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Solidarity Stories: "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad

Join the Mount Rainier Branch Library and Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights for our monthly book club! This month we will discuss the 2025 non-fiction National Book Award Winner "One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad.

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times. As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage. “I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it.” —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of "Wandering Stars" and "There There."

—From the catalog

Borrow the book from PGCMLS: Print | eAudiobook | eBook | Large Print

The Solidarity Stories: Community - Led Book Discussion takes place the 3rd Tuesday of each month in the upstairs lounge area of Mixt Food Hall in Brentwood, MD. Limited parking is available via the garage on 39th Street and Rhode Island Ave. Parking is free for program participants and no purchase is required, but participants are welcome to order snacks, drinks, or dinner from Mixt’s vendors. For more information, visit their website: https://mixtfoodhall.com