009. on palestine
There’s a Caribbean woman named Sha* who works at a Popeyes in Queens. I’ve been going there for over four years, so I remember her. I remember when Popeyes came to the neighborhood, and I remember when she started working there ‘cause service got better, faster, more personable. There were times she’d put extra chicken in the box for me, or help me decide what to order so I’d get more for my money. She knows my younger brother by sight and gives him extra food sometimes too.
This one night though, it was busy. I was ordering Popeyes, visiting my family, and more than two million someones in Palestine were being forced to evacuate, murdered, as they tried to leave. A second Nakba, but really an unending one; Palestinians have been experiencing genocide since before 1948.
Instead of calling for a ceasefire, the U.S. joined France, Germany, and the U.K. in encouraging Israel for “defending itself”. Defending itself, from itself, because when Hamas kidnapped several hundred Israelis, it was in response to Israel’s violence. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had unlawfully been kidnapping Palestinians by the thousands for seven decades. The retaliation by Hamas on the 7th, was an attempt to get those 5,000 Palestinians back. Then, the IDF kidnapped an additional 5,000 Palestinians in two weeks and murdered, Israel has estimated, as many as 20,000. Defending itself, from what?
Lindsey Graham, said to Israel, “Level the place”.
Nikki Haley, told Netanyahu, to “Finish them.” Hillary Clinton called Hamas’ response to 75 years of occupation “barbaric”. She used words like “inhumane savagery.”
Bernie Sanders said, “I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel.”
In some instances, Biden has ignored direct questions about a ceasefire in Gaza, completely.
There are so many dead, still under the rubble, survivors crying out, hoping to be found, while bombs go off like lightning in the sky. Israel has targeted journalists and their families, and turned off water and internet access in Gaza. There is no food, and people are now dying from hunger. The IDF has bombed multiple hospitals, and a cancer center with patients and people seeking refuge inside.
I need to remind myself of these things. They happened. They are happening. As it is happening in Sudan and Haiti, Puerto Rico, and and and. As it has been happening in every corner of the world, colonialism has touched, in front of our eyes. There is evidence, video, documents, photos from varying sources. Tweets. Threads. We say not in our names, to deaf ears, as we have before. As we will likely be saying again. As people high and low, gaslight, lie, and ignore.
Carrie Mae Weems said once, “We are on a spiral, a continuum. You are always coming back to the place that you were. Hopefully when you return, you are slightly at a different elevation everytime you go around the bend, sometimes collapsing. That is the changing same. Coming back to the same place but at a slightly higher ground allows you to develop a critical lens to see the patterns and allows us to truly grow…then came you.”
Maybe it’s that every time we resist the needle moves.
In France, Macron has changed his tune, now urging Israel to stop bombing Gaza and killing civilians. South Africa has recalled diplomatic staff from Tel Aviv. In Colombia, Petro too, has recalled ambassadors. He wrote, “The head of the state who carries out this genocide is a criminal against humanity. Their allies cannot talk about democracy.”
All over the world, people are marching and organizing in protest.
Sha, at Popeyes, had to step in to rescue some new hires who were overwhelmed by an influx of delivery app orders. The store was more full than I’d ever seen it, and more orders and customers were coming. Sha took over expediting in the kitchen, put everyone else on production, and filled the orders quickly, one by one, maintaining her sharp kindness, calling for more fries, more chicken. Saying what she needed.
The ways in which we navigate the world down to how we order the food we eat, have impact. Down the line it goes. Just because you think they haven’t come for you yet, doesn’t mean they won’t. They have already, because none of us are free until all of us are free, as Palestine will be, from the river to the sea.
I tipped Sha and thanked her. She smiled, and thanked me. One of the last times I’d be back to that neighborhood, likely for a while. I started a new job, moved to another place, that is not where I am from.
I always ask about freedom, what it is. I was reminded Nina Simone already told us. “I’ll tell you what freedom means to me - no fear!”
*Disclaimer: Please note the name of the worker mentioned is fictional.