sudzee pigpen 🧺🧼🧹

My friends and I have known Shaima and Omar, respectively, by now for over a year. They are both enduring so much. Let’s help them stay strong against the criminal US/Zionist occupation. Our place in all of this as average people outside Palestine is to support families directly as they resist atrocity and death for love of their people and homeland. If you have any income, any time, any group of friends or family, you can be useful in supporting them. All it takes is for you to decide to and then follow through.

There is always something we can do ❤️‍🔥

Shame can be transformative! I know this much at least. A recent post I rb’d mentioned it perfectly as being a feeling which is “only important to you, it’s only value is that it motivates you”, and in that case, it was about it personally motivating you out of being racist.

I hate to see us Westerners clutch to death the idea that one should never feel shame or never be told they should feel shame and that shame has absolutely no place. We should and probably will feel ashamed of white supremacy/racist behaviors and ideologies (among other evils). In unlearning white supremacy within ourselves, shame is gonna come up. It’s what we do with it, how we process it for ourselves that seems to matter.

I agree that it isn’t ‘toxic’ or even useless to be ashamed of shameful behavior! Don’t center your shame, let it be transformative for you. Personally, I tell my other ‘white’ friends who wanna do the work to destroy white supremacy in themselves to feel their shame even if it makes them feel sick, as this is a way your body shows that it knows what your mind knows; I try to remember that feeling for what it is — but you have to decenter that shame in you at the same time so that it does not become a block in of itself to the work you’re doing to unlearn your white supremacy.

I think about how we are called ‘The Shameless West’, how often I see ppl telling us to ‘have some shame’ — and damn yea I agree. We should have some collective shame at the very least, but not only that, I think we need to like… do something about white supremacy, if we do feel so ashamed. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that shame isn’t the only motivator for destroying white supremacy, but shame has a function and that function can be as (a) motivation.

Here was the post that inspired my writing this all:

or

I’m seen as a ‘good friend’, personable, supportive, loyal and caring, and funnily enough, it’s by people who aren’t fucking cowards & who, despite any mental illnesses we may have, have a solid grasp on reality — somehow moreso than able-minded, otherwise ‘mentally well’ people who make themselves sick from their own cowardice. And these are the people who have been around me over the past decade. Ppl who give criticisms to me and watch me take them to heart in the end.

Sometimes I doubt everything about everything including myself, but then I turn and see the ppl who should be my true mirrors in life and I’m reminded again that I can turn to them in honesty.

how the hell am I supposed to even address this I want to be very confrontational I’m screaming inside. The actual poorest ppl I know give or do something at least. They share the campaigns too. The ppl who tell me they’re ‘broke’ when they see me coming then go buy endless treats for themselves should be ashamed of this behavior and then stop this shit and begin engaging directly with Gazan families.

On one side are liberals who think they’re for Palestine defending him as an anti-Zionist, the other side are overt Zionists attacking him for “anti-semetism” and “supporting terrorists”. Both perspectives have twisted the reality of Zohran Mamdani.

Both liberals and overt Zionists are stuck on his surface level gestures and statements. Neither are actually reacting to or considering anything he’s actually doing or saying (or not doing or not saying) — the man’s words and actions actually serve Zionism. This is because, despite however many times he calls Netanyahu a war criminal, he normalizes Zionism and the Zionist entity; he preserves the very systems which support Zionism. Those systems aren’t challenged by him/by anyone’s liberalism. If he did, he would not be allowed his platform. (Read Pitfalls of Liberalism by Kwame Ture to better understand this point).

So there is this confusion which happens, where whenever anyone who is principled by Al Thawabit for Palestinian liberation calls Mamdani out for his Liberal-Zionism and normalizing, we are the ones immediately told to shut up & accused of actually being Zionists ourselves for “trying to divide the movement”. This is not Mamdani’s movement. He serves Zionism. An easy tell that this was always going to be this way with him was when, before he was even elected, he took the stand at the debates to claim he believes the Zionist entity of “israel” has the right to exist, and then stated the Palestinian armed resistance were “war criminals” on the level with Netanyahu. He validates the invalid Zionist Hasbara atrocity propaganda against Palestinians.

The result of this confusion = too many of those who consider themselves “pro”-Palestine do not know how to properly identify Zionism in its more liberal or “progressive” cloak (Liberal-Zionism). Being unable to identify Zionism serves Zionism. Mamdani is an agent of Zionism in this way and in other more overt ways too — when he defended NYC Zionists selling off stolen Palestinian land in their synagogues by conflating their settler-colonialist activity with “right to worship safely” because actual principled pro-Palestine activists protested at these synagogues. He retained a Zionist NYPD commissioner. He is moving forward with building a 16 story prison in Chinatown built by the same military contractor who builds for the IOF. He silences supporters of the resistance when they chant for their glory against the entity. He uses his identity as a Shia Muslim to mask his actual movements. He collaborated with known Liberal-Zionist NGOs to get their votes. He won’t arrest the many IOF thugs who walk freely thru the streets of NYC. Maduro is jailed in his vicinity *right now* and yet he won’t do shit about it.

Because people think he looks cute, dresses nice, rides a bicycle thru the streets without security guards, says “Free Palestine”, says he cares about queer people, says he’ll do all kinds of things he doesn’t mean to do so that pacifiable New Yorker’s can “get their’s”, challenging his actual actions and words is seen as an affront to the cause of Palestine itself when in actuality openly challenging his Liberal-Zionism serves the cause of Palestine (Al Thawabit)!

It’s not just ironic — this is always convenient for Zionist powers, every time a SocDem US politician replicates into yet another one claiming to “be the change”, hoping you’re too stupid and trusting to look at their foreign policy for even a second.

Again, Mamdani doesn’t serve Palestine nor their liberation movement. He serves the presiding systems, he keeps them intact.

Y’all aren’t even well-meaning in my eyes because you look up to some NYC mayor on the matter of Palestine’s liberation but you don’t know Nizar Banat or Yahya Sinwar or Bassel Al Araj… Mamdani won’t challenge these systems which uphold Zionism, lest he be made to sacrifice his own power. Sacrifice is not what Liberals do. They exist to maintain, enable, placate and benefit from oppression.

Ture says that the liberal is the oppressor, but he is the least powerful limb of the oppressor. He never challenges the oppressor, he only challenges the oppressed, telling them that adjusting their behavior, and staying non-violent against the oppressor will liberate them.