Full, Uncut Conversation – Palestinian American Comedian & Disability Advocate Maysoon Zayid 

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Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza has been a mass disabling event. Today’s guest says we must create a “viable, accessible future” for the disabled Palestinians we have failed. Maysoon Zayid is a comedian, Princeton Fellow, and unapologetic voice for both disability rights and Palestinian identity. A fierce advocate with cerebral palsy, Zayid proves that the most powerful messages often come from unexpected places and are filled with laughter. She’s lost tens of thousands of dollars of contracts for her views, she says, but that hasn’t stopped her “making funny during a genocide” on social media all year. And she’s shown her followers her home village in Palestine — the best place on earth, she says, despite the onslaught of oppression and violence that her people have endured. Maysoon co-founded the New York Arab American Comedy Festival and the Muslim Funny Fest. Her viral Ted Talk, “I Got 99 Problems…Palsy is Just One,” has been translated into 42 languages, and was one of the most popular talks of 2014. She’s the author of “Shiny Misfits”, the new graphic novel that tells the story of Bay Ann, a disabled girl and her cat friend that rock star Dave Matthews narrates for the audiobook. In this conversation filled with heart and humor, hear how comedy shines a light on injustice and serves as a voice of resistance. All that, plus a commentary from Laura on human shields. 

“As a disabled kid, I liked Palestine a lot more than Jersey . . . I was the only visibly disabled kid in my school growing up. But in Palestine there were other disabled kids and disability wasn’t shunned. It wasn’t mocked, it wasn’t bullied. I grew up in a society that very much believed that disability was a natural part of life . . .” – Maysoon Zayid

“I’ve always used comedy to humanize and educate on disability. And this is the moment because the future of Palestine is disabled and between life and death, there’s disability. I don’t think it’s better to be dead than to be disabled. I want us to create a viable, accessible future for this cohort of human beings that we have failed in the present.” – Maysoon Zayid

Guest

• Maysoon Zayid: Comedian & Disability Advocate; Author, Shiny Misfits

Portions of this interview are featured in our episode, “Maysoon Zayid: Comedy of Resistance, Disability, Difference & Palestine“.

Transcript:

FULL, UNCUT CONVERSATION — MAYSOON ZAYID: COMEDY OF RESISTANCE, DISABILITY, DIFFERENCE & PALESTINE

Watch / Download Podcast- Full Conversation / Download Podcast- Episode

Narrator: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full, uncut conversation. The following is from our episode, “Comedy of Resistance, Disability, Difference & Palestine”, featuring comedian and disability advocate, Maysoon Zayid. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.

LAURA FLANDERS: If you’re like me, you have spent a good amount of the last year doom scrolling images from hell. Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza, the West Bank, now Lebanon, and all places it seems where there might be Palestinians has filled our social media feeds with the worst images imaginable. Dead babies, starving adults, journalists assassinated in the very act of reporting. Ancient places flattened and burned. Amidst all the horror, one person’s social media feed has popped up and made me smile. She calls Palestine her happy place, her home village, the most beautiful place on Earth. And her posts from there have reflected that in all their love and bitter humor and heartbreak this year. Here’s one.

• (MAYSOON ZAYID) We are back in Dheisheh Refugee Camp. You loved the video last time. I’m going to give you more. People ask me all the time, “Why are you going to Palestine right now?” I’m here right now because this is my happy place. That’s right. Palestine is my happy place. Even with every single oppressive, violent thing that’s happening, this is still the best place on Earth.

LAURA FLANDERS: Maysoon Zayid is an actor and comedian, Princeton fellow, disability activist. She lives with cerebral palsy, she’s Palestinian, the co-founder of the Arab American Comedy Festival, and the author of a recently released graphic novel, “Shiny Misfits,” for which the musician Dave Matthews recorded the audio book. She has “become an expert,” as she puts it, in “making funny during a genocide.” She’s also paid a price. To tell us more about all of it. I am happy to welcome Maysoon Zayid to “Laura Flanders & Friends.” Maysoon, I am so happy to have you here.

MAYSOON ZAYID: I love being invited. Nobody invites me to anything these days, so this is a real treat for me.

LAURA FLANDERS: Well, let me just start by saying, I don’t think that Instagram is actually shot in your home village unless there is a Disney castle in Palestine that I don’t know about.

MAYSOON ZAYID: That’s actually Orlando. That’s the place that damaged my romantic expectations for my entire time in eternity, and so it holds a special place in my divorced heart.

LAURA FLANDERS: Alright. Well, to give people a little sense of your history without you having to go through it all, let’s take a taste of your TED talk from 2014. Here’s a clip. 

• (MAYSOON ZAYID) And I don’t want anyone in this room to feel bad for me because at some point in your life you have dreamt of being disabled. Come on a journey with me. It’s Christmas Eve, you’re at the mall, you’re driving around in circles looking for parking, and what do you see? 16 empty handicap spaces. And you’re like, “God, can I just be a little disabled?” Also, I gotta tell you, I got 99 problems and palsy is just one. If there was an Oppression Olympics, I would win the gold medal. I’m Palestinian, Muslim, I’m female, I’m disabled, and I live in New Jersey.

LAURA FLANDERS: So as you say there, Maysoon, you grew up in New Jersey. How did you grow your love for Palestine as you did?

MAYSOON ZAYID: So I was born and raised in New Jersey, but I spent every single summer in Palestine. So I do a joke on stage where I say my friends would go to a Jersey Shore, and I would go live in a war. And so every single summer, we went and lived back home with my grandmothers, with my aunts, with my cousins. We farmed land. We washed our own clothes. We didn’t have internet. We didn’t have TV, and that’s where that love came from because I got to live two completely separate existences. And as a disabled kid, I just liked Palestine a lot more than Jersey.

LAURA FLANDERS: Why? How come? 

MAYSOON ZAYID: Well, first of all, I wasn’t the only disabled kid. Like, it was very isolating in New Jersey because my parents fought to have me mainstream before the Americans with Disabilities Act was ever even passed, and so I was the only visibly-disabled kid in my school growing up. But in Palestine there were other disabled kids, and disability wasn’t shunned, it wasn’t mocked, it wasn’t bullied. I grew up in a society that very much believed that disability was a natural part of life and that all things from God were good. And, you know, kind of the centerpiece of how I raised was that I wasn’t a mistake that this was all by design. You know?

LAURA FLANDERS: Your parents sound like pretty incredible people, and you have followed in that tradition sending that message to people who might feel that they are outliers with your new book, Shiny Misfits, which I should say was recently announced as a Read Across America book or listen to.

MAYSOON ZAYID: So the Read Across America is a huge, amazing thing because it’s the National Educators of America, and they choose 12 books a year from each category. I’m in the middle grade category. So my book for Scholastic, it’s technically for 5th graders to 8th grader, but I wrote it for all ages. And the reason I think it’s so important that it was chosen for Read Across America is because “Shiny Misfits” is not your conventional middle grade book. First of all, it’s a comic book, and secondly, your center character is a Muslim disabled kid. And I really think that they kind of took a risk by having a nonconventional disabled kid because we don’t wanna get ahead of ourselves. But when I read negative reviews of “Shiny Misfits”, it’s because people are not expecting to see a fully vibrant disabled character or a fully vibrant disabled child. And so I’m really excited that they took a risk on this book, and it’s also a great, like, you know, bludgeon for me for when people are like, she’s too edgy. She’s too, you know, we’re afraid of putting her anywhere. I’m like, Read Across America picked me. Nobody’s more conservative than them. You don’t have to worry about it.

LAURA FLANDERS: And how’d you get Dave Matthews to do the audiobook?

MAYSOON ZAYID: Dave Matthews is my friend. So, I was a huge Dave Matthews Band fan, and then I had the privilege of doing a movie with Dave Matthews, and they always say don’t meet your heroes because you’ll be disappointed. I was thrilled to say he is even cooler than he seems on stage. He’s even funnier. He’s even realer, and he’s extraordinarily intelligent, empathetic, and a real cheerleader. I’ve just been so blessed and lucky to have him as a friend. So when I was writing “Shiny Misfits”, I’m an old school comic book fan. So my first approach was, I want comic book fans to love this. I don’t want them to be insulted with the fact that I’m calling a graphic novel a comic book. But the second thing I did was I wrote the cat rhyming because I knew that I wanted Dave Matthews to voice it. And I was like, “OK, I need this cat to be really musical and really magical, just like Dave. And, again, at a time where everyone was, like, icing me out and not picking up my phone calls because we recorded the audio for “Shiny Misfits” at the height of the first year of the genocide. I was blessed and lucky to have Dave not only be in, but also to create this incredible cat who is whatever you want the cat to be. It’s maybe your inner voice. It’s maybe your imaginary friend. But either way, it’s voiced by a rock star and not the voice that people normally think a cat is going to be voiced because it’s his speaking voice. He didn’t even alter it. So everyone go on Audible. Get “Shiny Misfits”. It is an incredible listen. And I voice Bay Ann.

LAURA FLANDERS: It’s a great book, and it’s being described as about fame, friendship, not fitting in. It’s friendly for neurodivergent audiences. I think because of the colors and tones that you chose, a lot goes into that. Right?

MAYSOON ZAYID: You can have more than one disability. It was really important for me and for Bay Ann to have more than one disability. So in addition to cerebral palsy, which is her physical disability, she’s neurodivergent, and she clearly has anxiety. In my opinion, she clearly has anxiety. And it does require certain things. You have to think about certain things to make the book good for neurodivergent audiences. We have to think of certain things for all different disabilities, and sometimes disabilities clash. So first and foremost, it was pushing to have the audiobook released the day of because in print, there’s usually a delay between when the print version comes out and the audio version comes out, but we need it to be accessible for blind and low vision kids and separate is never equal. It had to be the same day. The cover is tactile so that people with autism or neurodivergent can kind of use it as a stem while they’re reading it. The font was designed by my incredible illustrator, Shadia Amin, to be dyslexic friendly because we didn’t find any font that was dyslexic friendly, so she drew a font. We made sure that Bay Ann wasn’t by herself so that she wasn’t the only disabled person in the book. There’s an amputee. There’s a wheelchair user. There’s diabetics. And that was how we made it accessible. And the best part of making it accessible was the audio descriptions because I created a world without borders because borders have not served me well in my life ever. I couldn’t color within the borders. They’ve created a ton of violence in my life. I don’t like borders. So when we were describing the skin tones of the different characters, it was a challenge. It was like, how do you describe a skin tone if you’re not, like, Latino or Filipino or Arab? And so we got advice from the First Nations, and we used elements. So in the audiobook, everybody’s skin tone is an element. So you’re like baked clay or opal or rose gold, and it was, like, one of the proudest moments of my life to unlock how we do that.

LAURA FLANDERS: That is so great. For those who don’t know much about cerebral palsy, you have a quip in your TED Talk, I remember, about you’re not drunk, but your doctor is. Just remind folks why some people are affected by cerebral palsy.

MAYSOON ZAYID: So cerebral palsy is basically a traumatic brain injury that happens within the birthing process or shortly after birth or shortly before birth. So you could have a stroke in utero, or in my case, I was deprived of oxygen. I was born on Labor Day, and I lost oxygen. And it damages the part of your brain that controls coordination, and it’s literally different in everyone. So depending on the damage, some of us are nonverbal. Some of us are more, like, facing difficulties walking. Others have more difficulty with their hands, and there’s wheelchair users, and there’s a whole spectrum of people with cerebral palsy. Mine, I joke on stage, it’s very much inspired by Taylor Swift. So I shake it, I shake it, I shake it. I shake it like Taylor Swift. So I’m spastic, and I’m also an ambulatory wheelchair user, which you can see in the Disney video that you showed, which means, yes, I can tap dance in heels on Broadway, but also, sometimes I use a wheelchair. And it’s not because I’m lazy or because I’m faking, but because it’s like a wave of ability. I can tap dance on stage, but I can’t walk a mile. Or one day my back is like, yeah, we can totally stand on pointe, and the next day, it’s like, hey, we can’t stand at all. And then in addition to having cerebral palsy myself and being neurodivergent myself, I had an allergic reaction to the Pfizer vaccine in 2022. So I also developed something called CIDP, which is, like, all of my nerves stopped working. I was paralyzed from my nose to my toes, and I had to learn how to walk again. And as a disability advocate, it was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me because I had never had a personal care assistant. I never needed home-based health care. I never was incontinent. I never needed someone to give me water to drink. And I think as a disability advocate living through the largest mass disabling event in modern history, it’s important for me to know what it looks like to be in that stage.

LAURA FLANDERS: From one disabling event to another, to jump back to Palestine for a minute. You’ve been going there all year. You’re making a film as I understand it. You have referred to war and genocide as a disabling event. Why?

MAYSOON ZAYID: It’s a mass disabling event. So on a daily basis, we’re hearing about the largest cohort of amputated children in modern history. And then we also, I mean, I hope we know as human beings that mental health is in disarray when you’ve watched what we’ve watched and what you’ve survived, what we’ve survived, and what we continue to try and survive with all odds against us has to do a job on your mental health. Hearing loss is extraordinarily affected in Palestine because of all the drones and the Apaches and the explosions and stuff. So this is a mass disabling event, and the way that I try to look at it positively is, like, I’ve been a disability advocate my entire career. I’ve always used comedy to humanize and educate on disability, and this is the moment because the future of Palestine is disabled. And between life and death, there’s disability. I don’t think it’s better to be dead than to be disabled, and I want us to create a viable, accessible future for this cohort of human beings that we have failed in the present.

LAURA FLANDERS: Well, let’s talk a bit more about that. I mean, disabling has many aspects to it. And I know from my own family that one of the aspects is this kind of pitying that happens. Oh, you poor people. Oh, you poor thing. What can we do for you? And I’m always torn as a reporter, we don’t want to underplay what is happening, but at the same time in so doing, we’re sometimes making invisible the power of Palestinians, the beauty of the place, the history, the culture, and it’s it’s that mix that you brought so incredibly brilliantly to your Instagram feed this week this year for which I have so appreciated you. So, I don’t know, un-disable our picture of Palestine, your beautiful village. How do you balance those two things? Pain and also incredible power and history.

MAYSOON ZAYID: It’s difficult right now because it all seems for naught, right? I founded something called the New York Arab American Comedy Festival with my partner Dean Obeidallah, my comedy partner, to combat the negative images of Arabs and Muslims in the media post 9/11. And I’ve spent my entire career, not just this year, but for years, showing the beauty, the humanity, the comedy, the art, the food, the love, the romance, the sunsets, the Christmas of Palestine. And it felt like this year that it was all for naught, that when I would see other Palestinian artists, like artists I had known for 20 years for the first time after the genocide began, we would cry because we felt like we had failed. And so my goal is no longer to show the humanity. My goal is now to document our lives because existence is resistance, and the mere act of existing is resistance. And I’ve grown up in this country, this American exceptionalism, where it’s like, nothing’s better than America. But, like, I go back home, and it’s a full blown war, and the food tastes better. The people are nicer. The chick who blow dries my hair does it in 8 minutes flat instead of taking an hour because nobody knows how to do fine hair in the United States of America. People know how to do my makeup. They don’t make me look like I’m a geisha or like I’m wearing blackface, both of which are offensive. And I feel safer in Palestine than I do in Newark, New Jersey. And when I say that, people say, oh, you’re downplaying the genocide. No. Because I’m not in Gaza. Because even though I’m Palestinian, I’m not allowed to even visit Gaza. I’m not allowed in Gaza. I was supposed to do a comedy show in Gaza in 2002. It got canceled. I was never allowed in after that day. Like, the borders literally closed. But why do I have so much fun? Because there is a humanity. People do take care of each other. I do a joke on stage about how in COVID, Americans almost killed each other for toilet paper. In Gaza, they’re building kilns out of, like, mud. They’re sewing jeans, using bikes to run sewing machines. They’re still being entertained by clowns. Clowns are terrifying, and somehow clowns are even fun in Palestine. We are a fun people. We are an alive people. We love life, and what we’ve been portrayed throughout history is these uncivilized barbarians that hate people more than we love our children. And I often think of the human shield thing. And, you know, I was married for 10 years. I’m divorced now. But when you sleep in a refugee camp, which is where I live when I live in Palestine in this refugee camp, they’re always talking about us using human shields, Palestinians using human shields. And one of the things that stood out to me going back and forth is the fact that couples have no privacy because they always sleep with their children in their beds. And the reason that they sleep with their children in their beds in the West Bank where there’s room is not because they have no room. It’s because if, God forbid, there’s an attack, you won’t be able to roll over on your child. You can’t run into another room to get your child. So, yeah, Palestinians are human shields, and it’s us. It’s the adults. It’s the parents. It’s the aunties. It’s us who are the human shields protecting our children at all costs, not us using them to protect ourselves. So I thought to myself, I just want people to see the Palestine I hang out in. And there was this old famous poster that says Visit Palestine. And it wasn’t even for Palestinians. It was, like, kind of a negative campaign, but I always saw the Visit Palestine poster and thought, I want people to visit Palestine. I want people to see what I see. I want people to understand that these people are not separate. There’s no two states. They live on top of each other, that we are the labor, we are the working class. We’re the ones who, unfortunately, build the settlements. We clean the houses. We work in the cafeterias. We pick the lettuce. It’s just like the migrant class in this country.

LAURA FLANDERS: And that’s the film you’re making now?

MAYSOON ZAYID: No, the film I’m making right now is, like, Christopher Guest-style parody of The Bachelor, where I star as a 40-year-old divorced, super rich social media influencer, Palestinian woman who is divorced and going back to Palestine looking for love again with five striking bachelors who are played by the most famous Palestinian actors in the game, and the entire thing is improv so that if your set gets blown up, you just move to another.

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LAURA FLANDERS: While I have loved your feed, others have had different reactions, And I’m not alone. Lots of people have loved your feed, with all of its humor and heart. But others have not, including the folks at the social media platforms that have posted some of this content. What’s happened? 

MAYSOON ZAYID: Everything I post gets reported, and I’ve been completely stripped of my ability to monetize. And I’m not even that controversial because I always joke that I answer to a higher authority. I go back and forth to Palestine all the time, so I’m answering to a higher authority. So my content is really sanitized and as nonviolent as you could possibly get, and I’m always promoting equality. And I will admit there is something that I do post that’s disturbing, and it is my cat, Beyonce. She does lack ears, but this is something that I want people to accept, that differences, even in a misfit cat are important. But it’s interesting because I get reported, and it’s because I know that people want to silence me. But that was not as disturbing as the amount of hate and bullying and violence I got throughout the election from people who were my former colleagues and friends, people who I shared stages and panels with. I was a delegate for Barack Obama in 2008. I was a Muslim surrogate for Hillary Clinton. I was a surrogate for Biden on disability and on women’s stuff and Muslim American stuff, which I I now count as my most shameful activity or moment in my life, being associated with Joe Biden is something I will never live down, and I can’t even confront myself. But the way we were bullied online during this election was terrifying because a lot of people who I thought were my friends, my colleagues, and my peers were fantasizing about me being dragged through the streets if Trump won because I wouldn’t fall in line and endorse candidates that endorse genocide. And it was really shocking because I always knew half the country wanted me dead, but when I knew it was 99%, I thought, “Hey, I need to write a sequel to ‘Shiny Misfits’” because we’re just not treating different people right in this country. And I need people to laugh and learn and be merry and listen to cat’s voice by Dave Matthews and stop leaning into this supremacy.

LAURA FLANDERS: Do write a sequel for sure. And I hope that you let people know about your shows that you’ve taken to the stage. Those two have faced some challenges. You’ll be coming to Joe’s Pub in 2025. But that show, DisCo, was going to be held somewhere else. 

MAYSOON ZAYID: So DisCo is a brand new show that was supposed to be a television show, and it was killed and it was not greenlit. First, it was killed, then it was not greenlit. And now I’m taking it live to the stage. I’m going to tell you all about DisCo. But as a stand up comedian, I have sold out comedy clubs in New York City for 20 years, and those clubs canceled me. They canceled 5 shows for me. I had corporate gigs canceled. I had academic invitations rescinded. I no longer have anyone paying for my health insurance, which is bankrupting me. I had over $181,000 of work canceled. So not only are we being denied opportunities to perform, we’re also having our livelihood decimated. And then the last place that we can make money online is also being destroyed, but now I’m looking into possibly putting my cat, Beyonce, on OnlyFans. We’ll see. But DisCo is my dream. So my dream in life was to be a host on The View, but they never gave me a seat ever. And it became very clear to me recently that they were never going to give me a seat, that the bigotry and discrimination on that show was just unfathomable. I was never going to be put on. And so DisCo is The View after a really bad accent. It’s a panel show hosted by a diverse cadre of disabled women, different types of disabilities. Some of us were born this way. Some of us were blessed to join the DisCo, and the reason I call the show DisCo is it stands for disability community, DisCo, because we’re the party.

LAURA FLANDERS: Will there be tap dancing?

MAYSOON ZAYID: Our first show there’s always tap dancing. I tap dance wherever I go. The metal on my shoes keeps me from falling over. It’s my life. But we’re super excited because we’re debuting DisCo at Joe’s Pub in February, and that one, because it’s right around VD, will center around, like, love and sex and relationships, Valentine’s Day.

LAURA FLANDERS: Got it (laughs).

MAYSOON ZAYID: But also, obviously, what results after that night. Diseases. But, like, our June episode live show is going to center around LGBTQ disabled people. Because even though a lot of people think being disabled is enough, some of us are also LGBTQ because disability intersects with every single minority community. You can join us at any time regardless of race, religion, age, gender, class, or who you love, and that’s why I am who I am, because my community has always been diverse. We’ve always been the underdogs. We’ve always been the ones that people look at as a burden instead of an asset. And whether it’s for the Palestinians or women facing violence and having to face the next four years with a convicted rapist as the commander in chief of the United States, I’m here to kind of keep saying, no matter what you do, our existence is resistance, and I’ve chosen to exist as a comedian because I believe laughter in the face of terror and death and hate is the strongest.

LAURA FLANDERS: Thank you, Maysoon, for that. That’s also a film just out that you’re in, “The Ride Ahead”.

MAYSOON ZAYID: That’s “The Ride Ahead” with Samuel Habib. So Samuel Habib is an amazing nonverbal wheelchair user who made a movie called “The Ride Ahead” about transitioning from being a cute disabled kid to an invisible, often neglected adult and how we kind of fall off a love cliff when we turn into adults and services disappear and parents age out of being able to take care of us. And disabled people are not eternal children, which is why I wanted to do this movie that I’m doing that’s a spoof of The Bachelorette to show that we can be romantic leads. So Samuel was also talking about, like, how do you become a disabled person who’s dating and not being exploited? You know, unfortunately, disabled women, for example, are three times more likely to be assaulted in their lifetime than their nondisabled peers, which is not something that people think about. So Samuel has made this incredible movie called “The Ride Ahead”. It’s on the circuit right now at festivals, but you can also watch a short version of it online. And it was so fun doing it because he’s, like, a totally different generation than me, and he’s talking about sex and dating and blah blah blah. And I’m, like, a conservative Muslim, so it was a really fun sit down. 

LAURA FLANDERS: The cast also includes former show guest Keith Jones as I understand it.

MAYSOON ZAYID: It has Keith Jones. It has the legendary, may she rest in power Judy Heumann. It has Ali Stroker, who is in everything from Only Murders in the Building, to my favorite Lifetime Christmas movie. It’s a who’s who of disability giants, but also it shows a lot of Samuel’s everyday life and what it means to be disabled in America. And I can’t tell you just how terrifying it is being disabled in America right now because people like Samuel depend on home-based healthcare, and people like me depend on $12,900 prescriptions a month that are covered by our insurance to keep us alive. And we don’t know what’s going to happen in the United States of America tomorrow, if a decision’s going to be made that it’s not worth keeping disabled people alive anymore. So I really hope that we, as a country, will come together.

LAURA FLANDERS: And let’s not forget neurodivergent families, kids rely on that Department of Education support.

MAYSOON ZAYID: Yeah. I mean, it’s every single — again, disability intersects with every single aspect of life. So anything that harms anyone harms us even more, whether it’s climate change and not being able to evacuate us in time, or as I said, violence against women, which disproportionately affects disabled women. One statistic that I will leave you with because I’m a comedian, so why not end on the darkest note possible? 50% of all Americans killed by law enforcement are disabled. So that’s the type of violence that we’re facing. That’s the type of fear that we’re facing. But, again, you give me a platform, and I hope that I give hope to everyone to say there’s more of us than them. We’re the largest minority in the world. We have the buying power of China, $8 trillion. So let’s just band together and make sure that we make the future accessible because the future is disabled.

LAURA FLANDERS: And peace in Palestine. Now as I understand it, at one point, you said that you were supporting someone —

MAYSOON ZAYID: I don’t even want peace in Palestine. I want an end to the slaughter in Palestine. I don’t want another child killed or disabled regardless of faith. That’s it. It has to end. It needs to stop. And I really hope that the United States can stop arming this because enough is enough. I mean, it’s just not even a strong enough statement. But for me, peace doesn’t state what I need. Like, what we need is an end to the bloodshed. What we need is an end to the killing fields. What we need is a literal permanent ceasefire now.

LAURA FLANDERS: Maybe justice comes closer, but that’s for a whole another episode.

MAYSOON ZAYID: I don’t want justice. I literally don’t. I believe in nonviolence, and I’m sure that this will upset people. I don’t even want justice. I literally want the killing to end. So if it means killing ends and no one is held accountable like we’ve seen for decades and centuries in history, I’m fine with that. I just need the killing to end. And then if justice is possible, that’s a goal for other people. But for me, it’s life.

LAURA FLANDERS: Fair enough, Maysoon. You know, we ask all of our guests the same question at the end, and not just because I can’t think of a better one, but because —

MAYSOON ZAYID: Miss Piggy is the best Muppet. I already know the answer.

LAURA FLANDERS: The question is what’s the story the future will tell of now? What do you think?

MAYSOON ZAYID: We failed. Short story. It’s one sentence. We failed. We failed.

LAURA FLANDERS: Alright. Then because I, like you, can’t bear to leave our audience on a totally down note, can you tell us about being with Muhammad Ali? Yes. So, I was a really young stand up comic who didn’t realize how young I was. I was only, like, three years into my career, and I had the opportunity to perform for Muhammad Ali. And it was very special because my father was a devout Muslim who never had seen me perform live because he was never going to go into any place that served alcohol, and he was able to attend this gala event in Washington, DC for Muhammad Ali. And the two things I’ll remember are that I ended my routine by saying I get to perform for a man who floats like a butterfly, sings like a bee, has Parkinson’s and shakes just like me, Muhammad Ali. And then I remember him telling my dad I was funny. And that was such a moment because he had been such an icon to young Muslim men in America when my dad had first come to America in 1959 as a 20-something year old with big dreams watching this man. And now all these decades later, Muhammad Ali refused to participate in the killing fields in Vietnam. He felt it was unjust, and he spoke so loudly against it. And other than Dave Matthews, how many artists have vocally, full throatedly come out and said, no, I will not sign on to saying it’s okay to kill certain people because they were born on the wrong land, the wrong faith. Maysoon Zayid, thank you so much for everything that you do and for being with me on Instagram this year and for your upcoming shows, which I’ll be sure to make. It’s been wonderful having you with me on Laura Flanders & Friends.

MAYSOON ZAYID: And everyone needs to read “Shiny Misfits” because we’re all misfits. We really are. This is not a both sides type of thing. Every single one of us is a misfit. Even the most popular person has a part of them that doesn’t fit in. So I hope you can find joy from “Shiny Misfits”. I hope you can find hope from what I put online for Palestine, and I hope that you can find courage to speak up. Your voice is your weapon against injustice. I beg you all to use it.

LAURA FLANDERS: Maysoon, thank you so much.

Narrator: Thanks for taking the time to listen to the full conversation featuring comedian and disability advocate, Maysoon Zayid. You’ll find more information in the podcast description, including a link to the full episode notes posted at patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriends. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters. Please join our members now by making a one time donation or make it monthly. All the details are at lauraflanders.org. And thanks again to all our member supporters.