By Hazel Uber Kellogg
I’ll call it a balmy Berkeley day at the end of August. Balmy like the gentle heat that makes every inch of skin bead with sweat like ointment you can’t get off, balmed but not sweltering. Of course the day was populated with many San Franciscan visitors and companions who weren’t used to making such a distinction, reminding me of my cloud-deprived envy. But for now let’s just say it was balmy during the two-day retreat for student organizers planning their next steps in the fight for a free Palestine and an end to U.S. aid for the genocide.
The first day I arrived late, during lunch and the busy ingestion of lamb and falafel wraps. Those who finished first were in a hurry to roll their own cigarettes. As the day’s trainings and workshops progressed I was impressed by their commitment to smoking at every one of the frequent 15 minute breaks, which were necessary to fight the creeping fatigue of summer afternoons.
It is difficult to describe what happened those two days. In part, because the emotions and the energy of the retreat encompass several competing truths, none of which are overtaken or undermined by the others. On the one hand, gathering as we did was certainly exciting, revelatory even: the distant sparks of more than half a dozen bay area campuses coming together to turn on the light of resistance. I can’t possibly overstate the feeling that permeated the space, that also hung over the encampments last spring. I think I’ll call it purpose, the only thing that could convince so many people to abandon the routines they try so hard to establish just to bash their heads against the wall of an institution that maintains at every level that it is not culpable nor responsible for such “foreign affairs.” At the same time, the retreat consisted of about 18 hours of near continuous exertion, in the heat of the summer and, for many, amidst the frenzy of the opening weeks of school. Between the teeth of wide smiles one could clearly see the wedge of a somber reality: to meet in this way is work. It is not, however, the work of our everyday, to please or satiate the owners of property we all seem inescapably indebted to. It is not the work of wages or hours. It is work of many lifetimes. And you could feel that fact, you could feel the dead scrambling for seats all the way up the walls, our posthumous audience of martyrs and innocents, organizers and agitators — all pretending to hold their ghostly breath, I’m sure — watching us, waiting to see what we can build with the scraps of dreams and poetry they left behind.
The Palestinian Youth Movement grounds us, the world is waiting to see what its students will do. Students are those who study, right? We have combed history, delegates from every school report, hinting at progress from their summer intensives. We all read Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie. Snippets from SNCC appear on the projector screen. The dangerous effects of the Taft-Hartley Act are considered well known, as some matters are settled by a mention of its name followed by a, “well, y’know.” Name an anti-war action from the last century, someone in the room knows about it, even though none of us were alive for it. We have only done our best to do what we have always been told, to keep learning, and never tire of it.
We need to act. Otherwise we cannot continue to learn. The encampments came from that impetus — a tactic we all knew was far from perfect. The camps stretched us to our limits, they made us squabble and lose sleep (although the Arabic aunties and uncles, among others, kept us more well-fed than most college students could ever manage for themselves, and we love them for that). The students’ actions then were surely inadvisable, but they were necessary for what is happening now. They were necessary, in order to speak as organizers involved with the struggle when before we spoke as enraged idealists. We had to act, because we felt to do nothing would be to sacrifice our humanity. What is a humanity that doesn’t keep learning?
Now, as the blur of violence contorts our sense of compassion — holding it in this interminable position of stress like collective, mental sahat al-shabeh — we are also watching the criminalization of houselessness unfolding in our state. The contrast of cold air and warm chatter around the SF civic center at night is now replaced by the wailing of sonic crowd dispersers. The students themselves are watching a new wave of austerity grip their schools with substantial cuts to departments of philosophy, ethnic studies, and art accompanying an ever-rising tuition. At USF, the music classes are being replaced by private tutors that students must pay for out-of-pocket. And departmental cuts go hand-in-hand with the tactics of repression schools are using to prevent another action like the encampments; UC schools now have a system-wide ban on facemasks. Yes, a ban on the very equipment that was mandated not three years ago to combat COVID, despite the fact that COVID is most definitely still here, still infecting people because of our unwillingness to slow or augment our status quo even slightly to allow our old, our young, and our immunocompromised to participate in society without risk of repeated infection.
All these tactics to counter the movement are not lessons, they are more like shackles. But it will not work. Because the Student Intifada understands its role is, and always was to ignite broader resistance, and a new education. This new education the students have formulated does not stay within the walls of any institution, it is public property. It is that which the “owners” of property do not understand. It is the need to live.
That is why I cherish these sad smiles the students give me, and their tired eyes. Because they understand, or else they would be somewhere else, that what we are doing, as a nation, supporting this or any war is not living. It is not living when a portion of the love we pour into our work must go to putting bullets in the guns aimed at people we have never met. Living is when we can decide for ourselves what work is worthwhile, and not live chained to a job because it pays off that interminable debt we call rent. That is why I trust them, those now experienced idealists, when they say, with the conviction of stone along the faultline, “None of us will be free, until all of us are free.” Because like that stone they see no reason to lie flat when the world is in need of change, but plunge into the sky, immersing themselves in the work of mountains. These are the children of many nations. Above all, they are the sons and daughters America has prayed for — true patriots that do not take this country to be a succulent up on the shelf, good to look at but not to touch. They are the thoughtful ones who see the roots that are decadently rotting, who will give this country and the world fresh, fertile soil to grow in.
If you understand anything about Palestine today, you will understand that these students need your help. They will need the resources you can offer, yes, but more than that they will need your heart to go with them. They will need the wealth and openness of your mind. They will need the fire which only you can kindle in your soul. Because we will free Palestine, and that will only be the beginning of our struggle.
Start now. Talk about Palestine and talk about our country. However much you make this genocide the issue of your friends, family, and co-workers — because it should be the issue of your friends, your family, and your co-workers — talk about America too. Talk twice as much. Talk like I see these students talk: for hours on end, throwing themselves against the wall of divestment, and then go home and talk more about the situation of Congo, Sudan, the Philippines, Utah… And when you are exhausted, eat, and study, and sleep so you can wake up and do it again. Talk about the skills we have forgotten. Talk about the way our isolation from our neighbors breeds redundancy and waste. Talk about how we can begin to take back enough knowledge of the land and ourselves that we can truly begin to take care of each other. Talk about how and why and when you are going to do these things, because if you do not have an actionable plan you are not done talking, and once you’ve carried it out you’ll only have more to do. Talk so that all of us can learn how to talk well enough to cast a vote in a world-wide conversation about what system we truly want to live by.
And then wake up, and do it again. There will be a strike soon. Don’t scab.