“This is wartime and in the minds of many people, The [New York] Times’ story fueled the fire at a pivotal moment when there might have been an opportunity to contain it before… ”

I think about this every day now

The traditional council of Kahnawake has confirmed that students have the right to be on this land.

In her first ever festival appearance, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natalie Diaz discusses her collected works to date, the connection between writing and experience, and the revitalisation of Indigenous language.

ilfdublin.com/whats-on/festi…

Robin Kelley doing the rigorous heart and community work. We are nothing without our students and young people. What do we do anything for if not for the next generations. We want what he calls for here for our Arizona State University student too.
bostonreview.net/articles/lette…

Your scheduled reminder that Nelson Mandela was designated a terrorist by the U.S. until 2008. The ANC was designated a terrorist group by the U.S. until 2008.

People who are like “but you wouldn’t be comfortable with students who are white supremacists”

Comfortable? No. Are we expected to tolerate and teach them just like we would any other student? Yes.

And trust, we faculty of color have stories about having to do exactly that.

'Progressives must champion free speech, even for those whose views we hate.' In the US we learned this via building a 'republic' on 400 years of slavery & genocide. That the slavers & génocidaires had a right to be heard. In Gaza's agony can we finally see that this isn't true.

Natalie Diaz 'what Israel's post-October 7 motives might be'? Anyone who's set foot there as US writer sees those motives plain as day, whether 50 years ago or 20 years ago & so naked now. Same motives as made the USA: kill or crush the people on the land & take it. Genocide. It's not subtle.

Natalie Diaz Maybe easier now in this horror to see that what we've called 'fascist' isn't about 'bad guys' in propaganda movies. It's a set of European values carried on in the US that started long before WW2 & continues now, woven into all our fabrics, & will end us unless we end it first.

When if we “do good”/find “success” in a system doesn’t mean it is designed for good. You’re tired of hearing me say I was born in a rez. The MFA was designed by the state dept and is bearing fruit now in our MFA’d writers who won’t stand against genocide. Read Suzanne Gardinier work.

Natalie Diaz W Natalie here & anyone else who sees that these orgs that 'do good' while spreading imperial harm are a staple of post-WW2 US domination. In a time of genocide who they are shines through. We could organize ourselves as writers without becoming tools of a genocidal state.

The motive is genocide. Israel keeps telling us the motive. All of we survivors of white western orchestrated genocides are saying don’t wager coming back later in unrigorous “hindsight”. We are “driven instead” by life! Palestinian life! Which is worth all of our lives. And now

Why do you act like we are all ignorant of the ling Israeli occupation. It’s not new. We’re also standing alongside friends and writers, poets and journalists who’ve been targeted and murdered. Why pretend we don’t know what words mean? We understand Israel’s propaganda and yours

I wonder why kids who grew up seeing dead kids and mass shootings, imagining their own deaths during shooter drills, betrayed over and over again by cops and their government,

would respond so viscerally to seeing mass graves of dead kids, betrayed by our government 🤔

I cannot stop thinking about the choice to point guns at students who spent their entire childhoods training to survive too frequent school shootings and who are out protesting because students half way across the world are being murdered

America hates its kids so fucking much

It’s something else watching our Arizona State University students before the judge on Zoom night court. How can they trespass on a campus they attend which is on Native lands. Arizona State University charter embraces their rigorous hearts & imaginations. We can’t arrest them for wanting a better Arizona & world.

I’m troubled two of our MFA students were arrested last night & very disturbed by video I saw of Police guarding what I’m told were other ASU students — allowing them to destroy the peaceful encampment. Arizona State University why are we inviting students toward violence. It’s not our charter.

And I don’t care if these peers never “give me a prize” ever again. We live in an unceded and occupied country. Natives know what the US and orgs like PEN are doing in this land and abroad to support genocide. Then real bs is that we can turn to US poets in times of genocide.

I’m one of those who don’t know better. Cause I actually know better. & I know different. PEN makes a difference for some of you. The difference you mitigate. But I see PEN’s Zionism shining. I’m sick of poets going to the mat for Zionist orgs. So angry for PEN, not Palestine.