We have to think beyond crisis

happy 2025

Refaat Alareer 🖤

I keep thinking about Refaat Alareer. Maybe like a lot of people in this last year, since he was slaughtered by the Zionist entity last December, I’ve been thinking about his impact on our society, and how his death has meant more to us than his life did. As a Palestinian, he knew that. He advocated for the life of his people to mean more to you. He died trying to tell us that.

If I Must Die has become a national bestseller, despite Zionists being in every newsroom in America — Professor Alareer’s work has cut through the patina of Zionism and its reach. He famously said after the genocide began: “I'm an academic. The toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker.” Yet, he fought till death, with his words. His mind, his voice, his education.

I’m thinking of all the Palestinian journalists — most of them in their early twenties — having to become WAR JOURNALISTS through circumstance. Bisan, Plestia, and Motaz are all in the early to mid-twenties. At the most recent event for the New York War Crimes in Los Angeles, we read AbuBaker Abed's essay about wanting to play soccer and live a normal life. Instead, he’s Documenting Genocide at Twenty Years Old (this is a PDF link to the latest NYWC issue with this dispatch from Gaza) and it made me think of these painful words from Walid Daqqa, the longest-serving Palestinian political prisoner, who died in a Zionist prison earlier this year:

“I must confess that I had not planned anything—not to become a fighter, nor to join any faction or party, nor even to engage in politics. Not because I deem all of this wrong, nor because politics is undesirable or reprehensible as some perceive it to be, but simply because these were vast & intricate subjects for me. I did not become an organizer or a politician because of a premeditated conviction. Instead, I could have simply carried on with my life as a painter or a gas station worker, as I had done until the moment of my arrest. I could have chosen to marry one of my relatives at an early age, as many do and perhaps have had seven or ten children. I could have bought a shipping container or become an expert on trading cars and hard currencies. All of this was within the realm of possibility until I bore witness to the atrocities of the Lebanon War and the subsequent massacres of Sabra and Shatila.”

All of these people, including Daqqa, all turned to writing as a form of resistance.

I keep thinking about that because I know that words are incantations. I’ve seen this in my own life, how words allow for magical realities to be conjured and written. For too long, we’ve accepted the white colonizers’ narrative and playing field but it’s time for us to choose our own story and write towards it. What is this great utopia that we believe is possible? What do we think revolution means? Let’s get clear on the new world and what we want to build together so we can actually work towards it.

In my last essay, which pissed some people off, I talked about how to consider futures that don’t rely on armament and war as a retaliation as we are only playing into the colonizer’s game and technology when we play how they want us to. So we must think beyond these containers they’ve put us in. Armed resistance is necessary now, but what is after the rebellion?

A lot of the reason I teach solstice classes or even why I wrote Who Is Wellness For? is because I’ve been exposed to a lot of spiritual theory my entire life (via my sister and father, in different ways) so I’ve had access to knowledge that I feel is important to share. In my own life, I’ve overcome so much that most often these days people don’t realize I’m a highly traumatized person. This is all to say, I'm healing—and healing works! It really fucking works.

When people talk to me about what we can do collectively as a people right now — I often share that we can heal, we can nurture our own minds, and become tools of resistance in everything we do.

I exist within the contradictions of feeling like a non-violent person but also knowing violence works. I, like many people on this planet, have been loving Luigi. I pray for more Luigis. I do think billionaires shouldn’t exist (and should die) and that revolution will be bloody. There is no future where billionaires can co-exist with life on Earth. Yet, we live within these constant contradictions.

I also know that war will not lead us to a true revolutionary society. Killing each other can’t be the only goal on either side. We have to want more for ourselves and our futures. We must believe in more outside this destruction they are telling us is our only tautological reality. We have to have a clearer understanding of what we are fighting for. It can’t just be about survival, it has to be about our collective futures toward liberation. Palestine is the litmus test because it connects everything — but as I said in my last essay, those of us in the Global North are responsible for thinking beyond crisis so that we have strategic goals that we are working towards as we rebuild this new world together.

I’m not a pacifist. Though I want peace I want everyone’s - not just my own. So, I’m willing to fight for peace. I also know that’s a paradox and that’s when I understand that revolution can only be sustained through revolutionary love — and this love can only be accessed through devotion, a love for the planet and her people is what guides me these days.

I see how fried we all are. I see how sick and beaten up my comrades are. A few months ago I stopped punishing my nervous system and started to put up boundaries to news, information, and even how I organize. I’ve seen how many of my peers can’t rest, they don’t eat well, and they’re nervous and anxious all the time. They have us where they want us: sick, many of us disabled, immunocompromised, spiritually battered and angry. Many of us use this anger against each other instead of using the frustration against the powers at be. I see this in every organizing group I’ve ever been in. It’s tiresome, but I also know this is a part of the work. We must heal together if we want to live and revolutionize together.

My prayer for 2025 is this — that more people commit to true revolutionary action and principle. That we continue to learn and read and educate ourselves about the material conditions of poor and working-class people around the world, and the plight of the Global South. We must understand that our liberation is tied to the entire liberation of the planet — which means liberating from our destruction of the natural world, as well. To decolonize is to think beyond the scope of war, beyond the scope of crisis, and begin to weave a future — through imagination and words at first and then through action — which holds all of us. No one is left behind. We must remember this and believe it by embodying it. We can only embody this through ourselves and our interpersonal relationships. How are you enacting revolutionary behavior in your own life? How’s are you applying it in your relationships?

May we continue to heal.

As the year comes to a close, despite my own breakup and the collapse of the entire world around me, I dedicated my life to Palestine and liberation even harder and this has been the most meaningful decision of my life. I do the work to heal so that I can be more of service. So as the year comes to a close, I am surprised by how full I feel. How ready I am for the next adventure. My own life has shown me, even the most brutal things can be alchemized. Lovelessness, betrayal, hurt can all be sublimated into something more powerful, potent and useful for revolution. Even your own evolution.

So many of us are hurt and we use that hurt against others. True revolutionary behavior is not perpetuating harm, it’s facing past patterns and bringing in cohesion and clarity into your own life. Be the site of your own liberation. Something I’ve been saying for a while now is people don’t believe in liberation or revolution because they themselves are not changing. But — when you begin to change and allow yourself to do so for good, for the betterment of yourself and others it gets easier to believe that revolution is possible. What if you are the missing key?

May we make ourselves more useful for the revolution. May we love each other better for this new world. May we remember dear Refaat Alareer’s words. May the death of our martyrs not be in vain. Ameen.

Free Palestine, liberation for all

many blessings for the new year,

Fariha

December 31, 2024