Well it happened, a few days ago, the tiny cracks of my thin social resolve and brave game face in midst of all this global genocide connected and broke open - rendering me sobbing, weeping and helpless in the face of this disgusting machine of a country and world. I must have gone through half a roll of kitchen tissue mourning all the broken systems overworking my family to death, keeping me and others - poor yet educated and in perpetual debt; killing, raping and plundering people and land for profit and dominance. I was enraged, embarrassed at this business opportunity of a country my family fought for, overworked themselves to death for, abused me for in the name of gratefulness only for me to see; years later - with a full heart and wide panoramic lens with the proverbial scales fallen off, that this is how the global powers that be have generationally harvested their power and might. Using terror, violence, triangulation and weaponizing nature and her bounties of land - we are fooled into settling and accepting the status quo after millennia of colonization, imperialism, genocide and eco-pollution. Please don’t get me started on Queen Elizabeth, I was never a fan once I left England and her death only brought about pain and horror on her imperialist rule, (she had someone hung from the gallows in the West Indies) and once testimony came out about her and those First Nations boarding schools - I officially cancelled her from my consciousness.
It’s exhausting to broker the privilege I have in the US despite feeling like a social pariah in this body and thinking about the atrocities in Gaza and other sites of genocide. It finally makes me sick to my stomach how people have had to broker their identities in the face of Islamophobia, casteism, anti-semitism, apartheid, dehumanization, racism, classism and sexism just to survive because the trauma of conflict and capitalism rear its disgusting head generation after generations its overt and subvert ways.
So many societies have generational trauma from global decisions governing occupied territories with human beings seeking to live and exist. Whether its the Partition, KrystalNacht, Trail of Tears, The Middle Passage, The Rwandan Genocides - or occupied spaces in the Congo, Amazon and other spaces of conflict - there is always a fissure, a rupturing of native people and its sustaining systems and I’m overwhelmed and sick and tired of seeing this play out again and again.
The conflict in Gaza as horrific as it is unnecessary - shines a light on so many others global terrors. I knew that the initial decision was inhumane but didn’t know how to support Palestine without sounding like a parrot, because inhumanely moving people like chess pieces is traumatizing and disgusting. As a person dedicated to land justice - once I learned about the initial decision for the British Empire to displace over 750,000 Palestinians (Native People) in 1948 - the Nakba (not the first displacement, apparently) and create Israel and to blatantly weaponize, destroy and criminalize the living and ancestral ecology of Palestine - I was galvanized. More than the art or the music - it was the documented fact that like the people - the once thriving, nourishing landscape of Palestine was grounds for erasure and it’s olive trees, being native species and in families for generations - were and continue to be cut down and erased like their families who tended to them. Various crops and herbs (Zatar, et al) and other animals (black goats) were criminalized for not landscaping the afforestation placed on top of desecrated Palestinian homes, and who can blame their innately superb instinct? In 2016 the Israeli government did pardon/repeal the law criminalizing the black goats, basically admitting it was a wrong approach. I walked away from this knowledge finally seeing that a Colonizing and governing country knows that in order to try and take over a territory, one destroys not only the people but also the heritage and ecology of the land. The governing body is twisted, depraved and clearly ignorant to the innate wisdom and power of the land they keep trying to destroy as well as it’s resilient people. This example while centering Palestine is prevalent in so many other occupations and once I got the model of this genocide and food apartheid in Palestine - I saw this lens on other global occupations as well and went through another roll of toilet paper for my tears.
I cannot condone the suffering that Israelis have had to deal with recently, especially those in solidarity with Palestine - but continuing to oppress Palestinians and destroy their people, their lands and food ways in continued food apartheid is dehumanizing and reveals a harsh calculating truth of the oppressive body knowing the power and heritage of land and seeking to exterminate it.
Free Palestine - Her lands do not lie.
#freepalestine
I stand in solidarity with Farm School, NYC and other collectives and people working to end global oppression and enliven land justice
For additional sources:
It’s exhausting to broker the privilege I have in the US despite feeling like a social pariah in this body and thinking about the atrocities in Gaza and other sites of genocide. It finally makes me sick to my stomach how people have had to broker their identities in the face of Islamophobia, casteism, anti-semitism, apartheid, dehumanization, racism, classism and sexism just to survive because the trauma of conflict and capitalism rear its disgusting head generation after generations its overt and subvert ways.
So many societies have generational trauma from global decisions governing occupied territories with human beings seeking to live and exist. Whether its the Partition, KrystalNacht, Trail of Tears, The Middle Passage, The Rwandan Genocides - or occupied spaces in the Congo, Amazon and other spaces of conflict - there is always a fissure, a rupturing of native people and its sustaining systems and I’m overwhelmed and sick and tired of seeing this play out again and again.
The conflict in Gaza as horrific as it is unnecessary - shines a light on so many others global terrors. I knew that the initial decision was inhumane but didn’t know how to support Palestine without sounding like a parrot, because inhumanely moving people like chess pieces is traumatizing and disgusting. As a person dedicated to land justice - once I learned about the initial decision for the British Empire to displace over 750,000 Palestinians (Native People) in 1948 - the Nakba (not the first displacement, apparently) and create Israel and to blatantly weaponize, destroy and criminalize the living and ancestral ecology of Palestine - I was galvanized. More than the art or the music - it was the documented fact that like the people - the once thriving, nourishing landscape of Palestine was grounds for erasure and it’s olive trees, being native species and in families for generations - were and continue to be cut down and erased like their families who tended to them. Various crops and herbs (Zatar, et al) and other animals (black goats) were criminalized for not landscaping the afforestation placed on top of desecrated Palestinian homes, and who can blame their innately superb instinct? In 2016 the Israeli government did pardon/repeal the law criminalizing the black goats, basically admitting it was a wrong approach. I walked away from this knowledge finally seeing that a Colonizing and governing country knows that in order to try and take over a territory, one destroys not only the people but also the heritage and ecology of the land. The governing body is twisted, depraved and clearly ignorant to the innate wisdom and power of the land they keep trying to destroy as well as it’s resilient people. This example while centering Palestine is prevalent in so many other occupations and once I got the model of this genocide and food apartheid in Palestine - I saw this lens on other global occupations as well and went through another roll of toilet paper for my tears.
I cannot condone the suffering that Israelis have had to deal with recently, especially those in solidarity with Palestine - but continuing to oppress Palestinians and destroy their people, their lands and food ways in continued food apartheid is dehumanizing and reveals a harsh calculating truth of the oppressive body knowing the power and heritage of land and seeking to exterminate it.
Free Palestine - Her lands do not lie.
#freepalestine
I stand in solidarity with Farm School, NYC and other collectives and people working to end global oppression and enliven land justice
For additional sources:
- https://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/israels-palestinian-inflicted/
- https://open.spotify.com/show/43YRDL7kMyIi3EdHdn7e8k?si=qEvjB5aEQsK14YktAhw0yg
- https://tribune.com.pk/story/1565720/black-goat-causing-environmental-damage-thrive-israel
- https://issuu.com/leadtolife/docs/solidarity_syllabus-3-compressed