Category: activism

I have known Ali Sajjad since he was a student in college and am proud of the crucial work he is doing for children’s education. This is the kind of investment in young people that we should all support. Pls consider making a tax deductible donation.

In Faisalabad, the historical city of Lyallpur, a team of socially conscious educators run a school that provides the kind of education we often dream of: meeting local and global needs while being holistic, building critical thinking, teaching science, mathematics, languages and technology, including music and the performing arts in the curriculum, and encouraging extracurricular activities (from sports to debates). It’s a school that focuses on inclusivity, social justice, and democracy as core values both in its student body and its staff.

Broadwood Central School is a testament to what Pakistan’s future can be. On account of its egalitarian/inclusive mission and the scholarships it provides to a large number of students, the school needs support to continue its work in the Faisalabad community. Please invest in the school and its students by making a tax deductible donation here.

More info at www.broadwoodcentral.edu.pk

In Scorsese’s film ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ a strong connection is made between the terror and murder faced by indigenous Osage people (with access to oil money since the early 1900s) and the Tulsa race massacre in 1921 which annihilated Black Wall Street and its wealth.

I want to take these connections further and compare Tulsa to Gaza. Images of the violence enacted on both cities speak for themselves (the first three are from the Tulsa massacre and the last three from the ongoing genocide in Gaza).

There is immense, unbearable loss of life in Gaza right now (more than 5,000 dead, half of them children). There is also an imperial destruction of all fundamental aspects of human life – social, political and cultural structures, housing, commerce, employment, transportation, familial and community networks, etc. This razing of the infrastructure of life, as we understand it, also happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in countless Native villages all across America.

The destruction of human (and non-human) habitats and ecology seems central to capitalism. Large swathes of humanity must be forcefully locked in ghettos of precarity and poverty in order for a small percentage of white elite (and their stooges) to enjoy unseemly wealth and privilege.

Black poet and activist Pat Parker understood this. In ‘Revolution – It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick,’ she wrote:

“The rest of the world is being exploited in order to maintain our standard of living. We who are five percent of the world’s population use 40 percent of the world’s oil. As anti-imperialists we must be prepared to destroy all imperialist governments; and we must realize that by doing this we will drastically alter the standard of living that we now enjoy.

…The equation is being laid out in front of us. Good American equals Support Imperialism and war. To this, I must declare—I am not a good American. I do not wish to have the world colonized, bombarded and plundered in order to eat steak.”

When we stand in solidarity with Palestine and other peoples and places being crushed by imperial greed and its technologies of extermination and containment, this is something we must consider.

Thank you Clarissa Brooks for reminding me of these powerful lines during a discussion on ‘Black Feminist Writers and Palestine’ organized by Black Women Radicals.

Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature, Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail is an absolute masterpiece.

Palestine-born novelist and essayist Adania Shibli was due to be awarded the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, an annual prize given to female writers from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Arab world on Oct 20th.

However, on Oct 13th, the LitProm association (which is sponsored partly by the German government and the Frankfurt Book Fair) that hands out the prize announced it would postpone the award ceremony “due to the war started by Hamas, under which millions of people in Israel and Palestine are suffering”.

Prominent authors and publishers from around the world have accused the Frankfurt Book Fair of “shutting down” Palestinian voices.

I met Adania in Lahore earlier this year, at the Lahore Literature Festival. She is as brilliant and uncompromising as one would expect. Minor Detail is a slim book (about 100 pages) but it “slices through one’s heart” and is unlike any book I’ve read.

Resist censorship and read the book. More about Minor Detail below:

“A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.”

more than 500 people have been killed in the bombing of a hospital in gaza, where thousands were taking shelter or being treated. this is a nauseating war crime. people describe apocalyptic scenes: headless bodies, charred remains, human fragments everywhere. in a hospital full of children, women, men. old and young. sick people, the wounded, doctors and hospital staff. their collective murder is incomprehensible. heinous.

so is israel’s arrogance. the hubris of committing genocide in full view of the world, with the powerful justifying and aiding their bloodlust.

then there is the vertiginous inversion of reality. the frightful corruption of language. the orwellian dictums that we are hearing are surreal: ethnic cleansing is self defense, genocide is some kind of justice, the killers are victims whose feelings take precedence.

after whining about free speech and ‘je suis charlie’ for a lifetime, france has banned pro-palestinian protests. so has germany. the UK says palestinian flags & slogans are illegal, msnbc has suspended all three of its muslim anchors, and US immigration is harassing palestinians in the diaspora.

in rochester, the palestinian film festival, which had been going on for more than a decade, has been postponed due to pressure from the jewish federation and security concerns.

it’s morally repugnant, violent, unreal.

we can only understand what’s happening around us if we look at it thru the lens of racism and colonialism.

think india’s independence war in 1857 and how spectacular the punishment. a common punishment was to tie so-called mutineers to the mouth of a cannon and then fire the cannon.

think the mau mau rebellion (1952-1960) in kenya and its aftermath. the british colonizers used concentration camps, unspeakable torture, and rape as punishment.

think the algerian war of independence (1954-1962) which lasted 8 years, and in which the french butchered 1.5 million algerians, because how dare they.

closer to home, think of all the indian wars (as they were called) and how indigenous people were subjected to campaigns of terror while their land was being stolen.

as the hampton institute said:

oppressed people who fight back against their sadistic oppressors are ALWAYS demonized, dehumanized & labeled “terrorists/animals” by the oppressor nation. nat turner, mandela, assata shakur & the black liberation army, george jackson & the black guerilla family… the list is endless.

good old colonialism never left us. it’s always been in our face.

enough is enough.