that have been put in place since Cuba’s independence. Through a total seizure of Cuba’s economic sovereignty, I recognized the parallels that the Gaza Strip was also under a blockade through the Zionist entity of Israel’s total control of the border. In order to give an accurate assessment of Cuba, the effects of the blockade and the Helms-Burton Act cannot be overstated. The total economic loss due to the violence of the embargo is estimated to be at least 6 billion, and it has had devastating effects on the population (Weisbrot, 2026). Everything from being able to procure construction materials to having the means to deal with new and emerging medical research and disease has been significantly hampered by the blockade, making it almost impossible to significantly modernize and upgrade medical facilities, for example. During my first day in Havana, I noticed significant amounts of trash heaps that were piled in various locations, and was told that there were interruptions in service because of not being able to receive sufficient fuel for incinerators. These things add up and snowball into quality-of-life issues that slowly chip away at Cubans’ patience, exhausting them and leaving them desperate, lashing out against the government. 

A nation’s independence and sovereignty cannot be viewed in isolation but must be examined through the lens of imperialism, the hegemonic world order that pits nations as potential incubators for resource extraction and exploitation, led primarily by the United States and its allies that manufacture consent for saving the global south from “dictatorships” and “corruption.” Not to simplify or marginalize the Cuban people’s real issues, grievances, and anger toward the government, we can still, at the same time, hold the truth that Cuba has been consistently in the crosshairs of the West and the US’s goal for domination of its backyard and the continuation of neo-colonial extraction through the Monroe Doctrine. While I was attending the seminars and cultural events, many of the facilitators expressed their support for Palestine and its liberation, linking the struggles for anti-imperialism. They expressed how many of the Zionist forces that play a role in shaping the discourse around the occupation and demonizing any efforts to express open solidarity with Palestine, through labeling it anti-semitic, is also seen in how perceptions of Cuba have been manufactured since the Cold War to create a perpetual state of siege and escalation of danger against the people of Cuba. Israel has consistently voted to support the embargo, aligning with US interests, and does not fail to label any kind of support for Palestine around the world as being infiltrated by foreign actors, such as Iran. 

Cuba’s own historical narrative and the telling of its own story is a response to the repression and is driven by the need to embody for Cubans the nature of the revolution. That nature comes from the resilience that has been forged through the repeated aggression of the US and its allies and through the blockade. In the museum dedicated to the covert operations of the CIA and other spy agencies, there are many sections/exhibits that allow the participant to piece together a different timeline and perspective of the various attempts at a CIA-backed coup, including the Bay of Pigs, or Playa Girón, as it is called in Cuba. Political education through exhibitions, connecting with educators, and through its imagery (many of the pictures and billboards are charged with depictions of heroic scenes and slogans from the revolution, lauding Castro). 

These appeals to the revolutionary project of Cuba were ubiquitous, whether by emphasizing the large-scale victories in the first stages of the revolution through its mass literacy campaigns, its demonstrably achievements in quality of life, its large-scale agricultural campaign, the redistribution of wealth, or its effect on the standard of living for all Cubans through its nationalization and effective response of its hospitals and medical support. These wins have been severely hampered due to the worsening crisis of many factors that are not limited to the embargo, including the criticism of severe mismanagement of the government culminating in large-scale protests during the pandemic. However, to note this does not diminish the zeal and show of support that Cubans have shown for Palestinians in the struggle for self-determination against colonialism. Sovereignty and self-determination, especially through difficult times, are something that has marked Cubans and made them stand out across Latin America and the Caribbean. This can be seen through the many mass protests in Cuba for Palestine, or the rallies with Cuban doctors showing solidarity for the murdered doctors and hospital workers during the genocide. During one of the panels I visited, there were connections made with the lack of crucial medicine and vaccines during the pandemic, exacerbated by the blockade and the blocking of essential aid into Gaza by Israel. Cuba’s situation is magnitudes away from what has been occurring in Gaza, but both are tied through colonial logic: that countries suffering under the yoke of a colonial entity must be under the control of a country that wants to exert dominance and collectively punish an entire population. As I listened to a father speak about his newborn son and the challenges of procuring medication for his baby and now reflecting on the suffering imposed on the children of Gaza through the malice and cruelty of the Israeli entity where thousands upon thousands of fathers are left with malnourished children, I realized how powerful it can be when our narratives are used as powerful agents of solidarity, challenging the norms of empire and creating bonds between educators throughout the Global North and South.

 

Counterstory and its implications in the classroom

For this paper, I draw upon autoethnography and counterstory in order to draw connections to how personal ideologies come from social and cultural upbringing that, in turn, influence our own perspective and positionalities. As educators and activists, there is a level of unlearning and acknowledgement that centers anti-colonial resistance and solidarity. This perspective does not arrive in one single moment but rather through a series of moments that we absorb and narrativize throughout our lives. In utilizing counterstory (Martinez, 2020) as a tool of autoethnography, I am able to weave our various nodes of identity and contradictions into a cohesive whole that draws upon our own experience of being activist/educators on a Cuba solidarity trip and connecting broader anti-imperialist struggles around the Global South, including Palestine. Counterstory as a way to create an identity out of the parts of our identity is important because we examine our own process of actualization, specifically through the lens of race, class, and linguistic practices. In my case, I felt that there was a constant presence of whiteness within the Latine community that racialized the struggles and concerns that would be constantly mentioned by the media and reflected in the ruling class’s desire to subsume all societal problems into Black/Indigenous communities. 

Counterstory in the classroom can have a powerful benefit to students who may not have the experience or comfort in speaking about societal issues in a generalized way, but through narratives, they are able to use constructed markers of identity, including race and social class, to question accepted truths and beliefs about themselves. In teaching and discussing Palestine, counterstory can be an effective tool to give marginalized students an entry point into connecting in a personal way their own struggles and identification. To Palestinian students, this could be such a powerful affirmative tool, and for students who still did not want to engage in the topic because it is “too political,” then the conversation can be oriented toward some of the common principles and guidelines that the class has already agreed to.

 

Challenges for educators

As educators who want to engage with the world and in the classroom with a Freireian framework in mind, it can be difficult to foster this kind of disposition when there are so many forces at play that work to stifle and suppress ideas in the classroom. The emergence of algorithms sponsored by big tech that censor, shadowban and limit access to acquiring Palestinian-themed books (Davis, 2026) should cause alarm bells to sound. The prevalent campaign of book banning in many states that have adopted more reactionary curriculums make it extremely difficult for teachers to engage in meaningful self-reflection, where heuristic tools like counterstories are more discouraged because teachers do not want to risk setting off any kind of political battles in the classroom, which might risk termination of their jobs. If Palestine is the compass for true liberation and emancipation from white supremacist and settler colonialist frameworks, like Zionism, then we must be able to critically reflect on the ways in which our own personal narratives have subconsciously guided our political ideologies. These ideologies need to be named; colorism in Latino communities makes it so that Whiteness and the power that it encompasses are seen as the default norm. Counterstory can help us identify the contradictions in our identity and makeup so that we can call out the dominant power structures that make these conditions, such as race, language, and culture, biological and not the function of historical processes.

 

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