Free Palestine

what else is there to say?

in a sea of voices

tidal waves of information

it is difficult to know what to say

or maybe not even what to say

it’s just… do i really need to say it?

i’m not talking silence here,

i’m a writer after all.

stand up, rally support, speak out

we must

but do i really need to write an essay about it?

what do you, my ANTIREADER, need to read from me about this?

nothing.

you are watching it play out it real time

and if you’re not, how could you not be???

i grieve, i am often times finding it difficult to enjoy daily life, the ease with which i live, knowing what is happening across the globe. where generations and generations of people have been brutally denied their right to exist. genocides (yes, what an absurd word to need to use a plural for) are happening in countries like Palestine and Sudan and Congo all because a few people value money and power over human lives. they lust for natural resources to ravage in pursuit of a dollar. can you believe it? i know it’s the same ole story, but watching it happen before your eyes is something different. how is it that the world can sit by and let this happen? how have we allowed a few governments, a few people, to obtain such power that seemingly no one can put an end to genocide happening for all of the world to see? what are we going to do about this?

in the same vein on a smaller scale we have what is happening in Atlanta and how it is linked to the atrocities happening in Palestine. How they are destroying miles and miles of forest, altering ecosystems, so that some already wealthy CEOs and their puppet politicians can make a buck militarizing police forces to terrorize civilians. This continues despite an entire community fighting against it. How?

I think it’s imperative we ask these questions, so that we may come up with solutions.

but i also think the internet has ruined my brain. i have this perception that everything should happen immediately. that everyone should “get it” while yearning for the instant gratification that social media has conditioned me to believe i need. i am comforted thinking of ancestors fighting for decades, refusing to give up. willing to fight for life rather than to destroy it.

a small square on an instant gratification machine reminded of a quote from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, “Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”

on this same machine i watch genocide happen before my eyes.

the blood of Palestinians burns in my brain and i can’t sleep… neither can they and they haven’t been able to since 1948.

here’s a poem from a high school friend of mine, Chris Tyler.

and remember

finally

🇵🇸

In love and solidarity,

Lexi