On New Year’s Eve, I was walking home from the hardware store when a woman pulled over next to me and asked if I was going to the protest. I didn’t know there was one and told her as much. Then I clocked the Palestinian flag in the front seat of her car and realized she must have noticed the keffiyeh I was wearing for the first time. I smiled and started to walk away but in the handful of seconds afforded by the stoplight, I realized this moment of recognition was actually an opportunity.
I asked if she would give me a ride and she said, “Yes! That’s what I was going to offer!” I hopped in with Lily (I learned her name after getting in), and we headed to Thomas Circle and joined dozens of protestors chanting “Our New Year’s resolution is to start a revolution” and I struggled to hold back tears at the beauty of people coming together.
It meant something.
It meant everything.
That was nearly four months ago and in the time since, I have struggled to write about that day and what it meant to me. Part of it, I’m sure, is that I moved to a new city and have been balancing unpacking boxes, flying to conferences and making new friends in my thirties, with a full-time job and trying to be a writer. But most of it is not knowing what to do with the big feelings that come up when I think about the hope I felt that day and the despair I have felt since, as each day the number of lives taken continues to rise.
Wrapped up in the love and sense of community I felt in wearing a keffiyeh is also the grief and rage that drove me to wear one in the first place. I can’t stop thinking about the three men in Vermont who were shot for wearing keffiyehs and being Arab. I can’t stop thinking about the 34,097 people killed and the 76,980 people wounded, and the 8,000+ people missing, and the two million people starving in the genocide that hasn’t stopped.
In the midst of the pain and terror, my heart has been warmed by the marches and demonstrations all over the world. Small moments of spotting an older woman wearing a keffiyeh walking along the beach in Portugal or seeing a guy biking with a keffiyeh tied to his backpack on a warm day, and big moments like seeing faculty create a human chain around student protestors–have gone a long way to reassure me that the world of people who long for a free Palestine is vast and expansive and here.
The root of the word solidarity is the Latin word solidum, meaning “whole sum.” Webster defines solidarity as, “unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on a community of interests, objectives, and standards.” From this definition, solidarity seems like standing in shared values together. It seems like oneness.
“Solidarity seems like standing in shared values together. It seems like oneness.”
In the summer of 2020, I wrote an essay called, We Can’t Be Friends if You Ignore My Blackness. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed, I felt hurt and distanced from white friends that didn’t speak up about the injustices that were becoming so evident around them. The more time that went on without them posting to Instagram or giving me a call made it increasingly clear that our wellbeing was not connected. The message resounded clearly: I could be broken and they could be fine.
I ended up confronting one friend about it. She defended herself saying that she never really posts on social media much anyway. I didn’t have the language then to be clear that it wasn’t about IG posts for IG’s sake, but that I had no evidence from her that she saw the pain my community was enduring. I had no evidence that she cared. I didn’t need an IG post or a tweet; I needed reassurance that in the hardest moments of life, my friend would stand by my side. I needed to know that we were one.
I needed solidarity.
The moments after our conversation ended are among the loneliest of my life. I never want anyone to feel what I felt then–that someone I cared about didn’t see my life, my pain and my people as valuable enough to speak up about. I know my friend didn’t mean anything by it, but in underestimating the value of her voice, she underestimated the weight of her silence.
“In underestimating the value of her voice, she underestimated the weight of her silence.”
In 2021, after the Atlanta spa shootings, I wrote an essay about the intersection between the particular sexism, stereotypes and fetishization that Asian women experience in the US and its ties to Puritanism and white supremacy. I spent most of my late teens and early twenties in white Evangelical Christian groups, hearing that women were supposed to hide themselves to keep men from lusting after them–versions of the warped logic that fueled the shooter’s violence. I reposted things on Instagram and shared articles, but I never published the essay. I got so in my head about whether I was the one to tell the story and was so worried about taking up too much space as someone who is not Asian, that I missed an opportunity to stand alongside my friends—many of whom felt isolated by the lack of attention to what they were going through. I can’t say for certain whether those in my immediate community were hurt by me not publishing the essay, but I will always know that I could have done more.
“I got so in my head about whether I was the one to tell the story… that I missed an opportunity to stand alongside my friends…”
When I bought my keffiyeh, I knew that wearing this symbol was an act of solidarity. By donning this ornate scarf, I was telling those who stand for a free Palestine that I saw them and stood by their side. What I didn’t know was that wearing it would invite me into deeper solidarity. When I openly shared where I stood, I was recognized by people who shared my values and offered an opportunity to stand as one.
I’m not telling you to buy a keffiyeh or write an essay. How we show up is bound to vary, but what matters is that we find ways to show up for one another and make it clear that anyone who stands up for Palestine does not stand alone.
Get Involved
Here are a few ways to show up for Palestine:
The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Jewish Voices for Peace have resources to help you:
demand a ceasefire by calling or writing to your representatives,
find protests, and
find boycotts.
You can send a fax to your representatives for free via faxzero.com
Elevate the Freedom Flotilla - They are risking their lives to break the blockade and bring aid to Gaza. We need eyes on this movement so violence against them can’t be ignored.
Repost information from credible sources on social media to challenge the algorithms and shadowbans.
Have bold conversations with loved ones.
Combat the many Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian efforts that are popping up on the local level.
Give:
Donate E-sims to help Palestinians communicate with their families.
Support Mutual Aid networks in your area that are supporting protestors.
Finding the Laughs
Every edition, I share what’s making me laugh. This time, it’s this dog.
BONUS BIG NEWS: YOUR GIRL IS PUBLISHED!!!
For the first time in my writing career (unless you count my high school magazine) I have been published in a literary magazine! Shout out to midnight & indigo for believing in my essay and publishing A Place for Everything, Everything in its Place! Big ups to my writing community, friends, family and paid subscribers for encouraging me to put myself out there and believing in what I have to say.
Y’all really keep me going. Thank you.
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I am based in Lënapehòkink, now known as Pennsylvania. I gratefully acknowledge the Lenape peoples on whose ancestral homelands I write and the diverse and vibrant Native communities who are very much still here.