One of the tactics we've seen governments use to suppress speech throughout this series is revoking non profit status or otherwise making it difficult for organizers to get funding to stay afloat. That happens in other ways too. I wanted to talk to Céline Semaan this week about exactly this problem.

Céline runs a project called Slow Factory. They do educational initiatives on social media and via online learning platforms and events connecting the dots for people on art, science, history, and colonization. Their content is really interesting. Céline's a designer so it's always very beautiful to look at and they do a really great job of making really complicated issues accessible.

Over the past few months, Slow Factory has been outspoken in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and as a result, has lost all of its funding in a matter of just a few months. You're going to hear from Céline on that, and why it's more important than ever for the climate movement to be a justice movement.

Prefer to listen to this conversation? Check it out on the podcast!

[00:01:22] Celine Semaan: I'm Céline Semaan. I'm one of the co founders of Slow Factory. And Slow Factory is a non for profit, for now, working at the intersection of climate justice and human rights. Particularly, we've been studying for the past decade, looking at the impact of climate on human health and also the impact on climate on geopolitics and human rights in general.

And so I've started working on Slow Factory in 2008, just as a research, trying to connect the dots between a lot of things that were impacting My lived experience, but also were part of my area of work and area of expertise. At the time I was working on digital access, access to information digital literacy, access to the internet, essentially. Training folks to be on the internet. working with groups, uh, human rights groups to try to get the internet in Lebanon, get people connected, get people online. And with that work a lot of things were interconnected and a lot of things were becoming much more part of a global system for me. And I was starting to understand that we exist within many systems, compounding systems, and every single system is impacting another. But when we were advocating or creating stories or trying to communicate certain issues to the general public, we realized that folks were not used to seeing systems or understanding systems. That in fact, if the world was pretty decent for them, they weren't even aware that there were systems out there that may or may not be working in it for the advantage of the majority. And so I started Slow Factory trying to connect the dots between different things that were interesting to me: access to information, digital literacy human rights, climate justice, geopolitics, and a little bit of fashion, a little bit of culture, a little bit of storytelling.

And what does that create? What, what could we create with all of this?

[00:03:37] Amy Westervelt: I didn't know you started in 2008. That's really, that's amazing.

[00:03:41] Celine Semaan: It launched in 2012. So from 2008 to 2012, I was researching. I was trying to figure out a way to make it work because a lot of people back then told me I need to pick one thing

And, you know, often the advice was do one thing and one thing well. It was like the boom of startup culture, everything. Every single startup is like one service, you know, and I really, really was convinced that we need to do many things at the same time and doing them all the way.

[00:04:13] Amy Westervelt: And you were always looking at climate intersecting with all these things, right?

That's not like a new thing. You were always looking at all these things together.

[00:04:24] Celine Semaan: Yes, of course. I mean, for me, climate is a new word. At the time we were talking about environmentalism or the environment. And I remember like, you know, in 2008, for example, very few people used the word climate next to justice.

It was more like climate change, climate change. And the narrative were about environmentalism and to be an environmentalist, you would have to be part of a certain category of people. And it wasn't really given that someone coming from Lebanon, you know, who doesn't really have a science degree would be interested in climate and would be able to impact climate spaces.

[00:05:04] Amy Westervelt: Totally. I'm super interested then to hear your thoughts on just how much it's changed from from 2012 to now. Like, I feel like there's been maybe a couple of cycles where the broader climate movement has gotten a little bit better about seeing these intersections. And then I, I don't know if you've seen this too, but I feel like I've seen people really like backpedaling on on that in a, in a very troubling way in the last year or so.

So, yeah, I'm curious just what you've seen on that front and what you think the blockers are to people understanding that these things really are all interconnected.

[00:05:43] Celine Semaan: Climate for me and the stories around climate are all about culture. And there's something that, you know, we keep saying in the space, which is like, If you want policy change, you have to really be able to impact culture because policy follows culture.

And the other thing also that I've observed is that you know, in 2011, 2010 climate wasn't really part of the everyday media conversation. You know, I think it really entered the mainstream in a massive way. around 2019 and really made its way clearly in 2020, where everyone was like, Oh my God, you know, like when everyone was home during COVID, uh, if they were lucky enough to be healthy at home, they, you know, most of the people were online just consuming digital information and being like, Oh my goodness, I need to change, or I need to make a change in my life.

Which we'll talk about that because that's in its way problematic. But going back to what you were asking, you know, I feel like part of telling people the stories around climate and telling people about systems and systemic change or systemic oppression, is really about, you know, broadening their perspective because, you know, encountering, like realizing that there's a system in place, oftentimes systems are designed to be invisible and they're designed to be, you know, omnipresent, invisible, you don't really pay attention to them.

If they work in your favor, you don't have a perceived notion that a system is in place. It's only when the system doesn't work in your favor. For example, when you find yourself on the, on the phone with customer service, right? And saying this doesn't work. And the customer service is a robot. And it's like, press one to speak for, with a representative.

And you're like, Oh my God, this doesn't work. Like what's happening. That's when you realize that the system is there and the system might very well be not in your favor. For people of the global majority, we are born and raised in a broken system. We're realizing that the system is not in our favor and we learn to navigate around it.

We have an additional systems literacy in place in our cultures because that's how our lived experience has, you know, created our perspective, perception of life. When we have to explain that to people, and I often consider myself a translator-- you know, translating cultures. And as a designer, a lot of our work as designers are about translating complex systems, translating the inter, like translating the database to becoming an interface so that people can relate to it. Translating, really complex data back to people so that they can relate to them. So I really, really see myself as a, as a translator. in translating our lived experience, our cultures from the perspective of the global majority, from a very well lived experience in the global South to folks in the global North who don't understand often that A, there's a system in place that is not in the favor of the majority, B, that they are participating in that system, and C, that that system is in fact crumbling and you know, it's not sustainable.

that system is not sustainable in itself because it's not designed in a way that is in alignment with the larger system, the ecosystem that we live in, you know? And so being able to explain these things in a way that is relatable, that is, not riddled with shame and guilt and anger, which is a big work that we have to do behind the scenes at Slow Factory, which is about you know, transmuting these emotions, you know, alchemizing these emotions so that we, our message is as clear as possible to the general public that has the power to create change in any which way that they can.

[00:09:56] Amy Westervelt: Yeah, I'm, I, I think at least, you know, once a month, I'm really struck by how well you guys translate a very complicated issue into a very accessible story. It's not easy. You do it really well. So I, okay, a thing that I get asked a lot is like, well, so you're raising awareness about these, this or that thing, but what impact does that really have?

And I'm curious, like how you, I mean, it's an annoying statement, but I'm curious how you yeah, it's very and you measure this impact, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also actually for funders too, right? Like they're constantly asking for those kinds of metrics. And I was. Just talking to someone the other day where I'm like, you know, None of the metrics that we have actually capture how impact works.

Like I was I was telling someone the other day about something that totally shifted my thinking on something. And it was just like one conversation with one person, but I'm like, but you know, probably like five other conversations I had leading up to that one, like, started me down that path. And how do you measure that?

You know? So anyway, I'm curious just how you think about that whole, you know, impact thing.

[00:11:11] Celine Semaan: Absolutely. We are working now on a, on an impact report. We, we never used to work on these before we were just very grassroots, very much moving from a place of, I would say, passion and compassion. And 2020 that we started to compile the data.

because we were observing change. It was very palpable that what we were creating was impactful, but we didn't measure it prior to 2020. And so we retroactively measured using two different techniques. Again, my background is in tech. So, okay. My background is in data and measuring data and understanding data and understanding that data on its own means nothing without information and without storytelling and wisdom. So data, the number on its own needs to be contextualized. So for us, we do use you know, a methodology that incorporates hard data, the reach, just the numbers, the numbers themselves are enormous. Uh, the reach of slow factory daily is about 10 million which is insane because like, we're just a social media platform.

We're working on growing into various other things. That's why we're fundraising. But on our own, just as a lo fi, I would say storytelling method, like, Output daily it's, it's, you know, enormous. So data, just calculating data, observing data, looking at add words that uh, that are being out there and just also looking at Google words.

What is the, what are the words that are the most searched after we launched a post and correlating this research? That's a way to measure And then the other way is through empirical data. So testimonies, people that are emailing us, people that are participating in our surveys comments, like what people are commenting about.

and how they are, you know, susceptible potentially of changing their perception. And the, that data is harder to pinpoint. So it takes longer to research and to map, but the two together are really indicative that what we're creating is effective on narrative change and it's effective on debunking a lot of misinformation.

And it's done in a way that's It's so accessible that it's shared widely and it becomes sort of a starting point for people to research further, which we also offer with our program on open education. It's a, about 200 free classes under the framework of open edu that we've developed, which is about climate justice, human rights.

Cultural change. And under this wheel of, uh, of information, I would say we offer classes to go deeper into into the entry points that we offer on social media. So there's a funnel of, you know, engagement from the 10 millions that are engaging on social media. Hundreds of thousands are continuing their experience through open edu.

Which is, I think it's not everything, but it's like a very good pathway that we could continue investing in.

[00:14:38] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. That's really interesting. Okay. Can I ask you a little bit about the book that you're working on? It sounds so interesting.

[00:14:46] Celine Semaan: Yes, you can.

[00:14:52] Amy Westervelt: When I saw the description, I was like, Oh man, that'd be so much fun to research.

I bet you've you're like, lay down the research rabbit hole.

[00:15:03] Celine Semaan: Yes, I am. Wow. What can I say? Well, first the book is almost it's done. I am ready to, to launch it.

[00:15:13] Amy Westervelt: Oh, amazing.

[00:15:15] Celine Semaan: Yes. It's called A Woman Is A School and it's stories as data points. for collective liberation. And it's a lot of stories from the global South, from women, some men, some, you know, of my personal stories, uh, lived experiences that span between, I would say 1948, which is a very important date in the region and today. And it's basically a documentation of lived experiences from that time in Lebanon.

What it tells us also this, a woman is a school is the title. Thank you. Because when you are teaching a woman, you are really teaching her entire community. And it's very much about the, the, what I've learned outside of school, like how I was brought up. It's a documentation of what I believe is an endangered culture.

The culture of the global South, which is an important culture. When we look at our collective survival, uh, during a time of transition, during the time that we are in, which is a time of great transition. You know, we're talking about climate transitions. We're talking about economic transition. We're talking about political transitions.

We're in a time of. deep turmoil and for, you know, looking at how do we survive climate change? How do we survive climate change? It's always a question I hear people ask. It really depends on the culture that, you know, your community has. And what I mean by that is that in the Global North, for example, I feel like the book is a lot about an anthropological study.

you know, at least a very, you know, a cultural, as a cultural anthropologist myself, it's a cultural and anthropological observation and documentation of what collective, collectivism and collective cultures are about and how I was raised in radical generosity, how I was raised in, you know, my understanding of the origin stories of our world.

that are different from origin stories that are, you know, for instance, Judeo Christian or that are, you know, told in the global North. And so, yeah, it's a documentation of our endangered culture. I'm super excited to read it. When does it when does it come out? So I'm in the process of of separating with my publisher.

And starting a, an imprint under slow factory to publish the book in September. That's amazing. So, I mean, this is really news because the emails are still hot. So, uh, that sounds a little bit stressful. I hope it, I hope that it all goes well. I'm not stressed anymore about this because the system never really worked in my favor since I was a child and I am, I've kind of lost the disillusionment that the system will one day be in my favor or great thing of me and my culture and working for my, for my greatest good, you know, and so I am ready.

I've always, been ready. I've done everything on my own. For instance, I'm a designer, but like I have been rejected from every single design school I applied to. And the design work that we do at Slow Factory is one of the most effective design work I've seen out there. And I just feel like the schools and the universities and whatever, and the system that can't embrace the wisdom that comes from the global south, because then we're going to just do it on our own, you know?

[00:19:16] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah. It's true. That's wild to me. Cause yeah, your stuff is amazing.

[00:19:21] Celine Semaan: And like, I never dare to say, to call myself a designer. I, even like when I say it, I really have to work on myself because I never even credit myself in any of the designs that I do. But like I do the majority of these designs with my team.

I personally designed The posts, you know, and so, and I work through a methodology that I've created and I train my team to understanding what I understand of design, you know, and I don't know, I feel like this whole idea of being a designer is so exclusive that decided to be a designer of the world.

[00:20:03] Amy Westervelt: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, it's it's. Your stuff is, is excellent. And I feel like I definitely see more than one, you know, account cribbing off of it.

[00:20:15] Celine Semaan: So, uh, I think that we have defined a visual language that Folks think is just up for grabs. Yeah. We have to, we had to change our fonts several times.

We had to also go and reach out to some people that were in direct, in the direct line of work and say, honey, like this is literally our design language. Why not build upon it? Why not? Exactly. Build something new. At least improve it. Like build upon our work and credit the work, which is something I feel Generation Z is not used to.

Everything is like, I discovered this on TikTok or I discovered this on Instagram. Therefore it must be free. Where back in 2001, when we started with the internet, the work was very defined as you have to trace back the source because then you are building a stronger web. When you break the web, you, you literally break the movement.

Yeah. And I don't understand why would you break the movement? Like why would you not say this is from this and this is from that and this is where I got it from. Then you're building, building, building, not just like...

[00:21:28] Amy Westervelt: yeah, it's true. I was talking to someone who works in academia the other day who and not, you know, academia is far from perfect on this front and there are plenty of, of problems with it.

But one thing that they mentioned was that, everyone, you know, when they're doing research, it's just sort of like, yeah, of course it's building on what came before. And I'm going to cite what came before, because that's how we build an understanding of something.

I wish that all these other realms had just accepted that as well. So, okay. I want to talk about Billboards for a Ceasefire, which you just launched right last week. Was it last week in LA? In LA?

[00:22:08] Celine Semaan: Correct. Yes. We tried to do it in New York first, but...

[00:22:12] Amy Westervelt: what happened?

[00:22:14] Celine Semaan: We got censored. We made a little video about it that went semi viral. That's how we actually got the contact from LA. Uh, someone was like, Hey, I saw you guys are trying to put billboards up in New York. And we, cause we put the video in, like, we created a short documentary just to show how hard it's been to just have these messages out.

And someone reached out to us and said, Oh, I saw you guys trying to put out billboards in New York. I run a billboard organization. Can I help you? Like, I work specifically with nonprofits. Yeah. And we were like, Oh my gosh, yes, yes. We couldn't put the word you know, genocide up there, but we, we managed to put pretty much everything we wanted.

Calling for ceasefire. You know, we call our billboards, uh, skittles for Palestinian justice because we purposefully chose skittle colors so that people don't, uh, stop at the red, green, and black colors. And that they're, you know, their guards are down. when they're looking at these Skittle colors.

And so they can read the message and understand that, you know, what we're asking for is as cute as Skittles.

[00:23:33] Amy Westervelt: And they went up just last week, right?

[00:23:36] Celine Semaan: Yes, they went up last week. They're going to be there for a month. They're in 10 locations in Los Angeles, which is, I think, the heart and soul of storytelling, especially for mainstream.

All of the stories that are mostly in our disadvantage come there, come from there. And our designed there and they are filmed there, you know, every single representation of Arab lives, whether it's on, uh, the TV or on the big screen is, you know, produced in LA. So, you know, this was our way to planting some seeds, some watermelon seeds.

[00:24:15] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. The belly of the beast. Yeah. That's really interesting. I wanted to ask you too about how the climate movement has been I would say very visibly absent from any of the discussion on, on Gaza. I feel like it's maybe starting to turn a little bit.

Like I think Rafa was a little bit of a a turning point where more people started to speak out, but yeah, I'm curious just what you've seen on that front. And and I'd like to ask you to kind of, uh, explain for folks who might be listening who might have this mindset of like, well, what does this have to do with climate?

You know, maybe I, maybe have you answer that question from, from your perspective.

[00:25:01] Celine Semaan: I'm going to try to do this without sounding so bitter. I realized that me saying Generation Z with all my bitterness. First of all, I am raising a teenager who is Generation Z and I'm raising my children, uh, also Generation Alpha in a way where I'm trying my best to represent you know, this lineage of culture I was part of.

Definitely, if you're out there listening and you're part of that group, uh, do remember that you need to state your sources because you create a stronger web in that way. And then your movement is unbreakable and don't break the movement that you were born into. Remember that you were born into an existing movement.

And the relationship with boomers are great, but they're at the disadvantage of the folks that have been fighting against and building the platforms that, you know, a lot of you are dancing on and, you know, shooting your, your TikToks on and, you know, doing brand partnerships on in the name of climate justice.

I just have to say, I'm saying this with love and as a mom, just careful with how you are doing a disservice or how you're building upon someone's work, how you are able to build upon each other's work. So I'm prefacing that with For the talk about Palestine, because the work that we're doing in the region and in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine, of course, has been a litmus test in the movement, uh, for climate justice, not just now, but forever.

You know, and we have lost a lot of relationships and opportunities. because of where we are and how we advocate for human rights. And correct. You're correct. Like, yes, the climate justice movement has been harmfully silent about Palestinian rights. And if they have spoken, it was when it was safe for them to do so.

And they have spoken in ways that was erasing Palestinian voices that came before them, Arab voices before them, purposefully hurting Arab led groups like Slow Factory in multiple ways, you know, prior to this moment. So it's a shame that we are all talking about climate justice, which is a movement that exists within collective liberation. that we have a hard time being in solidarity with Palestinians in a way that is selfless, that is not done in a way that is just good for you right now in an individualistic framework, which is a lot of the things I talk about in my book. That if we want to see collective liberation, we really, really have to understand that there are other ways to exist besides the individualistic approach, the capitalist approach.

And it's true that groups have been not only silent, they've been actively silencing slow factory and defunding slow factory and the climate justice groups that are purposefully silent are benefiting financially from funders. that are Zionist funders that are working, you know, around the clock to defund the work that we're doing.

We have lost every single funder since October.

[00:28:41] Amy Westervelt: Wow.

[00:28:43] Celine Semaan: Every single foundation, brands, everyone. Wow. defunding our work. And I'm being honest and vulnerable because I don't understand anymore how else should I be, you know, what should I play? What kind of game do you want me to play to be like giving you, you know, the, the reality of behind the scenes.

So you, everyone understands that Slow Factory is really working out of a miracle since it was created because no one really understood what Slow Factory was. And still, most of the time people say, I love slow factory. I just don't know what you all do. What do you mean? We work at the intersection of climate justice and human rights through education, design and science.

What's so complicated about that? Yeah, but like how? What's your business model? We don't have a business model. Yeah. You know, we are a public service. Yeah. And we're creating massive impact because we are so raw.

[00:29:49] Amy Westervelt: Yes, totally. Also, I feel like all of your work on Palestine has been really, really well researched, really thoughtful.

That's awful and stressful.

[00:30:01] Celine Semaan: It's very stressful. Very, very stressful. And it's stressful because not because we are not good at what we do. No, because we are not effective. It's not because we have not measured our impact. It's not because we are not creating massive impact. No, it's because we are creating massive impact.

Yeah. It's because we are so effective. It's because we are perceived as potentially a threat. What are they talking about? Systems change. I don't want my system to change. Can we just do it in a way that just doesn't change anything? No, we can't. And whether you like it or not, it is changing. It's not me personally, Celine Semaan, who is like a lady from a fucking refugee from Lebanon, who's changing your fucking system.

Sorry to be so blunt. It's changing. So why not work with it? Why not embrace it with creativity? Why not work with people who understand it, who know how to impact it, who know how to design around it, who understand it on a visceral level. Like work with us, join us, you know, I don't know my, I, I feel like at this time, I'm just letting go and just opening up to whatever is going to occur.

[00:31:22] Amy Westervelt: I find it so mind blowing that there are still people out there that are like, I don't know. Yeah. I guess just trying to resist any kind of systems change by trying to keep climate focused on specific technological solutions or one particular politician or things like that.

It's draining to watch it over and over again. How do you keep going in the face of all that?

[00:31:51] Celine Semaan: I don't know how I keep going. The best way I can explain is like when I was giving birth to my first child, every pain felt like that's it. That's the end of the world. I'm, I'm, I'm going to die. I can't take it anymore. I can't take it anymore. And then I would get into another level, another threshold of pain.

pain. And then again, I would say, I can't take it anymore. That's it. I'm dying. And then another threshold of pain would take me to another layer and layer of pain. And I would open up and open up and open up and be able to handle this pain and eventually, you know, go through it. That's how I feel right now with everything that I'm witnessing coming out of Gaza, Gaza in English, coming out of Lebanon.