Journalist Dena Takruri Reports on Conflict, Culture and Communities

By Jessica Semaan

Dena Takruri is an award-winning journalist, producer and storyteller who has built a brilliant career in digital news media. Known for her insightful video reports from conflict zones around the globe, Takruri covers the human impacts of natural and man-made disasters. She has reported on the devastation from wildfires in Northern California, hurricanes and environmental conditions in Puerto Rico, and the coronavirus pandemic’s toll in San Quentin prison. Curiosity, empathy and grit are her signature traits as a reporter. We are excited to share this very personal interview with Dena Takruri.

Journalist Dena Takruri sits down for an interview with Seismic Sisters.
Photo by Tumay Aslay.

What inspired you to take the journalist path?

My desire to become a journalist was very much shaped by growing up Muslim and Arab in the U.S. and seeing the absence of fair representation of my communities. I grew up in a home where my Palestinian immigrant father basically had the news on 24/7. He was constantly monitoring the situation in Palestine because his plan had always been to pack up the family and move us “back home” once there was peace. Of course that never happened. What did occur instead was that I got an early crash course in media literacy. I observed how my people were regularly demonized and dehumanized. The basic denial of my people’s humanity motivated me to want to work in the media to reclaim our narrative and carve out a space to have a voice without having to compromise who I am. It fueled the fire to want to amplify the voices of the voiceless and speak truth to power. I’ve also always been a highly inquisitive person who asks a lot of questions. My parents jokingly nicknamed me “the FBI” when I was a child because of how many detail-oriented questions I used to ask about everything. I’ve always been curious about the world and love learning people’s stories, which made journalism a natural fit.

What has it been like to be a prominent female reporter in a male dominated space?

There are many challenges but also certain advantages to being a woman in this space. As is the case in most professions, discrimination exists. I remember pretty early on in my reporting career, a male manager passed me up on an assignment to cover a story about a far right movement in Europe and opted to send a male colleague instead. When I asked him why he didn’t send me and if there was anything more I could do to be considered for such opportunities, his reply was, “this story is gritty - it needs a man.” It was a slap in the face, but I’m proud to have later gone on to report from various conflict zones and found myself in many a dicey situation that demonstrated my grit. That said, after his comment, my femininity became something I grew self-conscious about while reporting in the field. I sort of internalized the idea that dressing a certain way or having too much makeup on could be disqualifying. I have to make considerations about my appearance that my male counterparts never have to think about. The rampant objectification I experience from men who comment on my videos online is another constant challenge, and one that’s been very demoralizing. I want to be judged by the quality of my work and the stories I’m telling and not by how I look. Unfortunately the internet can be a very degrading and hostile space for women in that regard.

Despite all that, I think that being a woman has been a huge asset to my success. Having compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence are intrinsic to who I am as a woman. And they’re qualities that are necessary to have while reporting, especially as I’m often meeting people during the most traumatic moments of their lives. I’m able to forge a connection with them that makes them feel safe to open up, be vulnerable and many times cry as they’re sharing their stories. I’ve also found that powerful men and/or men from the opposite side of the political spectrum are more inclined to talk to me because they’re disarmed by the fact that I’m a woman. That’s fine by me because it just makes it easier to hit them with the hard questions!

I’ll add that while the news landscape is certainly male (and white) dominated, it is in fact changing. That’s in large part thanks to movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter which have drawn attention to systemic inequalities and have opened the way for necessary critique and change. There are conversations taking place within newsrooms now that would have been unimaginable just a few years back. My experience at AJ+, though, has been refreshingly unique in that my top boss, Dima Khatib, is a strong Palestinian woman who has worked to ensure that other women are empowered and thrive.

What about your journey as a journalist do you feel most proud of?

I’m most proud to serve as a role model to younger women and girls from my community. It’s very humbling to hear them say that I’ve inspired them to speak out, or be brave enough to follow their dreams, or embrace their (Palestinian/Arab/Muslim) identity, especially as I remember how isolating it felt to grow up with virtually no role models who looked like me. One of the most touching moments I experienced was after I gave a speech at a Muslim American gala event. A college student came up to tell me that her father had been unsupportive of her desire to major in political science and was encouraging her to pursue something more “practical” like medicine and engineering instead. She said she played some of my videos for him, which changed his mind and made him get on board. I was really moved by that.

How does your identity of being Palestinian American influence the work you do and topics you cover?

I was born and raised in the U.S. but grew up visiting my relatives in the Occupied West Bank very regularly. The experiences of living under a military occupation with checkpoints, curfews, strip searches and the overall lack of freedom were transformative and shaped my political consciousness. Being Palestinian gives you a very personal and intimate understanding of injustice. I know what it means to be criminalized and dehumanized on the basis of your ethnicity and how it feels to be dispossessed from your land due to ongoing settler colonialism. It’s enabled me to connect the dots between the systems of oppression faced by other communities, whether we’re talking about Black Americans, Indigenous folks, or the undocumented. I’m driven to tell the stories of marginalized communities and people fighting for equality and self-determination and select my stories first and foremost through the lens of social justice.

What are forms of self-care you practice? 

I adopted a kitten two years ago and found that his companionship is very calming and healing and also brings me so much joy. I named him Shams, which is the Arabic word for sun and also the name of Rumi’s spiritual instructor and companion. My Shams has shown me that pet therapy is real! I also love riding my bike and dancing. Getting out of my head and into my body as much as possible is good for me as I tend to be anxious and overthink things. Reading and listening to audiobooks is another big self-care practice for me. And finally, knowing when to unplug from the news and social media is a form of self-care that I have yet to master but am steadily working on. It feels more imperative now than ever.

Dena Takruri, Journalist, Host and Producer. Photo by Tumay Aslay.

What advice do you have to give for young women wanting to use their voice for change but who are afraid?

You’re not alone. Patriarchy was designed to silence us, and that's exactly why we need to summon the courage to speak up and speak out. Every woman, whether she realizes it or not, is in the midst of a revolution against the patriarchy. It doesn’t matter whether she’s fighting for the right to vote, equal pay, autonomy over her body or the freedom to do or wear what she wants without getting catcalled, harassed or even worse. Every time a woman chooses to use her voice to stand up for herself, it benefits the rest of us. We’re living in a unique moment where we’re witnessing the power that social movements have to disrupt the status quo and aggressively push for gender, racial, and socioeconomic equality. These movements wouldn’t be around had women not used their voices to advocate for change.

That said, we must also be mindful of the fact that it’s inherently riskier for some women to speak up. Women of color, queer and transgender women, women who are less educated, and women of lower socioeconomic status are especially vulnerable. That’s why it’s incumbent on all of us, particularly those of us with more privilege, to support them with true allyship.

Twitter: @Dena
Instagram: @denatakruri

Journalist Dena Takruri. Photo by Tumay Aslay.

A note from the interviewer.
Before I met Dena Takruri at an Arab Film Festival event, on whose board she was serving, I had watched many of her intelligent, captivating AJ+ viral videos on topics ranging from systemic oppression in the U.S. to the Israeli occupation in Palestine, read interviews with her online, and kept up with her Facebook page. Suffice to say, as an Arab woman myself, I was fascinated and inspired. The day I finally met her in real life, I almost fangirled her and asked for an autograph, until I remembered that I was also on the board of the Arab Film Festival, and we have friends in common who were present. Avoiding embarrassment, I went up to her and asked awkwardly for her name, trying to play it cool.

With time, and later a pandemic lockdown, we have become friends and I have gotten the privilege to know Dena Takruri behind the cameras and away from the noise of reporting zones. I got to see her deep care for the causes she reports on. I saw her attention to detail in everything she takes on. I saw her endless curiosity about humans, their stories, what drives them and even how could she help them. I witnessed her undying loyalty to her friends, family, community and her Palestinian roots. Dena's identities of journalist, activist, American, Palestinian, woman and human all are integrated and aligned around her core values. The Dena in front of the camera is the same as Dena behind the camera. She is the real deal. She is the authentic deal. And I am excited for you to get to know her too. 

Jessica Semaan

Jessica Semaan is a freelance writer, book author, poet and performer. Chronicling her journey of healing from trauma, she has over 50,000 people following her writing on Medium. Jessica’s debut book Child of the Moon was published in 2018. She also is studying to become a psychotherapist.

The views, practices, information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the individuals involved in the article and do not necessarily represent those of Seismic Sisters.

Fighting Stigma of Psychedelics with Science - An Interview with Natalie Ginsberg, Policy and Advocacy Director at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

By Jessica Semaan

After decades of being stigmatized, feared, and criminalized in the United States, psychedelics are getting a fresh look and being studied for their healing potential by scientific researchers and psychotherapists. With a growing interest in the use of psychedelics in medicine and as tools for healing trauma in guided psychotherapy contexts, we reached out to interview Natalie Ginsberg, Policy & Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a “non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.” Ginsberg shared her personal journey which brought her to work on this topic and ultimately to become a public face and advocate for MAPS.

Tell us about your path to becoming the Policy & Advocacy Director at MAPS, a job that I would imagine is highly coveted.

Natalie Ginsberg: While pursuing my master's degree in social work, I worked as a therapist with people arrested for prostitution at an alternative sentencing court, and I worked as a guidance counselor at a Bronx middle school located in one of the poorest zip codes in the United States. I noticed that so much of the trauma people were facing stemmed from oppressive policies and systems, especially related to mass incarceration and criminalization, and driven by racism and the profit-maximizing demands of capitalism. I was seeing firsthand how drug policy is used as a deeply racist tool and the largest driver of mass incarceration. During college, I had interned for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, and had to refuse to process the hundreds of cases that were coming in for black teenagers arrested for crumbs of marijuana, when my white classmates from Yale were smoking freely a few blocks away from the courthouse without a worry from the cops. My senior year in high school, a cop walked up to me smoking a bowl in a park and said, “Honey put that down, aren’t you going to college?” It was so clear that these thousands of marijuana arrests were not about the cannabis, but were an excuse to criminalize black people.

Natalie Ginsberg, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Photo by Tumay Aslay.

How did that lead you to MAPS?

I began a fellowship at the Drug Policy Alliance, where I was working on a campaign for marijuana decriminalization that focused on racially disparate arrests. After we succeeded in decriminalizing marijuana in New York State, I was moved to the medical cannabis campaign, and we also ended up legalizing medical cannabis in New York, though unfortunately Governor Cuomo personally removed the ability to smoke cannabis from the legislation, after the law had been passed by the legislature. While working at Drug Policy Alliance I started to read about MAPS, and their research struck a chord. Though I had enjoyed smoking cannabis, before my work on this campaign I never understood cannabis’ deep medical value. Now I was intrigued to read the research and learn that other plant medicines and psychedelics could help people struggling with addiction, PTSD, and depression — ailments I had learned had no cure in social work school.

What was the psychedelic therapy you read about?

As a policy fellow at Drug Policy Alliance, I was asked to write an article about a MAPS LSD therapy study for the treatment of anxiety. I quickly discovered that the bulk of MAPS’ research was focused on MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Researchers and psychotherapists were finding that psychedelic therapy had the potential to heal or lessen a wide range of afflictions in only a few sessions. I figured psychedelic therapy must be addressing the root of the problem rather than suppressing the symptoms, which really resonated with me. I also understood that the research must have broader political implications regarding the way we approach medicine and treatment as a society. I reached out to the pioneering MDMA therapist Marcela Ot’alora after seeing her speak at a Drug Policy Alliance conference, and after a beautiful conversation with Marcela I connected with the founder Rick Doblin, who luckily needed some help on the marijuana-policy front.

You've been at MAPS for six years now. How have you seen the organization change?

Size-wise, we’ve more than doubled our team. In certain ways, the organization doesn't feel different internally, but things have changed significantly from the outside due in large part to the research that MAPS has done in the last 30 years.

What has changed from the outside?

Society has started to become more accepting of our work and MAPS’ goal of mainstreaming psychedelic medicine seems closer than ever to being achieved. The popularity of Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, news coverage on the TV show “60 Minutes,” and other mainstream movements are helping to shift the tide. There are even ayahuasca jokes and MDMA-themed episodes on a bulk of mainstream TV shows these days! We are starting to see major policy shifts, such as the city of Denver decriminalizing psilocybin and the cities of Oakland and Santa Cruz decriminalizing all entheogenic plants.

Natalie Ginsberg, Director of Policy and Advocacy at MAPS. Photo by Tumay Aslay.

What is something you are proud of in the past 6 years at MAPS?

A change I'm really proud of is our work toward more accessibility. Last summer we hosted our first MDMA therapy training for communities of color, which opened with a workshop called Psychedelic Medicine and Cultural Trauma. We're expanding our conversation around who has access to these medicines and where these medicines come from. The reality is that the highest rates of trauma exist within the communities that are most marginalized in our society, including communities of color and queer communities, and especially indigenous communities around the world, who are also the communities who have been in practice with plant medicine for millennia. A lot of marginalized communities don't have access to diagnosis or treatment. When trauma is constant it can be even more deeply traumatic, especially when it is compounded by the historical and intergenerational trauma that is often attached to social marginalization. It's important that we expand our understanding of PTSD, especially when considering who has access to psychedelic therapy and which therapists are best equipped to provide this sort of treatment to various populations.

You mentioned that you are working on the psychedelics in conflict resolution study. I'd like to hear more about it and share with our readers. It sounds very fascinating.

I’ve been working with Antwan Saca, a longtime Palestinian peace activist, and Dr. Leor Roseman, an Israeli psychedelic researcher at Imperial College in London, exploring how psychedelics might be useful in conflict resolution, peace building, and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. We are curious to see if these contexts might be particularly helpful for healing shared intergenerational trauma. In our research, we started by interviewing 36 Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Israelis and Palestinians who had sat together in ayahuasca circles. Many of the participants reported powerful visions of historical trauma or flashbacks from time served in the military. One Palestinian man reported being in the body of an Israeli soldier and looking down the barrel of a gun aimed at a Palestinian man. Strikingly, this Palestinian man reported a noteworthy compassion for the Israeli soldier’s pain, saying “this is not an easy life after” pulling the trigger. He talks about how his activism changed tremendously after this experience, from being motivated by hatred, even in his nonviolence, to now being motivated by love and compassion, which he reports feels much healthier in his own body and mind. Multiple Jewish Israelis reported hearing Arabic sung during ceremony as one of the most impactful pieces of ceremony, as they were being able to release the fear and hatred they didn’t even realize they had associated so deeply with the Arabic language and Arab people — one Jewish woman describes how for the first time the language of Arabic was sending her “light and love.” I wrote an article about it titled “Can Psychedelics Play a Role in Making Peace and Healing Cycles of Trauma?” in the MAPS 2019 Winter Bulletin, and gave a talk presenting more of our research in Austin titled Can Ayahausca Promote Peace in the Middle East?

What does power mean to you as a woman?

I think a lot about what it means to be a woman in power and how to model feminine kinds of leadership in the context of our patriarchal society. One feminine approach to power that I employ is to work collaboratively, making sure that the power I have as a director is shared with others. I always include lots of perspectives and opinions in my decision-making, sometimes to a fault. Feminine power to me is about being reflective, listening to your body, listening to your intuition — the opposite of what our patriarchal society teaches us, which is to ‘power through’ and that your value comes from how hard you work. That's another big piece of feminine leadership that I'm trying to embody — operating from a place of what feels right and feels aligned in my body. If a masculine approach to leadership is more reactive and proactive, and a feminine one is more reflective and intentional, the most effective and healing modes of social change strike a balance between the two.

Is there something you find challenging as a female leader?

In my efforts to be more collaborative and build new ways of operating, I sometimes disempower myself. I always use the word “we” because I work with so many amazing people and we build together. I notice that so many men talk about their work using only the word “I.” But on the flip side, I can sometimes erase my individual contributions when I'm elevating others, so it's an interesting balance to strike. The reason I mention that is because the dynamic of men raising themselves up and women elevating others contributes to the issue of people not seeing women leaning into things.

Natalie Ginsberg in Los Angeles. Photo by Tumay Aslay.

Whether we like it or not, we operate within a patriarchal system. I wonder how not wanting to play into patriarchy might come at the cost of your contributions being taken into account.

I’m trying to model ways of living and working that are healthy, where I get enough sleep and eat well and take care of my mental health. In this hyper-masculine, hyper-competitive society we live in, I see people not sleeping, not eating, always being urgent. I understand that because our work is urgent, and people are dying and going to jail every day because they don't have access to therapeutic treatment. But I'm very inspired by thinkers like adrienne maree brown, who talks about how the best way of serving is to take care of ourselves so that we're best able to do our work for social change.

Do you have any self-care routines or tools that you could share?

I find yoga to be really powerful, not only yoga classes but the ability, wherever I am in the world, to feel into my body where I'm holding tension, and to stretch it out. Dancing also connects me to my body; it's very cathartic. I love to smoke a joint and dance to Beyoncé alone in front of my mirror. Smoking cannabis is very healing for me. It can be a really powerful, self-reflective, and therapeutic time for me where I process a lot. Quality time with friends, and spending time in spaces where you just feel nourished and inspired. Whatever feels good! Massages!

Any resources for people who are interested in learning more about psychedelics?

Absolutely. MAPS.org for information about studies, psychedelic harm reduction, and a wide variety of other documents related to psychedelic history and research. Cosmovisiones Ancestrales, co-founded by Paula Graciela Kahn, with the mission to “build bridges between indigenous communities, psychedelic researchers, mental-health professionals, drug policy makers, psychedelic consumers, and populations that have been acutely impacted by the legacies of colonialism, slavery, war, and forced migration.” Chacruna, founded by Beatriz Caiuby Labate, is another great resource for interesting articles about the social, cultural, and political contexts of different psychedelic plant medicines.

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This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jessica Semaan is a freelance writer, author, poet and performer living in San Francisco. Chronicling her journey of healing from trauma, she has over 50,000 people following her writing on Medium. Jessica’s debut book Child of the Moon was published in 2018. She also is studying to become a psychotherapist.

The views, practices, information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the individuals involved in the article and do not necessarily represent those of Seismic Sisters.