How Quickly We Forget

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LISTENING: to the "Free, Free Palestine" chants still singing in my head
FEELING: scared but never silenced
SEEING: my cutie kitty clean his little butt

Oh, how quickly we forget.

We forget how our ancestors fought — how the land bled — for the liberties we have today. We forget that the first enslaved people were forcibly brought to these lands in 1619. We forget that, almost 255 years to the day, the Boston Massacre happened. British soldiers fired into a crowd of Bostonians, killing five people. We forget that, five years later, Americans declared war, fighting for their freedom from British colonial rule.

We forget that the freedom of Black and Brown folks came much later. America has always been racist. We forget how old racism is. We forget how long-lasting it can be — from slavery to segregation to the prison-industrial complex that keeps Black and Brown brothers and sisters in chains. We forget how quickly our freedoms can be taken from us in this capitalist, white-supremacist country.

In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb atop the house of Black organizers with the MOVE Organization. Eleven people died, including five children. We forget how violent the state has always been. We forget that they have disappeared and deported people before. In 2017, Chicago Palestinian activist and migrant Rasmea Odeh was deported for an alleged terrorist attack in Israel that she says she was tortured into confessing to. We forget that we weren't always a nation of walls and division. The first solid barriers between the U.S. and Mexico were erected in 1991. Until 2009, families could gather at Friendship Park between San Diego and Tijuana to meet bi-nationally between borders. I visited the park this weekend. Not anymore.

Oh, how quickly we forget.

In January, Los Angeles was on fire. People are still without their homes. They continue to dig through the rubble, but you wouldn't know that from the TV news. Everyone is too busy chasing the Donald Trump presidency. Here's just a quick run of some of his latest actions that are threatening the future of environmental and climate justice in this country:

• The Environmental Protection Agency is closing all its environmental justice offices.
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is illegally detaining Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and graduate of Columbia University who helped lead some of the negotiations from pro-Palestine student protesters on campus last year.

There's lots more, but this is what I'm watching. I attended a protest in downtown Manhattan Wednesday morning calling for the release of Khalil. A helicopter flew over, watching protesters. I saw a DHS van and police officers. So. Many. Police. But I saw even more people fighting for the freedom of Khalil and Palestine and oppressed peoples everywhere.

I left inspired. I left angry. I left scared and hopeful.

One speaker said something that stuck with me, "We deserve the world, and we're going to organize to get it." I do this work because I know that we, the oppressed, deserve more. We deserve clean air and clean water. We deserve affordable housing when hurricanes or flames come for our shelter. We deserve safety and freedom.

We deserve a collective memory that's stronger — one that doesn't forget. We can't afford to forget. History will remember. And history will be unforgiving. What side of it will you be on? 🌀

I'm heading to Palestine in a few weeks to join a climate justice delegation and get some reporting done from on the ground. Consider donating to our fundraising efforts here. If you're an editor and want a story, let me know!

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Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more frequent and/or stronger disasters like these.