Keep Showing Up!

Those of us with white privilege need to keep showing up and speaking up about what’s happening in Gaza and Palestine, speaking out against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, both on the rise in our communities and in our workplaces, and finding ways to be in solidarity with colleagues and employees who are directly impacted.

Many speaking up are being silenced, shadow banned, gas lit and some even fired from workplaces.

When we speak up, it may make it easier or safer for those with lived experience and directly impacted to speak and share.

I’m standing in solidarity and honestly struggling to process the overwhelming grief and despair at times.

Showing solidarity will look different for each of us, the key is to find your contribution, and keep going.

Some of us will march, some of us will donate, share on socials, some will hold vigils. We can all reach out quietly to colleagues, start conversations with friends and family, speak out against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia (both on the rise) ask our leaders to do better, write to our political representatives.

Done all that? Great! Rest up lovely, recuperate your energies and then get ready to go again. This isn’t a one-hit-then-we’re-done kinda situation. Again, our white privilege means we’re used to leaning in then backing off when we get tired, or it feels too hard. We did our bit, now we’ll snap back to our comfort zones. This is where it matters loves, we need to keep going.

I trust that your company’s leadership is able to build compassion and kindness into the DNA of your organisational culture. Humanity at work is needed now more than ever!

I trust you’re feeling supported and resourced, and that you’re able to reach out for help, and receive it, when you’re struggling.

xKaty

Here are some resources and thinking points that are helping me restore and replenish, so I can sustain hope and resolve:

*all these resources are available at my UK Bookshop where I collate reading lists for you – have a browse here.

Chris Hooten recently reminded me of James Baldwin’s words ‘You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had been alive.’

I’m thinking a lot about reimagining the world we want to live in, and working back from there, diving into Lola Olufemi and Rachel Cargle’s work. Sendolo Diaminah reminds us that ‘a new world is not created in a moment, it is created forwards over time’ and encourages us to ‘practice in your centre. What do you do repeatedly because it is life giving.’ Aaron Krishna reminds us that ‘fast gets all the attention. Slow has all the power’.

I’m thinking a lot about how our heart grows stronger when we feel, when we make space for our collective grief, can we vow to stay connected to the sorrow of the world. ‘The more you love, the more you grieve… the more you grieve, the more you love’ from ’Dr Saliha Afridi and adrieene maree brown ‘the broken heart can cover more territory’.

I’m thinking about what it means to shift from practicing to feel better to practicing to feel more Mathura Mahendran from @dismantlingthemasterstools

‘We are taught to consume, not witness, we are taught to seek comfort, not sit with discomfort. We are taught to fix, not be with. If we can’t fix it and fix it fast, we are taught to look away, and subscribe to a story that makes it acceptable to look away. We have conflated safety with comfort, and difference with threat. In doing so we’ve effectively cordoned ourselves off from the kind of individual and collective power, connection and transformation that can only emerge from moving through discomfort and difference.’

Mahendren challenges us that ‘we can only metabolise and mobilise what we can acknowledge and accompany’ and asks ‘how can we build our collective capacities to sit with a wider range of human emotion: unprecedented (for us) grief, rage, despair, helplessness, relief, shame, hate, love, gratitude, pain’. She acknowledges that this is ‘scary work, especially in systems where we’ve been taught to fear and repress our emotions’.

Dr Saliha Afridi in response to her daughter’s question ‘mama it hurts to much to think about it, shall stop thinking about it and feeling it?’ says:

‘Your heart is a muscle. You don’t get a strong heart by protecting your heart. You get a strong healthy heart by lifting these painful and difficult feelings … keep feeling, keep breaking, every time your heart breaks, it strengthens.’

I’m thinking about Alice Walker’s quote ‘My activism is my rent for living on this planet’. I’m thinking about collective care, shared humanity, solidarity. I’m thinking about how it’s all connected.

So grateful for these creators making art, poetry, words, music to express what I’m struggling to express.

Reading:

Malidoma Patrice Some Ritual Power Healing and Community

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein

Light in Gaza edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, et al.

A somatic approach to interrogating white supremacy in social R+D and beyond Mathura Mahendren

Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown

Lola Olufemi Experiments in Imagining Otherwise and check out study groups with Keri Jarvis

A Renaissance of Our Own Rachel Cargle

See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love Valarie Kaur

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundation of Movement by Angela Davis

Healing Justice Lineages by Cara Page and Erica Woodland

Reading list on Palestine from Black feminist perspective (the very best IMO!)