Love, Education, Liberation
Written on October 9th, 2023:
I have been debating posting anything because I have little power in this situation. Many of us have so little power and a sick stomach and a heavy heart.
What I do have is my voice. I am offering my support, my love, and my thoughts to Palestinians who have been oppressed for many decades now. What makes the Israel-Palestine conflict so painful is that Jewish people have undergone subjugation in Europe, and some have chosen to subjugate in support of Zionism. This is something that happens to all people throughout history, we forget atrocities and form new ones.
We need to look, truly look at ourselves and what anger and power has made us. On this day, in the United States, we are meant to honor the lives of people displaced and massacred and controlled through colonization in the Americas—an act of genocide carried out by the Spanish, English, and French. As we stand in support of indigenous people, we should also uplift those who undergo this same struggle in other lands.
Though I am separate from this conflict in many ways, we are all—all of us—connected by the struggle to shed light on state-sanctioned violence of oppressed people everywhere. We must all remember those who have died in this struggle. In 2020, an autistic man, Eyad al-Hallaq, was killed for looking suspicious (the simple act of being) just as George Floyd was in the US. Let us not forget that many immigrants are detained in the US. They are kept in prisons as if searching for safety were a crime. Palestinians have died for years without sympathy because violent and inhumane news coverage calls certain deaths “casualties” and others “murders.”
We must look within ourselves to think clearly about history and humanity and loving one another, truly seeking compassion. We should not fund “defense” with more weapons which creates more death which wounds us all. We are all connected by our humanity, and the way we treat one another with violence is an attack on ourselves. Violence comes in many forms, through public opinion, in structures. We do damage to others, and we do damage to ourselves when we misconstrue and lie and twist a story. We should fight for love and education and liberation.
