A different year-end invitation: from the river to the sea, reflections on what liberation asks of us
Greetings,
Usually at this time of year, I send a list of my Top 10 social change favorites. And I will—that’s coming in January.
But today I write to you about Gaza.
Earlier this year, I articulated a commitment to practicing radical love in action. In this moment, I feel called to speak up about the U.S.-backed Israeli violence against Palestinian people, especially in Gaza.
I know there are many horrors in the world. But watching footage of a Palestinian father kiss the eyelids of his lifeless 3-year-old daughter, hearing the screams of bomb survivors in news clips, witnessing the impact of this fresh and ancestral trauma on the Palestinian and Jewish people I Iove…moved me to action. I grieve every life taken by violence.
It is our moral responsibility to withhold cooperation with injustice.
I’ve been calling my Congresspeople to demand a ceasefire and an end to arming Israel, but that alone felt insufficient. And as a communications strategist, I know that change happens through our connections with other people.
So I’m sending this note to my entire professional network, even though there may be personal or professional consequences. It feels like the right thing to do.
Narratives and power
This letter is going out to people who hold a range of narratives about what’s happening.
I invite you today to think about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t.
What it means when one group has the power to decide how/whether another group can live, love, work, move, learn, heal, eat, pray, and/or play. (This applies to more than Gaza.) The power to flatten apartments, schools, hospitals. The power to kill 16,000+ people—almost half of them children—and force nearly 2 million more from their homes.
A power analysis makes it easier to see what’s unjust.
The hard work of liberation for the 100%
I am not interested in othering or oppositionality. They are incompatible with liberation. As AnaLouise Keating said, “Oppositionality traps us in the very systems we’re trying to change.”
And Culture Hack Labs cautions, “Any ideology that dehumanizes and justifies cruelty as a pathway for liberation or security will only perpetuate more oppression and war.”
I’m a practitioner of nonviolent communication (NVC). NVC teaches that everyone’s needs are equally important. And that needs are never in conflict, only the strategies to meet them.
Having empathy for people currently choosing to oppress, valuing their needs too—is hard to do with so much intergenerational and ongoing trauma. Yet humans have shown we have a remarkable capacity for repair and care.
Monica Dennis and Autumn Brown remind us never to talk about oppression without also talking about liberation.
So: I believe it is possible to find a path to healing, safety, dignity, and belonging for every person currently living between the river and the sea—and beyond.
One thing that gives me hope is that violence is always a choice. Which means we can choose…not to commit it. We can dismantle our current systems of domination and oppression and build systems of collaboration and care.
We can embrace ways of feeling, knowing, doing, and being that affirm life.
Humans have done it before. Many of us—despite the domination ideologies and systems under which we currently live—do it in ways big and small every day.
What you can do today
Most of the people receiving this note are Americans—we are complicit in the horrors in Gaza because our tax dollars are funding it. We’re doubly complicit if we choose not to speak up.
I invite you to join me in doing three specific, easy things:
If you do one thing, call your Congresspeople and demand a permanent ceasefire (phone numbers and call script at the link). It’s easy. It only takes three minutes total, and the calls will likely go to voicemail. Congressional staffers say it’s working. Set a routine to keep calling until there’s a permanent ceasefire—I’ve added the calls into my daily dog walk.
Sign up for updates from groups organizing to stop the violence—like Jewish Voice for Peace, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, or the Adalah Justice Project—and engage in their calls to action.
Fill your bucket of hope. Watch The Third Harmony, a documentary on the powerful history of nonviolent direct action successes. Check out Beautiful Trouble’s stories of people-powered victories that have upended the status quo. Get inspired by Culture Hack Labs’ catalog of beautiful alternatives.
I leave you with the wisdom of Ruha Benjamin: “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.”