OUR STORY
Founded by a Palestinian writer who was urged to reckon with the increasing suppression of BIPOC and other marginalized voices within her community in Denver and across borders in a homeland being erased from maps.
It became too dangerous to ignore, so she left her FinTech career to fully commit to building the kind of space our stories deserve.
THE STORY
Written by Rand Shannak, Founder of Prohibition Press
01
I was hiding from crypto bros in a blurred glass office in Downtown Denver.
My dog was snoring in the corner.
My computer was balanced on my lap as an incessant tide of Slack notifications eroded my sanity.
It was a day like any other, doing what I'd done for most of my adult life:
helping the rich get richer.
A few coworkers retreated into my refuge and asked, “How’re you holding up?"
We didn't really ask each other, 'How are you?' We were all hanging by a thread, and we all knew it.
But that afternoon, I didn’t offer the daily trauma-dump of our toxic work culture. Instead, I asked a question.
"This new spot just popped up in RiNo that's like a reverse speakeasy. Front is a concept café with rotating immigrant vendors and back is a banned bookstore and publishing house. They host community workshops, sell artwork all by and with local BIPOC creatives. What do you think of that?”
One of them collected her jaw from the ground to yell “Hell yeah! We need this in Denver! What’s it called?"
I paused.
"Umm... Prohibition Press."
As they reached to their back pocket to grab their phone and look it up, I shattered the excitement with reality: "Actually, it doesn't exist. But it should."
What felt like a momentary fantasy, a daydream in the life of someone chained to corporate tech for survival, refused to fade.
Everywhere I looked, space for BIPOC and immigrant creators was shrinking.
Books showcasing the perils of fascism were being banned.
Arab artists were being asked to soften their exhibitions so as not to offend Zionists.
Western journalism grew increasingly sanitized and writers from Palestinian, immigrant, working-class, and marginalized communities were being told more and more that their stories would be marketable if only they were simply less themselves.
Meanwhile, I was spending my days hiding inside conference rooms, helping build products for people whose values I protested against and collecting paychecks cut to bankroll the genocide of my homeland.
02
I wasn't oblivious
But like so many of us, I convinced myself I couldn’t survive in this system if I wasn’t making good money.
I convinced myself that pushing back where I could from the inside was enough.
I convinced myself that while I was stuck as a pawn in the very system responsible for my family’s displacement, at least I was defying the current where I could.
I fought against decisions that catered to white nationalism, and I spoke up when it would've been easier to stay quiet.
In February 2026, the facade of my rationalizations shattered as I sat in another blurred glass office.
This time, I was shackled to a black walnut conference table in a Chicago high-rise, surrounded by the rancid air of ego I often avoided.
A selected few of us had been flown in on a moment’s notice to convene about a high-profile, confidential project. The meeting kicked off, and the unmistakable neon-orange caricature of the President filled the projector screen under a crayon-styled headline that read: “Jumpstarting the American Dream!”
Every cell in my body revolted. My lungs seized and my chest locked tight.
I looked around the room.
There were probably twenty of us around the conference table.
And I was the only visibly distressed person in the room.
And I was the only brown person in the room.
Holy shit.
What was I, a Palestinian woman, doing sitting at a table of fintech bros who gawked excitedly at my colonizer's benefactor?
The blood of my ancestors surged through my anatomy, unshackled my lungs, and drew breath through me. I quickly understood that survival was at stake as long as I stayed in that room.
resistance inside the oppressor's institution isn't resistance at all.
03
For a third-culture daughter of Palestinian parents in the diaspora, success in America was assimilation. And I was programmed to measure success by proximity to power.
I swallowed the colonizer’s fallacy that self-worth is defined by a fancier title, a fatter paycheck, a bigger project, and a seat at the big boys’ table on the top floor of a gaudy high-rise.
As I stared at the crayon sprawled eagle on the projector screen, I knew I spent far too long confusing success with survival.
I went back to my hotel room and puked bile.
Then, I began drafting my resignation.
04
“If you don't like the system, don't depend on it.”
Three months later, Prohibition Press refracted from the shards of my wreckage.
What was once a daydream clarified into a dire necessity. Now it's taking its first breath as an unapologetic reality.
Building a platform for emerging BIPOC and immigrant writers to share their raw, authentic voices is where we're starting. We're building toward a permanent physical space for cultural resistance through books, art and community.
Because sitting at their table is how we dissolve into their background and submit to their erasure.
Our stories demand their own space.
Prohibition Press exists to carry it.
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