I decided last month that it was best I starve myself of social media. I would no longer allow it to feed off my energy. I stepped away. I wanted to reevaluate my presence here and what this space meant for me. And if I was being honest with myself, I was losing myself. I no longer recognized who I was. My relationship with my family was suffering. I needed to step back. It was time.
And while gone, I learned of so many broken friendships, broken trust, broken connections…
Lines drawn. Pointed fingers. Angry words.
Violence that brought about more violence.
Is this what it’s like to live?
Is this what it’s like to be human?
Humanity knows how to hurt itself.
Guts itself and lets the soil beneath our feet fill with the blood and tears of our fellow man.
Absorbing into our skin, staining our insides…we consume trauma like it sustains us. And we don’t act as though this is a problem.
Like this is something we are supposed to be used to.
This is life, right?
We are…this is not…this is too much.
Too much pain.
Too much anger.
Too much hate.
Too…
much.
And I am living this in this space where I don’t even know if it’s okay to break from the things that are breaking me right now because there are people in this world who are going through literal hell. The hell I live feels insignificant to what they are going through.
Every single day, I feel immense amounts of guilt for the meltdowns I have. For the tears I cry over how my body used to feel when it held no pain. For the mind I have that I have to fight with every single day when I feel my heart is too heavy to continue on.
I can’t feel my way through my own hurt because the world is hurting itself.
However, I think I have sat with my thoughts for long enough.
Listening. And being silent.
I think many equate listening with silence. Though both require not lending your voice, one feels like an active and deliberate decision to choose to not enter the conversation, or to provide your voice for a cause and the other is choosing to hold your voice until you feel you have enough information to add value. Or at the very least, determine where it is that you stand.
The “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, courtesy of western media, was how I was first introduced to how bad it was. And even a decade later they were still claiming “conflict”. As if this were a squabble between two coworkers that were evenly matched in skills and production but just couldn’t see eye to eye on what color sharpie to use for the presentation.
Enter the world of social media where ppl think not saying something is akin to not caring and therefore, not doing. You ain’t doing shit cause you ain’t talking about it on social media. Because so much of our lives play out within the grids of Instagram, the timelines of Facebook, the short words on X, and video clips of TikTok, that should there not be a mention of genocide or the condemnation of Hamas…you simply do not care.
Are there those who are choosing to remain silent, even when knowing what is going on, knowing where they stand, knowing the influence they have in the community? Yes, there absolutely are. I can’t speak to their motivations for doing so. But there are.
In all honestly, the climate is fucking hostile…couple that with how many just don’t know what to fucking say plus they can’t actually make sense of what’s going on and bam, you got a bunch of ppl choosing to not offer their voice.
But for those same reasons you have many choosing to take the time to listen. They are trying to learn what they can, and let me tell you, as someone who dropped a video recently about using the Soda Stream, the response of those who wanted to help educate me was overwhelming. And I appreciated it. But I will also tell you that what was provided to me was in opposition to one another and it all looked credible as hell at first glance, second glance, 50th glance.
If you have time to catch the comment section of those who have decided to give their voice for a Free Palestine, even the comments are riddled with those who feel something isn’t right and they provide their own sources.
Media is fucking powerful. It’s able to control what we have access to and in what manner. And we are left to sift through it all to find what is proper and what is true. We all will sit in spaces that confirm what we already feel to be accurate based on our own beliefs, values, histories, contexts, etc. Occasionally, we will venture out and sit in spaces that provide information that is opposite of what we know to be true and sometimes, this information is presented in an unbiased way.
There’s a lot of information out there. And a lot of misinformation that looks like solid, verifiable information. I spent twenty long ass minutes of my life (that I cannot get back) watching an ad for removing stuck poop, created by this top NYC GI doctor. This was an incredibly convincing ass ad, y’all. Complete with cartoon graphics, studies, the life story of the doctor, their credentials, how they solved this woman’s 40 year bout with constipation, how diarrhea is actually a form of constipation, “fiber doesn’t help clear your intestines, it just produces bulky poop”…it felt like a science class with engaging images and animations. I’m like, “damn I want to try this shit.”
I don’t even know if I need this, but the ad was so convincing. But they didn’t really have a way for you to order, I am assuming you had to watch forty more minutes of that video. I already watched like twenty. I looked it up online and there are so many reviews that are incredibly negative. I don’t know if this product is a scam. I got sucked in cause it was on IG and talked about “this 7 second method would get you regular…” *cue the poop animations* I was thinking it was some extra stuff to this “method,” which just happens to be a pill that appears to be unlike other probiotic supplements on the market.
I say all this to say, my ass probably would have been duped. By shiny packaging, ads that appealed to every single one of my senses, and just enough science and studies to legitimize what they were selling. All of this to say that there’s some sources out there that put out articles, links, videos, etc. that look like the real deal, but in actuality can be quite shit.
And we gotta sift through all of that.
Many are just fucking lost to the history. Though they are still listening. And they don’t want to say the wrong thing. But they also don’t want to share the wrong things either. Cause, like I said the climate is hostile. Y’all, we have mom bloggers from the midwest who share nothing but half from scratch baked goods, toddler hacks, and Target store runs who make one post about a free Palestine and she is labeled antisemitic. This happens to so many people to the point that many have to come out with explanation after explanation of how wanting Palestinians to live openly and freely without fear does not mean they want Jewish to suffer in their place.
Back to this midwestern mom blogger…who is now considered antisemitic, who is told that she should stick to baking and managing tantrums…everybody ain’t built Ford tough. People aren’t born brave. And with courage. Though this person stood up for something but wasn’t equipped to handle the backlash she received. Others see this and they perform a cost-benefit analysis to doing the same thing. Many choose to not speak up.
Having said that, HAVING WROTE ALL OF THAT…even if we are a bit lost on the history. Even if the media does it’s best to confuse us. Even if social media throws so many links and persuasive words and informative graphics at us. We should still be able to understand, without their aid, but our own eyes and comprehension, that this is no war. And it is heavily weighted to one side. And those on the other are incurring devastating consequences of not being evenly matched with the other. Their loss of life is greater. Their circumstances are more dire. They control so little compared to the other side and they are not backed by the world’s superpowers. Take that, and go back decades…Palestinians have been unevenly matched for quite some time.
So, even if you are unsure of what is going on. Even if you are weak in the knees with fear for saying the wrong thing. You are human. Just as they are. And you inhabit this world. Just as they do. You can see that this isn’t a fair “fight.”
Focus on that, call for a ceasefire. I ain’t gonna tell you to post your efforts on social media. I won’t blast you nor shame you for not doing so. But do make calls to your legislators. Write letters. And take the time to educate yourself. I know there’s a lot out there and it can get confusing, but it’s worth the effort. Education is liberatory.
My own (quiet) voice.
I am dealing with shit. And the break helped. But I am still in the thick of it. I can’t tell up from down most days, and I didn’t know how useful I would be offering my voice. I can barely share what it is that I am going through.
However, the more I stay silent in my own pain and that of others…the more I maintain the systems of oppression that bind others to a life of inconceivable hardship. This ain’t deliberate, but my life is in such a way that there are many days that I don’t know up from down. I'm just…trying.
But, here I am…trying to press pause on the things I am going through to breathe life into a position that many are looking for me to share. I don’t even want to get into how the demands for BIPoC to speak up are centered in settler ideology.
But I wondered if this was something I needed to address.
And then I wondered what my grandma would say knowing that I even fixed this head of mine to wonder about speaking out…and speaking up.
There’s no way I honor her memory and the lessons she’s taught me with sealed lips.
I stand on the shoulders of giants and I deliberately choose to keep a silent tongue? Though I have kept busy fingers and quick feet. I have called my legislators, I have called for them to press for a ceasefire. I have supported organizations that are doing their best to stop the bloodshed. I have just chosen to not lay it out all over social media. If you have been following me for some time there, you would know the hell I catch for saying that we shouldn’t put all of our energy into social media. We have to branch out. I have no issue with social media activism, I take issue when it stops there. I am disabled and that limits me in what I can do. But I do what I can from my seat. And I do what I can from my house. From making sure those with their boots to the ground have food and water to sustain them, to making phone calls and writing emails to legislators, to using my pen to spread messages that inspire others to act. I do my part.
I will grow to an age where I will sit with the regrets of my life, all of them…and this moment will not be one of them.
Palestinians should be free.
How could I, blood of those whose land was stripped from their feet and language ripped from their tongue, those who built up stolen land, living with the same traumas my grandma felt, her mama felt, her grandmama felt, etc. and feel anything other than, Palestinians should be free?
And so many will tell you that it’s complicated. And it is. But for me, it’s not that it’s complicated in an “all sides are wrong,” “all lives matter,” “two wrongs don’t make a right,” etc. kind of way.
It’s complicated in expanding on, “Palestinians should be free.”
It’s complicated in that we have to live lives peripheral to whiteness in such a way that it is demanded of us that we explain time and time again that to feel one should be free doesn’t mean that the other should not be. Or that the other should be harmed.
That’s that colonial thinking. Those binary, closed minded thoughts. If you are for something, you are automatically against the opposite? Nah. Palestinians should be free because we should ALL be free. People should be free.
I am a Black disabled woman whose fight for autonomy is etched within my hue, sealed within these bones…there’s no part of me that would feel comfortable advocating for anything other than the freedom of others.
I grew up in the American south, this place that has always been seen as culturally backwards. Then, and now. I spent my youth sitting in the kitchens of my grandmothers, inhaling their lessons.
This skin, these bones, carry the history of a people that doesn’t allow for neutrality.
It should not allow for neutrality.
Education is liberatory.
I know I spent the first half of this piece talking about how much misinformation is out there and how confusing it can be. And I stand by that. But you still try to educate yourself.
I haven’t spent much time on social media. I haven’t spent much time watching the news. But what little time I spare, I do absorb the coverage. I do visit the accounts and links of those far more knowledgeable than me. I listen to the stories of those who are able to articulate the nuances of their existence. An existence apart from mine. We share similarities, but those differences are the pocket I sit within.
I yearn to know more, because education is liberatory. It serves as a path to freedom. The free mind is an open mind. It is possible to learn in social media spaces. You just have to be more mindful of who you choose to learn from. Everyone is not of equal value there. And it is hard as fuck to know where to go, but I guess a good rule of thumb for me is to seek guidance from those who live the lives that are directly impacted. You want to sit in those spaces, you want to visit the sites they share and watch the news that they do. You’ll want to hear their stories.
What’s your favorite social media accounts doing?
Guess it just depends on how your timelines are set up. For myself, the ones that stand out the most are those that are either riding this line of neutrality, or positing that to stand with Palestine is to automatically be against Israel. Both trend towards the maintenance of a status quo that is not open to the inclusion of Black and Brown bodies. There are not many spaces that will challenge supremacist systems while still being inclusive for all stories, histories, and contexts. And those are the spaces you want to be in.
I stumbled across the comments on articles shared, posts sent to me, screenshots of interactions friends have had with others and most leaned into this binary that undergirds Western racist ideologies. That whole “if you stand with Palestine, you are anti-Israel,” “you must be okay with children dying…” bit. This isn’t indicative of an open mind. Critical thinking and discourse doesn’t occur here. Not like this.
We don’t learn in harsh and abrasive environments.
I once felt bound by the perspectives I felt I was supposed to have. And many influencers, advocates, etc. are in this space right now. They are at a crossroads. They can listen and learn, then speak up; they can choose to not listen at all, therefore not learning at all, and thus remain silent; they can listen, learn, and make the decision to choose to stay silent.
Some are taking the time to educate themselves. I know several of them. But I am surrounded by those who are involved deeply with social justice work. Their reaction and responses hit different than those who aren’t. Those folks are getting smacked hard when they choose to sit, listen, and learn. The more they learn, the more they feel on the outside of where they used to be. And of those who actually share their thoughts, those things they learn, they begin to feel disconnected from their audience. (See midwestern mom blogger). They might even feel less connected to those around them. Because they are beginning to feel what it is like to no longer receive the spoils of conformity. That audience is beginning to shift for them. They see their audience just as differently as their audience begins to see them.
And they have another choice to make. To dip into silence, or to continue to speak up. But I guarantee you that other advocates, bloggers, influencers, etc. are watching this unfold. They are taking their own notes. They run cost benefit analyses to see if it is even worth speaking about.
It is. But they might not see it that way. And I can’t tell folks that the loss they will have ain’t nothing. That they was better off without all of that noise. What they lose when they speak up, will hurt. Like Hell.
There’s loss in this fight. There’s loss in liberation work. You are going to sacrifice. Period.
Palestinians should be free.
And in their freedom, Israelis are free as well. Palestinian children should be free. And in their freedom, Israeli children are free as well. You free the most oppressed in our world, you free us all.
They deserve to know freedom. This isn’t a statement that claims that Israelis deserve to know oppression. Nor does it mean they deserve to die. Or that they deserve to suffer.
Sometimes, we can have issues with complete sentences. We think they mean more than what they do. “Palestinians should be free” is a complete sentence.
The loss of innocent life weighs heavy on my spirit, no matter who they are. No matter where they are from. I can mourn the lives of those taken from this Earth before their time at the hands of Hamas, and shed tears for the collective grief of a people who have been fighting for so long while the world passes them by. This is playing out in our faces, in real time. The violence they have been screaming for us to hear, for us to see, for us to know…you are seeing it firsthand.
We shouldn’t need to see the cuts to know that they bleed. We shouldn’t need to see parents weeping for their lost children. We shouldn’t need to see children crying for their parents. Buried under rubble. Lost to bombs and other weapons of war.
This didn’t just happen. We didn’t just stumble into a “conflict.” This has been the systematic erasure of a people in front of a world that stood by.
I carry blood that won’t allow me to stay silent on this. There are many who follow me today who will not follow me tomorrow. There are many advocates online who follow Black and Brown bodies claiming to learn in our spaces and remain quiet. And if they choose to speak, they provide us with a position that lands them firmly in the middle.
Palestinians have been cut off further and further from their land, themselves, and the world. They have been denied water, food, electricity, cut off from humanitarian aid…
And yet to feel this way, to spend weeks on a post only to keep coming back to it to make sure I am using the right words and ensuring that my thoughts are articulated well so there is no confusion as to what it is I am writing, will still be met by those who are hellbent on deliberately twisting my thoughts.
I watched clips of Van Jones at a March for Israel protest/rally. He used the argument that Jews walked side by side with us during the civil rights movement and we owe it to them to do them same.
However, today many Jewish persons are walking side by side with Black folk and other BIPOC for Palestinian liberation. I watched so many Jews pack the halls of their state buildings in support of both a ceasefire and a free Palestine.
Also, the fight against oppression shouldn’t be transactional. What you do for me, I will do for you? Should not work that way. You stand up for people and causes because it is the right thing to do with no expectations in return.
I want to acknowledge the Israeli lives lost. They should never be forgotten, and most importantly, THEY SHOULD BE HERE. Right now. Today. We can no longer afford to live in a world where this is okay.
Both Van and I pull from the lessons of our youth and our history to guide us to where we are now. Only, I can’t turn my back on those whose lives are disproportionately impacted by violence and oppressive conditions. That’s too much like us for me to ignore. I find it interesting that he is seemingly able to do so.
They are not in the position to do this to another. This is being done to them. And has been, for several decades. Much of what has happened to them has occurred under the radar, and much of it has occurred right in our face.
We need a ceasefire.