All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys on the line, I've got Charlie Davis, but wait, it's not the shameless shill for al-Qaeda in Syria that all good and decent people despise.
No, it's a different, wonderful, heroic Charlie Davis, the founder of SkatePal.
And that's skatepal.co.uk.
And of course, that stands for Skate Palestine.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Charlie?
I'm doing good, thanks.
Thanks for having me on the show.
Very happy to have you here.
I think you've probably done more to spread liberty in the Middle East than any other American.
True liberty, skateboarding.
And I love this website, I love this project, and I saw this thing in Thrasher back in January about you were trying to recruit teachers to come with you out there to help teach skateboarding and distribute skateboards to the kids on the West Bank.
Of course, nobody can get in and out of Gaza, but the minimum security prison that is the West Bank still allows for this kind of thing.
I guess the Israelis allow you in and out to do this.
So obviously we've got a global epidemic and everything is kind of frozen in place here, but I just want to give you the floor to talk about this project, which is not over yet and will be kicking right back in as soon as possible here to spread liberty and happiness to the poor victims of Israel there living on the West Bank of the Jordan River.
So please do tell, sir.
Thanks, Scott.
So yeah, basically I first went over to Palestine about 12 years ago because my mom and my dad had worked over there.
My dad is American and my mom's from Scotland.
So I went over to go and teach English in a youth center up in the north in a town called Jenin.
But I took my skateboard as a skater, and the kids are more interested in learning about how to skate than how to do my grammar homework, which I completely missed out on.
So I completely understood, and I realized that if people brought some skateboards back here, there's a huge potential because the kids were really into it.
And because they're quite hardy, more hardy, I would say, than the kids from, say, Scotland, they would skate and they would fall and they would get up and do it again, and that's quite a good attitude.
So it kind of fits in well with what it takes to be a skater.
So after I first went, I came back to Scotland, I got a degree in Arabic here, and then I went over the years to go and learn about the people, the culture, and sort of the different areas of the West Bank, and then I connected with a youth center who was up for hosting a skate ramp and done some classes, and that was about six years ago, in 2014.
And from the beginning, I didn't really have the idea of starting an NGO or doing anything.
It was basically that it would be fun to bring some boards and skate with the kids, because anywhere in the world where it doesn't exist and you bring boards, chances are the kids will be interested, especially if there's not a lot of other options.
And so things grew and grew, and gradually I became aware that the interest was there, and also there was interest among international skaters to head over and teach skateboarding as well as they could learn about the situation on the ground there, as well as teaching the kids.
So I think what works quite well in our international program is that it doesn't really come under the same heading as other aid-giving, where you have, I'm giving you the aid and you're receiving it, but people come to skate with the kids and learn about the culture, about what's happening, how to cook the local food, and so it's quite a good exchange of culture ideas and how to skate, and how to understand the Middle East as a whole, and I think that has been quite key to why it's worked well in the areas that we have.
So since then, since we started having internationals there all year and doing classes, our aim is basically to hand it over to the local skaters within about three or four years so that they can run everything, and it doesn't rely on us as SkatePal, and it doesn't rely on international donations of skateboards, but they can have their own skate shop, and they can then just invite people to come and skate, and then after that we'll be focusing our work as an NGO in other areas and more in the UK as well.
So that's kind of an overview as to how it started and the aims, so it's kind of a total of about a 10-year project, with at the end the aim of not existing as a foreign entity, but being able to pass everything over so they can do it themselves.
That's just great, man, and I guess we talked about this before, right, is that once you get this thing going, there's going to be one or two of these kids who are just rippers, and who then inspire everybody else.
They lead.
If you get a couple of really talented kids, then all the other kids are going to model after them and make them the heroes, and they'll have their own skate culture there.
Well, exactly.
And it's interesting that you speak about having their own culture, because in the beginning I think the mistake that I made was I came in and wanted to show them Thrasher as a magazine, and I hear some skate DVDs, and tried to introduce them as to what it meant to be a skater for me, but then quickly I realized that that's probably not a good way to approach it, but try to see how skateboarding develops over there, so that heading to the mosque on a Friday and then heading to the skate park is being a skater, and you don't have to have this, like, the world, I'm doing my own thing.
It can be existing within their own community, and as such it can be a very family-friendly vibe.
And because we kind of start from nothing, there was no background, or any sort of preconceived ideas as to what it was, we found that we kind of said, we need to have half of them girls, half of them boys, because the council was kind of more keen to do it only for males, because it was seen as an outdoor sport, and it really shouldn't mix.
But over time, because skateboarding inhibited this sort of place between a hobby and a sport, I think people were kind of unsure as to how to view it, and so as a result, especially in some of the villages, and some of the more conservative places, skateboarding has emerged as something which boys and girls can do together, which has been great.
And obviously not everyone, but it does kind of have that niche which, say, football doesn't have.
And I think it's been great to sort of see that.
Yeah, it's really cool.
If people go look at skatepal.co.uk, you'll see all these pictures of these young girls.
I love the picture of the young girl putting her board in Axel Stahl position, because she's going to drop in.
I love it.
I'm a skater, I don't know.
And it's funny, too, right?
Like you were saying about the culture, we're here, and maybe this isn't as true anymore as it was when I was a kid, but it very much was an outlaw culture.
We're here, they're all outlaws just because of the fact they were born with the wrong religion.
Everybody on the West Bank is an outlaw, Christian and Muslim.
Well, that excludes the settlers, the colonists who are stealing their property.
So they don't necessarily have to be outlaws within their own culture.
They all already are.
And so this can be acceptable to moms and dads right away, right?
They don't have to be so punk rock that they scare their parents out of letting them do it.
Exactly.
I think, basically, as you said, the thrasher vibe has been changing a bit, and so now if you see the international skate world is more along the line of being a bit more inclusive.
In the past, it was a bit less inclusive, which definitely attracted a certain excitement, but now I think it's a lot more open for everyone.
So other skate NGOs that are working in the world are along the same vein, and it's quite nice to be able to embrace the skateboarding and not have to feel that it's us against the world in the sport.
I mean, obviously, outside of that, of course, it exists, but within the sport, it can be for everyone.
And I think that's something that all the internationals that head over, they see that vibe.
And that happens in places like Afghanistan, where Skateistan works, and that's a real positive in the community that it is a very family-oriented thing, that everything that is brought there is, oh, look at this, it's being embraced by everyone, and not only by the young males, which is quite nice.
Yeah.
So, now tell us overall, sorry, go back to how many years you've been doing this now, and can you give us a sort of round number estimate of how many skateboards you've been able to export to the West Bank?
Obviously, well, I don't know, obviously, I assume they don't have the ability to have their own skateboard companies there, under the blockade, the level of economic control, but you've built skateparks, ramps, and concrete skateparks, and I know you brought, I don't know how many, hundreds and hundreds or more boards over there, wheels and trucks and everything?
Yeah, so we began, I began planning in 2013, and we had our first sort of sessions there on ramps.
Since then, we've built concrete skateparks in 2014, 2015, and then 2017, and we were going to be doing another one this year, but of course, because of the virus, that's now on hold.
So, there are various skateparks up in the north, and then in the middle, and then down in Ramallah, and we have, with internationals, we've had about 260 people come over, and of course, as you mentioned, it's very hard to bring equipment in, because it can get stopped in Israel, and then stopped again in the border, so most of the boards that we bring in equipment is brought over in the bags of the volunteers, and also of the skatepile team that heads over each year, and I think we've been able to bring over hundreds of boards over the past six years, and we had a workshop from a team from Glasgow in Scotland head over to teach Aram, who's our local manager, and one of the first skaters in the country, how to recycle old skateboards to make them new again by sanding it down, so that then every skateboard can have three lives, which means, ultimately, that the same 500 boards in the country could be turned into 1,500 boards, until such a time as we can develop a good importation network, so that Aram can set up a skate shop, which is his ultimate goal, and one of our objectives is that if he can set up a skate shop, which then provides him and other local skaters with an income, it also means that they can have a way to import skateboards and sell them, so that the community doesn't rely on us bringing it over, and that's the key for it all working out in the end.
Yeah.
So, it was great to see this mentioned in Thrasher Magazine, or at least on their website there.
I'm actually a subscriber, I can't recall seeing it actually in the mag, but I don't know if they have covered it at all, but are there any name-brand pros that we would know here in America who have gotten on board for supporting this thing?
Well, actually, in the next issue of Thrasher, there's a 10-page article all about skateboards in America.
Oh, really?
Oh, that's great.
I'm a capacitor from Arizona, Ryan Lee, if you've heard of Ryan Lee.
Yeah, I'm pretty old, so some of these newer guys I don't know as well.
He skates for Etnies and Welcome, and he's been our ambassador for over a year, and he was over in Palestine a few times, and in the second last trip he did, he met with Aram and Azam, who were two of the first skaters in the country, and they went all over and skated, and had a lot of clips, and took the footage, which then ended up going into the actual print magazine, which is going to be released in the next month's edition, and to be honest, it's kind of amazing to see them commissioning a 10-page piece about skateboarding in the West Bank.
Yeah, that's great, man.
So that's a huge step, not only for them, but for Thrasher and skateboarding as a whole.
Yeah.
Well, I don't want to pick on Bucky Lassick here, but then again, he is a giant, and so he can take it.
For years and years and years, maybe decades, Bucky Lassick rode aboard with a big Free Tibet on the bottom.
When Tibet is not occupied by any ally of the United States of America, we have no role whatsoever in that.
I don't know if Bucky even knows who's occupying Tibet.
And yet, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is essentially 100% an American responsibility.
The cool thing about responsibility is it's actually a quality, not a quantity, so you can divide it up different ways.
The Israelis are responsible for their own behavior, but they wouldn't be able to get away with it at all if it wasn't for the United States of America.
Our money, our military support, our diplomatic cover in the United Nations and the rest of it to allow them to get away with the apartheid system that they have foisted on these poor conquered people here.
And so, what about Free Palestine, Bucky?
And what about what major name-brand pros like Bucky Lassick and Tony Hawk and others who can really, you know, raise the level of consciousness about this issue to a much more prominent place?
And so, where are they?
Come on out, guys.
Here are people who actually need your support.
Here are people who America is actually responsible for the oppression that they're suffering under.
Seems important.
It's a very interesting thing for us.
Obviously, working over there in and of itself is a political statement in what we do.
But in order for us to maintain our structure and to allow people in, we have to stay completely apolitical in everything that we do.
Because obviously, if we were to be more vocal, which obviously at times you want to be, you then risk not being able to arrive in the airport, because obviously they don't have their own airport in the West Bank.
And I think that this is something which we'll see potentially in the future, after we've handed over all the network and structures to the local skaters, we'll see maybe a bit more of a voice coming out of there that is maybe a bit more political.
But at the moment, as difficult as it may be, it's more prudent for us as the organisation to just allow people to head over.
And of course, all the volunteers and people that head over there, and every time it's in the news, so for example, when people read it in the next issue of The Thrasher, that's going to open people's eyes to see it not as this mesh of Middle East and whatever it is, but individuals over there, and potentially open their eyes a bit as to what's going on and the influence over the past hundred years as to what's happened.about the truth behind the Israel-Palestine conflict.
You'll learn so much and highly value this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation.
And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton Show interviews, 2004-2019, interview transcripts of all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years, on all the wars, money, taxes, the police state and more.
So how do you like that?
Pretty good, right?
Find them all at LibertarianInstitute.org slash books.
Hey, you guys may know I'm involved in some Libertarian Party politics this year, but you can't hear or read about that at the Libertarian Institute due to 501c3 rules and such.
So make sure to sign up for the interviews feed at ScottHorton.org and keep an eye on my blog at ScottHorton.org slash stress.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
If you want a real education in history and economics, you should check out Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom.
Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn't teach you in school, but should have.
Follow through from the link in the margin at ScottHorton.org for Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom.
So I saw a thing just recently where I guess it was Runa Gliffberg and a few others had gone and done a tour of Israel and saw some footage of them skating a pool over there and this and that, and it made me wonder about whether there was any kind of solidarity between the skate scene in Israel and the skate scene in Palestine, because who cares about who your grandparents were if we're all skateboarders, right?
That's a very interesting question, actually, because obviously in Israel, there's a huge skate scene, and a lot of American teams, international skate teams that go to visit would only go to Israel and obviously not go into the West Bank, because it's quite a nascent scene and it's kind of unknown, and obviously if they see Israel, it's kind of the American vibe there, but I think in the future, I think we'll see a bit more of a crossover.
I think there are a lot of skaters in Israel who we know and have spoken to, who are aware of what's going on and are supportive to different extents of the work that we do and of the skate scene as a whole, because everyone is a skater.
But then if you bear in mind the people that are in the West Bank and their attitude towards that, it's going to be quite hard for them to disassociate their political reality with but they're just a skater, because that's such an important part of their life that it would be in some ways quite difficult to bridge that gap, even with skateboarding.
But I think of all the tools that are available, skateboarding has the potential to break that down the most.
Yeah, absolutely, because hey, a ripper's a ripper.
You gotta respect somebody who can air higher than you, grind further than you, skate faster than you.
No matter what your prejudice is, skateboarding is an individual type of an activity.
We all do it together, but all of the pain and all of the suffering and all of the accomplishment is really on an individual basis, as far as that goes.
And so the respect comes on an individual basis, too.
And how can you not respect someone who can blast a frontside air over your head, you know?
Obviously, that's as human as a human can get.
You can't dehumanize that, man.
That's perfect.
That's the essence of what it means to be alive, for those of you who don't skate and don't understand that.
Yeah, that's true.
So man, yeah, I'm really hopeful about that, I think.
And I'm not sure, you know, the different perspectives, especially among the young over there about what they think of each other on the other side of the wall there.
Some skater kid from Tel Aviv obviously isn't responsible for putting up that wall any more than some skater kid from Ramallah is responsible for whatever is supposedly the excuse for that wall in the first place.
So they're all just from here, you know what I mean?
They're not in any position of authority over each other or anything like that.
And so it seems like if we can get these people to skate together and respect each other on that basis, that could be the start of something beautiful, you know, for real.
Yeah, no, I mean, that is, I mean, for them, that's kind of in there, the ball is in their court.
And in the beginning, when I first arrived, I kind of had ideas of like, oh, we can maybe like, bring over like some of the kids from Israel and into like, Palestine and have a cascade exchange.
But again, like I realized quite, quite quickly that it wasn't really my place as someone from Scotland to be instigating a project like that in a place which I don't know.
And that's kind of going to be up to the local skaters.
But as things grow in Palestine, and as you see, as you said, like, it's become like better and better and really hard.
There's going to be like crossover and interest as to what's going on.
And that can really be, that could have a big impact in the future for sure.
And then so I see here, they did a whole episode of Epically Latered about the birth of skateboarding in the West Bank.
Huh?
That looks great, man.
I can't wait to watch that.
Well, that was, it wasn't an actual Epically Latered, but it was a kind of a...
Oh, like a take off on it, kind of, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
For people who aren't familiar, that's a documentary series of biographies of important pro skaters that they play on the Vice channel there.
But anyway, go ahead.
Yes.
So the person that I work with, Phil, Chris, the other director, him and his friend Phil made that film, the Epically Latered version of the skating in Palestine, Epically Palestine, which was great because it was in the same sort of style and it really showcased the disparate scene across the country, which is coming together more and more.
And then after that, we had Vice came and did an episode in their series called Post Radical, which was with Rick McClank, as you'll know, who was over there, like him, looking at the new skate scene and the emerging skate scene on either side of the wall.
So that also was a huge help for us in the scene as we got a lot more exposure and funding after that show was out.
Yeah, that's great.
He's a Canadian, right?
Maybe he knows a little bit more about it for that reason.
There's a little bit more of a Palestinian community there in Canada.
True skateboard hero, Rick McClank, for a generation now, you know.
Okay, great.
For now, listen, I know the virus has got the whole world frozen still right now, and it's just a big pain, but this project is not going away, thankfully.
So please tell the people, first of all, obviously, skatepal.co.uk is the website, but how can people help?
You're taking donations, you're still recruiting volunteers, anybody got a garage full of skateboards you can't sell?
Whatever's the deal, what can people do to help you?
So yeah, as you said, if you head to our website, skatepal.co.uk, and check us out on Instagram, you can see all our updates, and obviously at the moment, as you said, because of the virus, our actual classes there are on hold, but as soon as the kids are able to go outside and exercise and use the skate parks again, local classes will resume, and then we'll try to restart our international voluntary program as soon as that's safe.
If you're interested in heading out to teach, then do go online and email us, and then if there's a chance this year, we can try and make that work, and if not, then we can add you on to the application send out for next year.
A lot of our funding for SkatePal is through the fundraising events of the volunteers that come before they head out, and also we run official SkatePal events in the UK each year, and because all of that is now on hold, our income has obviously dropped by about 50%.
So at the moment, we're exploring other avenues so that we can keep SkatePal running, even if it's at a skeleton staff, and especially a local manager, Aram, who just began his role like six months ago.
So if anyone has extra equipment or money to donate, especially monthly donations, they really help us budget for the year and allow us to see how much money we have to spend on essentials, then get in touch with us, and I have an address over there in the West Bank that you can send skate equipment to as well, so if you do want to help out, we'd love to hear from you.
So in other words, if people have obviously new, or I don't know, new and used, you tell me.
Or good used stuff, yeah.
So that's wheels, trucks, hardware, and pads and helmets, too, right?
Basically, yeah, everything except for clothes and shoes, but we just focus on the actual skate equipment, and the most difficult things to get for us are the trucks, the axles, because people usually skate them for ages and ages, but any skate equipment, if it's in decent condition, that new or second hand, is gratefully received by a skate pal.
Okay, great.
Listen, I'm so sorry, I've got to go right now, the guy's trying to interview me, calling in, but you are a worldwide hero, Charlie, I just love what you're doing here, man, it's so important, and I don't care if people think it sounds trivial, it's not.
This is such an important project, and I'm just so grateful that you're doing it, and I really encourage everybody to help as much as you possibly can.
It's skatepalestine at skatepal.co.uk.
Thank you so much, Charlie.
Thanks.
Good to speak to you.
Thanks for having me.
The Scott Horton Show and Anti-War Radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, antiwar.com, scotthorton.org, and libertarianinstitute.org.
