Where is our freedom?

I am an Arab woman of colour and we come in all shades of anger.

[micdotcom]

This 14-year-old Muslim American student was detained for bringing a homemade clock to school 

Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Muslim student was arrested at his high school in Irving, Texas, after bringing a homemade clock to class, which school officials mistook for a bomb. Mohamed showed his engineering teacher first, but when the alarmed went off later in the day, that’s when the trouble started. 

[-unbreakablevow]

Twent-teen. It works.

[-unbreakablevow]

I have a real problem with the word ‘martyr’. Who said a 19 year old on his way to deliver aid and rebuild a recently-liberated city wanted to 'sacrifice’ his life for 'the cause’? Who said a child who went to the market with her mother to get fruit and vegetables had to die? When will we see the results of this so-called martyrdom? We won’t. Innocent lives are being taken for no reason other than to portray the evil of the groups stealing them away.

[frederick-the-great]

Images from Greece, celebrating the victory of the No. Celebrating Democracy.

[thebeachboys-deactivated2020050]

Me: *tries not to be petty*

Mao: To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

[-unbreakablevow]

I haven't done a long post in a while, and I feel like it’ll be important for me to remember what I've been feeling these last couple of weeks, in the future. 

I met a guy who I started to really like. We had met twice (first time I went up to him, second time he invited me to come see him perform his music) and spoken a lot via messenger. He asked to meet up before I leave (in a week), I gave him a day when I was free and he said he'd have to confirm that day and get back to me. He never did, and I didn't expect it at all - not him not messaging, nor my reaction. 

Together with the loneliness I've been feeling, I was put straight back into a state of depression for about a week. The house was virtually empty, and pretty much all of my friends (?) are fasting for Ramadan, meaning they're spending it with their families - while I'm neither religious, nor geographically close to my family (except my brother who's been staying with me for a month or so, but he's got a busy life). I invited some of them over last week and made them an Iftar, which was fun, but then I was incredibly bored again for the rest of the time,

Then I've been reading Assata Shakur’s (amazing) autobiography, and I watched the documentary on Nina Simone a couple of nights ago. I like the person who I'm (politically) becoming, but I feel like I'm not doing anything worthwhile (besides running the Palestine Society). They were/are such amazing women, and both went through so much, while I'm complaining, in my middle-class expat university-educated privileged existence. 

I've also often gone with my brother to events, full of interesting people including academics, writers, artists (most being PoCs), and I've had to come to the conclusion that I'm not there to contribute anything meaningful to conversations, but instead I exist for comic relief. I feel intimidated, and I've no new/exciting inputs. I don't know how to come to terms with that yet. 

I've sort of just been feeling very isolated, and extremely lonely. In a week I'll be back in Germany, where I will get to see my family again. I haven't told anyone I'm Germany that I'm coming back for the summer, except one childhood-best-friend who I reconnected with two summers ago. I'm going to be there for two months (with a break in Portugal with my parents for a week), working twice a week with my aunt, and I will have to make sure I've enough books to read for the possibility of sitting in parks and reading all day. Because that's my plan. And it'll be ok. 

[black-0rpheus]

Interviewer: What’s “free” to you, Nina? Nina Simone: What’s “free” to me? Interviewer: Yeah Nina Simone: Same thing it is to you. You tell me. Interviewer: No, no, you tell me [laughs] Nina Simone: [laughs] It’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling. It’s like, “How do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love?” How are you going to tell anybody who has not been in love how it feels to be in love? You cannot do it to save your life. You can describe things but you can’t tell them, but you know it when it happens. That’s what I mean by “free”. 

[thepalestineyoudontknow-deactiv]

Families from Gaza having their breakfast meal (Iftar) of Ramadan on the rubble of their houses which was destroyed last summer by israeli occupation.

“Not a single home has been rebuilt” in the besieged Gaza Strip since the end of the Israeli military’s devastating offensive against the territory in the summer of 2014, said UNRWA spokesperson (x)

[navigatethestream]

your friendly reminder that Malala Yousafzai actually had a polite sit down with Obama to talk about how his drone strike policy was perpetuating the conditions for the Taliban to thrive in Pakistan and it literally changed nothing about the U.S’s droke strike policy.  

your friendly reminder that last year Muslims went to iftar at the white house only to be told that the U.S will continue giving financial aid to Israel as Gaza effectively burned in the background

so tell me again why what Jennicet Guitierrez did was “disrespectful” and not a necessary act of civil disobedience when clearly polite political sitdowns with the marginalized are not affecting Obama’s policies 

[maarnayeri-blog]

any obama heckler would have been kicked out. it isn't about her trans identity. there is a time and place for everything. it wasn't there and then.

Actually, it was about her being trans. Even if it wasn’t explictly, it was. There is more talk today about the conditions of undocumented immigrants (especially trans women) and the sexual assault/brutal methods of torture that occur against them in ICE cells today than the most of span of Obama’s presidency, so regardless of how you feel about the fact she interrupted him, Jennicet Gutierrez did something right.

I absolutely love how Bush can almost get smacked in the face with a shoe and that’s immortalized as one of the greatest moments in history (which it was), but when Obama is (rightfully) called out on his deplorable treatment of undocumented queer migrants, that’s not okay because that’s disrespectful. Do you know how many years undocumented LGBT immigrants have attempted to highlight the urgency of their cause? How long do they have to tolerate being ignored, abused and tortured before it no longer becomes “disrespectful” to openly call him out? How many nice letters and polite rallies and sweet petitions should Not1More organize and distribute before they get the green light from you? All of this has to do with your Obama bias and less to do with the ethics of activist reactions. Had this been any crusty archetypal GOP member, you all would have cheered Jennicet Gutierrez and deemed her Messiah of the movement.

When Obama’s mouthing off about the civil rights of the “LGBT” community, his narrative does not include her. It doesn’t include all the slain TWoC whose deaths are only discussed intracommunally. It doesn’t include all the poverty stricken youth who make up almost half of the homeless population in metropolitan cities. It includes exactly who you see in that audience. Predominantly affluent white cis gay men who have been granted every privilege and avenue of assimilation, besides the right to marry. When he’s invoking her identity to proverbially pat himself on the back for doing absolutely nothing, she has the right to say “hey, actually, you haven’t been showing up for my community. In fact, you’re singlehandedly the biggest threat to our livelihoods”.

Your priorities are warped and miserable. Obama and his cohorts, if they wanted to, could change the entire framework of immigration in this country. But that’s hardly his concern. He doesn’t care about the thousands of children in foster care because their parents were ripped away from them for none other than not being able to obtain arbitrary papers. It worries him none that trans immigrants (almost all of them being trans women) make up only one of every 500 detainees (which still includes thousands of people btw), but account for one of every five cases of sexual assault. Your precious POTUS will go down in history as the most vicious deporter in America’s history.

These numbers represent a person this administration could’ve assisted, but tacitly decided not to. Jennicet Gutierrez attempted to give more clarity to these struggles. I support her wholeheartedly and will not employ respectability politics to invalidate her. Shame on you if you do.

[-unbreakablevow]

I invited some friends over last night and cooked them all Iftar, and even though it was so lovely, I'm completely exhausted. I started cooking 2 days ago, and now I just want to lie on my bed for a week.

[sweepmoon]

I legitimately just found this altar to Jon Snow on a street corner in Williamsburg. Never change Brooklyn, never change.

[krxs10]

Neighbors call police to a Suburb in McKinney,Texas when they learn that a family Invited “too many Black People” to their pool party . Cops Brutalize only black kids.

A McKinney police officer has been placed on administrative leave after a video that had surfaced online of an officer responding to a disturbance at a pool party in Craig Ranch with violence aimed only at the black teens.

The video shows the officer pulling a 14-year-old girl down and shoving her face first on the ground. When several other teenagers tried to help their friend, the video shows the officer pulling out his weapon and aiming it at them. The teenage girl could be heard screaming on the video, “I want to call my mom!!”

Witnesses stated they felt the officer acted inappropriately when dealing with the teenagers.

The neighbors however, said given the situation, they felt the officers “did what was necessary.”

Welcome to America. A country where pulling a gun on a group of kids and shoving them to the ground for “talkin shit” by a police officer is worth it.

#StayWoke

[-unbreakablevow]

I may have just cut my hair myself, and I may just love it very much. 

[petyrbaelishs]

[-unbreakablevow]

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

[fotojournalismus]

Black Panthers in Chicago, Illinois, 1969.

Photographs by Hiroji Kubota

[emiratizayn-deactivated20150816]

and the Iraqi people welcomed the Americans with flowers. I wanted to set a historical event to teach Bush a lesson from the Iraqis, telling him you lied, we did not welcome you with flowers, and instead we are saying goodbye with our shoes.” 

[emiratizayn-deactivated20150816]

Muntaza Al Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who became known as the guy who threw a shoe at Bush and later ended up in jail for three years because of it.