My best friend was born in the Middle East. From her birthplace, she traveled to the UAE, where she eventually made her way to Canada, just in time to be my friend, before I ended up without a place to live. When I was houseless, I called her to say “I can’t, I’m done, I’m out of options, money, and ideas.” She smiled over the phone and said “Devon, what the fuck else are you going to do but survive this?”
And because of her, and many others, we did survive that. But we survived in time to watch her entire country go to war over dubious lies about events that didn’t play out the way that we were originally told they were.
Every morning when I get up and out of bed, I go to the bathroom, put on the kettle for tea for mom and coffee for me, and then I head outside to have a smoke and welcome the morning.
My morning smoke is my time to meditate, but mostly I use it to abuse my lungs and cough out the crap that gathers when you smoke too much. See? I’m a fucking ordinary human being, living in Western Canada.
I’m just like the average folks reading these words.
My friend is just like us. She’s a writer, a teacher, a philosopher, a model, a dancer, and a creator. She’s really funny and silly. She’s beautiful, wise, and talented, and if she lived in the UAE she’d be in danger of speaking out against Israel.
In Canada of all places – the most free place on the planet, and let’s face it, unless You’re Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, Disabled, or LBGTQ2S+, that’s exactly what it is, you can be punished for speaking out against Israel.
It took weeks and weeks for Canada to call for an immediate Ceasefire in Gaza, but I want you to see this petition. It tells you exactly how many people signed from which province or territory. I think that’s fucking cool. It tells me that I am not alone in my beliefs.
I grew up being told that if you were disabled. or LGBTQ2S+, in places like Gaza you would be treated badly and abused, and yet they consider these folks to be some of the most respected among the Palestinian community.
Palestine was a rich, vibrant, and beautiful community of folks who lived peacefully from all over the world. There were all kinds of different religions from Christianity to Muslim and Sikh, folks lived together in peace and no one cared where you came from or what you needed, as long as you were kind.
But then the Nazis invaded Germany and other places across Europe and next thing you know Zionist Jewish people were trying to flee.
They tried going to South Africa, but the white South Africans told them to fuck off basically because they were already invading South Africa and they didn’t really want the competition.
So they transferred their ideology and decided that the perfect solution would be to “Create Israel” by taking over the northern part of what we now know as the Gaza Strip. They invaded just like the Nazis did and now they say that anyone who disagrees with them must also hate Jews.
They don’t forget to admit that they are Zionist Jewish people, which is different than Orthodox Jews, who denounce Israel’s tactics and political policies.
I say all this because I want you to understand I am not stupid. I can read a history book like the best of them, and I can study policy and government sanction shit all the way around, but what I can’t understand is why Justin Trudeau the “Left-leaning Policy guider” isn’t doing what he can do for his Muslim and Christian constituents, by demanding every single day, for a Cease Fire in Gaza.
I mean I didn’t vote for the guy and the last time I wrote about him it was because he’s an asshat, but the truth of it is that if the people led the government the way the government is supposed to work, then there wouldn’t be a war in Gaza right now.
I don’t think there’s every been a time in history when folks had peace. I can’t fathom a time even going back to the days of Jesus Christ when there weren’t people on this planet fighting for resources, power, hunger, and money.
But we’re supposed to be the generation that has that peace we’ve been searching for all these centuries. Yet our governments are choosing, deliberately, to fight against a non-existent enemy.
And in 20 or 30 years when radicalized Palestinian men fight back, we’ll start the process all over the fuck again.
Before the holidays I had literally run out of words, I didn’t know how many more ways I could say that what is happening in Gaza is wrong. But now I have all the words in the world.
“It Doesn’t Matter That I Don’t Live in Gaza, What Matters Is What I Do For The Folks That Do.”
If you’re reading this and thinking “Well, I guess we can’t hire her now because they are too radical for us,” then that’s fine. I’d rather spend the rest of my life trying to survive, then live in a world where I am forced to take down the words “Genocide and ethnic cleansing are wrong.”
From Gaza to Sudan and The Congo, women, men, children, LBGTQ2S+ and Disabled folks are suffering at the hands of those who have the power to alleviate that suffering in a matter of minutes.
If you choose to do nothing in this time of grief and sorrow then you deserve what you get. That’s the end of it.
Sending all my love to those suffering and living in oppressive circumstances,
Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
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Loud Mouth Brown Girl 