Everywhere we went in Copenhagen, but particularly in Norrebro, there were beautiful signs/ symbols of people’s love for Palestine. These are just a few pictures, I could have taken photos all day. Whatever the wretched politicians of the West (and some of their puppet regimes in the global south) might say or do, the vast majority of people want justice and freedom for Palestine
back in the US, where the state kills black men at home and funds concurrent genocides in the global south. stress is predictably next level. picture of our place in malmo.
From THE GREAT REPAIR MOVES NORTH, an exhibition at the Form/Design Center in Malmo, Sweden, which focuses on the conflict between ecological balance and uncontrolled growth and advocates a new architectural ethos centered around repair. What we are seeing in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other parts of the world is not just an attempt to exterminate people but also entire knowledge worlds.
our beautiful speakers, musicians, artists, organizers, and audience members at imagine palestine on aug 23, 2024. thank u muna, dina, andrea, hernease, lamisa, matt, molly, jennifer, megan, rashaad, michelle, jackie, wegdan, halima, and rachel <3
photo credit: elizabeth chiang and mara ahmed
so grateful for beautiful people in this world who can come together, almost at the last minute, and create small disruptions (with ripple effects – always ripple effects) in systems of imperial power and destruction. thank u rachel crawford and matt mcdonald for being my compadres. more pictures from ‘imagine palestine’ soon!
photo credit: elizabeth chiang
some pictures from imagine palestine: an evening of poetry readings and music to raise funds for gaza at the @swedgemission in #rochesterny. a space full of beautiful people who shared visions of freedom for palestine, and stunning palestinian poetry in conversation with live music. a full house where we were able to raise thousands for the gaza municipality.
the struggle to decolonize is something special. it creates love and solidarity between complete strangers. it builds community <3
this will be a series of events to support and celebrate gaza and palestine. stay tuned!
organized by @unabridged.roc, mara ahmed and matthew mcdonald
good morning rochester! i am back and so looking forward to imagine palestine, an evening of poetry readings and music to raise funds for gaza, today at 7pm at the south wedge mission in rochester, ny. 12 artists and activists, 4 musicians, 7 poems by palestinian poets, multiple visions of palestinian futures, the reading of a beloved classic by a resistance writer, and a unique juxtaposition of silence for gaza by mahmoud darwish and musical reflections. all of it to come together in one space and provide mutual aid to the gaza municipality which is doing essential work at this moment. the event is free but pls come ready to donate and intervene in systems of oppression. see u at 7pm this evening!
Dear friends, please donate directly to the Gaza Municipality via this link:
Life for Gaza
“The Gaza Municipality is tasked with providing vital services such as water supply, waste management and sewage treatment. However, the widespread destruction in Gaza City has severely hampered the Municipality’s ability to deliver even the most basic necessities to its residents. With limited access to water, the population faces a dire health and environmental crisis, especially affecting children.
By joining forces in this initiative, we cultivate hope and solidarity, fostering empathy and collaboration across communities while easing the hardships endured by those in Gaza. This collective effort reassures Gazans that they are not alone in their struggle. The Gaza Municipality earnestly appeals for your support to help reinstate essential services, currently the foremost priority. In the northern regions of the Gaza Strip alone, over 500,000 individuals urgently require these services.”
So proud to attend the opening of my friend Safia’s photography exhibition at the Glen Cove Public Library yesterday! Here is more about her brilliant project:
“Living Water for Women is a halfway house located in Glen Cove, NY that fosters growth and independence for formerly incarcerated women to overcome their addictions. In 2016 l established biweekly art workshops at the home. At each session we use art as means of communication and expression. In this process, stories are shared, tears are often shed, and an important community has been created. These women are often shunned and forgotten by their families, friends, and society. They have important stories to share to help those who might also be struggling with addiction, mental health issues, and jobs. By combining portraits with transcribed interviews, I hope to both empower these women and raise awareness about addiction.“
Friends, as you know settler colonial violence has reached shocking levels in Gaza, with non-stop bombings and massacres for the past 10 months.
Gaza’s infrastructure has been systematically destroyed which means that along with starvation (on account of the food and water blockade), deadly epidemics are also setting in. The poliovirus has been found in sewage water now flowing freely in Gaza.
The Gaza Municipality provides water, sanitation and sewage management, waste collection, the removal of debris and reopening of key thoroughfares to facilitate movement, and aid to personnel doing heroic emergency work. They have started a fundraiser and are trying to raise a million dollars. They still have a long way to go. Let’s support them.
At this gathering, we hope to imagine Palestine beyond the ongoing horrors. Fanon said: “The settler’s work is to make dreams of liberty impossible for the native.” Let’s challenge such temporal control and envision Palestinian futures free of Zionist settler domination.
We will read poetry by Palestinian poets and writers, some of them iconic, others still relatively young. We will listen to music that will frame beautiful words of hope and resistance, and inspire us to visualize freedom for Palestine.
This is a free event where we will invite everyone to donate directly to the Gaza Municipality. Let’s articulate a just future in the face of imperial death cults – it’s a radical act!
Organized by Unabridged Literary Arts, Matthew McDonald and myself/ Warp & Weft Archive. Join us!
Ismail Al-Ghoul was a Palestinian journalist and Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza. He was born in 1997 in Al-Shati refugee camp, north of Gaza City. A brilliant journalist who refused to leave, his reports became a mainstay of the news from the north of the Gaza Strip. He was assassinated along with his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, in Gaza City today. He was younger than my son.
“Let me tell you, my friend, that I no longer know the taste of sleep. The bodies of children and the screams of the injured and their blood-soaked images never leave my sight. The cries of mothers and the wailing of men who are missing their loved ones never fade from my hearing.
I can no longer bear the sound of children’s voices from beneath the rubble, nor can I forget the energy and power that reverberates at every moment, turning into a nightmare. It is no longer easy for me to stand before the rows of coffins, which are locked and extended, or to see the dead people more than the living who are fighting death beneath their homes, not finding a way out to safety and survival.
I am tired, my friend…”
More than 165 journalists have been killed in 10 months by the Israeli occupation.
i will not watch the olympics when an apartheid state in the process of exterminating palestinian children is allowed to participate and flaunt its genocidal talents. but the images i’ve seen so far are from a dystopian novel, full of garish spectacle including a bloody, guillotined head. so disorienting/ nauseating when i’m also watching footage of medics in gaza collecting the soot-covered head of a little girl and placing it gently into a body bag next to her tiny beheaded body. this and then reading ridiculously servile posts from fb liberals about joe biden’s shining legacy and patriotic sacrifice. what a violently racist, warped world we live in folx. the west is a lurid collective death cult. ceasefire now.
i am with her. sonya massey, a 36-year old black woman who called 9/11 for help and was shot in the head by a cop. she’s not the only black woman murdered by police in her own home. so were breonna taylor and atatiana jefferson not too long ago. and before that charleena lyles, korryn gaines and deborah danner.
did it matter who was in the white house when they were killed?
white supremacy is a bipartisan project. the death cult that applauds a war criminal fresh from butchering children in gaza, is the same racist system that slaughters black people in america. the utter dehumanization of palestinian children, so that their bodies become receptacles for untold savagery, means that brown and black bodies here at home are also stripped of rights and protections and will be equally open to incomprehensible brutality. not only that, they will be blamed consistently for their own extermination.
people of color in high places will not guarantee our safety. vote ur conscience, but pls look beyond mercenary politicians (of all skin tones and anatomies) for long term change. our survival depends on it.
the butchers of gaza. the whole lot of them. cheering a war criminal hated by most of the world. they would have welcomed hitler the same way had he contented himself with genociding people of color only. this is white supremacy/ racism in action. in 2024.
i am with her. hind rajab, a 6-year old palestinian child who was trapped in a car with the bleeding corpses of six family members, all killed by israeli occupation forces. she was able to call for help before being shot by israeli soldiers with more than 300 bullets.
i am with the children of gaza who are being incinerated, shredded, and shot deliberately in the head by israeli snipers. see comments for more details.
of the 186,000 people killed in gaza (according to a lancet study), a disproportionately large number are kids. mountains and mountains of dead brown children.
how to describe the cringe-inducing tributes to genocide joe except as american exceptionalism? how to grasp the enthusiasm for top cop harris except as more of the same bipartisan imperial/ capitalist bs that has brought us to this ignominious place in history. there is a holocaust going on right now funded directly by our dollars.
end the genocide in gaza. isolate israel and throw it in the trash can of history for making a joke of international law. vote for candidates who articulate this as their priority. otherwise, who are we?
