Weaving in the words of influential public intellectuals connected to diverse struggles of liberation across time and space — ‘Beginning with Us’ are conversations that begin from within particular communities of resistance; and explore what it means to be a scholar-activist involved in on-going collective struggles of resistance across the Arab world. Reflecting upon what happens to the political when conversations shift their points of beginning to the world-views, self-understandings and lived experiences of these struggles — they explore what it means to live, speak and write with their on-going joys, horrors, hopes and radical imaginings of the future.

Highlighting the voices of a rising generation, they also reflect on what the public intellectual and the political look like today; what it means to be part of a global community of solidarity, inspiration and friendship; the meaning of hope in times of despair; and how the world is experienced when your body itself is a site of violence and struggle.