Untitled

Tiara amar

Falastin is freeing us right now. We owe the resistance in Falastin, in Kashmir, Haiti, Sudan, Congo, Puerto Rico everything. There are blueprints for this revolution. We have elders who have been fucking shit up, the real work, raising children, building homes, reminding us where to look. Elders who have been tending to their anger and sustaining their rage to pass it down to us, who have endured, who have forgiven us. May we remember the cost at which we have accessed each and any material comfort these past 6 months. May we avenge our martyrs. May we always remember that direct action runs through our blood, through our transcestors, our comrades, our teachers who we read of and revere. May we hold each other through the burning of all empires, heads on stakes, love unrelenting. 

DAMASCUS 1934 // FRENCH OCCUPIED SYRIA 

The night before the reconvening of the colonizing French parliament in Damascus, a small group of Syrian women snaked through the old city, distributing zines through the night. In the morning, hundreds of women joined them in an unauthorized march from Umayyad mosque, preventing the parliament from gathering. When met with orders to cease, the women showered the police with stones, resisting and pushing ahead. Police retaliated. Eleven of the women were arrested under charges of organizing an unauthorized demonstration, public disruption, and assaulting police officers. 

Face to face with the judge, none of the women removed their veils. In their naive, paternalistic bullshit of the time, the colonizing French refused to issue women identity cards. Consequently, these women could not be ID’d or properly charged. This was the first time in Syria that women faced trial for protest. News spread to Aleppo, to Hama, to Homs, then to the imperial cores in Paris and Geneva. And this was all before the internet. We know about this action today because it was effective and disruptive. Because it was not peaceful, and these women used what they had to protect each other. 

We must actively fight within the confines of this country to bring it down. I am not prepared to let other nationalities do my dirty work for me. I want the people of Iran to be free. I want the people of Puerto Rico to be free, but I am a revolutionary feminist because I want me to be free. And it is critically important to me that you who are here, that your commitment to revolution is based on the fact that you want revolution for yourself.”

  • Pat Parker, 1980

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