Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 48: Palestine & the words I'm reaching for — Part 2

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48: Palestine & the words I'm reaching for — Part 2 · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  Hello, soul sibling, hello sunshine, hello divine and magical being. Welcome, welcome back to the soul salon, a space for the dreamers, for the feelers, for the healers, for the people who see beyond the current paradigm into who we could be and how we could be.
• 0:20
  I am very excited to be back with you for part two of this mini series on the words that I am reaching for in this moment and it's not purely this moment but it is centuries of colonial violence and decades of Israeli violence against Palestinians.
• 0:38
  So we want to amplify the work of the incredible abolitionist scientist named Dr Ayesha Khan. And if you are here, I really recommend that you listen to part one first because that's where we lay the foundation of three of the main lessons that I am taking and receiving from their work at this time.
• 1:01
  I want to again acknowledge there are so many more lessons to learn and their sub-stack is just an incredibly rich and precious and beautiful resource that I highly recommend and that is in these show notes all the things you need to subscribe to their sub-stack as well as follow them on Instagram at the work scientist.
• 1:21
  And just stay in touch because these are going to be words you reach for. I'm telling you because they're collectivist thinking, they're abolitionist thinking, they're thinking on community and how we can really build stronger community.
• 1:33
  It's just so necessary and of course they're thinking and they're writing on Palestine and on genocide and on genocide against black and brown people in general and how we can and how we are responding.
• 1:46
  So I just want to amplify that again on my word in the last episode I said the word amplify so many times.
• 1:51
  And so we are here to uplift their words, their work and we are doing three takeaways and in the first episode we did the first takeaway which was the dehumanization of Palestinian men and boys.
• 2:03
  In the narrative around who deserves our compassion, our empathy when we think of Israeli violence against Palestinians, genocide, bombings, raids, destruction of homes, forced evictions, all of these deeply painful traumas, all the deep trauma that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians.
• 2:22
  The genocide, the bombing, the forced removals, the destruction of homes, the tearing apart of families, the open air prisons, the checkpoints, all these different forms of violence.
• 2:34
  We are turning to these words and hopefully you are turning to other people's words as well that can help offer something in this time.
• 2:42
  So I want to go to the second and third lesson in today's episode and the second lesson is this idea of peaceful protest and the third is going to be the idea of hope.
• 2:54
  Okay, so let's talk about peaceful protest. The essay that this focuses on is called effective activism will never be peaceful and we should stop using that word.
• 3:06
  And I also think it's important to note, and I'm sure you've heard these words spoken before, once people get to a protest that others deemed violent or destructive, they've tried every other form of protest.
• 3:19
  They've written the petitions, they've asked nicely, but again, you can't ask nicely a state that's literally bombing and obliterating you to stop killing you, like they don't see your humanity, so they will not react or respond to you writing a petition to them or peacefully marching.
• 3:36
  And also, who decides what a peaceful protest is and isn't when the state is so violently repressive towards any form of protest that goes against what the police are there to do, which is really to protect property and to protect the wealthy in the society and whiteness and so on.
• 3:55
  So it is something that sounds so radical and so like, oh, my word, are you uplifting violence or you support violence? And it's like, the status quo is violent. You, the person saying this just aren't affected by that violence. So to you, the status quo is tolerable because of all the privileges that you have in the society.
• 4:12
  So for you, it's like, oh no, they're disrupting the state of normal, the status quo. And it's like, the status quo is disruptive, the status quo is inhumane, the status quo is catastrophic, and it's only someone who is resting on their own privileges who can say, oh no, you're disrupting things as normal, business as usual.
• 4:31
  So I think that's so important, like the part of us that wants to say, oh, you shouldn't be disrupting the peace is the same part. It's like the cop inside of you that wants to protect law and order. But when we think of ecocide and genocide and the genocide against Palestinians, Congolese people, all the forms of violence that people in the world are facing at the hands of the state, at the hands of capitalism, at the hands of white supremacy and colonialism and imperialism and such things, the status quo is intolerable.
• 5:00
  And so that's what this point number two really speaks about. And I know it can unsettle people, but we have to think about that idea of settled, feeling settled versus feeling unsettled. And I think of the Israeli settlers, right? We think of feeling settled as a good thing, but should we feel settled in a world like this? It's unsettling only to people who feel settled in how things are. That's what I feel like this essay really highlights.
• 5:24
  And so I want to read some quotes to you from this essay. Thank you so much Ayesha for your work. Thank you so much for your words. Thank you so much for offering something so deeply nourishing to our political and social and liberatory education. We thank you. We thank you. Okay, now let me read.
• 6:17
  What does peace mean exactly? I want someone to define, describe, explain it to me in excruciating detail.
• 7:02
  I have never understood the word peace, just like I have never understood the word nonviolence.
• 7:14
  But I do know that these terms are subjective and most people use the definitions that were established by capitalist and colonial systems and states.
• 7:30
  Now that is so interesting. The definition we have for peace and for nonviolence, who taught it to us? Who told you, oh, that's what a nonviolent protest looks like.
• 7:42
  Who defined nonviolence for you? For me.
• 7:48
  And I love what they're saying because the ability to define, and I always say why did the colonizers insist on us speaking their languages, insist from South Africa to Brazil to Nigeria to Mexico to Australia? Why did they insist you will speak this language?
• 8:19
  As a means of control and dominance, and as a means specifically in this case to control our relationship to reality, so that they could define reality in their terms and on their terms.
• 8:35
  So that they could say this is what crime is. This is what this would means. This is what it is. This is who a criminal is and then continue bombing people.
• 8:45
  Continue invading nations. They have no business even entering. But you're a criminal. You're black. You're inherently criminal. You are criminalized.
• 8:57
  You have drugs. You're a criminal. We can bomb people. We can bomb nations. We can fund literal mass death and genocide. But you're a criminal.
• 9:09
  Why didn't they protest more peacefully? They didn't have to do all that. They could have been peaceful. They could have been nonviolent.
• 9:19
  Nonviolent according to what? According to who? According to how? You know what I mean? How? And this is also what happened in South Africa with the incredible students. The roads must fall and fees must fall protests.
• 9:33
  Where a lot of the students were criticized for the destruction of property and monuments and such things.
• 9:41
  And again, it's the idea that the system is violent and that is the main focus.
• 9:47
  Not the reaction to that system. And when you've given people no other option, they've exhausted every other option. They've tried everything else.
• 9:58
  That happened as well in South Africa's liberation movement against apartheid.
• 10:02
  Started quote unquote nonviolently and then it became an armed struggle and that armed struggle is what led to the end of the system in name at least.
• 10:10
  And we see this in many different contexts.
• 10:12
  Okay, let me continue reading.
• 10:14
  Conses.
• 10:17
  Is it fair to label protesters as peaceful versus unpeaceful or violent versus nonviolent when these empires are massacring entire communities and killing all of us slowly?
• 10:34
  Like the fact that that even has to be asked massacring entire communities, bombing people, families having to search for each other in the rubble, entire lineages of Palestinian families wiped out.
• 10:49
  And this has a long history of imperialist violence by the West against black and brown nations.
• 10:59
  And I like the second part of this question when these empires are killing all of us slowly.
• 11:07
  Okay, I'm going to continue reading.
• 11:09
  Over 40,000 Palestinians have been massacred in the last seven months. Gaza has been leveled to the ground with bombs made from our money.
• 11:24
  So Khan is based in the United States of America.
• 11:27
  There is a horrifying ground invasion of rougher unfolding as I write this.
• 11:36
  When people glorify peaceful protests, what peace are we trying to protect or maintain exactly?
• 11:47
  Whose peace are we preserving?
• 11:57
  So we have to ask whose safety, whose peace?
• 12:03
  We can't just say we care about peace.
• 12:07
  Whose peace? Ask someone next that time when they're like, why can't they protest peacefully?
• 12:11
  Oh, you value peace, whose peace?
• 12:14
  Okay, I'm going to keep reading from this phenomenal essay.
• 12:19
  Palestinians are being massacred with snipers, endless missile strikes, drones and bulldozers while we bear witness.
• 12:33
  As all our eyes are on rougher, it is being decimated and leveled to the ground with bombs made in our back yard.
• 12:49
  Our definition of safety and evaluation of risk must be shaped by the reality that billions of people at this very moment are dead or dying because of violent colonial slash capitalist states and systems.
• 13:14
  Someone somewhere in the world is already paying the price for our refusal to escalate.
• 13:37
  The privilege can only afford to bask in the illusion of safety because the most marginalized carry excessive risk.
• 13:50
  That is how inequity works.
• 13:56
  And then Conquotes Peter Geldr-Luz who writes the sub-sac ethics, risk and apocalypse in saying that there is this paradox of safety.
• 14:06
  This is the quote, significantly, the actions that may feel the safest if we are inculcated in all the delusions of a liberal democracy are actually the riskiest.
• 14:21
  So if you think about it, what that means is what it may feel safest to do is nothing. But if we all do nothing, my brain said we're all going to die.
• 14:33
  And people already are dying. That's the entire point. Someone is already bearing the cost of this risk.
• 14:39
  But I think that's such an incredible paradox like the paradox of inertia, while inertia as in staying in the state that you're already in.
• 14:47
  The paradox of that is though it feels most comfortable, though it feels most safe, though it feels most secure.
• 14:53
  It actually guarantees our lack of safety, our lack of security, our lack of ultimate comfort in terms of light supremacy and climate catastrophe and also classism, ableism, all the things.
• 15:05
  Okay.
• 15:36
  This is clear if you think about it for even a moment. If there was such a thing as an action that produced real change without real risk, there would be no reason not to do it.
• 16:04
  And people with us have done it already, bringing about the change in question.
• 16:09
  That is sexy. Logic can be so sexy. When we think it's a higher form of thinking, no, but when we use it in a little sensual way, I'm for it.
• 16:17
  Like this is so sexy. So basically the logic here is that imagine an action that requires no risk of us. Like we could just do it. There's no risk involved.
• 16:26
  Well, then we would have already done it because obviously we want to change things. We want things to improve.
• 16:31
  So if there were no risk, there'd be no resistance and we would have done it already, bringing about the change that we desire.
• 16:39
  But there is a risk. There has to be a risk for any consequential action, any consequential change.
• 16:44
  So then let me continue the quote. The risk free changes already happened.
• 16:50
  A collective abolitionist politic understands that if we want consequential change for all, we must accept risk.
• 17:02
  And another quote, nothing is more high risk than delay. The risk will simply be shifted onto someone else.
• 17:14
  Well, that is powerful, powerful.
• 17:23
  Okay, continuing to the last quote from this section on the myth of peaceful protest, I'm uplifting these words in this work.
• 17:33
  I don't have as much thinking on this as Khan has. And so I really recommend you go and sit with their work.
• 17:39
  And I wanted to offer this as a way to sit with these ideas and then find ways to also live them and embody them.
• 17:46
  Which I love about what Khan does is not just keep it theoretical, but offer ways that we can bring this into our embodied lives.
• 17:55
  So the final quote from this second lesson that I'm learning from this work is this.
• 18:01
  It is time for us to step up and push each other to be brave courageous, but cautious collective risk taking is our only shot at securing the long term safety of our planet.
• 18:16
  There is no riskless path to liberation. It has always been time for us to escalate or focus on building the capacity to seriously escalate as though our necks are on the chopping block too.
• 18:33
  When we stick to what is safe by individualistic standards, we simply accept and enable the violent status quo under the guise of safety.
• 18:46
  But what if we did to dream about possibilities together?
• 18:54
  I love that so much. What if we did to dream about possibilities together? And how can we be brave? How can we grow our collective risk taking?
• 19:04
  How can we adopt a collectivist understanding of safety where we make each other safe? I can't make myself safe.
• 19:15
  Or at least there are deep limits to the extent to which I can make myself safe. And if I can make myself safe, it's only as a result of the privileges that I have to do so.
• 19:24
  And so simply shifting the burden onto someone else.
• 19:29
  This is very powerful work. These are very powerful words. I too have so much to learn on doing this. I feel very afraid of risks, very afraid of danger, very afraid of backlash of many different kinds.
• 19:47
  I'm afraid to post this episode. And at the same time, these words gave me the dose of bravery that I felt I needed or I was being invited into or called into.
• 20:01
  Because I felt like, wow, if more people interacted with this work, like what would be the ripple effects of that? And how can I lend a hand to this work?
• 20:11
  So that's of course a very intense, heavy place, which I think is in tandem with the intensity, the deep trauma and heaviness and grief as we know at this time that so many are experiencing across the world in this time of genocide and war of Congo, of Sudan, of many others.
• 20:36
  I think that hope can feel like a form of toxic positivity. It can feel like we're pushing ourselves to move past the negative emotions and onto the positive.
• 20:49
  It can feel like we're not holding space that we should be grieving. You know, that's appropriate response to genocide.
• 20:59
  And also I was really drawn to Khan's work on the importance of hope from a resistance and liberation standpoint.
• 21:09
  And so that is my third takeaway from their work. And if you do need more time to just sit with the second takeaway, I would invite you to pause here and come back to this episode when you feel like you have more capacity.
• 21:22
  If you feel like you need some time to digest and to sit with this and read the essay before just moving on, I love you and I so support that. Take the time that you need, press pause here and hopefully else you at the back end of this episode for the third and final lesson.
• 21:40
  So the third and final point that we are going to sit with in the Sol salon in this mini series on words that I feel like we can reach for in this moment.
• 21:49
  And I know there are many others and again, I really encourage you to comment below the episode if there's other resources that are really supporting and not only you, but also you think if more people read them, we could do something more meaningful together as a result.
• 22:07
  Like I feel like this work, if more people engage with it, it's the ripple effects of how they'll then take that into how they're responding to this moment is what is driving me as well.
• 22:17
  So if you have more resources or more people to follow, organizations to uplift or videos or anything you think is important for us to sit with, please do comment below the episode.
• 22:28
  So one lovely short quote that I want to start off this point on keeping hope alive. And why should we do that? Like why should we be hopeful in a moment that feels so hopeless?
• 22:39
  And this essay is called, how do we keep hope alive in our movements? Okay, so the sentence to start us off is this.
• 22:47
  Hope is the bedrock of all liberation struggles. That's a metaphor. So a bedrock is solid rock underlying loose deposits.
• 22:58
  So it's the solid foundation of something. And so what it is a metaphor for is the fundamental principles on which something is based.
• 23:06
  So hope is the bedrock of all liberation struggles. It is the solid basis. It is the foundation, i.e. without it, we are groundless. The ground gets sweeping from under our feet. We have nothing to root and ground ourselves in and on. We are lost.
• 23:23
  That's what this implies.
• 23:26
  And when we think about feeling hopeless, feeling like, oh my word, the world is ending, do merism. There's nothing we can do.
• 23:33
  Khan in this essay gives us a very interesting paradox of hope. The section is called the contradictions of hope.
• 23:40
  Listen to this. And think about the times you felt the world is hopeless. Who in your life feels the world is hopeless and how? And listen to this quote.
• 23:49
  Because it spoke to me and it called me out at the same time. So listen to this.
• 23:54
  Hopelessness is often most pervasive among the privileged who are more insulated from avert violence. Hopelessness is often most pervasive among the privileged who are more insulated from avert violence.
• 24:15
  Isn't that so fascinating? Hopelessness is most pervasive, most common, most everywhere among the privileged who are in fact most insulated from plainly apparent, present, explicit violence.
• 24:33
  Like they're not actually facing violence. We're not actually facing violence. I would include myself in this. I felt hopeless. I'm not experiencing avert violence.
• 24:43
  Among the most privileged, continuing the quote from Khan, however, however, remember the poem we ended last episode on.
• 24:58
  If I die, let it be a tale. Let me bring hope. And that was someone who was Palestinian who was assassinated along with his family for his resistance against Israel.
• 25:11
  And still that poem is hopeful. Still. And I think sometimes it's dehumanizing to expect the oppressed to be hopeful and resilient that I don't like like forced expectation. Oh, you've got you're so resilient. You'll just keep resiliency.
• 25:25
  Like no, that's dehumanizing in my mind when you impose that on people. But what Khan is saying is that's an energy that they naturally observe within the spirit of those facing colonial capitalist violence because it is the bedrock of their ability to fight against such violence. Okay, continuing.
• 25:45
  However, Khan says, when I look to the Palestinian resistance on the ground, even from thousands of miles away across oceans, I feel the flame of hope reignite within me.
• 26:03
  Their ability to co-create and sustain unyielding, unfaltering hope, baffles and inspires me Palestinians are not only up against the brutal Zionist state, but also the destructive imperialist superpowers financing it like the US.
• 26:29
  And yet you cannot kill hope in a freedom fighter. You cannot suppress the waves of hope inspired by martyrs who died resisting.
• 26:47
  This genocide has been raging on for nearly 100 years and 76 days at the time of writing and yet Palestinians remain steadfast in their unrelenting pursuit of freedom.
• 27:06
  Generation after generation. However, their fight should not be glamorized. Their resilience is a necessity born out of atrocities that are unimaginable to most of us.
• 27:28
  They should not have to bear such suffering only to have their strength exotified as their pleas for help are ignored.
• 27:42
  It is not a struggle they asked for. The violent colonial occupation of their indigenous homelands is an undeniable reality they were born into.
• 27:57
  Their only choice is to resist or passively accept the annihilation of their people.
• 28:10
  So is hope even a choice or is it a flame people across history are simply compelled to keep burning in order to survive?
• 28:30
  How have collectivist communities resisting colonialism around the world?
• 28:54
  Remained hopeful in the face of seemingly insurmountable oppression.
• 29:03
  How do they simultaneously carry pain, grief, hope and joy?
• 29:16
  That was so powerful.
• 29:26
  In all of this tension and this new ones that they're offering us.
• 29:33
  I love how earlier they say they're baffled. I'm also baffled and I also love this conclusion that there is a sense where hope is not even a choice.
• 29:42
  It is what is required to keep people experiencing the violence of colonialism, the violence of capitalism at the most extreme for those people to keep surviving.
• 29:55
  All beings on earth what do we have in common is that for the most part we have this will, this need to survive even on a cellular level fighting illness.
• 30:09
  And I know that doesn't include everyone's relationship to living or life. Nature seems to have this insurmountable will to stretch and reach forever more life.
• 30:25
  That life stretches towards itself. The trees, the plants stretching for the sunlight reaching for one another beneath the soil, passing nutrients, information towards each other, the hidden life of trees, book, explores this.
• 30:43
  Okay, let's continue.
• 30:44
  And now we have to talk about where we locate our hope and listen to this quote.
• 30:48
  Who do we put our hope in? Who do we put our faith in? Let's listen to this.
• 30:53
  Begging politicians, the rich or celebrities to do something is not a source of hope. Dreaming of a free Palestine and acting on that dream today, today, that is what gives us hope.
• 31:12
  Finding people to fight and struggle with is life giving. Drawing threads between our distress and struggles is life sustaining.
• 31:30
  Boldly supporting the Palestinian resistance gives me hope. Ultimately, it is revolutionary direct action that creates hope.
• 31:46
  Building towards it, forging relationships around it, engaging in it and supporting oppressed people as they engage in it.
• 32:00
  Okay, wow.
• 32:03
  Wow, finding people to fight and struggle with is life giving. Drawing threads between our distress and struggles is life sustaining.
• 32:20
  Wow, that is excellent and wonderful and wow, gives me chills. Wow, I want to read you one last quote from Khan's work today.
• 32:34
  And it is from their essay on collective risk, which I mentioned earlier called we keep us safe by fighting back and taking collective risks, not by being pacifists.
• 32:51
  And here is the last quote to end off our sole session today, as well as to end this many series. By now, I'm hopeful you can feel the power of this work from abolitionist scientist Dr Ayesha Khan. Let's have the quote.
• 33:11
  We are weaker when we are solely motivated by a fear of struggle. We are stronger when we prepare to fight as though we can and will win.
• 33:28
  So there's the bedrock of hope. It makes us more resilient, bold and creative.
• 33:39
  Hope then is ultimately a tactical advantage while despair and excessive fear or paranoia are a tactical disadvantage.
• 33:55
  So here what they're offering us is that hope is not only emotionally important. It is tactically strategically politically important because when we have hope we act like we can actually build the kind of world we want to see dismantle the kind of world we do not.
• 34:13
  And let's bring back that Ruha Benjamin quote because it's so important and it is hopeful. Dr Ruha Benjamin says, remember to imagine and craft the world you cannot live without just as you dismantle the world you cannot live within.
• 34:40
  And so weaving that together with Khan's words that hope is ultimately an advantage while despair is a disadvantage.
• 34:52
  And asking again the question they ask of us what if we did to dream about possibilities together and actually act in alignment with those possibilities.
• 35:10
  Now I want to say free Congo free Sudan free all nations and all peoples suffering under the excruciating life crushing weight of imperialism of capitalism of white supremacy of colonialism free Palestinians from Israeli colonial violence and genocide.
• 35:39
  Once again in the show notes you have the link to all of these essays to all of Khan's main links please follow their work as well as you have links to the decolonized Palestine reading list you have links to 14 organizations helping civilians in Palestine.
• 35:57
  I am looking at what I can do in order to lend my voice more to Congo and so I'm hoping to find either someone to interview or resources to uplift on the democratic Republic of Congo and the genocide.
• 36:14
  And I'm learning to say this is what I have to give now and I hope to give more but in order to give more I must continue to refuel rebalance and so you will hear from me at some time on that I love you so much my love my loves I'm sending you so much love let's take a collective inhale and exhale if that is accessible to you inhale.
• 36:39
  All our struggles are united all our freedom is bound up in each others that we are soul siblings that we give our love we send energy and frequency of healing to all in the world who need it including you if you need it I'm sending you love I'm sending you hope I'm sending you imagination.
• 37:09
  And the insistence on acting upon a more loving imagination.
• 37:15
  I love you so much my darling and I will see you on the next sole session I hope that this was in some way nourishing or informative or helpful to you but more so.
• 37:27
  To us co-creating the kind of world we wish to see and to us attending to rather than looking away from genocide anguish and the resilience although it should not have to be the case the fight the struggle of Palestinians free Palestine truly free Palestine
• 37:57
  and free all nations and all peoples facing colonial violence and capitalist violence and white supremacist violence and homophobic violence and anti black violence and anti poor violence and anti disabled violence and anti trans violence and anti women and fam violence I'm sending you so much love my darling I will see you on the next sole session.
• 38:27
  I love you bye.