My heart holds on

Image by Gerald Friedrich via Pixabay

“I’m here but my heart is still there!” 

His eyes shone as he pounded his chest and looked back at us. We were frightened kids in the backseat of the taxi, and my uncle gently reminded the cab driver to keep his eyes on the road. He laughed and turned to face the road as we sighed in relief. My first encounter with a Palestinian was at 16, in the backseat of a taxi in Boston. My understanding of the conflict in the Middle East was jumbled because it was confusing and everything was so far away. But with a black man in the White House and university on the horizon for me, I couldn’t relate to how this man could have so much passion when the world was getting better.

It has been about 12 or 15 years since then. As bombs drop on Gaza today, I think about that taxi driver often. How much more family, friends, and community has he lost? His heart torn now. 

Land. It all comes back to land.

They will kill us all for land. 

There are ghosts on the land. 

We are witnessing the genocide of the Palestinian people in real-time. As this happens, Kenyan and other military operatives are entering Haiti to deal with unrest as Ukraine still fights Russia. The world is wild and the media is blatantly lying. Gaslighting us. 

What is happening in Palestine can happen to any of us in the Global South. This strikes true fear in my soul as I consider the climate crisis and the work that we’ve been doing. 

Earlier this year, I helped to organize and coordinate a regional climate policy conference for youth. Despite all odds, my team and I managed to pull off the impossible and lead an incredibly successful event. But at the end of it, I thought to myself, what was the point of this? All of the policy and world-building work I’ve done this year feels extremely pointless in the face of military degradation and dehumanization. What do we do this work for? Who do we do this work for? 

It feels disjointed. Like a vanity project in the face of real turmoil. The policy and science work together but they’re both censored because they ignore the context of Western imperialism. There can be no climate and environmental Justice without the freedom of Palestine. Anything else is ineffective and only gives a shallow interpretation of what “we” can do together. But then, it’s imperative to consider who “we” really represents in this context. 

“We,” the people who push for peace or “we,” the people who profit. 

The “we” who push for peace because we can feel racism and colonialism remain at play. Because Jamaicans can’t access their beaches and neither can we. Because instability eventually leads to new all-inclusive resorts built on the graves of our dead. Land. 

The loss of land. The acquisition of land from people. 

Indigenous Peoples. Caribbean People. Black People. Mexican People. Aboriginal People. Palestinian People. 

The “we” who profit from instability recognize the need to push particular narratives. War is a profitable business for elite wealth and is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and it is ALWAYS kept out of the conversation. War is a tool of colonization, yes, but also extreme profit for capitalism. Selling and manufacturing weapons of war, armies for war and acquiring land for oil and control are all means to add to profit and wealth. Because you absolutely can’t have a thriving GlobalNorth without a destabilized Global South based on the system that we exist in.

I think of “we” in the context of tourism in The Bahamas and the Caribbean because that is the “we” that I’ve grown up in. Tourism exists in this system, and the only reason that global powers allow us to function is because of tourism, which serves a light colonial structure to ensure servitude and land acquisition exists in the Global South. As a result, we are not recognized as citizens in the world as black people and as black people in the Global South. Our humanity is irrelevant to the system. When there is a natural disaster, at face value, the resources we receive depend on the value we exhibit at the time. We are a great tourist destination. We have advantages because of our proximity to the Global North. We are useful to prey on with new climate and natural disaster predatory loans. We will never be liberated because our imagination is purposefully limited to a world where tourism and serving the wealthy, whiter ruling class are inherent. We cannot break free.

Until Palestine gave us a reason to want liberation. Freedom from oppressive regimes.

Witnessing the Palestinian genocide on this large a scale and remembering that this is how they see all of us . . . .

What will happen when we become useless to Western interests? 

What will become of our culture? 

Because they will take our land and our lives and build memorials generations later to admit guilt. 

Or they will let the ocean swallow us up and say we weren’t loud enough at policy conferences. 

After the damage has been done, they will give us a day to recognize the sins of the past. 

All with the intention to repeat history. 

There is no real remorse. 

At climate talks and negotiations, we know this. There is no intention to stop polluting or carbon emissions. That would get in the way of big business and finding ways to make money amid the crisis. And when people die, they will say it was our fault for not using paper straws. It was our fault for not appealing to their humanity well enough. It was our fault as Palestinian men waved the corpses of their children on cameras to beg for ceasefires. As Palestinian children hold press conferences to invite us to protect them. Our fault as people take to the streets to call for change but first-world governments censure voices for peace. 

“You weren’t loud enough.”

They plan to kill us. But we are not dead yet and death will not come easy.

Palestinian culture and community thriving through the bombardment inspires me to fight and it should inspire you. The resistance to white supremacy and colonialism, which continues to threaten us with the climate crisis and the killing of our environment, comes through our preservation of culture and community. We live when we refuse to let go of the strength of our people and hold our culture and communities in our hearts. 

“I am here but my heart is there.” 

From the river to the sea. 

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