The entire world can be free.
on Student Intifada and doing our parts
Hi friends, welcome. And buckle in!
College students are camping day and night on campus quads and lawns across the U.S. to protest Palestinian genocide and demand institutional divestment from Israel.
It’s exciting. It’s beautiful. It’s energy this movement hasn’t seen yet.
This Saturday, THE Dr. Angela Davis – freedom fighter, political activist, author, academic, and social movement leader – made an appearance at one of them in Colorado.
She spoke to the students and allies of the Palestine solidarity encampment at Auraria Campus (home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Community College of Denver) where snow was coming down and temps hovered around 32*F. Dr. Davis lit a fire with her words of encouragement.
The presence of this giant of peacemaking pit-stopping on these campuses means it matters. The aggressive reactions of police using force against these protestors also confirms these protests matter.
“This is the moment we have all been waiting for,” she says. Can’t you feel that energy? Isn’t that the perspective we need right now?
This catching fire.
I had FOMO watching it all go down on a screen. I could’ve been out there shivering, but I was warm under a blanket feeling guilty for a moment before I remembered that I am doing my part. Is it enough? We can probably only answer that in hindsight when we’ll know so much more about what our actions today might mean.
I’d woken up to an out-of-the-blue text telling me how much my writing and sharing has impacted someone’s understanding of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. It came as a surprise. I haven’t been posting anything lately and I’d been feeling some ways about that, if I’m honest.
Her message gave me a boost. It was enough inspiration to get back up to speed so I could get back to sharing. It led me to the video of Dr. Davis, which led me to making this post between other writing I am getting done today. This text reminded me that even a little ripple makes a difference. Now at least one more person is out there talking about Palestine at parties.
When I get discouraged, I have to remember all the ways I’m adding fuel to the fire. Sometimes it’s witnessing and journalism through travel. Sometimes it’s relationships and organizing. Sometimes it’s advocating and educating. Sometimes it’s speaking and making calls. Sometimes it’s shutting up and having the humility to learn something new.
For right now, it’s storytelling. It’s putting the words down. It’s not shying away from my own stories about Palestinian solidarity and travels to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Beirut and Amman. Writing a book is no small action, and making a main theme of what I’ve learned from Palestinians about faith, hospitality, justice, and liberation, is what I pray is meaningful action. Is this enough? Is it protest enough?
I don’t know but I’ve tried to tell the truth. It’s what my memoir is about.
I’m at home writing a book I hope is useful. But really, I hope the calls to action I make regarding Palestine are rendered irrelevant tomorrow, before it’s even published. (I may or may not put that in a book proposal but it’s my honest-to-God hope.) I don’t want to be saying these same words 50 years from now. May they become outdated. Immediately. May I be able to put in the foreword that it was all instead “for the record.”
Can I be real a second, for just a millisecond? There's something integral, permission-giving, and honest about admitting our failures and fragilities so we can all learn to do better. So we can remember how not one of us is alone, AND how not one of us is, alone, capable of handling or fixing these atrocities.
It was around February that compassion fatigue crept in. Horrible month after month of witnessing genocide, gratefully volunteering and working with organizations trying to make a dent in the needs, and dealing with challenges and grief in my personal life. It was too much to keep momentum and I shut down. It wasn't so much that I’d meant to look away, but I'd numbed out, so consuming wasn't serving anyone anymore. I know by now there are no awards for running myself into the ground. It's not helpful or noble. I wrestled with the shame of my complicity to the situation in Gaza, and my own inability to stay awake.
I had some damage control to do. I deleted Instagram. Then I sent a note out saying I was going to hunker down to finish my book. Then I stopped writing because paid freelance work and my mental health “got in the way”. I was drowning and not taking care of myself.
I’ve been despondent and distracted lately. Too “busy” to get out in the streets then kicking myself for not making the “right” priorities. Too “focused” on work and writing to keep up with the always-urgent news. I’ve been at home healing burnout ain’t no Gazans got time for.
I eventually came to remember staying human is the first essential part of resistance. The second is remembering this is the long-long game of peacemaking.
I look at Angela, an 80-year old Black woman born in the Jim Crow South. She embodies endurance and she points to the collective. If one person were the key to liberation, we’d have seen it by now. My goodness, maybe even through Davis herself.
The way we are going to see lasting freedom is through the collective. That’s what these college students are doing with mutual aid and educating themselves and us on the lawn. We do not make durable change by our own might and our individual contributions, though they matter. We keep in mind that we’re joining the chorus that’s been ringing out from the land of Palestine and the diaspora since before October 2023, and before 1967, and before 1948.
Dr. Davis said 50 years from now, we will look back on this narrative of history and being part of the breakthrough made possible today. She was speaking directly to those courageous protesters out in the cold, of course, but I believe there’s something for all of us who she calls “historical actors”, stepping up in sync in our unique ways. It’s all of us awake to this historical moment.
I take this seriously from someone in this fight for decades and decades, since the 1960’s. I came on the scene only 10 years ago, and even though I’ve had a keffiyeh in my profile pic since the jump, and even though I’ve got lots of zayt and za’atar in my cells, everything I’ve learned stems from the solidarity movement, of which she’s been integral for more than 60 years, or from Palestinians themselves.
Like her, I believe we will be the generation of action that frees Palestine – along with all those who came before – and still accompany us from beyond on marches and are in the room as we pen the most brave words we may ever write.
For the first time in 200 days, I saw a Palestinian in Gaza smile. Her braces and dimples lit up the whole world. Gazan journalist Bisan Owda, encouraged by these campus protests, brought me to tears. (Also her English which she learned to speak six months ago to educate and report to YOU AND ME.)
This gives me hope.
As do Dr. Angela Davis’ parting words at the student protest:
“If Palestine can be free, then the entire world can be free.”
Don’t give up hope. Engaging the movement is how we reignite each other’s flame when it dies down. This is about growing that collective wildfire.
Don’t look away from Gaza, from Rafah, from the West Bank. I know it hurts to look but you will pay either way. If we look away, we pay with our humanity now and our humiliation later and our conscience forever. We pay by staying on the wrong side of history that claims Palestinians are not worthy.
Don’t sit this one out. Go to an open encampment with extra gloves and warm food. Write and share your words. Learn the history. Listen to Palestinians. Read Angela Davis. Lift Palestinian and allied voices. Participate in strikes and divest, sanction, and boycotts. Fight with all the spiritual resources you can draw on.
Vote with your dollars. Tap in with an eSim for Gaza. Donate to a bail fund to help your local college kids and professors being arrested. Buy and wear a keffiyeh from a business that supports refugee women. Even if it’s just a text, send a spark out to someone who needs it.
The solidarity is felt. The pressure is working. Palestine will be free. I believe it.
We do our parts and the entire world can be free.
Until then,
Thank you for these words— I needed to hear them! ❤️🇵🇸
Thank you for reigniting the fire that I let simmer. Thank you for reminding me that even though I am just one small human, that I am part of a collective. Much love to you friend.