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fiercynn · 5 months

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The Gaza Monologues: Audio Production in Solidarity with Palestine!

The Gaza Monologues is a collection of testimonies from Gazan youth in 2010, after the first war on Gaza, collected and adapted for stage by ASHTAR Theatre in Ramallah (@ASHTARTheatre), and performed here by 26 people from several countries for International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People on November 29, 2023. In lieu of copyright purchases, ASHTAR Theatre requests donations to their programs in the West Bank.

This is an audio-only production of The Gaza Monologues, but is posted as a video to include subtitles. Most monologues are in English, but there are two in Arabic, two in Spanish, and one in French. English subtitles are available for all monologues. Currently, subtitles in Arabic, Spanish, and French are only up for the monologues that are spoken in each respective language, though we’ll try to get subtitles up for others in the near future. The script of The Gaza Monologues is available in those languages and more.

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Produced by me, audio editing and additional coordination by Hannah, and art by @pocketsizedquasar.

Thanks to all the voice actors, including @saltqueer, @to-every-house-you-enter, @hyeoni-comb, @datfearlessfangirl, @shooshopath, @cryptenby, @exsequar, and many others – see below the cut for full credits!

Alt text for art: A digital painting of a Palestine sunbird sitting perched on olive branches. it is a small black and blue songbird with a teal-turquoise shimmer on its head and upper wings. In the background is a faded scene of a beach at sunset in the colors of the Palestinian flag: red, green, black, and white. Handwritten text at the top left reads, “The Gaza Monologues,” and the artist’s signature “@pocketsizedquasar” is written over one of the branches on the bottom left.

MONOLOGUES

1. Ahmad El Ruzzi: Deepa

2. Ahmad Taha: Juniper Hanrahan

3. Ashraf A Sossi: Sam (@morelenmir on twitter)

4. Alaa Hajjaj: Deepa

5. Amanee A Shorafa: KC

6. Amjad Abu Yasin: M

7. Anas Abu Eitah: @priismacolors on twitter

8. Ehab Elayan: Andrea

9. Tamer Najem: @saltqueer

10. Taima'a Okasha: Brook

11. Rawand Ja'rour: Percival

12. Reem Afana: Clio (@to-every-house-you-enter)

13. Reema El Sadi: shambs (@tipsyloki12 on twitter)

14. Sami El Jerjawi: Juniper Hanrahan

15. Sujoud Abu Hussein: Mary

16. Suha Al Mamlouk: Anne (@exsequar)

17. Ali Al Hassany: Rose

18. Fateema Abu Hashem: N

19. Fateema Atallah: Maddy

20. Muhammed El Omrani: PK

21. Muhammed Qasem: p

22. Mahmud Abu Shaa'ban: Essie

23. Mahmud Bala'wi: @hyeoni-comb

24. Mahmud El Turk: Maaytah

25. Mahmud Afana: @datfearlessfangirl

26. Mahmud Najem: @shooshopath

27. Heba Daoud: KC

28. Wi'am El Dieri: Cameron

29. Yasmeen Ja'rour: M

30. Yasmeen Abu Amer: Maaytah

31. Yasmeen Katbeh: TK (@cryptenby)

#free palestine #the gaza monologues #audio drama #theatre #audio #international day of solidarity with palestinian people #ashtar theatre #FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA

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freedom-in-the-dark · 1 year

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A Fight Taken To Heart: How Edward Teach Became a Queer Ally in Honor of Charles Vane

This piece was originally written for the fantastic @blacksailszine, which unfathomably came out over a year ago (and you should check it out if you haven't!). Somehow, I managed to procrastinate posting this here for that long, which is asinine. Especially because I'm actually very proud of it!!!

The news about Ray Stevenson today has me emotional (of course) and thinking again about how his performance as Blackbeard had a great impact on me. In his honor, it feels like a fitting day to finally share my tribute to his character on this blog.

Without further ado... please enjoy my meta below 🖤

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The first time we see Edward Teach’s eyes, they’re framed in a mirror with a heart carved above it. Within the context of a scene designed to convey that Teach is a figure who commands fear and respect, this seems to be a curious choice for an introductory shot. Yet, much like many details placed throughout Black Sails’ meticulous narrative, the mirror’s design is poetic in hindsight because Teach’s heart was his ultimate motivation.

Over the course of multiple scenes, the first half of season 3 introduces us to both the pillars of who Teach is as a character and the primary characteristics of his relationship with Charles Vane. Taken as a whole, the picture painted of Teach’s presence in the story is that he acts as a metaphor for heterosexuality, toxic masculinity, and tradition. We learn that Teach had nine wives over the course of eight years, at least partially because he is motivated by the desire for a son. He glorifies strength above weakness, and he defines strength as superior physicality, independence, and sufficient leadership. He reminisces about the original state of Nassau in his youth, in which the standard was an enforced masculinity, powered by the notion that “one had to prove his worth.” And as he says to Vane and Jack in 3x02, in his view,

“You have taken away the one thing that made Nassau what it was. You have given her prosperity. Strife is good. Strife makes a man strong.”

Upon his introduction, Teach sees only the small picture of Nassau, not its place in the bigger picture of the world. He looks upon a Nassau rich in monetary plunder, preparing to come to its own defense or go to war, and he sees the ease in which men can typically join any crew as a marker of a lack of conflict. What he fails to take into account is that the primary strife now originates externally rather than internally because it is the strife of oppression, and that the solidarity that results from that strife creates its own version of strength.

”Why are you so determined to defend Nassau?” he asks Vane in 3x02, because the island is no longer anything special to him. “A lion keeps no den,” he tells Vane in 3x05, “Because the savanna, all the space within it. . . belongs to him.” Teach is not beholden to Nassau for haven or home, because he was able to assimilate into civilization whenever he had cause or desire. He married multiple women, flew under the British flag, and even spoke their “language” of flag codes (3x10). While Teach is certainly a pirate, it is by choice rather than survival.

As a result, he cannot understand the importance of true solidarity amongst the oppressed–and thus, Nassau’s defense–because he’s never needed it, as a straight white man who’s never been limited by oppression. And because this is a narrative where piracy is arguably a metaphor for queerness, filled with characters who do not have the luxury or desire to play by civilization’s rules, Teach sticks out upon his entrance. It’s also partially why he’s initially framed in an antagonistic light; he is not “with them,” and therefore, he is “against them” by default in some capacity.

The exception, of course, is his bond with Vane. Teach is one of many characters motivated by the desire to leave a legacy; as he says in 3x03, “There is an instinct to leave behind something made in one’s own image.” In his case, this manifests as his desire for a son–but he saw parenthood as an opportunity to mold and form another man to be his reflection. Teach wanted Vane to be a copy of him, but Vane never was, and it’s the primary source of the conflicts between them.

Teach had no love lost for Nassau, and so he calls it a “burden” on Vane, while Vane insists that he is “committed to it” and Jack by extension (3x03). Teach scoffs at the idea of such loyalty, deriding and discounting Vane and Jack’s relationship, casting aspersions on Jack’s character in the process–even as Teach demands to receive such loyalty from Vane himself. It’s evident that Teach doesn’t understand core aspects of Vane’s personality and motivations, but Vane is unequipped to explain himself to him.

This is partially because Vane initially doesn’t understand his own motivations either, especially in the face of his father figure’s disapproval. His inner struggle is exemplified in how he’s torn between allegiance to Teach, or allegiance to the rebellion for Nassau’s independence and his people caught in the fight. Flint summarizes Vane’s internal conflict by bringing it to light for him in 3x06:

“They took my home. I can’t walk away from that. Can you? Forget me, forget Teach, forget loyalty, compacts, honor, debts, all of it. The only question that matters is this: Who are you?”

It is not insignificant that a gay man says this to Vane. The struggle of finding oneself is inherently queer as a framing device, especially in the context of a narrative where piracy and freedom are pursued by the marginalized. The fact that wrestling with identity is the defining point in Vane’s arc implies that the answer exists beyond the bounds of what others would ascribe to him. Straight people–particularly in regards to Black Sails’ main cast of characters–are not faced with this question.

And various players do try to ascribe an identity to him. Teach tells Vane that he’s a lion, while the Spanish soldier calls Vane a fellow sheep (3x05); Eleanor lists Vane as the antithesis to civilization (3x01) and calls him an “animal” to his face (3x09). Yet even up to his end, though civilization and history would paint him differently, Vane’s motivations were always painfully human. Vane was driven by emotions on a deeper level than most recognized, and by desire for two primary things: freedom and honest loyalty.

Vane felt empathy for the unfree, and he was defined by wanting to avoid living in chains again at all costs–literally or metaphorically. He explicitly compared the fear that slaves face to the wider struggle of the pirates on Nassau (3x01), and the fear they feel as they sit on “Spain’s gold on England’s island,” expecting a retaliatory response. Vane feared subjugation or submission at the hands of any person or power, considering it a fate worse than death; to him, “no measure of comfort [was] worth that price” (3x08). His manifesto was “side with me. . . and we’ll keep our freedom,” and he said he was “[a man] who would die before being another man’s slave again” (2x06), which became his ultimate fate.

Pursuing freedom defined both Vane’s life and death, but it was not an abstract concept. It was freedom to a purpose: freedom from expectation; to make his own choices; to define home as he saw fit; and, crucially, to surround himself with honest people who provided mutual loyalty and respect without subterfuge or manipulation. This is why Jack, who knew him best and cared for him most, called Vane a “good man” and summarized him this way in 4x07:

“He was the bravest man I ever knew. Not without fear, just unwilling to let it diminish him. And loyal to a fault. And in a world where honesty is so regularly and casually disregarded…”

Vane exhibited and sought both honesty and loyalty. It was also how he expressed his love, and the way he wanted love to be expressed to him in return. That is partially why Eleanor so effectively acted as his downfall: he repeatedly trusted her, but she could not or would not be loyal to him. By contrast, as he told Teach in 3x02, Vane found loyalty and commitment in Jack–and in Anne by extension.

So while “a lion keeps no den,” as Teach said, what a lion does keep is a pride. A lion may be free to roam, but it does so with a family. Teach did not begin to understand the significance of that to Vane until after Vane gave his life not only in the name of freedom, but also in defense of his family and home.

This turns Teach’s earlier question of “Why are you determined to defend Nassau?” into the unspoken question of Why did Charles Vane willingly die to defend Nassau and those who are fighting for it?

When Teach called Nassau–and, to some extent, Vane’s partnership with Jack–a “burden,” Vane tried to explain to him that wasn’t the case. At the time, Teach didn’t listen. He gave Vane an ultimatum: I’ll help protect these people, but you have to leave them, their cause, and your “commitment” behind.

Teach thought leaving all of that behind was freedom, and it was a definition of freedom he thought that he and Vane shared, referring to the two of them as being “of the same mind” (3x05). But Vane was unable to leave his people or their fight behind, because that’s not what freedom meant to him. For Teach, freedom meant solitary independence; for Vane, freedom came to mean solidarity (3x09):

“Because they know that my voice, a voice that refuses to be enslaved, once lived in you. And may yet still. They brought me here today to show you death and use it to frighten you into ignoring that voice. But know this. We are many. They are few. To fear death is a choice. And they can't hang us all.”

After Vane’s death, Teach listens. In the absence of being able to listen to Vane directly, he does the next best thing: he goes to the people Vane valued most and died to protect. In the name of the mutual interest of revenge, he listens to Vane’s family.

At first, Teach obviously thinks Jack and Anne are both weird–to use a different word, he thinks they’re both queer–and he makes that clear in underhanded comments. Neither Jack nor Anne fit into the boxes of “man” or “woman” in the traditional senses that Teach is most accustomed to valuing. He doesn’t understand why Vane would align with them and their cause above all else, or why Vane would be loyal to them and value their unconditional loyalty in return. But Teach seemingly knows that if he can get to know them, then perhaps he can understand what Vane saw in them, and–in turn–learn more about Vane as well. Vane lives on in pieces of them, and so it is upon listening to them that Teach ends up indirectly listening to Vane one last time.

In a discussion spurred by Anne’s concerns, Jack and Teach debate the merits of murdering Eleanor Guthrie or chasing Woodes Rogers, and they bond over their shared understanding and memory of Vane’s “distrust of sentimentality” (4x02). They can chase an empty version of revenge in the name of justice, fueled by emotion... or they can fight to win the war of resistance that Vane gave his life to incite. Between the two of them and their shared grief, and in an echo of Vane’s internalized arc, they find that the only question that matters is this: Who was Vane, and what mattered to him most? They both discover they already know the answer.

For Teach, acknowledging that answer involves fully accepting that Jack and Anne were the family that Vane chose, that the rebellion for Nassau’s freedom was personal enough to Vane that he died for it, and that this is a fight which holds value and necessity that Teach initially misunderstood.

Teach is straight, and his views on masculinity are not fully incompatible with the ones civilization enforces. Oppressive powers hold no true threat for him, because he is capable of assimilation; he could leave Nassau and thus the rebellion for its freedom behind. He always planned to. But after the sacrifice of the man he considered a son, he chooses to become an ally in the fight against white supremacy, and an explicit supporter of Jack and Anne–the queer found family that Vane prioritized, and died to protect.

Teach always thought he was molding Vane into his own image, but the reverse became oddly true instead: Teach allies with the cause, gives his life for it, and indirectly protects Jack and Anne with his final moments, echoing and honoring Vane’s sacrifice.

Woodes Rogers expected to keelhaul Teach into submission by default, through torture no man should have been able to repeatedly survive. But to fear death–to submit to death on anything other than one’s own terms–is a choice. A pirate’s fear is an opponent’s victory; Vane and Teach both knew that, and embodied it. Teach’s unwillingness to let fear diminish him or to be broken by Rogers was largely the result of his own principles and hard-won defiance, but it was also the only reason Jack and Anne narrowly avoided the same fate.

It aligns poetically: in the final months of his life, Teach’s actions were motivated by old shifting shrapnel lodged in his chest and the beating of his heart, which he referred to as “a grim little timepiece” (3x06). And “the louder that clock [ticked]”–the more the shrapnel moved, and the closer his end became–the more inclined he was to pursue happiness and purpose (3x01).

Ultimately, he was keelhauled 3 times, and then he was shot.

For Charles–tick.

For Jack–tick.

For Anne–tick.

And for Nassau–

Boom.

How fitting.

After all, Edward Teach always expected that his heart would bring about his end.

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If you'd like to read more of my meta about this show, here are the other pieces I've written:

• Black Sails, Queer Representation, and the Valid Canonicity of Subtext

(I should crosspost that to tumblr at some point ^)

• The Flinthamilton Reunion Is Definitely Real

• James Flint Is Gay

And my pinned post on Twitter @/gaypiracy has a collection of the shorter posts / writing I inadvisably did on there.

Don't forget to check out the Black Sails Zine for a variety of incredible work :)

#black sails meta #edward teach #blackbeard #charles vane #black sails #edward teach meta #this is mostly going to get seen and scrolled past by people who are into that Other Show now isn't it? probably lol #vanerackham #what on earth is the trio's quasi ship name?#vanerackhambonny #fuck it I don't know #charles vane meta #my meta #okay I'm done. but in all seriousness I'm still very proud of this piece of writing!!!!#thank you to Ray Stevenson for all that he gave us by playing Teach with such gravitas and depth. RIP to a wonderfully talented man

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biird · 5 months

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Prints for Palestine at Pratt Institute! Pratt is located in Brooklyn, NY at the border between the Jewish neighborhood of South Williamsburg, the rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the gentrified Fort Greene. As such, we've seen a richly diverse array of voices weighing in on the conflict, but those in support of Palestine have been truly inspiring. As a member of Palestinian Youth Movement on campus said, "this is one of the most intersectional movements this campus has ever seen." On this day of International Solidarity with Palestinian People, we created silk screen designs demanding a permanent ceasefire and printed them on students' clothes and bags for them to wear and show their support. Free Art available now, Free Palestine Now!

#pratt institute #free palestine #palestine #free gaza #international day of palestinian solidarity

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gumjrop · 4 months

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The Weather

All areas of the country are now at High or Very High levels of COVID Transmission.

According to the new CDC National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) dashboard, all regions are experiencing increased COVID wastewater levels, with the Midwest being the highest. Nationally, wastewater levels are “very high.” Driven by the JN.1 variant, we are currently seeing the second highest wastewater levels since BA.1, the first Omicron wave in January 2022.

We continue to stress the importance of mitigating the spread of COVID, especially during this time of increasing transmission. Please continue to wear a high quality respirator mask (such as an N95) in indoor settings of any capacity, and postpone crowded events. In addition, make sure to take appropriate precautions when meeting with others.

Wins

Amidst this new surge, many hospitals – some responding to staffing shortages, and some responding to public pressure – have reinstated mask mandates. We celebrate the work of organizers across the country including those at Care Not COVID Chicagoland, COVID Safe Maryland, COVID Advocacy NY, and MaskBlocs around the country who organized a call-in to hospitals last week to demand they reinstate – and make permanent – masking policies. A coalition protest by Sacramento Jewish Voices for Peace, Sunrise Movement Sacramento, International Jewish Anti-Zionist network, Bay Area JVP, & Youth 4 Palestine Sac organized a fully masked (N95!) and tested (2 days in a row!) pro-Palestine protest at the CA State Capitol in Sacramento last week. ACTUP’s New York chapter has voted to require and provide KN95 masks at all upcoming meetings and actions “due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and recent surge, as well as to increase safety from surveillance at protests.” Solidarity means we protect each other, and these organizers are showing us the way!

Variants

JN.1, a BA.2.86 descendent, is rising to prominence quickly in the United States. Nowcast estimates predict that by 1/6/2024, JN.1 will account for 61.6% of circulating variants. According to preliminary non-peer reviewed data, the newest (XBB.1.5) booster helps to protect against the JN.1 variant. Conversely, older vaccines did not offer significant protection against JN.1. It is important to receive the updated booster, especially since uptake is currently low–according to a poll conducted by Gallup, only 29% of 6,000 participants surveyed received the updated vaccine as of December 7, 2023. This is in stark contrast to flu vaccine rates, polled at 49%. This is likely due to an imbalance in public health messaging–while efforts were poured into advertising the flu vaccine, not as much emphasis was placed on receiving the updated booster.

Hospitalizations

Weekly COVID hospitalizations continue to trend upward, now at 34,798 for the week ending December 30, 2023. The numbers for currently hospitalized patients with COVID are also increasing, currently at 25,430. In terms of regional trends, the Northeast and Midwest are seeing higher rates of hospitalization. When reviewing these numbers we must also remember that patients who are already admitted for other reasons and are suffering from nosocomial, or hospital-acquired infections, are not accounted for in this data.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. Healthcare workers are demanding support from administrators. Read this account of ER nurses at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx who say that the hospital executives are refusing to open up vacant areas of the hospital to accommodate the surge in patients – leaving the ER dangerously overcrowded and forcing patients into hallway beds.

Long COVID

A new cross-sectional study published in Nature Communications found that Long COVID patients with post-exertional malaise (PEM) exhibit skeletal muscle changes that are exacerbated by exercise. PEM patients are also found to have unique pathophysiological changes, such as amyloid-containing deposits in muscle tissue. These findings contribute to mounting evidence that COVID infection can significantly damage the body, and more research is necessary in order to fully understand manifestations of Long COVID. If readers are curious, summarized findings can be found in this X (Twitter) thread, penned by one of the authors. Long COVID research is important. This is why it is essential that all Long COVID research centers adhere to the strictest infection prevention protocols. Read this account of a person disabled by Long COVID who dropped out of a study because the study personnel refused to mask. We saw this same phenomenon last spring at Stanford during a study of Paxlovid’s impact on Long COVID rates.

Take Action

This week Jewish Currents put out a report on The Epidemiological War on Gaza, which amplified WHO’s January 2nd announcement that “there are currently 424,639 [reported] cases of infectious disease in Gaza,” an area with only 2 million residents total. With the ongoing destruction of hospitals and deprivation of food and water and environmental pollution from continued bombardment, the occupying forces have ensured the conditions for continued deaths even in times of ceasefire. Call your representatives and join a protest this week to demand a ceasefire and the reconstruction of Palestinian medical infrastructure towards fair health access for all peoples! Let us support Massachusetts General Brigham Long COVID patients by telling the hospital to 1) meet all patient accessibility requests including wearing N95 respirators upon request and 2) make universal masking their new standard of care. They can be contacted through their contact form, or by calling 1-800-856-1983. Rashida Tlaib sent out an email blast informing constituents of the current surge. The message included acknowledgment of COVID’s airborne nature, recommendation to wear a well-fitting mask, a link to access free tests through USPS, and information on updated vaccines and COVID transmission. Let’s contact Congresswoman Tlaib and thank her for this invaluable action!

Future Weather Reports

Starting next week, we will begin to publish the Weather Report on a bi-weekly basis. This will allow our team to focus on crafting action campaigns to push for a comprehensive public health approach to the pandemic, including mask mandates, paid sick leave policies, testing access, Long COVID research, next generation vaccines, indoor air quality regulations, and more. We hope to see you in our expanded actions to end the COVID pandemic soon to come!

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Midway through Jamil Jan Kochai’s collection The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, which maps generations of Afghan and Afghan American lives against over a century of entwined wars, sits what appears to be a résumé. Entitled “Occupational Hazards,” it meticulously records the everyday labors of an Afghan man: [...] his “[d]uties included: leading sheep to the pastures”; from 1977–79, “gathering old English rifles” left over from the last war while being recruited into a new war; in 1980–81, “burying the tattered remnants of neighbors and friends and women and children and babies and cousins and nieces and nephews and a beloved half-sister”; [...] becoming a refugee day-laborer in Peshawar, Pakistan; in 1984, becoming a refugee in Alabama, where he worked on an assembly line with other Asian migrants whom the white factory owner used to push out the local Black workforce; and so on. Dozens of events, from the traumatic to the mundane, are cataloged one by one in prose that is at once emotionless and overwhelming. [...] Kochai interviewed his father for the résumé’s occupational trajectory [...]. An Afghan shepherd [...] is displaced by imperial wars and then, in the heart of empire, is conscripted into racialized domestic economies [...]. [M]ethodically translating lived violence via a résumé, a bureaucratic form that quantifies labor in its most banal functionality, paradoxically realizes the spectacular breadth of war and how it organizes life’s possibilities. [...]

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In this collection, war is past, present, and plural. In Afghanistan, Kochai recounts the lives of Logaris and Kabulis, against the backdrop of the US occupation, still dealing with the detritus of previous wars - British, Soviet, and civil - including their shrines, mines, and memories. In the United States, Afghan Californians experience the diasporic conditions of war -- state neglect of refugees combined with targeted surveillance -- amid the coming-of-age of a second generation that must confront inherited traumas while struggling to build political solidarities with other displaced youth.

These 12 stories explore the reverberations between historical and psychic realities, invoking a ghostly practice of reading. Characters, living and dead, recur across the stories [...]. Wars echo one another [...]. Scenes and states mirror each other, with one story depicting Afghan bureaucracies that disavow military and police violence while another depicts US bureaucracies that deny social services to unemployed refugees. History itself is layered and unresolved [...]. Kochai, who was born in a refugee camp in Peshawar, writes from the position of the Afghan diaspora [...]. In August 2021, the US relegated Afghanistan to the past, declaring the “longest American war” over. Over for whom? one should ask. [...] War, in other words, is not an event but a structure. [...]

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In Kochai’s collection, war is not the story; rather, war arranges the scenes and life possibilities [...]. Kochai carefully puts war itself, and the warmakers, in the narrative background [...].

This is a historically incisive narrative design for representing Afghanistan. Kochai challenges centuries of Western colonial discourses, from Rudyard Kipling to Rambo, that conflate Afghanistan with violence while erasing the international production of that violence as well as the social and conceptual worlds of Afghans themselves. Instead, this collection moves the reader across Afghans’ transcontinental, intergenerational, and multispirited social worlds -- including through stories of migrations and returns, homes populated by the living and the martyred, language that enmeshes Dari, Pashto, and Northern California slang, as well as the occasional fantastical creature [...].

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Like Kochai’s debut novel 99 Nights in Logar (2019), this collection merges realism and the fantastic, oral and academic histories, Afghan folklore and Islamic texts, giving his fiction a dynamic relation to history. Each story is an experiment, and many of them are replete with surreal or magical elements [...].

As in Ahmed Saadawi’s 2013 novel Frankenstein in Baghdad, a nightmarish sensorium collides with a postcolonial body politics [...].

In a recent interview, Kochai said that writing about his family’s experiences of war has compelled him to explore “realms of the surreal or magical realism […] because the incidents themselves seem so unreal […]. [I]t takes years and decades to even come to terms with what had actually happened to them before their eyes.” He points not to a documentary dilemma but to an epistemological one. While some scholars have argued that fantastic genres like magical realism are often conflated with exoticized imaginaries of the Global South, others have defended the form’s critical possibilities for rendering complex realities and multiple modes of interpretation. Literary metaphors, whether magical or otherwise, are always imprecise; as Afghan poet Aria Aber puts it, “you flee into metaphor but you return / with another moth / flapping inside your throat.” [...]

Kochai does not “escape” into the surreal or magical as fictions but as other ways of reckoning with war’s pasts ongoing in the present.

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Text by: Najwa Mayer. “War Is a Structure: On Jamil Jan Kochai’s “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories.”“ LA Review of Books (Online). 20 December 2022. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

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murderousink23 · 1 year

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04/24/2023 is National Panchayati Raj Day 🇮🇳, International Youth Solidarity Day 🧒🌎, National Pigs in a Blanket Day 🐖🇺🇲

#national panchayati raj day #international youth solidarity day #national pigs in a blanket day

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bfpnola · 9 months

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introductory excerpts on the rainbow coalition:

The Rainbow Coalition was an antiracist, anticlass[1] multicultural movement founded April 4, 1969 in Chicago, Illinois by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization and José Cha Cha Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords. It was the first of several 20th century black-led organizations to use the "rainbow coalition" concept.[2]

...

The Rainbow Coalition soon included various radical socialist community groups like the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition,[3] later, the coalition was joined nationwide by the Students for a Democratic Society ("SDS"), the Brown Berets, the American Indian Movement and the Red Guard Party. In April 1969, Hampton called several press conferences to announce that this "Rainbow Coalition" had formed. Some of the things the coalition engaged in joint action against were poverty, corruption, racism, police brutality, and substandard housing.[4] The participating groups supported each other at protests, strikes, and demonstrations where they had a common cause.[5][6]

The coalition later included many other local groups like Rising Up Angry, and Mothers and Others. The Coalition also brokered treaties to end crime and gang violence. Hampton, Jimenez and their colleagues believed that the Richard J. Daley Democratic Party machine in Chicago used gang wars to consolidate their own political positions by gaining funding for law enforcement and dramatizing crime rather than underlying social issues.[citation needed][7]

The coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Hampton.[6]

...

The phrase "rainbow coalition" was co-opted over the years by Reverend Jesse Jackson, who eventually appropriated the name in forming his own, more moderate coalition, Rainbow/PUSH. Some scholars, including Peniel Joseph, assert that the original rainbow coalition concept was a prerequisite for the multicultural coalition that Barack Obama built his political career upon.[11]

The Rainbow Coalition youth—made up of Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots—also launched free breakfast programs that were supported by donations from community businesses and ran free daycare centers for neighborhood children. Several operations were upheld by the women of the Black Panthers and women’s focus groups like the Young Lordettes and Mothers and Others (MAO). The federal government institutionalized the School Breakfast Program in 1975.

“We’re gonna fight fire with water. We’re gonna fight racism not with racism, but with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism, but with socialism… We’re gonna fight with all of us people getting together and having an international proletariat revolution,” Hampton was recorded saying.

...

In public appearances, the Rainbow Coalition was backed by community residents and Black and brown street gangs—but they also had the support of unions, Independent Precinct Organizations, college students and activists who supported the movement through Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Rising Up Angry, and countless other organizations. Their allies included Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park, the West Town Concerned Citizens Coalition, the Northside Cooperative Ministry, Neighborhood Commons Organization, and Voice of the People. “It was really based on common action,” said Mike Klonsky, a former Chicago leader of SDS (who, like Hampton and Cha-Cha, had a reward out for his arrest). “If there was a protest or a demonstration, the word would get out and we would all come to it and support each other. If somebody was arrested, we would all raise bail. If somebody was killed or shot by the police, we would all respond together.”

...

In December of 1969, the FBI conducted an overnight raid on Hampton’s apartment with intelligence provided by an infiltrator. He had just been named spokesperson of the national Black Panther Party. A barrage of police bullets struck him in his sleep as he lay beside his pregnant fiance, Akua Njeri, who survived. Another occupant, Black Panther security chief Mark Clark, was also killed. Distraught members of the Coalition unofficially disbanded, and a handful of the leadership went underground after Hampton’s assassination, fearing for their own safety. Thousands of people lined up to witness the open crime scene, while lawyers from the People’s Law Office disputed the later-disproved official police account, which had falsely claimed a heavy firefight on both sides. Having assassinated its most vocal leader, the Feds had effectively crushed the 1960s’ most promising push for united, cohesive social resistance in Chicago.

#reaux speaks #history #rainbow coalition #bipoc #resources #socialism #community #black power #black panther party #young lords #anti capitalism #chicano #indigenous #communism #wikipedia

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internationalyouthday · 2 years

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Intergenerational Solidarity: Creating a World for All Ages

On International Youth Day, join us in uplifting the voices of youth and celebrating their leadership.

#International Youth Day #12 august #Intergenerational Solidarity #A world of all ages #UN-Women #youth

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nansheonearth · 7 months

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youtube

0:10Social movements fight for it.

0:12Politicians promise it.

0:14Police say they enforce it.

0:16And judges and courts claim to embody it.

0:19Yet in an age of intense polarization,

0:22stark divisions have emerged

0:23over exactly what justice looks like

0:26and how to enact it.

0:28So what is justice after all?

0:30And what do anarchists have to say about it?

0:33Justice is a fundamental ethical,

0:35philosophical,

0:36and political concept

0:37that shapes our lives

0:38in countless ways every single day.

0:41The decisions we make are influenced

0:42by our own inner sense of right and wrong,

0:45society's expectations,

0:47and the implicit threat of punishment.

0:49Children navigate justice on the playground,

0:51and when they're disciplined by their parents.

0:54These experiences shape their conceptions

0:56of what they think is fair.

0:59Individual and collective ideas around justice

1:01end up defining how we think society should work.

1:05Throughout history, human societies have developed

1:07their own interpretations of justice,

1:09often with the goal of consolidating power.

1:13The Code of Hammurabi in ancient Mesopotamia

1:15emphasized commensurate punishment,

1:18based on the principle of an eye for an eye.

1:21In ancient Greece,

1:22Socrates went from giving public lectures about justice

1:25and its essential role in maintaining public order

1:28to being put on trial and executed

1:29for corrupting the minds of the youth.

1:32Organized religions have mobilized notions of divine justice

1:36to enforce strict adherence to tradition,

1:39dogma,

1:41and established social hierarchies.

1:44Countless atrocities and acts of violence

1:46have been sanctified by religious decrees,

1:48edicts,

1:49fatwas,

1:50and doctrines.

1:52Religious wars of conquest have imposed ideologies

1:54on local populations,

1:56replacing indigenous forms of justice

1:59rooted in communal equilibrium

2:01with grand unifying myths of salvation,

2:04damnation, and submission.

2:07As European standards of justice

2:09evolved from witch trials and brutal acts of public torture

2:12to modern legal systems with judges, jurors, and courts,

2:17these features became standardized

2:18and incorporated into colonial legal frameworks

2:21in Africa,

2:23Asia,

2:24and the so-called New World.

2:28What we refer to as justice systems

2:31are formalized networks of power relations

2:33designed to serve the interests of a society's ruling class,

2:37but regulated, in part, by its local customs,

2:40culture,

2:41and political institutions.

2:44Today, the so-called justice system of capitalist society

2:48is characterized by the principles of individual rights,

2:51due process,

2:53and the sanctity of private property.

2:56It's a system whereby laws, police, courts, and prisons

3:00exist to enforce social control

3:02in the interest of capitalist economics.

3:06Anarchists see states, capitalism

3:08and their internal hierarchies such as race, caste, and gender

3:12as sources of injustice

3:14because they create inequalities,

3:16institutionalize exploitation,

3:18and restrict individual and collective freedoms.

3:21Most anarchist conceptions of justice

3:23involve fighting against these oppressive systems

3:27and building resilient, autonomous communities in their place,

3:31anchored by principles of solidarity, equity, and mutual aid.

3:34Any formalized system of justice

3:36aims to regulate behavior in accordance with the values

3:39of a given community or society.

3:42This necessarily entails addressing and discouraging behavior

3:45that contravenes or threatens these shared values.

3:50To do this, states employ a disciplinary process

3:53known as criminalization,

3:55through which certain acts are designated as crimes,

3:58and the perpetrators of those acts as criminals.

4:02From the moment of an individual's arrest

4:04to their trial and potential incarceration,

4:06the state assumes control and responsibility

4:09for investigating, judging, and punishing crimes.

4:12Punishment has proven itself over and over

4:14as an ineffective tool for reducing violence.

4:19On the contrary, it tends to reinforce systematic oppression

4:22and increase violence against targeted groups.

4:25On top of that,

4:26it fails to help perpetrators of violence

4:28understand how their actions affect others.

4:32Instead of encouraging people to change their behavior willingly,

4:35punishment fosters resentment.

4:38Many individuals simply refocus their violent actions

4:41where they know they won't be caught,

4:43often leading to increased rates and severity

4:45of domestic or intimate partner violence.

4:50The carceral logic of punishment represses certain actions,

4:53or entire black market industries,

4:56forcing them out of the public spotlight.

4:59However, it does nothing to address the underlying root causes

5:02of what states deem antisocial behavior.

5:05And in many cases, simply creates new opportunities for gangs,

5:08cartels, and other organized enterprises

5:11built to compete in the violent unregulated markets

5:14created by state decree.

5:17While the law claims to treat everyone equally,

5:19its application is used to disproportionately criminalize

5:22certain groups over others

5:23based on the operation of power in a given society.

5:27In some states, it may target certain religious or ethnic minorities.

5:31In others, it may be women or queers.

5:35In settler colonial societies,

5:37founded on slavery and genocide,

5:40it's Black and indigenous people.

5:44Those who find themselves subjected to a state's justice system

5:47face the traumatic experience of being violently

5:50cut off from society,

5:52then struggling to reintegrate.

5:55While most states cite rehabilitation as a primary goal

5:58of the criminal justice system,

5:59the reality is that processes of criminalization and incarceration

6:03primarily serve to perpetuate cycles of poverty,

6:06mental illness, and horizontal violence,

6:09creating a hyper-marginalized and disposable

6:11stratum of the population.

6:14Disproportionate criminalization among targeted communities

6:18doesn't just affect those who are incarcerated.

6:21It disrupts families

6:22and community relationships for generations.

6:25Prisons, often portrayed as housing dangerous anti-social monsters,

6:30predominantly house poor, traumatized individuals.

6:33So-called correctional officers subject these prisoners to further trauma,

6:37trapping them in toxic, overcrowded environments

6:40governed by strict hierarchies of gendered violence.

6:45These institutions do produce monsters

6:48... on either side of the bars.

6:50Even so, the capacity of prisoners to harm society is relatively minuscule

6:54when compared to the actions of CEOs, bankers, and politicians

6:59whose decisions affect the lives of millions.

7:02Anarchists reject the state's framework of criminalization

7:05and the police and prisons that underpin it.

7:08Yet in a world where trauma, alienation, and poverty are widespread,

7:13people all too often hurt each other.

7:16A world without prisons or police doesn't mean a world

7:18where harm isn't confronted and addressed.

7:20While anarchists hold a diversity of views on how best to do this,

7:24most solutions emphasize popular organizing of community defense

7:28and a community-based method of navigating conflict,

7:31identifying root causes of violence,

7:33and addressing them in a participatory framework.

7:37In some circles, this process is known as transformative justice.

7:42Transformative justice as an alternative to state-imposed justice

7:46aims to facilitate understanding between different parties of a conflict,

7:50encouraging them to directly participate in their own healing,

7:54and in determining what a just resolution looks like in a given situation.

7:59Often, it will look at what needs people were trying to address

8:02when they engaged in harmful behavior,

8:04and will try to seek out healthier solutions or outlets to this problem.

8:10Interpersonal violence is often conditioned by personal and collective histories of trauma.

8:15It is passed down across generations

8:17and shaped by our relationship to systems of exploitation and oppression,

8:20such as capitalism,

8:22colonialism,

8:23patriarchy,

8:24and white supremacy.

8:26Without discounting individual accountability,

8:29it's essential to recognize the ways in which the culture we're all soaked in

8:32feeds our tendency to harm one another.

8:35Properly coming to terms with this reality

8:37involves practicing self-accountability above all else.

8:40No one is above hurting others.

8:44In our alienated, hyper-atomized societies,

8:47the demands of capitalism and the constant burnout

8:49it imposes on our bodies

8:51often leave us without the time or energy needed to fully engage

8:54in transformative processes of healing and repair.

8:58Our communities often lack the ability or collective will

9:00to deal with severe trauma and mental illness effectively.

9:06To make matters worse, many of us did not grow up

9:08learning the values of navigating conflict and practicing empathy.

9:12Trusting state institutions to handle our conflicts for us

9:15has deprived our communities of vital conflict resolution skills,

9:18and instilled us with an anti-social thirst for punishment.

9:21Rather than putting in the work to try and resolve conflict,

9:24we all too frequently opt for the ease and impersonal nature of social media.

9:29And a voyeuristic call-out culture that further alienates our interactions

9:33and undermines our interests in building meaningful relationships.

9:37In the absence of strong communal bonds or kinship ties,

9:40there is often little incentive for people to participate in transformative justice processes,

9:45or to take accountability for their actions.

9:49Public call-outs are a tacit admission of this.

9:52And in practice, they often serve as little more than warnings

9:55for other members of an extended friend group, social network, or scene

9:59to avoid a particularly violent or abusive individual.

10:03Building capacity for transformative justice

10:06would entail helping communities resolve interpersonal conflict amongst themselves,

10:10thereby avoiding dynamics of exclusion and punishment that echo those of the state.

10:17When revolutionary movements manage to carve out territories of autonomy from the state,

10:21the stakes are raised.

10:23Security and safety are essential cornerstones of justice,

10:26and pushing the police or army out of a given territory

10:29creates a vacuum in which insecurity and injustice can flourish.

10:35If a revolutionary movement is unable or unwilling to fill this vacuum,

10:40they create paths to power for whoever can.

10:43This is a costly and often repeated lesson of history

10:47from the Spanish Civil War,

10:49where Stalinists rebuilt the Republican police forces

10:51and used them to smother the revolution from within.

10:55To war-torn Afghanistan,

10:57where the Taliban slowly re-consolidated their power

11:00by using their strict interpretation of Sharia law

11:03to settle local disputes in areas effectively abandoned by the state.

11:09Fighting for a new society

11:10means constructing and fostering alternatives in the here and now,

11:13that can spread as we build our collective power.

11:17Far too often, an inability to constructively navigate conflict

11:20and to take care of one another's needs

11:22has been the ruin of radical collectives and social movements.

11:28So long as we're living in an unjust world,

11:30any pursuit of justice will entail some level of discomfort, pain, and distress.

11:35Developing and popularizing anarchist conceptions of justice

11:39will mean breaking habits,

11:40taking risks,

11:42practicing,

11:43and critically experimenting wherever we can.

11:46If we desire a world without prisons and the police,

11:49we'll need to build it together.

12:03you

#submedia #judicial #anarchy #government #police state #gender #patriarchy #radfem #corruption #police #military #social media #o #Youtube

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beardedmrbean · 3 months

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Gilbert residents in a letter demanded the immediate resignation of Police Chief Michael Soelberg and Mayor Brigette Peterson, citing “negligence and inaction” related to ongoing investigations into the “Gilbert Goons.”

“For four long months, we’ve given you the chance to stand up and be leaders. Instead, you’ve chosen to punish those who’ve come together in anger due to the police’s failure to make our community safe for our teens,” reads the letter posted Tuesday on the Lily Waterfield Facebook page, which has become a beacon for calls of justice for victims of the Goons.

It’s a call to action by Gilbert parents Kristine Brennan and Angela Rogers, who run the Lily Waterfield page, to flood Soelberg and Peterson’s email inboxes with the demand.

An investigation by The Arizona Republic in December found the Gilbert Goons, a gang of mostly affluent teenagers, had engaged in a string of attacks on other teens in the southeast Valley for more than a year. Most attacks occurred in Gilbert. Parents, students and community activists say members of the Goons were involved in the Oct. 28 fatal beating of 16-year-old Preston Lord at a Halloween party in Queen Creek.

Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg has said officers never had connected the attacks because victims did not specifically mention the gang. Victims since have referred to their attackers as being associated with the Goons, according to the department. Gilbert police have opened multiple investigations related to what officials there describe as "teen violence" cases.

Sixteen people have been arrested so far in connection with group attacks on teens in Gilbert, Mesa and Pinal County.

Parents remain unsatisfied that leadership has done enough, claiming police have “turned a blind eye to the kids who continue to pose a threat.”

“Every day that law enforcement chooses to target scared, terrified parents instead of the violent teens terrorizing our youth brings us one day closer to another senseless beating or the next tragedy of a teen murdered,” the letter reads.

Brennan told The Arizona Republic the police department has begun to go after parents for doxing, an act to publish private information about a person as a form of punishment or revenge.

The Republic has not independently verified these claims. Gilbert police cited one resident, accusing the person of publishing the address of someone who had no connection to the Goons cases, according to police records reviewed by the Republic. Other claims of doxing remain, for now, unsubstantiated.

Assistant Chief Jim Bisceglie, who heads the department’s investigations bureau, gave a brief statement at Tuesday’s Town Council meeting. Soelberg did not attend Tuesday's meeting to give the council and public a biweekly update, as he had over the past several months.

Bisceglie addressed the doxing claims, saying one arrest has been made related to the issue, with others pending. He called it irresponsible and said it would not be tolerated by the Gilbert police.

Peterson announced on Jan. 25 she was suspending her re-election campaign and in an internal email to the town vowed to stay in office until the end of her term.

“Step down now, or we’ll make sure our voices are heard even louder,” the last line in the letter reads.

Residents petition the council

A dozen residents attended Gilbert's council meeting wearing orange.

Peterson's announcement that Gilbert's iconic water tower for two days would be lit orange in solidarity with Preston Lord's family and other victims of teen violence was met with applause from residents. This fulfills a request they made in previous meetings. Some residents pleaded for additional days.

Katey McPherson told the council she had reached out to the council about the simmering teen violence in the town in 2023, before Lord's death. Ninety days later, she said she doesn't see a plan to address the ongoing issue.

Brennan, during public comment, pushed back against Peterson's previous comments that she had been unaware of community events for Lord because Brennan had made her aware of the Dec. 27 community march.

"Kindly do the right thing" and resign, she said.

#nunyas news

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readingsquotes · 4 days

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"..

At the encampment, I also met a nineteen-year-old Jewish student from Sacramento whom I’ll call Sam. (He asked that I not use his actual name.) He wore a watermelon kippah—a signal of solidarity with the Free Palestine movement. (Watermelons, which are grown in Gaza and the West Bank, are red, green, and black, like the Palestinian flag, which, for many years after the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, was barred from public display in Israel.) Sam saw his role in the encampment as an “untangler,” someone who could separate what he saw as real instances of antisemitism from criticism of Israel. He said that he and other Jewish students who were at the encampment “believe that our history as Jews, our long-standing history of oppression, informs us even further and compels us to act even more.”

Sam grew up in a Jewish Reform community that he described as “P.E.P.,” which stands for “progressive except Palestine.” “We declared ourselves a sanctuary synagogue and were always taking in refugees on the border, Syrian refugees, et cetera,” Sam explained. “And there was a lot of critique of Netanyahu, but never substantial critique of Israel itself.” In high school, Sam was assigned a project on the Israel-Palestine conflict. “I remember pulling up the initial partitions of land between Israel and Palestine, and formed my own opinions around that,” he said. “I have distinct memories of getting in screaming matches with other family members.”

At Berkeley, Sam joined Hillel International, a Jewish student organization, but, as someone who considered himself an “Israel skeptic,” he didn’t feel very welcome. After October 7th, he began what he described as a “process, in terms of changing of beliefs.” The claim, repeated by President Joe Biden, that Hamas had beheaded forty Israeli babies was a “major turning point” in his thinking, he said. “There’s a long history of institutions and government lying to the masses,” Sam told me. “But it’s another thing to experience it firsthand.”

“There’s this idea that we should put our faith in institutions and establishments that have deemed themselves credible, whether media or universities or politicians,” Sam went on. “And I think a large awakening in this generation has been seeing the complete opposite of that.” Sam pointed out that, just a short walk from where we were sitting, Berkeley ran a campus eatery called the Free Speech Movement Café. Like Zach, he suggested that the university had not actually learned anything from the prior movements that it now championed in its marketing pitch to prospective students.

Sam believed that the war in Gaza had exposed the contradictions, elisions, and hypocrisy of American institutions—not only the government and academia but the press. He contrasted what he and other students saw “every single day on our phones from civilians quite literally holding different mobile devices and videotaping the horrors” in Gaza with what he considered “the utter lack of reporting from the mainstream media.” Thanks to those civilians, he said, “this is the most documented genocide in history,” but people who watch only the news don’t know what’s really happening. “That’s been a large part in the stark difference between the youth’s opinion versus the older generation,” he told me."

#palestine #free palestine #isreal #genocide #gaza #apartheid #colonization #american imperialism #us politics #police state #student protests #student activism

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