Call It A Reblog

The Sameer Project desperately needs your support right now. They’ve had to scale back some of their operations due to dwindling funds. Please consider setting up a recurring donation to help sustain their important work!

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[Image description:

Three posters with text, made and signed by The Sameer Project and Translating Falasteen. They read:

What this means

Our kitchen closes: At least 3,000 meals a day, feeding up to 9,000 people, not being distributed.

Our water trucks stop: At least 350,000 liters of fresh water a day not being delivered.

Our medical clinics shut down: At least 400 patients not being treated.

Our team pauses: At least 200 ground staff on break without a way to support their families.

[Every 'not' is emphasized in capital letters]

No tents. No tarps. No transport. No medication. No baby formula. Everything people in Gaza rely on to survive is provided by aid organizations, and one by they are having to reduce or pause our operations - because of funding.

[transcriber note: we presume they meant 'one by one']

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What is our plan?

Our community has always shown up, but relying solely on crowdfunding going into our third year of operations is not sustainable. We need to create more reliable and predictable streams of funding.

We're working on an action kit to share with you this week, so you can be part of the solution.

We're encouraging people to support us on a monthly basis; sign up for this feature on Chuffed.

We are asking our community to recruit monthly donors so we know how much funding we can expect.

Be an active participant in sustainability - consistency is key.

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More to come.

Pausing for long, stopping distributions, ceasing operations, is not an option.

['is not an option' is emphasized in capital letters]

We need your support to create consistency and predictability in an otherwise unstable situation on the ground.

The genocide is not over - so we need to adapt. Consistency is solidarity.

We will be providing more information this week on how you can make a difference.

['You' is emphasized in capital letters]

For now, please give so we can restart our lifesaving work:

[There's a QR code for donations to the Sameer Project]

My issue is how much people get stuck on the abjection. I know it's defensive because of how much we get disbelieved or blamed for what we went through. This fucking site is basically Kiwifarms with how much running discourse is based around whether a specific person who dared to disclose their abuse deserved it, is a lying fetishizer, still needs to be "held accountable" for some tangential thing, or all three. Who wouldn't be paranoid or defensive after that? If there's a person who hasn't developed a grotesque persona or behaviors in that kind of environment, I haven't met them. Name a person who has been called out for that on this site, I've likely been a friend, mutual, or follower of theirs, even after said public lashing.

But I wish we could talk about who gets to have that kind of persona or space without giving fuel to said Kiwifarmers or sounding like Camille Paglia. Who gets to be hurt? Whose pain gets to be spun out into a quasi-political movement made out of personal experiences and posts? Who gets not just permission but visibility, resources and a benefit of the doubt (limited as they are because of the default attitudes towards survivors) to be able to express thenselves? It seems to me that whiteness and class are variables in that, and that sucks. What also sucks is how people talk about and respond to these things. Privilege is a poisoned concept now, because people take it like a demand for silencing or self-flagellation for being the wrong kind of person. Kiwifarmers and people who uncritically swallow what they say have made it into such, and every few months someone who has been deemed an intellectual because a political post of theirs gets shared a lot shows their ass on this topic.