Support For Palestine - No $$$ Needed!
Firstly, I highly recommend This Site, That Will Donate With One Click!
(Seriously, no signing up, no inputing information, no costs, just press the button, I used it myself and you can revisit it every 24 hrs! So try to bookmark it or keep the tab open!)
And secondly, I recommend contacting your representatives in government and advocating for the millions of innocents currently facing danger in the Gaza Strip.
Joseph Biden, in a recent address, acknowledged that the "overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas". I believe this time, right now, is our chance to try and break through our decades long, wrongfully given, support of the Ethnic Cleansing of the Gaza Strip. So I urge you, anyone with even just the time to spare, to try. Plead. Demand. At the worst, you tried and lost a little bit of time. At the best... maybe some people don't die.
So, I wrote a twt thread with instructions/advice for American Residents to reach out to their local representatives as simply, easily, and quickly as possible, and I wanted to share that same info here. I promise I only wants a few minutes of your time.
You can use this White House Contact Page to send one message to Biden and another to Harris. Just fill in your info and you can either write your own message, or feel free to copy and paste mine (it'll be at the bottom of this post)! The focus is first demanding that the US withdraws its support of the Israeli State.
Next, you can use this Common Cause page and instantly get all the information to reach out to your local representatives, it even tells you which committees they sit on! Just put in your address and it'll use that to find which jurisdictions you're in and provide links to all their contact pages. Again, fill in your info, some of mine also required a Topic, so I selected either "Foreign Relations/Affairs" or "Civil Rights and Humanities" and put in my message.
I clicked through all of mine, sent in my messages, used the exact same ones for all of them, only adding an additional note for my most direct representative as I grew up in the same town and wanted to express that to hopefully assist in drawing on his humanity, and it only took me about 30 minutes to get through.
Personally, I wanted to scream and rage and throw my whole beating angry heart at them and their gross, racist bigotry that allowed them to not only neglect the issue of the Israeli Occupation, but fund it. The US has been aiding Israel in their ceaselessly cruel genocide against the Palestinian people, and I'm sure it lights a white-hot fury in many of us. But, I wrote this plea with as much restraint and grace as I could bring myself to allow, if only for the sake of them possibly listening instead of tuning it out.
My statement -
Subject : We Cannot Support a Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing
To the Office of _________ -
I am pleading with the governing powers in place to help the people of Palestine. The government in Israel has said not only with their actions, by committing multitudes of War Crimes and breaking the Geneva Convention repeatedly, but even in their own words that they intend to entirely decimate and wipe out the citizens of Gaza. They have already killed and injured thousands in only these last few days - to say nothing of the past 7 decades they have spent doing the very same - and this devastation is a human rights violation like something we have never seen to this degree being supported and under-reported. Especially by the American Government, which has always held its citizens to the belief that they are a good and just organization that stands for humanity wherever it can.
We have already lost so many innocents in Palestine, but there are still so many that can be spared and saved if our government can withdraw its support of the Israeli Occupation. If they can inform their citizens of the truth that has been happening for so, so very long.
The U.S. has been wrong in its history of supporting and ignoring the cruelty that has been taking place for so long. But only by righting ourselves, by admitting and accepting that the financial aid we've sent has, at this point, become a sunken investment without the extermination of the Palestinian people. It hurts to lose so much money, it hurts to admit we've been on the wrong side of history, but the only way to stop the damage from growing exponentially worse, is to address it honestly now.
This is not about Judaism. This is not about Jewish people by ethnicity or religious affiliation. This is not about Nazism or Antisemitism.
This is about the colonizing power of the IDF that has been ignored and allowed for almost a century.
Please. Try to save some of them before it's too late.
This comes from a concerned citizen who is feeling extremely devastated by the state of things currently.
As a human being, who I hope cares for the lives of fellow human beings, we cannot allow this to happen. Least of all with our seal of approval.
-[Your Name and any Salutations]
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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the problem is that being single is seen as the consolidation prize, and not the natural neutral state of being-a-person. at the end of the movie or the book or the poetry, there is a person waiting for you at the altar, and they love you. if the play is a comedy, everyone gets married. the metaphor is about how you are not-whole. the metaphor is about how everyone is going to be happily-ever-after. the metaphor is that romantic love is the most important resource on the planet, not just all-love. all-love is not a thing, that is a disappointment. the treasure is not the friends we made along the way. the treasure is the girl you landed.
the metaphor is that you cannot be alone, that means you are broken. are you getting over someone? that is acceptable, you can be getting over someone, but not for long. you must be single because you would rather not be single. you must be single and looking to not-be-single. you must want to date, eventually.
friendship and community are never seen as being equal-to or even-better than romantic connection. that person is your one! you need to find them. you need to hunt through the sand particles until you can shift out some kind of gem. this is regardless to your own experience of the beach and the sun. you need to be somewhere with someone.
if you are taking this time alone to heal, that is so sad. everyone gives you this little pitying look. the understanding is that you are not actually happier than you were before you were single. it is seen as a sort of pity - oh, you are choosing yourself, making yourself the priority? - that isn't quite right. you must mean that you are making yourself ready for the right person. you are just laying the bed better this time. open up your heart. you'll find them, we promise!
what do you mean you're really-truly genuinely-very happy? you are probably misremembering what it was like to be in a relationship. and besides, once you meet your person, that time will look grey and bland and wasted. your person is the only way for you to see in color. so what if you have taken this time - for the first time in your entire life - to actually-for-real do the fucking work. you can be proud of yourself, sure. but the way we need to know that you got better is that you get a partner. you're healed enough for the next bad part!
people don't choose to be single, they just say they're choosing to be single - they actually mean "nobody wants to date me." it doesn't matter how many people you have gently rejected or how many times you've talked it over carefully in therapy. what matters is that you are single, and by all accounts - that means you are something worth our pity. your successes and life all seem pale in the sunlight. sure, you have done amazing things and finally found your way in life. what matters is that there wasn't a person in the room with you while you did it.
you want to tell them - that's the whole thing. i didn't know how to be alone in the room. i didn't know how to handle the silence. every moment was so sharp, and i kept choosing the wrong way to close the door. i have spent my entire life in the empty well, living in the ricochet of someone else's cruelty. for once i have built myself a ladder. for once everything i taste is all mine, every bite of sunshine and laughter. i have learned how to sleep out in the open with my memories. recently, they have started to purr.
your father rolls his eyes. listen. this isn't about you. i just want a grandchild in my future.
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Prompt 312
You know what I never see used in crossovers? The fact that the Rogues, Flash’s rogues specifically, will not only hold a funeral for any central city rogue that passes, but several, if not all, will don their costume and commit one final crime in their name, so their rap sheet has one final score. Like can you imagine that for a final send off?
Can you imagine being a ghost and seeing that?
The Rogue doesn’t even have to be liked by the others, they can be an utter asshole. And the tradition is still done. And I just think that’s beautiful in a way.
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