the same is true as yesterday
notes on entering an era of America's decay
Earlier this year, my friend Kris gifted me with a ponytail palm tree. Over the months, I noticed that its leaves had wilted. I did some research in an attempt to revive the plant, performed a minor surgery on its trunk and roots, gave it ample sunlight, and monitored its moisture. Over the months, the palm exhibited no growth, no signs of life. Instead, its trunk felt hollow to the touch. I felt sad that I had failed this plant, and held onto hope that maybe it just needs more time to respond to my care, that it’s a slow grower.
Last week, I came to terms with the fact that the plant is beyond saving. I don’t want to keep watering things that are dead, I thought to myself. I uprooted the palm, and delivered it to the woods so it could begin its decaying process and provide fuel for other life. I bought a beautiful ginseng ficus from Trader Joe’s and planted it in the ponytail palm’s former home.
This is the first election of my life that I boycotted. For as long as I have been able to vote, I’ve followed the ‘lesser-of-two-evils’ logic and voted for the Democratic Party. Over time, the lesser evil became more and more evil to the point of financially underwriting and providing political cover to a genocide. The lesser of two evils had become too evil for me to support. I, like many others, was faced with the dismal reality of having no presidential candidate to support in this election.
I am not shocked by a Trump victory. I had accepted this very possible outcome long ago, so I can’t say the grief of these results is all that overwhelming. In the past year-plus of witnessing my loved ones endure genocide in Gaza, I’ve developed an intimate relationship with grief, one that I’ve come to regard as sacred. The collective and profound grief of genocide far outweighs the personal grief I feel as a brown Muslim woman in Trump’s America. Suffering is relative, and no matter how bad things get under Trump, our suffering will only be a sliver of what we have inflicted on whole populations around the world for decades—even under leadership as ostensibly decent and noble as Obama’s.
The past year of organizing for Gaza has taught me compassion and resilience. It’s made me reflect on my privilege and how to wield it for collective care. It’s made me trade in my hope in our institutions for disillusionment in them. It’s broken me mentally, spiritually, and emotionally and taught me the intrinsic link between self and collective care. It’s made me more courageous in cutting ties with systems, relationships, and ways of being that don’t align with my morals and principles. It’s taught me how to lead and build systems of care that exist outside of infrastructures of power.
This past weekend, I visited my dear friends Stewie and Susanna on their family farm they run in rural Virginia. To get there, I had to drive deep into Trump country, marked by countless yard signs and bumper stickers. Despite being surrounded by extremist right wing supporters, I felt no fear that weekend because I was under the care and protection of friends who make me feel loved.
My time at the farm in the company of true friends was life-affirming. It gave me respite from the pain and anguish of reckoning with the turbulence of ongoing grief. I ate home cooked meals made of vegetables and meat sourced directly from their farm, slept in a cabin that had a sunrise view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and hiked in a serene forest. I jumped on a trampoline with 6-year-old Dia who wore a red panda tail she bought from the zoo all weekend. I read Berenstein Bears to 3-year-old Seneca and her stuffed panda named Cheetah. I lounged in a hammock-like swing under the trees. I straight up frolicked in the wide, expansive fields of their farm. I got to feel like a kid again. I got to feel joy.
The weekend reminded me of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s words:
And if happiness should surprise you again,
do not mention its previous betrayal.
Enter into the happiness,
and burst.
Part of what made that trip so restful was that Stewie and Susanna have actively volunteered in my Gaza Champions initiative that links people around the world with my community in Gaza as pen pals and supporters of fundraisers that helped some people in Gaza evacuate and others afford day-to-day life in apocalyptic conditions. I connected Stewie and Susanna with my former student Yousef and they have gone above and beyond in caring for Yousef and his family, helping them to reach safety and prove ongoing moral and financial support.
There’s something deeply affirming about not only being seen in my grief, but being helped to bear its burden. To know that the impossible weight of caring for all my friends in Gaza isn’t mine to carry alone. To be able to connect people who have never met, across oceans and borders, and to unequivocally trust in the deep and tender care that will follow. Organizing concepts and terms like mutual aid can sometimes feel hollow and impersonal. But if there is anything this past year has shown me, mutual aid is the most powerful tool we have to resist violence and fascism. It gives us agency in a cruel system, and deepens our bonds along the way.
Susanna reflected beautifully on the agency we have in cultivating hope as a practice. She says:
My heart is big enough to hold pain and suffering while also experiencing joy and loving deeply. Holding pain and love together in my heart does not diminish one but instead expands my capacity to feel both fully. Feeling fully with my eyes and heart open is what it means to be alive and present. I take my strength from this land under my feet and in return I give her my utter care and devotion. It is only from this physically grounded place that I can open my arms and heart to the daily work of hope.
This past year of being an activist for Gaza has grounded me in ability to hold pain and love together; it has expanded my capacity to feel both fully. It has acquainted me with my truest self — with my courage, my power, and an unwavering clarity of who and what I value in this world. While a Trump presidency is categorically bad, a Harris defeat is also good. It signifies that the Democratic Party, the “good guys,” have to face accountability for running on a platform that insults and dismisses marginalized and working class communities. To face accountability for green-lighting the ultimate crime against humanity.
I woke up today to the news of Trump’s victory and thought: the same is true as yesterday. We keep each other safe, we are each other’s saviors. Community, under any of our two parties, will always be the answer.
We are entering an era of decay of the farce of American democracy, the farce of the lesser evil, and the farce of imperialism with impunity. Decay is a grotesque, painful process, but if we steer it responsibly, it gives way to new life. I am content with not putting my energy into watering dead things. Instead, I look to the future, confident in my ability to plant saplings that might provide shade to future generations.