Beloveds,
This year is winding down.
For so many of us, it has been a year overflowing with truthful lessons & reckonings. Where I stand, these times are stretching & growing us in painfully traumatizing & yet potentially freeing ways. I am searching for the blessons - blessings within these lessons.
What is 2023 teaching you?
Free Palestine. Palestine will be free.
Duas & actions ongoing for Gaza, for Palestine.
From the river to the sea.
Day 84 & going on 76 years of occupation. So much of the western world, our communities even, have chosen to concede in silence or be actively complicit. We have normalized mass deaths without grief. We feign normalcy instead of pausing to be humane.
2023 has revealed how invested we continue to be in oppressive paradigms of empire. 2023 has laid bare how little we understand about the machinations of oppressive regimes & roles in both ending & upholding them.
Yet, 2023 has awakened many of us into realizing anew that all the empathy & theoretical care in the world falls short unless we are able to practice them with humanity & in integrity.
In 2023, I am learning …
that the same people advocating for diversity & inclusion, will not include Palestine in their activism.
The self professed allies & activists rarely ally with Palestine.
The antiracists among us often do not see racism when they see Palestine.
Those who teach about decolonizing or oppression may exclude Palestine from their teaching.
The friends who stood by us will ghost or stonewall us behind walls of silence about Palestine.
Those who understand genocide of their own communities, will overlook the genocides unfolding in real time in Palestine, Congo & Sudan.
So many trauma informed healers are staying in trauma informed silence struggling to offer their remedies, therapies & medicines freely.
The humanitarians who proclaim empathy & compassion might be bereft of words & actions.
The poets & writers & wielders of words & stories, reveal themselves speechlessly aligned with empire.
The folks we used to respect or admire for their moral courage have lost our respect.
The vastness of space between
Words …. Deeds
Compassion …. Action
Theory … praxis
Grief…. living
Care…. integrity
Might just end us
Unless we end it.
I hope we are normalizing unlearning & learning.
I pray we are normalizing releasing the oppressive connections, ideologies & systems we previously held true.
May we collectively commit to our interconnected liberations. From Palestine to Sudan, Congo, Eritrea, Kashmir, within & everywhere.
May we find & build with our people, collaborators, colearners & comrades.
I am rereading Fanon & Kanafani & bell hooks & Freire & more for actions & inspirations. A few excerpt-morsels for reflection & action:
“Imperialism has layed its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the World Revolution.”
“The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” — Ghassan Kanafani
“To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.”
~ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
“Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as people - not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the 'rejects of life.' It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.” ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.
'If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to prepare for it; for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.'
~ bell hooks, Teaching Community
Thank you for your continued care & reciprocity, for staying in touch & reading this newsletter shares this year. I’ve made significant & drastic shifts based on this year’s learnings. For starters, I’m no longer reading or recommending books/ art by those who’ve refused to take clear & public stances of solidarity with Palestinians in recent months.
Hoping to resist & persist in 2024.
With earnest Solidarity,
until mutual liberations,
Desi book aunty
Grateful for your wisdom 💞✨
As always, your words are sanctuary. 🙏♥️💜