Less Outrage. More Organizing.
Over the holiday weekend, I caught up on some episodes of “This Is Us.” One was the episode where Kate goes for a singing audition. She sings a few lines, she’s mediocre and they cut her off. She launches into a big speech about how she knows she’s not getting the job because she’s fat and she isn’t going to accept that. I thought, “Okay, they are going to give her another chance, and she’s going to kill it.” Which would feel good for someone who’s always rooting for another fat woman named Kate but would also make it one of those televisions shows where nothing is like life. Instead, the guy tells her what’s wrong with her singing, and mentions that the thin women she’s competing with have been doing open mics for years. And Kate gets that before she can climb on a moral high horse, she has to put in the work.
That’s a lesson we in the left could take to heart.
In the last year, I’ve seen a lot of articles excoriating feminists and leftists for caring too much about the wrong things or not enough about the right ones. Several have centered on Ahed Tamimi, the young woman arrested in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh last week, after someone released a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier who was invading her home. Ahed, 16, her mother, cousin and aunt, remain in prison, the most recent of many times that members of her family have been detained by the Israeli military for their activism. “Where is the #MeToo Movement for Ahed Tamimi?” ask CodePink members Ariel Gold and Morley Taylor. “Why is the west praising Malala but ignoring Ahed?” says Shenila Khoja-Moolji. “An unconscionable liberal silence over Ahed Tamimi,” reads an article in the British press.
These are well-written articles and make important points about who is and who is not considered heroic within mainstream US and European culture. As someone who has been involved in Palestine solidarity work for a long time, I’m very familiar with the enormous hurdles for anyone promoting Palestinian resistance, and I don’t deny that the feminist movement is guilty of ignoring Palestinian women’s issues. (Two comprehensive new reports document the impact of military occupation on Palestinian women and the systemic discrimination against Palestinian women in Israel.) But the articles do not present any evidence that western feminists are aware of Ahed’s case and deliberately ignoring it. Has CodePink approached Feminist Majority or NOW and asked them to help publicize the case? Perhaps they have and been met with resistance or silence, but their articles don’t say that. (There is a Women’s March to Free Ahed and All Palestinian Child Prisoners this weekend in Los Angeles, cosponsored by CodePink and the ME TOO March International.) Although the case has received some international media, including in the U.S., it hasn’t been the kind of national news here that it is in Israel.
Malala Yousafzai didn’t become an international cause célèbre overnight, and her story is more complex than often represented — international feminism has not been so quick to endorse her call for world socialism. She and Ahed are hardly the only teenagers facing repression. The international feminist movement was pretty silent regarding Khetam Bneyan, a teen who spoke out about rape in Syrian prisons and has been pretty quiet about the disappeared human rights activists Samira al-Khalil and Razan Zaitouneh. Most of us know the names Sandra Bland and Rakia Boyd, but very few beyond a small cadre of activists in San Francisco know the name of Jessica Williams (not the comedian), who was killed by San Francisco police in 2016. Is there an #IAmEricaGarner movement? It was several weeks after Trayvon Martin was killed that his mother, Sybrina Fulton, enlisted civil rights lawyer Natalie Jackson, who hired a publicist to help make his a household name.
What becomes a viral hashtag, who becomes the face of a movement, who sparks an international outcry, is often a matter of timing, resources, skill and work work work.
I coproduce a feminist radio show. I did three pieces having to do with Palestine in the last year. Know how many I did on Yemen, Syria, Libya, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Sudan, Somalia, Congo and Myanmar? Zero. One could assume I don’t think the women in those countries are important, but that wouldn’t be true. The reason I didn’t cover them is because no one pitched me about them, I don’t know anyone working on them, I’m a volunteer, I’m busy and I’m lazier than I wish I were. If I see a story, I might reach out to the author or subject for an interview, but if they don’t respond, I will probably let it go. Not because I want to but because something else captures my scant attention.
I also write mystery novels about Palestine. I have won some awards but been passed over for some I thought I deserved. I haven’t gotten as many reviews as some other mysteries from my publisher. It’s easy to decide that is because the subject matter is seen as too controversial, or that people don’t agree with my politics on it, and it could be. But it’s also possible that my books just aren’t as good, or at least that people don’t like them as well, as some of the others.
I have a few writer friends who have made it big, a few more who have made it small, and a greater number who are stuck in the microscopic echelons with me. The ones who have made it are very talented, as are many of those who haven’t. But every one of them has worked a whole lot harder and endured more rejection than I have. I was shocked to hear Aya de Leon say that she shopped her Justice Hustlers series to 99 agents before landing one. Aya is a professor of writing, she has a following in the hip-hop world, she’s been on television, she’s charismatic, her books have lots of sex in them as well as beautiful “strong female protagonists,” she’s great at networking, and she’s a terrific writer. She has taught me a ton about not waiting for opportunities to come to you.
Those of us who want Ahed and her cousin Nour to become international symbols of resistance should make sure that #FreeAhed and #FreeNour are in every photo of every women’s march around the country on January 20. If we succeed, people will point out that there are more than 300 other Palestinian children in Israeli jails, some as young as 12. We know about Ahed because she comes from a prominent activist family, and because someone made a video of the incident, which went viral. But some people have suggested that we only care about her because she has blonde hair that she doesn’t cover.
Masses of feminists are not saying #FreeRedFawn, who still faces felony charges from the Standing Rock protests. (The Intercept reports that the gun Red Fawn Fallis allegedly fired belonged to her boyfriend, a paid FBI informant. This is reminiscent of Marius Mason, who is serving a 22 year prison sentence after being set up by his then-husband.) Back in the day, when feminist icon Angela Davis was on trial for her life, the rallying cry was, “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.” Those other, unnamed political prisoners people chanted about? Many of them are still in prison.
Feminists can and should push one another to do better at solidarity. We can write articles criticizing each other, or we can organize coalitions. Writing articles is easier, but less effective.
