I remember the way anger filled my veins anew about a month ago. The sadness, the sorrow, the anger of realising that this whole system that has been alive since before I was born permeates my every being and every part of my soul. It continues and lives on now. And now there are beheaded babies. There are beheaded babies. And there was the grandpa embracing the soul of his soul. And Bisan. And Motaz. The monopoly of violence wishes us to be silent. There is never a time to stop acting. The violence has become so hostile and so obvious. It is not that they are treating Palestinians inhumanely, it is that Palestinians are never afforded the construction of the human. There are Israelis asking if the people who died were terrorists. What is left to do? Let the anger and sadness not paralyse me, not paralyse us, move past the paralysis into a state of change. Be ready to change for the rest of my life. Be ready to be freshly angry again and again and again and freshly sad. But to learn to move past the paralysis. To march on. To march on for the queer, the Black, the woman in me know that it is my spirit’s calling to fight against imperialism and colonisation. My very existence is a form of resistance that has lived on from generation to generation. I must take on the strength of those that fought before me and fight just as hard. The blood will be shed. The blood will continue to be spilled in the fight. The truth is we have to be okay with revolution and not many of us are. The sentiment ‘Are you willing to die?’ becomes ‘are you ready to give up the comfortable lives we have under empire?’ And ‘are you ready to lose it all?’ ‘Are you ready to be targeted and mutilated again and again till your last breathe?’ Are you ready? And if you’re not ready will you fight anyway? Will you fight scared? Will you go into careers that support the fight? Will you surround yourself with likeminded people who wish to resist empire? And if it comes to it, are you willing and ready to die?
Long live the resistance. For many freedom fighters will die but the fight itself will never die. As long as oppression lives on, our anger and sadness will renew us into action, for to speak up and to love one another, radically, loving and fighting for the Palestinian people even if they never fight for me, that is true Love. The love that Jesus spoke about.
May I live a life of resistance.
On the night of the 28th May
I pray that we see everlasting liberation in our lifetime and that the laughs of Palestinians is not contained by them showing their dead mothers on social media in a language foreign to them. I pray that we continue to fight for our liberation and of those we do not know. I pray that fight lives on forever. Long live resistance. I pray that one day we realise that we are united by the bare fact we all breathe the same air and that it is all made up to keep us seperated. We are one and we must begin to act accordingly.
‘In what language does a child cry?’ In every language. Again and again. The freedom and rights for Palestine is not a call to only liberate Palestinians, it is a call for us to begin to fight against every form of oppression. May the resistance live forever. Long after the freedom fighters of Gen Z are dead. We must continue fighting. Till our last breathe. That is my calling. I wish to turn my insanity and my sadness and dispair into freedom fighting. For the message of Jesus was love. Radical love that would turn tables. When the monopoly of violence makes it clear that that there is only one way to succeed, you must ask yourself: Are you willing?Are you willing to die? For the cause? For the people? Are you willing to give up all comforts under empire? Are you ready? Are you ready to die?
During the month of May, I journaled every day. Daily journalling is not something I had ever done, but now I see it as a necessity for my being. Since the death of Aaron Bushnell, I have asked myself repeatedly whether I am willing to die. In asking myself this question, I do not necessarily only mean physical death, but rather the more painful death of accepting that the world view as I know it, was a lie and that the truth compels me to fight for the freedom of all colonised and oppressed populations around the world. I ask myself ‘Are you willing to die?’ because that’s the highest cost. But that’s not really the point. At best, we lose our minds and at worse we lose our lives. But I ask myself that question to reflect on whether I am prepared to surrender to a life in which I will be newly angry and newly saddened as I try to fight imperialism locally and imagine a better world.
If you have felt like this over the past 9 months, you are not alone. We are a collective and we must care for each other. A better world is possible.
I think Ive felt a new kind of grief everyday since the genocidal maniacs undressed themselves on the world stage.
The grief over the world I thought existed that had ended a thousand times between my every breath.
your words bring me hope. Thank you.