you belong you belong you belong

On Palestine and moving into action together

October 31, 2023

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Colonizers write about flowers.I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanksseconds before becoming daisies."—Noor Hindi, "Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying"*

This is a garden but our empire scorches the earth. You and I—old friend, new friend, collaborator, lover, stranger—share our ecosystem with all living and (at present rapidly and mercilessly) dying beings. I am writing here today to tend to my liberation—and, because we are inextricably linked, yours—knowing that the pestilence of genocide is poisoning us all from the roots.

Since I last wrote here, the Israeli government has escalated a genocide in Gaza, aided by unfathomable amounts of U.S. money and support. More than 8,000 people have been killed including almost 3,000 children.

If you have read these facts dozens of times and your eyes are blurring and you’ve stopped breathing, I see you. I spent the first week in a scroll/shame/avoid/numb/despair/isolate cycle. I cannot pretend that cycle does not still grab me, but it is ever-more frequently interrupted by a much more powerful weep/rage/read/write/fight/pray/call-a-friend/call-a-senator/show-up-in-the-street cycle.

This is an essay addressed to me two weeks ago and thousands of Palestinian deaths ago. It is an essay to myself in the moments I am still numbing out. It is an essay to my loved ones who are stuck in this cycle, hoping that we might move out of it together into action. Ultimately, this is an invite to go to protests together, to read together, to call our god-damned senators together, and to hold each other throughout. It is a love letter in the bell-hooks-ian sense of “extending myself for my own or another’s spiritual growth”—knowing that idly witnessing mass death will destroy our spirits. There can be no growth with this rot at the roots.

It is likely some won’t do this with me. It is likely friends will let me down. But I also cherish those who are already changing alongside me, interweaving their journeys with mine, drawing me into movements, building “comradely love” (to use Sophie Lewis’ gorgeous phrase). Political action and the relationships that sustain it happen in unexpected ways; I expect to be surprised in ways that will both break my heart and fill it.

In “Learning to Handle the Truth: We have to allow ourselves to feel harmed in order to find a new world.” P.E. Moskowitz argues that many of us in the West, no matter how progressive we think we are, collaborate with media misinformation that upholds our “sense of goodness.” That misinformation presently includes blatant genocide denial from our commander-in-chief.

We do this because it offers a sense of (false) psychological safety. “To acknowledge the full weight of all this is emotionally destabilizing,” Moskowitz writes. They (like myself) have often been “unable to work, crying throughout the day, feeling dissociated,” and tempted to “protect [their] peace” by turning away. But they offer an alternative:

Once you open yourself up to emotional destabilization, once you allow yourself to feel wounded by witnessing the evil of this world, there is, we all subconsciously know, no going back. And this is why we attempt to cling so strongly to fictitious truths.

But, as I have found in my own life through my own experiences of trauma, there is opportunity to find a brand new world once you get over the fear that the black hole you will fall through is endless. There is another side. It contains different truths. Ones about solidarity and brotherhood. Ones about responsibility and justice. Ones that make you feel your life is more worth living than it may feel now. We will all get to that other side, to those new and brave and strengthening truths, eventually. We just have to let ourselves keep falling for a bit longer. 

This has been my experience of both healing and politicization (and the two, I think, actually can’t be separated without some major spiritual bypass). My nervous system tries to reject it every step of the way, clinging to every possible bit of denial. But these last several weeks, I’ve returned to the flicker of this new world when I’ve wanted to look away.

Action is the only way to move through the black hole. I can’t just talk to my therapist about it. There is no way to privatize this process. In a conversation with adrienne maree brown, Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Morgan Bassichis talks about the need to act now even if we feel confused, full of grief, or unresolved. “We act for justice as a path to find resolution. We act for justice as a path to find hope. We act for justice as a way to move through our feelings, to reach towards each other….Action is the only antidote to despair.”

The black hole can be incredibly isolating: It can feel like no one I hold dear can understand, and no one who can would want me. I’ve feared I’m not “good enough” for the movements I admire and I’d be unworthy of the solidarity I crave. I’ve feared asking a friend to be my buddy to a protest because I’m afraid they’re already been going and will judge me for being “late.” These fears have frozen me as thousands are killed. Good art, good friendship, and good organizing ring out urgently across that black hole, saying you belong you belong you belong.

I went to Jewish Voice for Peace’s Seattle rally and ritual on Friday, and I plan to be back this week. In a prayer, a lead organizer named the belonging available to us if we came closer to the work, closer to actions demanding the sanctity of all life. “There is home here,” they said, “it’s called a movement.”

They then asked us to pull out our phones and text someone we’d want to have there with us. “No, this isn’t performative. Literally, text someone right now,” they said.

Think of this essay as that text. I want you with me as I fall through this black hole; I won’t let you fall through it alone. We will witness the dead together and fight for the living. Let’s build a new world together. There’s no time to waste.

*A shoutout to Anti-Capitalism for Artists, who shared this poem during their Artmaking in Solidarity co-working session (which also offered me the time and community to complete this essay).

Nutrients

The “nutrients” for this missive will be different than the last two issues. A crucial tool for me in the last several weeks has been Abolitionist Organizer Mariame Kaba’s “Questions I regularly ask myself when I'm outraged about injustice.”

  1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself?

  2. Who’s already doing work around this injustice?

  3. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support & help to them?

  4. How can I be constructive?

I’ll be using this space to share some answers to the first two questions.

What resources exist so I can better educate myself?

  • “Ceasefire” on How to Survive the End of the World with adrienne maree brown. This contains two interviews, one of which I cited above with Morgan Bassichis of JVP, and another with Lara Kiswani from the Arab Resource and Organizing Council.

  • The Tribe, a Black-led Chicago independent news organization, published a history and analysis of the colonization of Palestine—especially as it relates to the colonial history of the U.S..

  • One of my favorite writers, Fariha Róisín, has written two pieces on Palestine: “My heart, oh, Palestine,” and “On Israel & Propaganda”. Clicking and reading all her links would be an incredible education.

  • This reading list from The Palestinian Youth Movement. I haven’t begun this yet; lmk if you want to read together.

Who’s already doing work around this injustice?