How To Remain Engaged, Hopeful, and Angry in the Face of Global Horrors
Are you about that revolutionary life or nah?
Nobody in the world, nobody in history has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who were oppressing them. - Assata Shakur, “Assata: An Autobiography”
The process of becoming an ally requires a lot of emotional investment, and far too often the heavy lifting of that emotional labor is done by the marginalized, not by the privileged. But part of the journey from being a would-be ally to becoming an ally to actually becoming an accomplice is ANGER. [...] I would argue that despite narratives that present the anger of Black women as dangerous, that render being angry in public a reason to tune out the voices of marginalized people, it is that anger and the expressing of it that saves communities.” - Mikki Kendall, “Hood Feminism”
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” - Frederick Douglass, from an 1857 speech
We are living in a crucial historical moment written in blood, fomenting great upheaval. Climate collapse; the growing cost of living; the transphobia, misogyny, homophobia and various forms of racism reaching a fever pitch in the halls of government and daily life in America; a rise in Islamaphobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that is proving this country didn’t learn shit post-9/11 and instead is cheerfully returning to the cruelty of that time; the various genocides happening globally including but definitely not limited to the horrors happening upon the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. As a black woman living in the not-quite United States of America, I am hyper-aware that I am living in the heart of the empire. A dying empire that remains even more dangerous because of its rot and crackling beginnings of its eventual collapse. The most militarized and powerful empire this world has ever seen. My tax dollars aren’t going toward crafting universal healthcare or student debt relief or providing the homeless with a hearth of their own. It is going toward genocide. A genocide that anyone with a moral spine and a soul should be loudly and viciously fighting against.
It is currently Native American Heritage Month. Critics and cinephiles are lavishing praise or at the very least careful attention on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a film I have many issues with and am currently writing about. As we mourn the violent histories of America’s indigenous people, it is important we don’t ignore the violent present. You must face the massacres happening now, funded by your tax dollars and fucking do something about it. Blow up the phones and fax machines of your representatives to demand an end to the funding and support of the Palestinian genocide. Connect to those in your community who are about that life and aid those around you in the process. Protest. I went to a protest a few weeks ago with my partner. Hearing a diverse array of speakers and seeing the varied dynamics of those attending the protest-march not only lifted my spirits but was a reminder that all oppression is interconnected. We must do all within our power as citizens and human beings to free Palestine so it doesn’t become another empty land acknowledgement years from now. We have a moral obligation as human beings to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I read today on Mondoweiss that about 90 Israeli doctors have signed a letter calling for the bombing of hospitals in Gaza. The article states, “Only last week, dozens of prominent Israeli rabbis had already assured Israeli leaders that they have a right to bomb al-Shifa’ hospital in Gaza, and this week’s letter signed by “Doctors for the Rights of IDF Soldiers” urges the bombing of any and every hospital in Gaza.
The letter states, in no uncertain terms, that due to suspicion of “terrorist activity,” the hospitals are “a legitimate target for annihilation.” They claim that “ambulances that are evacuating patients to the south in order to be treated elsewhere are at their disposal.” It does not mention that these ambulances, too, are being bombed by Israel, or that the south is also being mercilessly pummeled.”
Such news articles are heartbreaking, infuriating, and also incredibly clarifying about my politics and what I value. Bearing witness to the bodies upon bodies of ruthlessly murdered men, women, children, elders in Gaza and the wailing tears of those that remain behind to grieve reminds me what the fuck this is about. Allyship fatigue — what many white and even non-black people were saying they were dealing with in 2020 as the uprisings sparked in part by the state-sanctioned murder of George Floyd popped off — is not something I ever have or will experience. That’s some white supremacist ass thinking. And I think a lot of this comes down to whiteness’s death drive and its relationship to anger.
The liberal imagination hates anger. Especially the liberals of the white variety. They’re mystified, even offended, by anger, particularly the anger of the oppressed. I had a falling out with a friend over Palestine. “Falling out” sounds too passive. He’s a white Jewish man living in a big coastal city whose Instagram stories first covertly then undeniably veered into Zionism. When he noticed I unfollowed him and was siding with a friend on another albeit somewhat interconnected matter he was taken aback. He asked that we “talk as human beings” and “put politics aside”. We had a conversation and I was firm about my support of Palestine. But I was also firm in the fact that I can’t sever my radical black feminist politics from any aspect of my life. My politics of care and liberation inform everything about me. How and why I write. Who I support. Who I fuck with in my personal life. I tried to impress upon him that all struggles are interconnected. And if you can dehumanize the Palestinians — while the first words out of your mouth during our conversation was to condemn Hamas playing that white liberal both sides are struggling bullshit — you will not be on the side of black people during our own revolutions either.
I came across a tweet thread (I am no longer, blessedly, on Twitter but screenshots filter through the social media platforms I am on) by writer Aaron Bady that made me raise my eyebrow. It’s a tweet thread that exemplifies the limits of empathy and imagination of white people when it comes to revolution. Even amongst the white people who are ostensibly on “my” side when it comes to these matters. Screenshot below.
I want to highlight the second tweet in particular where Bady writes, “Personally, I think the idea that anything “justifies violence” is a basic category error; violence is, definitionally, unjust. It sometimes be the least-bad, least cursed choice on offer but justice is the absence of violence, not the correct application of it.” I’m going to keep it buck. Not all violence is created equal. To strip the context from marginalized peoples use of violence is at the very least narrow minded, intellectually dishonest, and decontextualized to a troubling degree. If the Haitian Revolution was happening today many people would be on the side of France and would be denouncing the violence of the enslaved Africans fighting for their autonomy and the autonomy of their generations of kin to come. Anger and often violence is a necessary tool of the oppressed to snatch their freedom away from the chilling grip of those that oppress us. I will never forget in this moment the people who have gleefully cheered on genocide and rendered themselves the greatest of victims. (Amy Schumer, I am looking at your always been racist as fuck ass.) I will also never forget the people who have remained silent. Especially fellow creatives in the industries I inhabit. Think about Hollywood power agent Maha Dakhil — who represents people like Natalie Portman, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Cruise, who was forced to step down from a CAA board because she reposted the rather tame remark from a Free Palestine profile on Insta, “You’re currently learning who supports genocide.” None of the high profile clients I’ve mentioned spoke in support of Dakhil and against the Palestinian genocide. And this is an industry that thinks of itself as just and liberal and on the right side of history? Looking at this The Hollywood Reporter hit piece about Dakhil demonstrates that is utter bullshit.
James Baldwin once stated, “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” How can you consider yourself an artist of any merit if you are not meeting this present moment with honesty, conviction, and clarity? Y’all clearly didn’t do the readings you said you did in 2020 even as you quote black radical thinkers out of context to look like you give a fuck. Zeba Blay in her latest Carefree Black Girl newsletter about Palestine and this present moment, which is a worthwhile read, posed a series of “ever-evolving, ever-growing [...] existential questions that require definitive answers.” I won’t list all fourteen. I think it is important to read them in the context of her full piece. But I want to leave y’all with a few of them because they are vital:
Who are you? Who are you, really? Are you actually who you say you are? When no one is watching? If your sense of comfort or safety comes at the expense of someone else’s, are you truly comfortable? Are you truly safe?
What gifts can you bring to revolution?
What function does fear play in your life? What are you afraid of?
Is your fear bigger than your faith? Are you committed to life (not simply your own, or the lives of people you love, but to life as a whole, as an entity in and of itself)?
It is important that all of us work toward revolution. A better world isn’t only possible, it is necessary for the survival of our species. But it is particularly imperative for writers and artists, such as myself, to speak the truth about this current historical moment, to remain hopeful and against the apathy that despair can breed. I don’t entertain hopelessness and despair. I am too angry for that. Anger always returns me to my true self and what I deeply value. I encourage you all to tap into your personal and collective anger in order to create the world we need and deserve to live in. One where we all have our necessities and capture joy consistently not in fleeting moments where we must numb ourselves to the present violences. Anger is vital for survival, for growth, and for the transformative revolutions necessary to remake the world into something more beautiful, more true.
More writing coming soon on this newsletter. I will be writing about what anime I’ve been watching as well as recommendations of films for this Noirvember. As always, you can keep up with my writing at my job — New York Magazine/Vulture — here. I recently wrote a piece that I’m very proud of about back-acting in the sensual Ira Sachs masterwork Passages. And I have several pieces dropping through the rest of the year I am very excited to see out in the world. As always if you enjoy my writing and this piece please consider sending a lil donation my way! Until next time…
Thought about this essay so much last night watching Rustin which I think is a powerful film that can show the ways in which anger can galvanize and simultaneously be marginalized within a movement. Thank you as always for your writing.
From The River To The Sea.