Seeds For Liberation, Tracing the Fight for Liberation from Gaza to the Streets of LA

It’s a vital idea: individuals and communities standing together in solidarity to help one another. While this idea sounds simple, it’s especially urgent now as the mercenary and illegal acts of oligarchs are exposed.

We are seeing this distilled sense of community and solidarity play out locally, with community organizations such as the Harbor Area Peace Patrol defending immigrants and immigrant rights as they organize against ICE actions at labor pick-up sites at Home Depots in the community and on Terminal Island. Or the San Pedro Neighbors for Peace and Justice and Code Pink SP protesting genocide every Friday on the corners at the intersection of 13th Street and Gaffey and in front of the USS Iowa, raising awareness of the Military Industrial Complex. SPNPJ and Code Pink also deliver care packages and mutual aid to residents targeted by ICE in San Pedro. 

The 2026 documentary film, Seeds for Liberation, set to premiere on Jan. 17, explores these examples of solidarity on a global scale. Last year, director Matthew Solomon (Reimagining Safety) found himself depressed for monumental reasons. What wasn’t clear at the time was how the stones that were being planted through this darkness would become the catalyst for Seeds for Liberation.

Solomon began mapping out the film in January 2025, in between semesters, as he worked towards a PhD in Transformative Social Change. Seeds For Liberation peels back the reality of the genocide in Gaza while linking the Free Palestine movement with Black, Chicano and other collective liberation struggles, culminating in a shared vision of what true liberation means.

The project grew out of compounded loss — COVID-19, two family deaths, and the political moment. With no accountability for the new president and escalating violence in Gaza, the situation felt dire to Solomon. Watching New Year’s celebrations tout “positivity,” capped by the “audacity” of a performance of John Lennon’s Imagine, left him feeling unmoored. 

Days later, on Jan. 7, Los Angeles was ablaze. Living in West Hollywood, Solomon watched the Palisades and Altadena burn — places tied closely to his childhood. Now, “the sky was black, and you couldn’t breathe.” He joined fire watch and mutual aid efforts, sheltering people in his home and using social media to help coordinate housing, air filters and fundraising. He noted that grassroots groups like Midnight Books, the Harriet Tubman Center, and All Power Books mobilized immediately, yet the media only covered celebrities and large organizations that arrived days later.

“I really felt like, ‘Where am I?’” said Solomon. “‘Who am I?  Am I the one that’s fucked up,’ or ‘What is happening?’” 

Solomon also pointed to the UCLA encampments that arose in April 2024 in opposition to the genocide in Gaza. By this time, he was conducting what would amount to 20 interviews across the country for Seeds.

“When we talk about abolition and diverting from social systems and political systems, that’s what the encampments were,” Solomon said. “Like the Black Panther Party had.”

He explained that people in the encampments were fed and they had medical care. They participated in political education classes, built solidarity and learned about collective liberation — not only around Palestine, but also movements like Stop Cop City. 

“It became like community … people being together … learning and dissecting the political systems of oppression that we live within, and so that’s why the encampment had to get shut down,” Solomon said. 

Solomon criticized how the national media failed to properly cover the genocide in Gaza and how appalling their coverage of the university encampments was. That was the moment, being in community with principled organizers, at a screening of his first documentary, when he got the idea for the new film. He was inspired to cover the encampments at UCLA, USC, MIT and Columbia while including intersections of collective liberation, Black liberation and Chicago liberation.

He called his friend and executive producer of both of his films, Donna Hadjikhani, and shared his idea for Seeds. Hadjikhani is an Iranian American who spent her 20th birthday in Gaza in the ’90s. Her response was “We’re doing this.” Random Lengths News covered Reimagining Safety, which built an enormous grassroots following and has been screened at more than 100 community events across the country. 

The film opens with scenes from a massive “Free Palestine” rally in front of the Washington Monument before cutting to Gaza and the “Al Masjid Al Aqsa” sanctuary and Masjid Qibli, the gold-domed building, or ‘the dome of the rock.’ Next, the only remnants seen are the bombarded structures, left for gray rubble, that once stood along Gaza’s coastline. 

Centering Palestinian voices and experiences, the film explores Palestinian resistance through emotional and impactful interviews with historians, activists, legal scholars and experts. 

The film demonstrates how social media has challenged dominant Western narratives and brought the Free Palestine movement into global consciousness. Seeds features some of the biggest names in the movement – including human rights attorney Dr. Noura Erakat, investigative journalist Abby Martin, justice journalist Chuck Modiano, emergency medicine physician Dr. Mimi Syed, and members of the Black Liberation Army, La Raza Unida, and Stop Cop City. Highlighting decades of solidarity, the film shows how the fight for collective liberation is interconnected.

Dhoruba bin Wahad, political activist, author, former leader of the New York Black Panther Party and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army, discusses how Palestine has always been the object of conquest by the Europeans of the Western world, beginning with the Crusades in the 11th century. Seeds highlights Palestinian history and the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Five hundred villages were destroyed, and 750,000 people were expelled to neighboring countries, and also the West Bank and Gaza, parts of historic Palestine that did not become Israel.

Investigative journalist Abby Martin discusses visiting Palestine at the invitation of an Israeli spokesperson whom she debated on Israeli war crimes on national TV in 2012. The spokesperson claimed Martin had no idea what she was talking about, and to come to Israel, they’d show her around and explain why she’s wrong. Martin went and said it was worse than she ever imagined. “Every Palestinian has a horror story, every Palestinian has suffered at the hands of this occupation,” said Martin.

She interviewed Israelis on the street about Palestinians, and in Seeds, Martin explained the generational indoctrination of Israelis from “cradle to grave” on hatred of the other, and that they have to do this to maintain a place and to live in that society.

The film offers in-depth education on Palestine and doubles as a digestible educational tool for budding activists and revolutionaries. Importantly, the documentary also connects the links between Zionism, U.S. imperialism, South African Apartheid, and the Nazi project. By highlighting the perspectives of Palestinians, prominent members of The Black Panther Party, La Raza, and Stop Cop City Atlanta, Seeds for Liberation draws connections that have not been made in film before. 

Solomon filmed the interviews using two iPhones, a lighting setup, and an audio recorder, just as he did with his previous project. The interviews capture the immediacy of the moment while providing a safe space for the interview participants. Additional protest, encampment and rally footage was provided by movement comrades from around the country whom Solomon met at Reimagining Safety screenings. Footage from Gaza and the West Bank was provided by on-the-ground journalists, either directly or through social media connections.

Solomon and his team have done a remarkable job in creating a document that not only explains Palestinian history but also intersects with Black, Chicano and collective liberation movements to illustrate what “Free Palestine” truly means. The definitive documentary also reveals the lengths to which the United States government and the Israeli government are nearly one, in lockstep with each other on the surveillance and oppression of their peoples. 

Very recently, creative director, author, podcast host and award-winning human rights activist Alana Hadid has signed on to Seeds For Liberation as executive producer. 

Seeds for Liberation reminds us that Palestinians are not waiting to be spoken for. We will liberate ourselves, with our own voices, our own history, and our own truth — alongside our allies. This film preserves our collective memory told by us, in our words, and I’m looking forward to this becoming a resource for so many who are looking for next steps towards collective liberation.

— Alana Hadid

The world premiere of Seeds for Liberation will happen Jan. 17 in Los Angeles. Tickets are available at www.seedsforliberationmovie.com. The location, near West Hollywood/Beverly Hills, will be shared 24 hours before the event. You can attend or book a screening for the film tour being scheduled now. Hadid will be hosting the premiere, and there will be a panel discussion with several cast members.

Code Pink San Pedro will be tabling at the premiere. Member and San Pedro resident Rachel Bruhnke, who is participating in the event, said many Americans view the United States as uniquely important, a mindset that allows widespread harm to be inflicted globally with little public concern. She emphasized that communities are interconnected and urged San Pedro to remember its labor roots, grounded in the principle that harm to one is harm to all. Bruhnke added that since World War II, U.S. actions abroad have consistently caused damage across the world.

Bruhnke said the U.S.’s domestic woes are connected to our international aggression or entanglements and are a reflection of the nightmare we have caused.

“I have been to several U.S. detention centers around the country. They’re so enormous and they’re not just made for ‘the other.’ That is a big connection with the work I also [do] with the Harbor Area Peace Patrol.”

Bruhnke also linked the terror inflicted on immigrant communities in the U.S. — many of them refugees of war — to violence the U.S. has helped create in those countries abroad.

The Free Palestine movement has seen a global response of support and mobilization as more people wake up to the atrocities faced by Palestinians for more than 78 years. At its core, the documentary is about recognizing the dignity and humanity in all people and that the road to freedom and liberty for all is the same. 

Seeds for Liberation is a call to action, encouraging audiences to mobilize and join the fight for humanity. Despite a so-called “ceasefire,” the slaughter of Palestinians continues. Seeds for Liberation aims to both serve as the catalyst needed for more people to speak up and end the nonstop horror and to document the revolutionary spirit of activists who have the power to inspire action and plant the seeds for liberation. In the words of Dr. Noura Erakat: “Like seeds, we grow!”

Details: www.seedsforliberationmovie.com 

SEEDS FOR LIBERATION CAN BE SOWN BY EVERYONE

Viewing this documentary is important for everyone from the budding activist to the seasoned revolutionary. The filmmakers hope is for this project to reach far and wide, and connect with as many people across the world as possible, so that we may see a Free Palestine in our lifetimes.  

This documentary is especially critical for:

• White liberals and liberal Zionists, college students and people from other communities that have been marginalized who do not feel educated enough to speak up about Palestine, and who have not seen the correlations between Palestine and other collective liberation movements. Seeds for Liberation is humanity-based, justice-oriented and aims to plant seeds of hope and action.
• Revolutionaries, activists and immigrant communities; Black and Latino families, especially in major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago that are under attack by ICE and other government entities. Seeds for Liberation demonstrates that all of our struggles are truly interconnected and we must join forces to fight for human dignity and freedom.
• Existing organizations and movements (national and grassroots) already embedded in the fight for freedom, who can help spread the message even further and reach new audiences, utilizing Seeds for Liberation for education and mobilization.