Outside the Zone of the Given

Changes of scenery, brief updates + call for tattoo stories

🔴 Amplifying: This urgent fundraiser to help @kaljazeera’s family apply for asylum in the US after his aunt’s sons have been kidnapped by the IOF in Khan Younis. Any support means the world!

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I am currently out of town for an extended period, and it’s been difficult to be away from New York City and the people I love there. Last weekend, I watched video after video on my phone of friends and comrades being brutalized by the NYPD, heartsick that all I could do was send jail support funds from afar. This is just a small piece of the daily devastation we all feel watching the genocide in Palestine— the inhuman attacks on people seeking food and aid, the assault on Rafah hospital, the continued incursions in the West Bank. The morning routine is this: read Al-Jazeera, read the Resistance News Network and Samidoun Network updates on Telegram, catch up on any urgent Signal threads to know what’s happening at home. My sleep has been wildly inconsistent, punctuated by nightmares. Alongside all this, our international cohort is having important exchanges about gentrification, displacement, colonization, land back, and community building, dialogue I am so grateful to be a part of. It’s eye-opening to show people what is happening at New York actions and to have people from all parts of the world react with shock at the level of police violence, revealing how easy it is to become acclimated to the unbearable. My community in New York continues to inspire me, and though I am dearly homesick, I am proud to represent their spirit here while connecting with my culture, deepening a global perspective and solidarity.

Oaxaca highlights:

~A visit to Terreno Familiar, learning about brick making, wells, and escultura suave (soft sculpture) processes of making with artist Miguel Cintarobles and family.

~Learning about the water crisis in Oaxaca and the fires affecting surrounding Zapotec communities @comiteoaxacali

~A night of shorts on Mexican indigenous cultural preservation and sovereignty, projected on the residency wall and curated by Balam Toscano

~Browsing at La Jicara feminist bookstore

~Going to the march for el Dia de las Mujeres and seeing a feminist black bloc, armed with hammers and baseball bats, engaging in property destruction with the support of the crowd

Though my response time is slow while I’m away, I am booking tattoos for the second half of April and into May, so send over an email if you’d like to schedule something before beach season.

Currently seeking: stories about tattooing in alternative spaces— on freight trains, in nature, in ritual, etc. I’m writing about the tattoo exchange as a potential type of temporary autonomous zone, and am interested in tattoo sessions that felt co-created in response to a need by one or both people. Email me!

Reading:

• The New York War Crimes - “All the Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture”

• The Rise and Fall of Baby Boomer Zionism by Darryl Li

• Are We Indeed All Palestinians? by Mohammed El-Kurd

• The Shoah after Gaza by Pankaj Misrah

• Watching this video of parents and comrades of the disappeared students of Ayotzinapa break through the doors of the National Palace in Mexico, demanding a meeting with the governor- the masks and slingshots are so reminiscent of scenes of Palestinian resistance

• My dear friend and inspiring organizer Yves Tong Nguyen is co-leading a workshop, Foundations of Values Embodiment, alongside Yejin Lee. I learn so much from them and highly recommend taking the opportunity to join.

• Food Fight BK is making Iftar for asylum seekers during the month of Ramadan. Support their purchase and preparation of halal meals through Venmo or PayPal to @FoodFightBk.

🌷 Finally, an offering of a poem I wrote since being here~ an ode to transmasculine romance.