i recently wrote this essay about parenting that inevitably also ended up being about Palestine tank.tv/magazine/issue-100/f…

Feels like there is a severe lack of political education around electoralism right now. If electoralism is your strategy, and I understand the argument for using elections tactically , shouldn’t the point be to bring people into a larger movement? To expose and heighten contradictions, organize people, and move them toward a broader anti-imperialist politics? Instead, it feels like the opposite is happening. People with revolutionary anti-imperialist politics are being told to temper those politics in order to defend politicians. Even if your entire strategy is electoral, why wouldn’t you want a strong left flank pushing your politicians and their constituents further left? Why wouldn’t you want people outside electoral politics taking the uncompromising position, especially on Palestine, so that there is constant pressure on the people operating within those institutions? The movement shouldn’t be adjusting its politics to whatever its most progressive elected officials are willing to say or do. They should be getting pushed toward us. Not the other way around. This doesn’t happen in private meetings, this happens publicly. Electoralism can be a tactic within a larger movement. But once the movement starts disciplining its own left flank to protect an electoral project, who is actually absorbing who? Maybe this site is just giving me a distorted picture but it feels like some very basic anti-imperialist positions are treated as unreasonable because they create problems for politicians people are invested in. If this is reflective of a broader shift in the movement, then I think we desperately need political education around electoralism. Electoral politics should be one terrain on which a movement struggles. It should not become the ceiling of the movement’s politics. The direction should be electoral politics moves people towards movement politics, not movement politics requiring electoral loyalty.

Gaza before October 7: 1- Up to an 80% unemployment rate 2- Over 80% total reliance on aid 3- Almost a million people lived across 8 refugee camps 4- At least 40,000 people resided in dilapidated shelters 5- 5360 Palestinians killed and 115,000 wounded from Jan 2008 to Sep 2023. 6- 30% of applications for permits by critical patients in Gaza were turned down by Israel every month leading to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of deaths. 7- Upwards of two-thirds of a yearly 1000 recorded successful applicants for international universities from Gaza were denied travel.

“What would it mean, then, for October 7 finally to take place? Not to repeat the event, nor to preserve it as an image of revolutionary rupture, but to construct political forms adequate to the possibilities it disclosed”

Really can’t stand these tone-deaf “Merry October 7” posts from Westerners who’ve fetishized the resistance, consumed it like entertainment, and now talk about October 7 as if it were the pilot episode of some show they’ve become emotionally invested in. There are Palestinians, both inside Gaza and across the diaspora, who’ve spent their entire lives supporting the resistance and who still support it today, yet when October 7 comes around, they speak about it with a tinge of sadness. Not because they suddenly regret resistance, but because for many of them, it marks the last moment they remember feeling any real sense of joy, hope, or possibility before the entire world betrayed them and abandoned Gaza to the horrors that followed. This day should serve as a reminder of our collective failure, our impotence, and our weakness, and as motivation to be better and do better instead of leading lives where we’re constantly looking for the next compromise that’ll placate us. You can be unapologetic about it without sounding so gleeful and oblivious to the fact that countless futures were absolutely eviscerated in the horrors that followed while you cosplay as a revolutionary in the relative safety of the West. You’re watching this from thousands of miles away; they’ve had to live it, so have a little shame and show some decorum.

RT @jorglmelo: “Un violento anhelo de felicidad” Fue la mejor pancarta que vi en la manif de hoy.

The pictures represent what elite Gaza was before. And this is what ordinary Ghazza was like before:

catholicism really came up from behind these past few years

Aujourd'hui, au cœur de la manifestation, j'étais là où un maire doit être : aux côtés de notre jeunesse, pour la protéger et apaiser les tensions. Et ce sont ces jeunes qui ont fait bloc autour de moi. Spontanément. Fraternellement. Merci à vous. J’espère que tout le monde va bien. Vous êtes l’honneur de la France.

it’s all about the mayors now

this is so clarifying! negate the negation!

هل يكون لتاريخ السابع من أكتوبر ذكرى أشدّ ألماً من صورة آية الأخيرة في السادس من اكتوبر 2023 .. في آخر لحظات الأمان .. في آخر عهد أمومتي قبل قتلها وأخيها..

ثماني سنوات يا حبيبي.. هو عمرُك الآن.. لقد أضفتُ سنوات قتلك الثلاثة! أما أنتَ يا ماما .. فأذقتني قداسة حبّ الأم لولدها.. وأذاقوني نقيضها بقتلك! إسرائيل قتلت ابني عبود في عمره الخامس.. وبقي جسده تحت الركام 29 يوما.. ثم بقايا رفات.. دُفنت في أرض لا أعرف عن أثرها شيئا.. لكنني أمّك يا عبود.. وحبيبتك كما كنت تناديني.. ما زلت أرى وجهك، وأسمع صوتك.. وملاك حي في داخل روحي.. وفي جنة الله. أنا آسفة يا ماما.. على كل هذا الاستسلام! كل عام وأنا أنتظر..

The dad had to go home and disassemble the baby’s crib and hide his toys because he knew his wife wouldn’t be able to handle seeing it. You should hate the people who do this. Hate is good actually.

Reminder that Israeli construction companies like Terra Firma (staffed by ex-COGAT) are allegedly pulverising rubble with human remains within & turning it into dust for roadbeds in the Israel-controlled 70% of Gaza!

The Israeli tanks are firing toward our tents right now A terrifying night Please pray for us.

The situation is extremely bad right now. I was asleep and suddenly woke up terrified by the sound of missiles hitting one after another near our area. Gaza is still under fire, and the genocide hasn’t stopped at all. Please Keep Gaza and everyone here in your prayers!!!!!!

enough thc in the bloodstream to feel the insane autoerotic energy of nyc sloshing thru me

only just now realized the barred subject is a dollar sign