Photo by Tanya Habjouqa
News and updates at the bottom of this newsletter 🧡
While marching to demand a ceasefire in midtown Manhattan a few weeks ago, I had a deep, embodied memory, a type of deja vu: We’ve been here so many times before.
Over the summer, after listening back to an oral history I conducted with an artist who was part of the labor contingency organizing leading up to the 1999 Seattle WTO shutdown, also known as the Battle for Seattle, I watched This is What Democracy Looks Like, a documentary detailing the events. I was incredibly moved by a number of things about the film: protesters chanting “Bravery! Bravery! Bravery!” to steel one another against the onslaught of police violence; the cross-coalitional, multinational contingency of people understanding profoundly that globalization shapes every aspect of our lives and that we can only resist it together; the solidarity expressed between older union workers and younger direct action formations.
[05:34:18.04] “I think I’ve had kind of a few times where I felt that I experienced utopia or– heaven on earth or– depending what your language for describing that is… hope– they were times of hope, basically. And I can still remember those, so I still have hope somewhere deep in me because of those experiences, I would say. And it doesn’t take much to rekindle that.” -Brad Menninga, 2022 oral history interview
In Washington, DC for the historic march on November 4th, I thought back to this film as I listened to a program of speakers organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement. Black activists, Indigenous leaders, Orthodox Jews, Filipinx and Korean anti-imperialism organizers, and many more took the stage to express their support for an immediate ceasefire and a Free Palestine. The air was thick with grief, anger, wisdom, fear, and hope. For hours, we stood and listened to this wide array of speakers detail the interwoven network of both oppressions and resistances. The web, as Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo names it.
Hop Hopkins in This is What Democracy Looks Like, 1999
I have always looked to past social movements to better ground myself in the present and future. We know what is happening in response to Cop City resistance and what will likely happen in retaliation for pro-Palestine actions; they are the same things that happened in response to direct action environmentalism in the late 90s and early 2000s (new legal designations of “ecoterrorism” created to enact draconian sentencing as in the SHAC 7 case), the application of RICO charges (Cop City protestors are currently facing these for things as innocuous as donating to bail funds), and severe federal sentencing against protestors during the George Floyd protests of summer 2020.
I’m reminded of these risks as we flood our representatives with calls and faxes demanding a ceasefire, as this was one of the tactics cited in bringing charges against the SHAC 7, an example of early days targeted internet campaigning.
All of the activity alleged against the defendants is protected by the First Amendment: publishing a website, advocating lawful and unlawful protest activity, organizing and attending protests, contacting companies by phone and mail, etc. All defendants were convicted and sentenced to four to six years in federal prison. -Center for Constitutional Rights report
What feels different to me in the midst of the massive global solidarity movement for ceasefire and Palestinian liberation is that everyone is well aware of these risks. It is no secret that American police surveil us with drones and tear gas demonstrators and kill people; they have been doing it for decades. We know that anything we do to challenge state power can be characterized as a crime. We see people losing their jobs, professional opportunities, and being doxxed.
Despite this, I am deeply inspired by the persistence I see. Each day we wake up to worse and worse news– rising death tolls, one more day without clean water access in Gaza, another journalist murdered. The images that reach us, most often from journalists working through the unthinkable to bear witness, are so horrific that words fail to describe them. But I also see news of Indigenous activists in boats blocking ships carrying weapons to Israel, of Democratic conventions shut down by protestors demanding a ceasefire, and of Bay Area activists throwing their car keys into the bay and chaining themselves together on the bridge to shut down traffic. I have never before experienced such a widespread naming and recognition of imperialism and colonialism. Friends of mine for whom political engagement is newer are bringing their fresh energy and dedication to organizing, throwing themselves deeply into learning and showing up. Even skincare influencers are writing about preventing and recovering from pepper spray exposure at protests.
I recorded this on my phone as a voice memo and cry every time I listen to it. In this scene of the documentary, protesters have been taken to the local jail en masse, and 6,000 supporters have surrounded the jail, staging a sit-in to demand their comrades receive legal representation. The detainees receive word through their lawyers that people across the world are protesting for their release. Local unions have threatened to shut down the ports of Seattle if arrestees are not released.
Tom Hayden of the Chicago 7 addresses the crowd gathered, says the following words, echoed beautifully by the people’s mic: (1:04:13)
I never thought
The time would come
That a new generation of activists
Would part the waters
The waters in which your idealism is supposed to be drowned
And come to the surface
Smiling
Fighting
Laughing
Dancing
Marching
Committing civil disobedience
Renewing American democracy
Concretely
Expressing solidarity
Not only in our US states
But in the far corners of the earth
Beyond the eye of the media
You have slowed the machinery of destruction down. But it can’t be about slowing the rate of destruction. It has to be about speeding the rate of creation. Of a new world, a better place.
What can we do today toward both? Toward ceasefire now, right now, stopping the machinery, but also toward creation?
A friend of mine hosted a film screening this past week, showing Jerusalem, Flower of All Cities by Hani Jawharieh, alongside a tribute film made in his honor after his death, and Palestine in the Eye. I’ve felt conflicted, in moments, about employing poetics and art to highlight Palestinian beauty and culture, trying to understand the nuanced ways people labor towards a recognition of their full-throated humanity and resistance while simultaneously refusing to aestheticize their own suffering. The film program had me thinking in new and inspired ways about what the role of an artist is in social change, and how investment and proximity produce work that functions, importantly, beyond mere documentation.
Poet Mosab Abu Toha was kidnapped by the IDF while fleeing Gaza with his family. I am praying for his safety, reading and rereading his words: The Agony of Waiting for a Ceasefire That Never Comes
Important statement from Queers in Palestine
One Hour of Action — If you’re not sure where to direct energy. Changes daily
Listening today: Spiral Times: Solidarity Forever “This special show will offer a gentle reflection space and a holding zone for strength-gathering, interspersed with urgent voices who have been on the frontlines of actions of many kinds this past month, here in Berlin and beyond, stepping up even when all around us silence reigns and cowardice is handsomely rewarded.”
Thursday November 30th: Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit
Send e-sims to Gaza to enable continued internet access
Fax your representatives: faxzero.com
SHUT IT DOWN FOR PALESTINE NOVEMBER 24TH
🌼 NEWS 🌼
LOS ANGELES: I’m coming back for another guest spot at El Clasico! I’m booking for the first week of December, with priority given to existing clients and people who have reached out in the past. Please email again so we can get you to the top of the list.
I have short-notice openings before the end of the month on Saturday the 25th and Monday the 27th at 11am. Email if you’d like to claim one! I am also booking for December, your idea or mine.
I’ll be showing new work with Allouche Benias alongside Benjamin Kress at UNTITLED during Miami Art Fair Week in early December.
I’m in a group show that opened this week at Fragment Gallery in Manhattan:
“Following the Body” features works by Felipe Baeza, Antonius-Tin Bui, Debra Cartwright, Carlos Casuso, Kevin Claiborne, Giulia Crețulescu, Dagnini, Nicolo Gentile, Xandra Ibarra, Hamed Maiye, Carly Mandel, and Tamara Santibañez. The show examines how artists express and challenge the notion of the body as politics.
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