About Uprisings.

Recently, I was on Tehran’s Press TV defending the #OccupyWallStreet protests. Also recently, and also throughout my entire life, I’ve been asked (both in the general and the specific), what is the point of protesting?

I take that back. I haven’t been asked. I’ve been told–the question mark is merely there for aesthetics. The question is rhetorical, and the answer is obviously, “There is none. [subtext: I'm a worthless leftist, too blinded by my naïve idealism to realize that nothing will ever change. I should probably just go smoke more weed and/or hang myself.]“

The main criticism of the #OccupyWallStreet protests is that there are no defined leaders nor demands–that people are screaming with no cause, and barely inconveniencing the bankers beyond a strenuous eyeroll in the process.

Firstly, there are demands. The protestors (we, the people) are demanding an end to the corporate take over of politics. We are demanding an end to corporate personhood and corporate greed. We are demanding an end to a political system of financial terror that serves the top 1%, not only in lieu of, but at the expense of the bottom 99%. These demands can be realized through accountability: the repeal of Citizen’s United, financial regulations, an end to predatory loans, and the long overdue accountability for white collar crime.

But that’s not the point. The point is, people do not take to the streets because they have a concrete agenda, or a list of immediate demands. We take to the streets because we are indignant, angry at the system, and curious to see who else is. We take to the streets to find each other, and once we have found each other we figure out what the next steps are.

Demands. What are demands, and why must we define ourselves universally by a core set of demands? Why not have many and attack them one at a time, gaining momentum from small victories to achieve greater ones rather than giving up on the impossible goal.

We would prefer to be radical, but instead we are progressive with the hopes of one day looking back and realizing that our progressive victories created radical change.

SlutWalk

Lately, there have been many critiques that the SlutWalk Movement does not speak to women of color. Unlike white women, many Black and Latina feminists do not feel that they have the privilege to re-appropriate the word “slut” in a way that doesn’t counteract their resistance to a highly racialized sexuality.

I’m not going to pretend to understand any intersection of racial and sexual identities other than my own–that of a heterosexual, cisgendered, “questionably brown” female. However, these sudden and divisive racial critiques speak to the larger problem within the SlutWalk Movement.

SlutWalk is not about re-appropriating the word “slut” no matter how many feminists claim that that is on the agenda. It is about ending a culture of victim blaming, where rape culture not only facilitates and normalizes rape, but blames victims for their behavior, location, or clothing rather than seeking accountability for the rapist.

For some women, this means dressing “slutty” without being blamed for “asking for it.” For others, it means supporting rape survivors, and ending the myth that only the “perfect victim” –one who is pure, virginal and raped by a rampant criminal that they have ever met–is capable of being raped.

This is something that affects all women. I wish more women would realize this, and frame the protests as a tidal wave against victim blaming and rape culture rather than a playful re-appropriation of the right to be a slut.

Flotilla 2.0 – This One’s For You

Just more than one year ago, the violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla radically changed the international dialogue on Israel and Palestine. Protests in solidarity with the nonviolent activists erupted around the world, from expected global capitals like Tel Aviv and New York City to areas where one would never expect to see a Palestinian flag – like Cincinnati and Des Moines.

Palestine became less of a “controversial” issue.

One year later, Flotilla II, consisting of activists from twenty different countries aboard ten ships (including The Audacity of Hope, more commonly referenced as the US Boat to Gaza) is hoping to set sail if it can secure approval from the Greek government, which is being fierecly lobbied  behind the scenes to scuttle the flotilla. Continue reading at The Nation…

I Am Moroccan

Currently, I am writing about the #Feb20 protests for constitutional reform in Morocco. While I was at it, I wanted to share this beautiful video…

Cautious Excitement in Yemen

Saturday night the news broke that Yemeni president and dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh had been critically injured and flown to Saudi Arabia. Many remembered Tunisian ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s sudden, unanticipated exit to Saudi Arabia, and looked towards Yemen with disbelief and cautious excitement.

Did the long awaited Yemeni domino just fall? Read More…

Driving the Men Crazy

Since 1979, women have not been allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Although there is no official written law banning driving, women who are caught behind the wheel are arrested for “immoral behavior.”

Recently, Saudi feminist activist and rabble rouser Manal Al-Sharif uploaded a YouTube video of herself driving, encouraging other women to drive and upload similar videos. She has been arrested twice, and faces charges of “besmirching the kingdom’s reputation abroad” and “stirring up public opinion.”

Nevertheless, Al-Sharif’s actions blossomed into the “I Will Drive My Own Car Campaign,” an internet-based awareness initiative, designed to culminate in a mass protests of women driving throughout the country. Protestors are raising awareness through the hashtags #women2drive and #freemanal.

Currently, gender separation laws prohibit women from taking public transportation, thus making women rely on male relatives or chauffeurs to get around. Naturally, this divides women of means from poorer women who are even further enslaved in the confines of Islamic domesticity.

 

STIs in the Age of Technology

Grindr is a recent gay man’s technological sexual revolution, merging social networking with location based technology allowing users to cruise, message, and eventually meet up with other users within a few clicks of their smartphone. It removes the eternal questions of “who is single?” “who is gay?” and allows a fail safe way to break the ice, chat, and in many instances, eventually (or quickly) hook up.

Frankly, I’m worried.

Grindr has been referred to as both a gay man’s dream and the world’s largest, scariest gay bar. Though there are alleged safety precautions (no explicit photos, and one is required to confirm that they are at least seventeen years old), that doesn’t stop the pornographic profile photos or the fifteen year olds who claim they are seventeen and the fifty-three year olds who claim they are thirty five. Realistically, it is almost impossible to maintain standards for Grindr –though some photos are “reviewed for content” the viral, addictive nature of location based dating apps (an average of 3,000 new users join every day) has made Grindr a product of its users rather than its creators. At the risk of generalizing, it has effectively become gay porn that has the potential to come to life only a few feet away.

There is currently no data on a correlation between the popularity of location based dating apps and STIs. However, as technology makes it easier to cruise, meet, and in many cases sleep with more people, it will be more difficult to hide from these realities.

Drinking: A Feminist Issue

Lately, I have had many instances where I’ve been giggling with a girlfriend over some sexual encounter or another, been completely nosy and pried for details, and then gotten a story something like:

Well, I was completely drunk  and woke up at his place naked. I’m not really sure what happened because I was blacked out but I’m pretty sure we had sex.

It quickly goes from a funny story to a terrifying one. I was glad yesterday to see this article that addresses the issue. I would like to see others that address blasé attitudes towards date rape.

Al Nakba in the Arab Spring

Fancy that, I wrote an article for GlobalComment about Palestine!

The Nakba was not simply one event, but a sixty-three year process of continuous loss. What was once the tragic image of a depleted Palestine immediately after the Nakba is now the idealized 1967 border lines symbolizing “peace” and a successfully implemented two-state solution. …

I Don’t Want Your Free Falafel

This one is for Al-Nakba. Written a few days ago …

Three years ago, I was still in the closet. About being pro Palestine.

I knew I was. I knew it ever since I went to that Nakba rally when I was 16 years old. Everyone looked like me and my family. I had never seen anyone who looked like me outside of my family, and had always thought that I was secretly hispanic since everyone in California responded to my hair not being blonde by speaking Spanish.

I switched the language I was taking in college from Spanish to Arabic. I bought a bottle of olive oil. I learned what Palestine was, and that people could be Palestinian, and that these peoples’ families had been displaced from their homes.

I learned that they ate the same food that my Lebanese family ate, cooked with the same spices, and that the women had the same out of control hair. They were also Arab, without being Muslim. They were me, I was them, we were one: I’m Lebanese, but hell, its culturally inseparable from being Palestinian.

That’s when the conflict got personal.

I was told that I could offend people by talking about Palestine. I didn’t understand this, because it seemed like the most just, worthy cause that I had ever heard of. I was willing to defend it to its very core.

I went to NYU for college. Everyone was Jewish.

I was trying to make friends, and everyone I talked to was Jewish. I felt silenced, I felt like I could not talk about what I was most passionate about. I skirted around the issue, skirted around my family’s background, and skirted around the reasons that I was taking Arabic. I was nervous, and whenever I dared to discuss it —dared to let it be known that I was pro Palestine —I was immediately shut down.

“But Hamas are terrorists! They send rockets into Israel! That could kill someone!”

Well, Israel fucking did kill someone. That winter, they killed 1400 in Operation Cast Lead.

I started to realize that my opinions were controversial, but they were justified. I had even convinced myself that I was some kind of terrorist for wanting justice for Palestinians, even though I never have even said to myself that I want a complete end to Israel. For the first time, I felt like a good person for wanting justice.

I still felt silenced on campus. I still felt silenced by my peers. I still felt silenced (and outraged) when my neighbor, a frat brother in a Jewish frat and his friends knocked on my door to advertise their fundraiser for the IDF. I still felt silenced by my outspoken Jewish friends, and tried to go along with it and ask them about their culture without talking about the “I” word or their birthright trips.

Most of all, I hated when people would try to debate the Israeli Palestinian conflict as an issue. It’s not a fucking debate. It’s peoples lives.

I hated when people told me to calm down, and that Barack Obama was negotiating a peace process. I hated the people who said that both sides had done wrong and then avoided talking about it. This is oppression and power dynamics, not some playground battle.

My second year of college, I put a “Palestine” pin on my purse. This felt like a controversial act. I got more hatred from the Jewish frat boys in Campus, more questions about BDS, more accusations of being stupid and advocating for terrorists. I found Students for Justice in Palestine. I found Adalah NY. I found GRITtv. I bought a kuffiyeh and put it across my bed. I wasn’t alone anymore.

The tragedies — but also the successes of the Freedom Flotilla and the Mavi Marmara happened that June (technically May), and suddenly the green, black, white, and red flag that I held so close to my heart was sprawled across newspapers and websites. People in the “both sides have committed wrongs” crowd came out for Palestine. The protests were amazing.

I got to start writing about Palestine issues and am now somewhere in the New York Times’ photo repetoire of “angry Arab-American girl holding a Palestinian flag.”

I lived in Paris for a semester, got involved in other issues, and came back to the United States discombobulated, and upset that I was no longer in a country that valued protests and revolutions as a unique part of its history. I read the news exclusively in French, where two words absent from American Papers – “Sidi Bouzid” became an increasingly prevalent issue. I remember telling my mother, “I think this Tunisia thing is going to be huge —but its nowhere in American papers.”

Then it happened. Then Egypt happened. Then the protests looked a whole lot less like someone’s entire Arab extended family decided to come out, and a whole lot more like genuine solidarity. People woke up. Arabs were no longer the demons behind Al Qaeda and September 11th. They were no longer the misogynists who did not allow women to drive and made women cover completely. They were people —people who were infinitely braver than us and willing to risk arrest and death for freedom.

Now, we are back to Palestine. Back to the Nakba, and almost at the anniversary of the Freedom Flotilla. Genuine change has happened. Fatah and Hamas, the two notorious rival political factions agreed to set aside their differences and unite against the Israeli Occupation. Egypt has opened its border with Gaza. There is no more Mubarak to arrest foreign aid convoys. There might be genuine change.

Today is Israeli Independence Day, it is almost Al Nakba. There are signs around Washington Square Park for free falafel. It now seems silly —I no longer feel threatened.