It’s been 10 months…
…since the start of the most fervent attempts to annihilate Palestinian people. The genocide didn’t start on October 7th, but it certainly ramped up with a rubber stamp from the US government not seen previously. And I can’t help but still be stunned at the number of people from all walks of life, from all coalitions, who are not just afraid to speak about this but support it. No matter how many supposed lines or boundaries are crossed.
Schools and hospitals have been obliterated, aid workers killed, and the press systematically assassinated, meanwhile there are multiple infectious disease outbreaks among those who are still surviving. There’s a polio epidemic, hepatitis A outbreak, an unknown skin infection that many suspect is impetigo or MRSA, not to mention the tens of thousands of people who cannot access their treatments for cancer & other chronic illnesses, insulin for diabetics, or maternal care and delivery. The scale of this atrocity probably won’t be revealed for decades.
And despite all of that – the barrage of images and videos of decapitated and dismembered children, men digging through rubble with bare hands and feet trying to rescue anyone, people wailing in grief over the loss of their loved ones – people still swear this makes sense. Worse still are my colleagues who know it’s wrong and won’t speak up. The “experts” and “leaders” of public health and medicine (and antiracism in health equity), the organizations we pay these exorbitant dues to, the people willing to lick the dirtiest boot to be quoted in a media piece…SILENT.
I worked with a coalition of scholars to author a statement in support of Palestine:
We circulated the statement throughout our networks, among our peers, our mentors – people who we looked up to in the formation of our activist-scholar ethic, and people we cited routinely. The reticence and wholesale refusal to sign on left most of us stunned. Most of the signatories on this letter are junior scholars and students – people without job security, people on the job market, and primarily people of color who already face an uphill battle within academia. Those with the most security (tenure, full professorship) and the most reputation for their scholarship on these topics, were the least likely to publicly take a stance.
Here we are 10 months later, the coverage has slowed, the attention diverted, and things have only worsened. Moreover, we’re in a full blown Covid-19 surge with few collective efforts to even encourage masking, these same people who used to be quoted in every op-ed they could jump on in 2020/2021, silent once more.
We’re in the midst of a mass disabling event cheering on the death and dismemberment of people abroad while simultaneously legislating away our ability to preventing our own destruction or speak out against the destruction of others.
And who will be responsible for enforcing these bans and monitoring your speech? The police.
It’s been 10 years…
since Mike Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, MO. His death sparked some of the most pronounced protesting since Rodney King was beaten, sparked the outgrowth of a movement to end police violence, revealed that there’s NO systematic monitoring of police violence, and truly started the national conversation on the practice, policy, and mindset changes that need to happen. It set the groundwork (alongside diligent work of organizers and activists) for being able to bring the concept of abolition to the forefront when George Floyd was murdered six short years later and the movement to end police brutality went worldwide.
Yet, here we are in 2024, and the number of police killings are only increasing year after year, body cameras are a bust, policies have been passed that increase the scope of their powers while reducing accountability, and more funding than ever is going to police departments regardless of which party is in power. President Biden has provided more federal law enforcement funding than any president past. Almost every major, democratically controlled, city gave their Covid relief funding (ARPA funds) to the local police departments instead of the public health infrastructure. Cop Cities are being proposed across the country, with most focused on #StopCopCity in Atlanta, largely against the will of the people.
Now, just three days before the 10 year anniversary of Mike Brown’s murder, Representative Cori Bush loses the primary for her congressional seat against Wesley Bell, an opportunist sponsored by AIPAC to drop out of the senate race against Josh Hawley and run against her. This is the same Wesley Bell who ran for election to county prosecutor in 2018 on the back of bringing justice to Brown’s family only to turn around and decline to prosecute Darren Wilson for murdering Mike. It would be far more beneficial to everyone for Bell to have beaten out Hawley, a man with unclear ties to the Jan 6 insurrection. But AIPAC and democratic party leaders would rather thwart progress, than make any strategic gains that would actually benefit the population.
The connections between US policing and Palestine are deep. In those first months of protests in Ferguson where police unleashed chemical warfare on civilians, Palestinians abroad tweeted support and tips for how to navigate exposure to tear gas. The tear gas canisters used on Ferguson protestors are also used by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) against Palestinians – they’re all manufactured in the US.
Palestine essentially functions as a testing site for the tools, technology, and perfection of state violence that ultimately end up in our neighborhoods. We pay for all of it – in blood, in fear, in heartache, and in endless cycles of deprivation as money for community resources is funneled to our carceral system.
US police and the IOF have had an ongoing training exchange since 9/11 under the guise of counterterrorism. Our tax dollars go to sending law enforcement to Israel to be trained on their latest techniques, surveillance technologies, and ways to violently handle people (with a little propagandizing thrown in for good measure). But those skills are rarely employed in the efforts to prevent terrorism in the way most civilians think about terrorism (i.e., someone attacking a building or water system or cyber system). It’s primarily wielded and weaponized against Black and brown communities and supported by policies that expand the definition of “terrorists” to include people exercising their rights. Everything US police learn over there comes back to haunt us stateside, but the hypersurveillance impacts us all.
I find it curious that so many Black people think what’s happening in Gaza is an “over there” problem and not ours, but I had to learn this information, so likely most of us just don’t know.
It’s our problem because the violence “over there” is replicated as violence against us right here, it’s our problem because there’s undue influence in our electoral politics, it’s our problem because it’s hastening climate change, it’s our problem because it’s one more step on the path of normalizing mass death – which we’re already eerily complacent with between mass shootings and the let it rip mentality with COVID.
But most of all, it’s our problem because Palestinians are people. And we have lost our humanity if we can justify summarily executing what may turn out to be hundreds of thousands of people.
…people become debased by being exploited, and they are exploited because they are seen as debased, dehumanized. When Other is not only dehumanized but has been successfully converted into an “it,” deprived of humanhood, the stage is set for any type of direct violence, which is then blamed on the victim.
like black butterflies 