Sun Scorched; Blood Stained

"Fight for Trans Lives"

Graphic by Left Aesthetic

I’m really glad that Aaron’s self-immolation for Palestine is getting attention, but on November 8th there was also a Congolese man who did the same thing for the genocide happening in the DRC. From what I read in the article above, his fate and identity are unknown but I think his story should be getting equal amount of traction and I haven’t really seen anyone talking about it on Tumblr specifically yet.

Just premising this with the fact that Aaron Bushnells self immolation was felt by all palestinians in Palestine and in the diaspora because the idea that someone so deeply upset by what he saw happening to Palestinians at the "hands of their colonizers" decided to self immolate in front of the israeli embassy was a shocking act of solidarity. And that being said this extraordinary act of revolutionary suicide is exactly how you should perceive palestinian resistance who go out and battle one of the most funded armies in the world just so one day palestinians can be free of this occupation and colonial oppressor. Our resistance are not "crazy fundamentalists" they are occupied people who have bore the scars the occupation gives them and woke up and said they will not take the chains binding them anymore. Right of arms is the right of any anti colonial movement and we can't imagine the level of faith they must have in a future free palestine to battle million dollar tanks and drones and soldiers equipped with the latest weaponry

129 days and 75 years 💔

daniel handler // richard siken

"Palestinians were killed long before Hamas was formed and would still be getting killed even if Hamas never existed."

Interview with the Vampire | 1.07 

Photography: “A Palestinian demonstrator sews a Palestinian Liberation Organization flag before a protest during the first Intifada”, February, 1988. Photography: Patrick Robert

I am safe; it’s only change.

i think a lot about exactly 1 thing from the roman empire: the concept of bread and circus. the idea was that if your population was fed and entertained, they wouldn't revolt. you are asking us to give up our one small life, is the thing - for under 15 dollars an hour.

what would that buy, even. i am trading weekends and late nights and my back health. i am trading slow mornings and long walks and cortisol levels. i am trading sleep and silence and peace. for ... this. for what barely-covers-rent.

life really is more expensive right now. you aren't making that up. i make almost 3 times what i did 5 years ago, and despite an incredibly equal series of bills - i am still struggling. the most expensive line item i added was to own a dog. the money is just evaporating.

we were okay with it because it's a cost-benefit analysis. i could handle the customer harassment and standing all day and the manager's constantly changing temperament - i was coming home to hope, and my life planned in a blue envelope. three hours would buy me my dog's food for a month. i can give up three hours for him, for his shiny coat and wide, happy mouth. three days could be a new mattress, if i was thrifty. if i really scrimped and saved, we could maybe afford a trip into the city.

recently i cried in the car about the price of groceries.

business majors will be mad at me, but my most inflammatory opinion is that people should never be valued at the same place as products. your staff should not be a series of numbers in an excel sheet that you can just "replace" whenever you need something at that moment. your staff should be people, end of sentence.

it feels like someone somewhere is playing a very bad video game. like my life is a toy. like someone opened an app on their phone and hired me in diner dash ultra. they don't need to pay me well or treat me alright - they can always just show me the door. there is always someone more desperate, always someone more willing.

but i go to work and know i could save for years and not afford housing. i am never going to own my own home, most likely. i have no idea how to afford her ring, much less the wedding. my dog doesn't have his own yard. everything i love is on subscription. if i lose my job, i have no "nest egg" to catch my falling.

this thin life - they want me to give up summer for it. to open my mouth and throat and swallow the horrible hours and counted keystrokes. they want me to give up summer and any non-federal holiday. to give up snow days. to give up talking to my mom whenever i want. to give up visiting the ocean and hearing the waves.

bread and circus worked for a while, actually. it was a the kind of plan that would probably now be denounced by republicans as socialist commie liberal pronoun shit.

but sometimes i wonder if we should point them to the part of the history book that says: it worked until it didn't.

literally not surprised in the slightest

yes he did

[Image 1: a tweet from ayan, @/artan_ayan on twitter (now known as X)

The Director of the UN's New York office just resigned after thirty years at the organisation over the UN's handling of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

The entirety of his resignation letter is a necessary read but this first page blew me away.

Image 2 transcription: the UN's letterhead and the following letter;

Dear High Commissioner, This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I write at this moment of great anguish for the world. including for many of our colleagues. once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.

I also worked in these through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when each case settled on the horrors that had been perpetuated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocities, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights laywer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, arpartheid rules.

This is a text-book [sic] case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What's more, the governments of the United States, The United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations "to ensure respect" for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel's atrocities.

Volker turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva

end transcription.]

• “La liberté guidant le peuple” by Eugène Delacroix

and

• “13th attempt to break the Gaza blockade by sea”. Photo by Mustafa Hassouna (Andalou Agency for Getty)

I haven’t seen this linked on here so: this is an awesome resource for how you can help the people in Palestine. It has donation links, helps you figure out how to contact your representatives, and a regularly updated list of planned protests. It is USAmerican centric but the list of protests is international.

If you are American this site has a tool that sends an email for you. All you need to enter is your name, email address, and street address so they can auto-find your senators. It will take 30 seconds.

Canadian versions