Thursday 🇵🇸 Reflections

Reflections on Day 244 of Genocide

Secret Service keep a walkway clear so attendees can access the entrance to the event. In less than half an hour from this shot, SFPD SWAT team and other officers would push protesters to the end of the block and across the street in a so-called “deescalation tactic”. Protester sign reads “Kamala How many kids have you killed today?” (Photo by Author)

Does the truth matter?

This was a question I asked myself repeatedly as attendees of Harris fundraiser sneered at me and other protesters as they entered The Chapel yesterday afternoon. What we were saying, that Harris and the Biden administration aid and abet Israel’s genocide, was certainly true, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the politicians or fundraisers who attended the event. At every campaign event Harris and Biden have had, they have been met with protesters who, as the saying goes, speak truth to power. It is true that their abysmal response to the genocide may cost them the 2024 election, but Biden’s commitment to the genocidal and apartheid state is “unshakable.”

SFPD push protesters away from Harris fundraiser at The Chapel on Valencia and 19th st. Sargent Murray P. Daggs, Badge Number: #1650, is pictured center and is illegally obscuring his name-tag with his radio. Daggs participated in a racist drug sting that only targeted Black people in the tenderloin in 2013/14. In 2020 an eyewitness saw him break a resident and their dogs legs while arresting someone in the tenderloin. In 2022 he was promoted to Sargent. Last year, Daggs made $355,030.07 in total pay and benefits. (Photo by Author)

Earlier in the week, I attended an emergency rally outside of the Federal Building in San Francisco and moved with the crowd to successfully de-arrest a protester after Department of Homeland Security officers attempted to grab him. During the scuffle, the protesters successfully cordoned off the federal agents and held them in a corner. Moving towards their colleagues more DHS agents violently pushed through the crowd. For better or worse, the rally organizers protected the officers and shifted the crowd back towards the main speaker after the initial protester escaped. The speed and violence with which the officers moved provoked a deep fear in my body.

I have had the class and race privilege of often not needing to face police violence directly. Even so, there is an acute fear from looking at armed officers who have the power, physically and legally to exert immense harm on your person. Frankly the Police can (and do) kill citizens and almost always do so with impunity and with jaw-dropping (in a angering way) pay.

The truth that “Police are not primarily crime fighters” doesn’t seem to matter to Breed or Biden who both vow to “fund the police” in response to a manufactured crisis of crime rates. Instead police are part of the carceral system whose main purpose is to manage surplus labor and protect capital. Perhaps then, it is not surprising that Mayor Breed is moving to increase the SFPD budget by $46.7 million dollars to a record $821.6 million during a $789 million two-year deficit in order to appease the emergent right-wing tech billionares who have dipped their toes into political organizing through groups like TogetherSF, GrowSF, and Neighbors for a better San Francisco while cutting all other departments by 10% or more. Or perhaps, Breed is afraid of the Police. After all in 1975 they planted a bomb on the Mayors lawn when he wouldn’t increase their pay. (Crouch 1978, p 288)

To this day, the New York Times has not retracted its false story about sexual violence used as a widespread weapon by liberation fighters on October 7th. The story has been repeatedly proved false but was parroted by major news outlets and Netanyahu himself to justify the ongoing genocide. Last month, the ICC justified its charges against Hamas leaders with this story even though it also has no evidence.

Dena Takuri a Palestninan-American Journalist speaks at a vigil for Shireen Abu Akleh marking 2 years since Akleh was murdered by Israel. 5/11/24 (Photo by Author)

On the other hand the truth obviously matters. My “inquiry based” pedagogy for teaching youth history is based on examining primary and secondary source historical documents to make claims with evidence. The Kairos Palestine Document is titled “A moment of truth.” Without news outlets like The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, or Al Jazeera who actually have reporters on the ground in Gaza and publish in English, the hegemonic lies of the IDF would have an even tighter grip on perception of the situation here in the imperial core. It is their counter-hegemonic reporting that inspired me to start this newsletter and challenged me to not simply portray Palestinians as “perfect victims.”

In can be hard to both find and live with the truth. As I have written about previously there is explicit repression of the truth in the form of violent crackdowns on campus protests, administrative repression of educators, and style guides that repress what kind of language can be used to describe Palestine. To lean into the truth, to recognize and bear witness is also traumatizing. How can one comprehend or hold all of the destruction carried out by Israel and the United States? I don’t know. Just as I was writing this, Israel struck a UN school killing at least 40. What is there to say?

Incarnated Christ in Rafah, we come to you echoing the lament of the psalmist “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1). Lord, cultivate in us a stubborn hope which carries on regardless of our understanding, capability, and faith. Work through us, O Lord, in these dark times…

Lord, give sight to those who are blind to their participation in oppression. We remember the proverb that, “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment” (Proverbs 12:19). (Sabeel Wave of Prayer 6/6/24)

Perhaps then, the truth matters, but truth alone is not politically powerful enough to build the world we want to live in.

What I’m Reading/Listening to/Watching this week: