Blessed Solidarity

Such a blessing to be an accomplice yesterday at the #Nakba75 rally and march on the stolen lands of Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, not only alongside generations of resistance, but alongside Palestinians youths calling to free all lands and free all peoples as part of what liberation looks like.

Such a blessing to be in a space of solidarity where no one’s pain and suffering, losses and grief, rage and trauma, are pitted against each other. A space where our particular histories are held as both distinct and in ways intertwined. Where solidarity is marked by organizing as if social relations and mutualistic hospitality matter, without losing sight of those for whom the Nakba is an old and current violence.

Such a blessing to be welcomed in the fullness of who we are—as countless pomegranate seeds of a juicy new world that can and should encircle us all with liberation and freedom.

What a blessing to dream up, craft, and then carry this banner with its pomegranate circle A/alef at its heart, and witness the joy of recognition and affirmation when people on the street read the Arabic (“free Palestine”), or gave nods of approval to the French “ni québec, ni canada, ni israël” with its sentiment against states and nationalisms, or thanked us for being “Jewish anarchists against zionism, dispossession, and displacement.” Or when one young Palestinian ran up with a huge smile on their face and asked us to move up to the front to walk side by side with their friends because “you share the same ideas as us.”

Because it’s always a blessing for all those of us who aspire to tear down all walls and borders to meet in what feels, if only for a few hours, like the world to come.