(Less Scattered) Thoughts on Thawrah 25 yanayir

Somehow, it's already been nine years since one of the most seminal series of events in my life took place. At the same time, it's hard to believe that it's only been nine years since whatever it was that happened...

Like so many other Egyptians, the 2011 revolution felt like my raison d'être. Even from halfway across the world, it was difficult to think of much else. I remember skipping lecture after lecture just to steal away into the library and obsessively refresh my Twitter feed, aching to be there myself. It gave me a reason to write that felt like something bigger than me and my tiny world. 

In addition to recognizing the difference in atmosphere between Egypt and Canada, I’d grown up largely listening to my father’s own memories of living in a repressed, paranoid military state. It all made this movement feel that much more important. Here was a country in which anti-government opinion was restricted from all media, inside and out. A country filled with stories of police aggression--some made notorious (like the audacious 2010 murder of Khaled Saeed by Egyptian police in an internet cafe), some disguised in films that toed the line of censorship, and some only whispered amongst terrified neighbours when nobody else was listening. 

Never had we been given so much access to the news coming out of Egypt. Every major media outlet was locked into the quickly unfolding events. Every channel we tuned into seemed to be reporting live from the scene, or engaged in some sort of discourse around the revolution. And of course there were the videos being uploaded to Youtube, videos that carried narratives the bigger networks were too afraid to show. Outside of my father's daily insistence on reminding us of the place, I had never seen so much focus on the country I was raised to consider "home".

Egyptian Revolution Solidarity March in Toronto (January 2011)

And it wasn't just the Egyptians back home or in the diaspora (or those from the diaspora who went back home for the revolution) who kept me engaged. Finally my friends were asking me about things other than the pyramids, my professors involving me in conversations that didn't revolve around the free will of Muslim women. One of my English professors at the time--a well-known poet who openly spoke of his own revolutionary tendencies as a youth--especially indulged my preoccupation. We exchanged handwritten messages about the developments in Egypt after class and interesting articles with intersecting opinions on the future of the revolution.

I've memorized my father's nostalgic and proudly recounted version of the military coup that overtook the British. It was as if he was directly involved in the cause of liberating their country. It wasn’t so much that he was living vicariously through Nasser and his comrades, but living alongside them--when they spent countless months planning and re-planning every step without leaving a paper trail, when they took over state radio to make the announcement, and when they paraded through the same Tahrir Sq. among thousands of people…As the headlines quickly went from "protest" to "unrest" to "revolution", I felt like I was able to relate in ways I never had  before. This new raison d'être was also a means by which I could wrestle some attention from my ever-elusive father.

In those few months, everything took on mythic proportions.

As one of the most enthralling and deeply embedded bloggers to cover the revolution @sandmonkey once wrote,

"It's hard not to disengage from reality when observing or experiencing the revolution; through it we have lived all of our Hollywood cinematic fantasies." 

I used to cry a lot about the revolution. It was the infectious tone of hope by demonstrators, carried in the clever chants of hundreds, thousands of in-synch voices. It was the scenes of brutal violence that met them, and the stories of those mourning the (too) many who lost their lives in the carnage. It was the impassioned arguments I had with my father, who suddenly seemed to embody the general malaise that seemed to overshadow what had felt like the most momentous time I would ever witness. It was the eventual reality that perhaps the revolution was over, and that whatever dreams I once obsessed over may have just ended up being fantasies.

 

As the pace of the events sped into what felt like a constant whirlwind, thinking about everything seemed to induce a sense of vertigo. At times it felt like too much to keep up with, in other moments it felt like everything was at a standstill and I was just halfway across the world, helplessly waiting. In the last few years, my reactive responses have given way to a nostalgia painted in cynical hues. Losing my father last year meant losing a lifeline to the place I'd inherited as homeland. And my relationship to the idea of Egypt as my only "home" has only grown more complicated, nuanced, and precarious. 

In a post from February of 2011 (called "Scattered Thoughts on Egypt", of course),  I shared some of my conflicting feelings on the revolution. When I read them today I felt a tiny spark of the intensity those days brought to my life, and I feel a tinge of the lassitude that hasn't subsided since. Mostly I felt the sense of belonging to the revolution, of finding "home":

I sat by watching, my mind eager to snatch any new breakthroughs or information. My energy went from being fully devoted to listening to the stories from the front lines, to feeling weary and almost wishing the entire situation would just end.I've had trouble eating and sleeping, and have obsessively spent my time flipping between CNN and BBC, to getting live streams of Al Jazeera online. It borders on hysteria. 

I've Youtubed the same videos over and over, marched with hundreds of Torontonians for 2 Saturdays in a row, and have relentlessly pounded my cousin with questions about what its REALLY like down there.I've engaged in debates, explained what was happening to anybody who will listen, and brushed up on historical accounts of the power struggle that has ailed my country for decades. 

I'm tired. 

The other day, I scolded myself for feeling this way. I thought "What on earth gives YOU the right to feel weary and over-informed when these heroes are out there on the streets, determined to find an end that can satisfy them?!?"But am I really wrong for needing a break from all this overexposure? Have I betrayed my country and fellow Egyptians every time I've given a half-assed answer to people's questions in order to avoid launching into a full conversation?---- 

I'm at the point where I can look back at the full range of emotions and ideas I've had since January 25, and almost pinpoint the days when my attitude went from an excited, curious, hopeful observer, to a weary, almost paranoid bystander who got sucked into a dramatic scenario unwillingly. 

I remember feeling, albeit selfishly, PROUD and EXCITED that my country was making headline news. For once in my 21 years in Toronto, people recognized the flag on my bag. For once, I could head downtown and find hundreds of other supporters of the Egyptian people, speaking my language, sharing my vision for the future of our homeland. 

And I ate it right up. I stayed glued to CNN, collected any newspaper headlines (most, making front-page) about Egypt, and shared videos on my feed.

I've absorbed the news with an almost sadistic pleasure. I hate the way they make us look on TV. I resent the images of people fighting off men on horseback, burning pictures and flags- this is merely a snapshot of a situation that the rest of the world wants to dismiss as black-and-white, ignoring the multi-faceted colours emerging with every new image, testimony, or minute change... 

But I love seeing my country on there...

From the Archives: The Re-Birth of a Nation...

"Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever!"


I keep having this recurring thought: After the celebrations end, the CNN troops withdraw from the land, and the sentimental speeches from foreign heads of state come to a close, what is left?

Over 300 dead shahidin minimized to a statue erected in their honour?
Spatially, a downtown square already envisioned as the Freedom Square, re-crowned "Tahrir Sq."?
An already ailing, aged ruler whose fatal flaw has been pride and a reluctance to acknowledge reality?
A power vacuum, leaving the "new Egypt" vulnerable to whomever has the loudest voice?
And a nation of almost 85 million who never imagined that they would live to see such radical change in a country


February 14, 2011

Selves Delusion

 “And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”

― Khalil Gibran, The Madman: His Parables and Poems 

______________________________


It's a cool September evening with rain looming in the forecast and the phantom presence of summer lingering in the air; ****** and I have unintentionally embarked on another one of our dérives. As our legs carry us onward through Scarborough with almost no direction, he leads the conversation into a new-ish topic.

"Not to get too morbid or anything, but do you ever think about what people will remember of you, you know, when you're gone?"

"Of course. I thought everyone did..."

"Well, what do you think they'll remember?"

"Hmm...Inaccuracies."
 

_________________________________

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear--a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.”

_______________________________ 


I contemplate this exchange between ****** and I over and over again for the days following. I've quickly come to appreciate the ways in which our conversations manifest themselves into endless thoughts long after we've parted ways. Beyond that, I appreciate the sense of freedom as we mutually expel the ideas that can otherwise cause undue alarm among the others. The more I consider it, the more I can conclude that the source of my comfort lies in the fact that there are versions of myself than can exist unrestricted in the company of this friend. My fear isn't necessarily that those versions don't feel safe when shown to the others--or, any less safe than the rest of my selves--but that they might somehow endanger those they're exposed to. I've employed a new strategy over the last number of years in anticipation of this disconcertedness: show the most challenging versions of myself right away and see if they'll run. This seems to have worked out even better than I imagine...few remain. But then, what about the stubborn ones--the ones who wholeheartedly cling to versions of me I don't even recognize.

I can hear Don Draper's raspy voice uttering those lines about people showing us who they are and our failure to believe those versions, because "we want them to be who we want them to be."


_________________________________ 

“I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do--for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.”

_________________________________ 



Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by the absolute boring-ness of the selves others have construed of me, I can't begin to imagine how these versions can satisfy them. Perhaps there is an element of self-delusion at play in this claim. My favourite line to thwart the advances of interested, but not interesting suitors was always "But you don't even know me..."

I once made it a mission to avoid those people at all costs, the ones who project their version(s) of me, but I soon learned how Sisyphean a task that would be. It simply doesn't matter how much you assert yourself--or, the versions of yourself you think to be more accurate than those perceived of you externally--because that self is still subject to their own sensibilities.
In one of my favourite scenes of Waking Life, Timothy 'Speed' Levitch closes his monologue with the haunting lines
"as one realizes that one is a dream-figure in another person's dream - that is self-awareness!"
I read somewhere that in ancient Ubuntu philosophy, humans are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and only acquire it through interactions and experiences with others in the external world. Even in more Western schools of thought and disciplines, self-knowledge is most always constituted through relationships with others.
  
 The Self as a kaleidoscope (of versions) is an image that has its abundance of iterations in this post-, post-modern world...


_________________________________ 

“In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper...”

_________________________________ 


Growing up, we are fed a steady diet of well-intentioned axioms that basically tell us to be ourselves and disregard what others think of us--to "dance like nobody is watching". Of course as we get older and (hopefully) develop some critical thinking skills, we soon realize how unavailing these messages are--what is a subjective self?. Sometimes, though, we default to these as coping mechanisms when we feel overwhelmed by the burden of perception. Or as pseudo-intellectuals might otherwise identify as being subject to a dangerous gaze of some sort.

If you've ever been in an abusive relationship, you may recognize what I'm getting at. Sometimes, an important part of surviving some of these experiences is by convincing ourselves not to pay any. attention. what. so. ever. to what is being said about us. This is a lot harder than it sounds, and I think it becomes even more difficult over time. Sure, it may be easy to disregard the fuming vitriol being spewed in our direction as meaningless ire reflecting only the inner turmoil of the abuser, that we are simply casualties of that inner war. The only problem is, the 'abuser' is also usually the person who knows versions of ourselves that others have not accessed...


_________________________________ 

“You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen--the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives. I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.”

Making Myths Out of Massacres: on Rabaa & the challenges of mourning

"Right there. That's where it happened."

I follow Mohamed's nod, trying to take a long look at the somewhat distant cluster of buildings, fruitlessly searching for a minaret or anything to indicate the presence of a mosque. Our van defiantly lurches ahead, the image disappearing behind us before I can register any meaningful details. 

It's 2014 and our biennial family trip to Egypt is coming to a close as we drive through Madinet Nasr. Mohamed, the young man hired to drive us (and our growing pile of belongings) around the country for the summer, expertly navigates the full van through traffic. Polite and soft-spoken, he hasn't said much for the whole trip, even during the endless drives to the Red Sea a few weeks earlier when he brought a friend to accompany him. Sometimes I catch his spectacled gaze in the rear-view mirror, though it never seems prying.

"Atee3a! To hell with them!" my mom proclaims with uncharacteristic crudeness from the row furthest back. "They were going to bring down the whole country."

By "they", she is referring to The Muslim Brotherhood, who seem to have re-assumed their position as Voldermort-like sources of death and destruction in the psyche of people like my mother and father, whose mere mention by name proves too mention. "They" also happen to include Mohamed, who has just pointed out the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque to our left. I stare at his face in the rearview mirror, looking for anything, even a flinch, but Mohammed's eyes stay glued to the road, unchanging. I feel a tinge of shame for my mother and after fighting back the urge to react to such a harsh display, I feel the shame for myself.

This is the way it has always been whenever my parents, relatives, or their friends refer to the Brotherhood (or whatever conveniently constitutes that category at the time). They are not unlike many Egyptians, and many more diasporic Egyptians whose allegiance is inextricably tied to a regime that plays into their fear of instability and promises to deliver that rare, depleted regional resource, security--even as it actively compromises the safety of those it pretends to protect. Indeed, even if this allegiance compromises more important things, like their moral standards.

Just one month prior to this, on the cusp of the one year anniversary of the deadly dispersal, another moment of (imagined?) tension surfaced during a drive with Mohamed. Human Rights Watch had just released their controversial report on "The Rab’a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in Egypt", forcing open the wound that had been callously bandaged by those crafting the narrative for people like my parents. It wasn't surprising to see the immediate reaction to details about the mass murders, to watch the reactive denial of eyewitness accounts and registered figures. It wasn't surprising but it was disheartening. Throughout the discussion happening between my cousins and parents and the accompanying friend in the passenger seat, I kept looking to Mohamed for a response. He said nothing and drove.

Perhaps I am just projecting all of these expectations on Mohamed. Maybe all those conflicting ideologies packed into one van isn't such a big deal after all?

We learned of Mohamed's affiliation with the Brotherhood during the first ride we shared with him. When the driver hired to take us to Alexandria didn't show up several hours after he was scheduled to, my cousin offered to send a trusted friend with a van to help us out of the predicament. My mother seemed to pause, considering her options as she heard the name, but it was the day before Eid and she must have realized it was either Mohamed or missing out on Alex. A tall, stocky young man with a light beard and big glasses showed up within the hour, whisking our heavy bags into the large white tourist van that would become our main means of transport for the remainder of our stay. I don't remember the exact conversation that lead to the revelation of his association with the group, but I do remember it being a hot topic of conversation in the apartment that night. Eventually no one spoke about it at all.

Maybe that's why it was so easy to blindly deny the tragic reality and to propagate the regime's narrative right in his face.

I remember casually reading through the HRW report over a light breakfast and carrying on with my day, only remembering it if it popped up on my Twitter timeline. I was horrified by the flagrant brutality, but I was looking for something more tangible than shock. That overwhelming spate of grief I sought eluded me. Had I too become desensitized to "them"?

All sorts of thoughts are interrupting themselves in my head as we pull further away from Rabaa. The cacophony of chatter surrounding me fades into the background. I am being pulled by that same feeling that gripped at me as I walked through Midan el Tahrir months earlier, my first visit since the events of 2011. It is like a combination of grief and guilt, made heavier by the need to repress it. By the pressure to participate in the active denial of these realities. Or worse yet, to partake in the delusion that such loss, such taking of life, is ultimately inconsequential.

I turn my head all the way back to squint at the site, but by now all I can see are the massive military buildings in the horizon as Mohamed drives on.

"#TorontoStrong", Sometimes: On collective grief & who has access to it

This morning I woke up to a torrent of tweets and news stories about the mass shooting that happened last night on Danforth Rd. here in Toronto. A now (alarmingly) familiar formula was followed which included the deployment of the #TorontoStrong hashtag, the obsessive eagerness to (erroneously) quantify the number of victims in real time, and the rallying cries for unity by politicians and police chiefs. But while all these measures have come to constitute what we may now consider "normal"--a disturbing realization in and of itself--at the heart of this collective grief is a specific kind of mourning reserved for certain spaces (and their populations). This is reflected in euphemistic claims about how "safe" the neighbourhood continues to be, and in comments such as that of Andrea Horwath in city hall this morning:

"This tragedy does not reflect the Danforth, the city, or the province." 

There are several ways we can analyze such statements. For example, we can argue about how such incidents do in fact reflect the community, the parts of it that we avert our eyes from. Though it may be too early in this moment, we can look more and more at the bigger picture on mental health and access to guns, for example. Perhaps this sort of public grief is rooted in a self-centred empathy: the belief that innocent people should not face such untold tragedy represents our anxieties about such tragedy being visited upon us, or those we love. On the other hand, we can commend such a view for challenging the tendency to conflate an individual's actions with their entire neighbourhood, community, family, environment. The issue is that this nuanced discursive approach is only applied to specific narratives and neighbourhoods.

During a time of heightened fear--and fear-mongering--around what has been called "The Summer of The Gun 2.0", there has been no shortage of news covering what is often presented as a spike in gun violence, and the defaulted to "gang violence". Upon landing at the airport a few weeks ago, the first jumbo TV screen I noticed carried story after story about a string of shootings that had occurred while I was gone. Headlines scream alarmist claims like "Toronto homicide rates higher than NYC", and almost every public conversation involves a debate around the need to deploy (and employ) more police. 

As ultimate example of the way these tragedies are collectively handled, Community Safety and Corrections Minister Michael Tibollo was recently quoted as saying,

  "I went out to Jane and Finch, put on a bulletproof vest...visiting sites that had previously had bullet-ridden people killed in the middle of the night..."

If the rallying cries to remember that the Danforth community (a.k.a "Greektown") is transcendent of such violent tragedy represents much-needed relativism, then comments and actions such as those of Tibollo represent a negligent essentialization.  Rather than share in the grief of a community already affected by unimaginable loss and direct trauma, they are subjected to further stigmatization, even to blame. These environments are to be targeted for strategic intervention, and at the very least, to be handled separately and carefully with gloves--or a bullet-proof vest. It's as though the neighbourhood's inhabitants are deserving of, responsible for, or to be held guilty for the tragedy that unfolds right around them. Not only does this problematic view assume the inherent criminality of some spaces, it is a faulty logic that obscures structural dynamics of inequality that transcend a neighbourhood's boundaries.

Everytime I skim a major publication's coverage, or read what another politician said, it feels like 2005 all over again--the original "Summer of The Gun". As a result of those events and the way they were portrayed, I watched the neighbourhood I grew up in specifically, and the surrounding region (shoutout to Scarborough) become entangled in a targeted intervention that did little more than stigmatize it and solidify all the stereotypes that served as part of the mythology that forms our space(s).

Guaranteed Basic Income

Free Lunch Sociey trailer


I watched this engaging documentary on my return flight and I've been thinking about its contents ever since. Free Lunch Society explores the idea of a guaranteed basic income: a payment made to individuals that ensures a minimum income level, regardless of employment status. It features discussions among economists, political scientists, sociologists, and other -ists about its advantages  and disadvantages. Interspersed in the debates is a collection of archival footage, including Martin Luther's resistance struggle against President L.B.J's "war on poverty".

 The film provides a good introduction and presents the idea as a realistic possibility—highlighting different communities that have already experimented with the concept—rather than a romantic radical fantasy. In fact, the Ontario government just finished the first phase of a basic income pilot project in Hamilton, with plans to launch in Brantford, Brant County, Lindsay and Thunder Bay.

Insomniac Soliloquies to Self

it's 4 am and i find myself wide awake, twisting from side to side as though the furtive movements will eventually tire me out before finally giving in and sitting up. i turn on the lamp next to my bed--touch activated, a novelty in the 1980s it clearly dates to--and reach for my phone and the book I am halfway through reading. of course, this is purely for symbolic purposes, or maybe an incorrigible habit i adopted before my phone became an extra limb.

after distractedly shuffling through a montage of facebook videos-- old couples on vacation, white people calling the cops on black people for absurd reasons, a vice video about something to do with a fake fashion show (or restaurant, or drug, etc.)...

suddenly i am fixated by the image of a boy, no older than 14, whose hands are expertly binding together slats of timber using what appears to be a natural twill of some sort. he builds a cylindrical wall around a hole he has already dug out, his hands moving efficiently and gracefully, creating the perfect structure. with the miracle of time-lapse he soon creates a wheel out of hollow logs carefully woven together, and a mechanism attached to the wheel which allows for several "cups" to successively dispense water from the water reserve below. voila-- a well.

thinking about this boy's masterful use of hands, the aptitude with which he designed and created this whole thing machine before my very eyes, i hear that tormenting voice in the back of my head and i start to wonder. if a 5 minute time-lapsed video of my skill was to be made, what would it show? beyond the soup of cliche resume points, like "team player" (am i really?), or "excellent communication skills" (they're okay), what real skills do i have?...

somewhere between wondering what college program i can quickly enroll in to overcome this, and blaming my parents for not forcing me to study something more tangible, more valued in "the real world", i slip back into sleep mode...

The Sacred Oath of un-Hurt

I can almost see the words spewing out of my mouth before I can even stop and think about them first. The strange combination of anger, unchecked emotion, and a spiritual exhaustion that can only come from years of bottling everything up. Accusations come flying out, and my unjust unappreciation takes centre-stage. The messages become muddled into one long torrent of bitterness. They cease to make sense, cease to even be true, but what do I care-- I just want their crushing impact to be felt.
How could you look someone in the eye who you love and deliver stab after stab to their soul? Simple: by consciously trying to avoid listening to the own vile messages escaping your mouth.
How could you pretend their quickly appearing tears mean nothing, instead choosing to dismiss them as reflections of your own hurt and angst?
Most importantly, how could you bear the weight of defeating one of the only people in the world who's ever cared for you. The person who has had your back, even when you found yourself spineless. The person who watched from afar, but never too far, allowing you to be who you are, and then loving you for it.
How could you betray the most sacred oath made in a relationship between two broken people who found in eachother their own missing pieces: the promise you each took never to do to eachother what others had already done far too often...

How do you regain the sense of lost love and trust, if you ashamedly cower in your own solitude, trying in vain to convince yourself that you don't need them anyway...

Voting is sexy!

We live in such a wired, digital age, and we're constantly bombarded with new media sources. Add to that the popularity of things like Twitter and an abundance of current issues that should be important to us, and you should have a high rate of young voters, right? Wrong. Canadian youth are some of the most underrepresented at the elections, so it's important to go out and show that you are worth more than your tax dollars!
READ up on party platforms, think of things that represent your own values and ideas, and most importantly- look at track records in your own ridings. There is NO reason why you, as a Canadian citizen, with your own set of values, and 10 minutes to spare out of your schedule WONT go out to vote.
Its our moral, civic and awakened (if you will) duty as people to elect the people who will lead in our societies...

BUT, if this all sounds boring to you, I'll just let Nelly Furtado tell you:

Okay, so perhaps I wouldn't have really said that way, and yes I admit this video made me cringe a bit, but I LOVE the underlying message: VOTE!

The hero-villain dichotomy

The idea of the hero is one that seems to preoccupy Western culture, forming the basis for much of the literature, film, philosophy, and other popular-culture mediums that compose it. Our willingness to decorate soldiers and firefighters, play cops and robbers, obsessively consume old Western cowboy films or ancient mythology, and immortalize comic-book super-heroes all point to our eagerness to ascribe “hero” and “villain” roles. However, as one often comes to conclude, we must take a more discretional approach when examining who is a hero, and conversely, who is a villain. In fact, the issue is far more complex than a mere categorization of individuals or groups under either of these titles—most of the time, things are not always so black and white. Recently I devoured a book that reawakened these exact sentiments in me:

In her collection of poems under the title Ghettostocracy, Canadian author, poet, and spoken-word artist extraordinaire Oni the Hatian Sensation reawakens the “Black” community with a strong message: in order to understand the community’s needs and work to rebuild it, we must first work from within. An important step in this process is to reexamine the important figures that we collectively hold to be heroes. Oni invites readers to reassess our widely-accepted, if not imposed, understanding of what it means to be a hero or a villain in a number of ways. One important approach Oni takes is to present alternate perceptions of the hero and villain archetypes in our society by referencing specific individuals and general archetypes.
One of the most obvious themes in the Ghettostocracy poems is epitomized in her presentations of characters such as cops, politicians, church leaders, etc.—all who share the common denominator of being categorized as archetypal heroes in modern society. In fact, what Oni’s work suggests is that such figures are more often the “villains” than they are the “heroes”. Conversely, in her presentation of the “hood-hero” (inner-city neighbourhood “hero”), Oni shows that what mainstream society has deemed villainous may actually be held as valiant by certain members of society.

One of these perceived hero-types is characterized by “Reverend Seymour Cash”. This self-proclaimed “man of God” (who was at onetime a pimp) is still nothing more than a corrupt, greedy, evil man who exploits the community he pretends to uplift. Rev. Seymour, as Oni explains in the poem “Ghettostocracy” has “just raped the ghetto to escape into the upper class.” When he is presented again in the poem “Church” Seymour Cash is still the “sinistah ministah” he was in “Ghettostocracy”, this time explicitly partaking in deviant sexual activity with members of his clergy; one of the most revered community leaders, often looked to for moral guidance and leadership, is reduced to nothing short of a villain.

Other such embodiments of this concept are the cops and politicians found throughout Ghettostocracy. Unlike the courageous, caring, public-service-providing figures mainstream society idealizes such characters as, Oni’s references present them as detrimental, dishonest, and doing less to help the community than to exploit it. For example, she challenges the heroic legitimacy of our elected officials and politicians in “Elocution”, suggesting that the only way these people attain such sight-after positions is through a combination of sexual deviance and manipulation:

“Illiterate children in high school  

Sucking teacher’s dick to get through

Shortly, they are on their way to college-acknowledged.

Some get raped and graduate,

Then become head of state…” 

Such lines also draw attention to the tragic cycle, suggesting that had these “children” been properly guided and educated, rather than exploited by their teachers, they may have acted as positive agents within the community instead.

 Even the United Nations is not spared from this criticism. Rather than actually function effectively, if at all, Oni renders the U.N crippled, helpless, and compliant in their silence in the poem “Why Keep Score”:

“United Nations, who are we?

Invisible witnesses to world catastrophes.” 

But perhaps the most-visited hero archetypes in Ghettostocracy are the cops. We live in a society that largely idealizes the role of the cop in the personal lives of community members. But, the cop characters in the Ghettostocracy poems are instead portrayed as brutal, unjust, and racist, effectively blurring the line between cop and criminal. We are first introduced to this motif of villainous police in “New York Streets”:

“Police, cops, walking the beat,

On their feet, in the streets,

Are beating big Black boys, with their toys…” 

This scathing criticism is revisited in “I Am Not Ashamed To Say That I Am in Pain”, as she comments on what she perceives to be a lack of “morality” from our police heroes:

“Morality?

Hah! Most police aint got none:

Pulling triggers on a gun,

Aiming at the young (cause they think its fun),

Having brothers on the run until their lives are done…” 

Ghettostocracy is rife with references to popular cultural “hero-villain” figures- two of the more notable references being, first to Al Capone, then to Michael Jackson. In “What Happened to Michael Jackson?”, Oni attacks the race message she insists Michael Jackson makes through his orientation to typically “white” norms. When asked by her son whether he too will “be white when I grow up?” Oni replies that rather than naturally progressing to this, Micheal Jackon’s bleached skin and “political perm” are nothing more than sad attempts to surrender his “blackness”, playing into “hollyweird’s” obsession with trying to “make black colours nonexistent”. Oni’s critique of Michael Jackson reaches its climax when she suggests that Micheal Jackson is aware of this black demonization, but continues to sustain it: “Me thinks that Michael Jackson really knows this…”.

In “Gangster Alliance”, Oni speaks about the rampant gang violence within inner-city communities, particularly the streak of violence in South Central L.A in 2002. Oni’s allusion to Al Capone is particularly interesting in that she seems to absolve him from wrongdoing in this specific instance, a blame that has been imposed on the notorious mobster explicitly and implicitly by those in power. Al Capone is on one hand often characterized as a ruthless, manipulative, violent man of crime, and his legacy is often that of giving birth to organized crime in America. Whether this is wholly or in part true is of little concern to Oni, and as she suggests, should not be to us. The “inner city war zones” she speaks of in “Gangster Alliance” are “not caused by Al Capone”. On the other hand, Al Capone’s services to his community cannot altogether be ignored by his participation in criminal activity, as exemplified by his common characterization as a Robin Hood in popular culture. Oni asserts this dichotomy in “Iambic Pain”:

“Moors are not bandits

Some are misunderstood.

Robin Hood was cool-

Trotting on minions rule…” 

Oni’s reference to Al Capone implies this idea of dual-identity—what some may view as hero, others view as villain, but who is right? Perhaps, as the character in “Making Scents” exclaims “And to think I once thought you were a winner!” what the community would benefit much more from is a reassessment of those people they deem “winner”- or heroes...

Canadian author, poet, and spoken-word artist extraordinaire Oni the Hatian Sensation

In the dark, even my shadow abandons me...

Today when I left class I found myself hysterically running to the station, yet in no real rush to get anywhere. I hit the ground running and literally did not look back (or around, at the startled expressions of my fellow pedestrians) until I’d made it to the station and became distracted with the fare-paying.

But do you ever wish you could literally just pick up and runaway from life? Run, to no particular destination but away. Rush, with no time restraint, but with the intention of outrunning your thoughts?

As I felt the wind toying with my hair, resisting against my force I forgot to think. For that instance, for even that brief, fleeting moment, I could forget. Or maybe not forget, as the thoughts came rushing back as soon as I sat down, but rather ignore.  Every doubt that had been spewed in my face, every reminder of my countless fuckups, and every angry, bitter, disappointed, mournful voice- everything was silent.

All I could hear, all I could focus on was the rhythm of my steps on the concrete. The rhythm compelling me to keep running, because stopping even for a moment would undo all the unthinking I was doing.

But life doesn’t work that way. You get onto the metaphorical subway, nestled among dozens of your own kind, yet alone and an outsider at the same time. No friendly words or smiles exchanged, and no small talk about the weather outside. And that’s when it all comes rushing in, hitting you like a ton of bricks, one-by-one but within seconds of eachother. A jumble of words, images, phrases and thoughts come flying at you, aimed at your spirit and unrelentless until they do what they came here for: to break you down. Like an unexpecting matador suddenly thrown into a pen of raging bulls, each bearing a haunting resemblance to your own image…

Where can you run now? When you're surrounded? Yet alone...

Israel- the "democratic" state??

Last year was Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto and each day saw at least a couple of events stretched across Toronto's university campuses. As I was rushing to class last week (U of T) I happened to see a couple of students set up on a table with posters reading "Support Israeli Democracy" and such. Now, I just HAD to stop and see exactly what sort of misguided propaganda they appeared to be trying to spread. As I got closer to their posters, I noticed they were full of all sorts of numbers: statistics from the U.N (mainly) and some Israeli-lobbyist groups.
The first thing I thought about was why on earth they would use U.N "official" definitions and sources to explain why Israel should be allowed to carry out its terrorist agenda in the name of democracy.
Lets just remember here that of the 115-member states of the U.N's General Assembly, THE ONLY COUNTRIES WHO SUPPORT ISRAEL'S ACTIONS ARE (*drumroll*):
- The U.S
- Micronesia,
- the Marshall Islands
- Palau (all 3 of which are associated states of the U.S)
- Australia
- and Canada (ashamedly, under Stephen Harper)

Anyway, I gotta attach the fine print here: I'm not anti-semitic, I'm anti-the STATE of Israel & any ideas grounded in the belief that some people are more entitled to the world than others (ahem, Zionism, ahem). I do not support the Harper government (lets leave it at that). And of course, I'm in a firm believer in the democracy & the right to self-determination, but like my fellow-Canadian Trudeau said: "A democracy is judged by the way the majority treats the minority". And shall we even begin to discuss how the Arab + Palestinian citizens are treated within the occupied territories?...

The CHRONICles: I can't take back the words if they're said

You ever wish you could do something right?
Like life is laughing at you out of spite.
Every corner you turn,
You hit a  d e a d  end.
Keeping your enemies close,
You lose all your friends.


Relationships aren't getting any clearer,
I can't face the person in the mirror.
Can't distinguish between comfort and pain,
Try to look for sunshine
Only thing visible is rain.
My sins start outweighing every good deed,
Its like the rose that grew from concrete
Is still an unblossomed seed...


But how do I begin to grow?
When a million seductive voices
Are calling me from below.
Echoing, screaming all my pride and sin
Apathy mixed with doubt bursting from within


Why's everything I touch seem to waste away?
Everytime I demolish a wall
It wont stay that way.
Can't figure out who I'm going to be
And when I see my dreams getting closer,
Thats when they always seem to flee...
From me.


 Is this just self-pity from a disillusioned mind?
Or is there a TRUTH I'm looking to find?
If writing's the escape and the pen TRIUMPHS the sword
And every idea is immortal,
And salvation is in the almighty word,
Then how come we all linger
On the brink of self-defeat?
Threatening to implode from our self generated heat...




If every soul has its mate,
And to every night there is a day,
Then where do the broken souls go
To find their own fate?

c.e.

Waka does PETA

I'm not quite sure I know how to feel about this...

The Skeptic's Tinge of Guilt

"It is not certain that everything is uncertain."

- Blaise Pascal

I often think about some of the wisdom I've gained from my philosophy classes and one particular thing comes to mind: "Pascal's Wager".
Blaise Pascal (a French philosopher) basically IN LAYMAN'S TERMS suggests that it makes the most logical sense to believe in God because that route will produce more to gain and nothing to lose than any other path one lives. He does this by breaking it down:

- belief will lead to: 

a) heaven (if God exists)

b) moral benefits (if God does not exist)

- not believing in God will lead to:

a) hell (if God exists)

b) immoral consequences (if God does not exist)

Okay fine, I agree this whole theory (even when explored in whole, even when lectured on by one of Toronto's most recoginized modern voices in philosophy, Mark Kingwell) is a little thin and arid, its one of the first thing that strikes my mind whenever I think of my own place in the perpetually growing map of religion. And those thoughts, especially when shared with most other people, start to make me feel this strange tinge of guilt... maybe even shame?

Am I really shamed into feeling I should believe in something solid and well-organized?...

Think about it.
Everytime you make/laugh at that little sacreligious joke (What does Jesus order at a bar?... Holy spirits :| ) in poor taste.
Or how about when you have Sunday off, you've promised to accompany your mom to church and you sleep in?
The worst is when you're in someone's home (that someone of course, having made it clear they belong to a religion) and they begin accosting you with questions about your own faith...

And you begin to feel it. That little voice inside almost lashing out at you for such a display of "poor spirituality". Or even that you're being watched... and judged... by that Jesus of your joke.
And no matter how much you assert Christopher Hitchens quotes inside your head, you can't seem to escape that feeling. Who cares if in the end you've got reason on your side. When's reason ever accepted and appreciated in this world?...

Jay Z: "These lyrics are a cry for help" (video)

Jay Z explains how his style went from being centred around technique (flow, etc.) to being more lyrically-focused after gaining "more life experiences":

"For people, don't just judge us as ignorant kids, or drug dealers...Its much more than that... Its layers of complex things thats going in our house, in our homes, in our hallways...

Just imagine your kid growing up in the middle of Marcy Projects when it was fiends in the hallway and shootouts  on Sundays at 12 noon... or seeing someone get killed for the first time at 9 years old.

Imagine that.

So, here's why these things are happening and heres what we're going through... and why... so understand, and 

help.

A lot of these lyrics are strong in nature because they're defiant... but at in the end of it, its all a cry for help..."

Demoralizing the "enemy" from within: a short history of American foreign intervention

"Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future."

Adolf Hitler

Here's something sobering to think about: in the last 60 years, the Unite States of America has been intervened in the politics of several countries, attempting to overthrow at least 50 foreign governments since 1945. Using secret intelligence apparatuses and military power, they continue setting their sights on foreign intervention in countries all across the world, with a particularly eerie focus on the Middle East...

• IRAN 1946 
• YUGOSLAVIA 1946 
• URUGUAY 1947 
• GREECE 1947-49 
• GERMANY 1948
• CHINA 1948-49 
• PHILIPPINES 1948-54 
• PUERTO RICO 1950 
• KOREA 1951-?  (they still have bases there)
• IRAN 1953 
• VIETNAM 1954 
• GUATEMALA 1954 
• EGYPT 1956 
• LEBANON l958
• IRAQ 1958
• CHINA l958 
• PANAMA 1958 
• VIETNAM l960-75 (one million killed in longest U.S. war)
• CUBA l961 (CIA-directed exile invasion fails)
• GERMANY l961 
• LAOS 1962 
• CUBA l962 
• IRAQ 1963 
• PANAMA l964 
• INDONESIA l965 
• DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66 
• GUATEMALA l966-67 
• CAMBODIA l969-75 (Up to 2 million killed in bombing, starvation, and political chaos)
• OMAN l970
• LAOS l971-73 
• CHILE 1973 
• CAMBODIA l975 
• ANGOLA l976-92 
• IRAN l980 
• LIBYA l981 
• EL SALVADOR l981-92 
• NICARAGUA l981-90
• LEBANON l982-84 
• GRENADA l983-84
• HONDURAS l983-89 
• IRAN l984 
• LIBYA 1985
• BOLIVIA 1986
• IRAN l987-88 
• LIBYA 1989 
• PHILIPPINES 1989 
• PANAMA 1989 (2000+ killed.)
• LIBERIA 1990 
• SAUDI ARABIA 1990-91 
• IRAQ 1990-91 
• KUWAIT 1991 
• IRAQ 1991-2003
• SOMALIA 1992-94 
• YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94
• BOSNIA 1993
• HAITI 1994 
• LIBERIA 1997 
• ALBANIA 1997 
• SUDAN 1998 
• AFGHANISTAN 1998 
• IRAQ 1998 
• YUGOSLAVIA 1999 
• YEMEN 2000 
• MACEDONIA 2001 
• AFGHANISTAN 2001-? 
• YEMEN 2002 
• PHILIPPINES 2002-? 
• COLOMBIA 2003-? 
• IRAQ 2003-? 
• LIBERIA 2003
• HAITI 2004-05
• PAKISTAN 2005-? 
• SOMALIA 2006-? 
• SYRIA 2008 
• YEMEN 2009-?
• YOUR COUNTRY- 2011-?

(compiled by: Grossman)

Israeli Apartheid Week: Toronto

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe. The aim of IAW is to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and last year IAW took place in over 40 countries. Events include lectures, films, and actions that will draw attention to the many continuous injustices that  are crucial in the battle to end Israeli Apartheid.

From website:

"The aim of IAW is to contribute to this chorus of international opposition to Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for the BDS campaign in accordance with the demands outlined in the July 2005 Statement: full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, an end to the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands – including the Golan Heights, the Occupied West Bank with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – and dismantling the Wall, and the protection of Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194. In previous years IAW has played an important role in raising awareness and disseminating information about Zionism, the Palestinian liberation struggle and its similarities with the indigenous sovereignty struggle in North America and the South African anti-apartheid movement. Join us in making this a year of struggle against apartheid and for justice, equality, and peace."

Now here's a little schedule of all the events taking place in Toronto. For more information or to check out some of the events in other cities, CLICK HERE.


Interrogating Apartheid: Campus as a Site of Resistance
Monday March 7th , 7 PM
University of Toronto: Fitzgerald Building, Room 103
Speakers: Judy Rebick, Abbie Bakan, and SAIA (Students Against Israeli Apartheid)


Film Screening: Jaffa the Oranges Clockwork 
Tuesday March 8th
Ryerson University
Film by: Eyal Sivan


The Cultural and Academic Boycott
Wednesday March 9th, 7 PM
University of Toronto, Bahen Auditorium, Room 1160
Speaker: Judith Butler


York's Complicity in Apartheid: Art, Culture and Resistance
Thursday March 10th
 York University
Speakers: Paul Kellogg, John Greyson and SAIA


State of the Siege, State of the Struggle: The case for Boycott Divestment, Sanctions
Friday March 11th, 7 PM
University of Toronto, OISE Auditorium, G162 (First Floor)
Speakers: Riham Barghouti and Ali Abunimah

The CHRONICles: random mind wanderings/reflections on the day: De

What is strength, what is selfglorification?
What is bravery, what is bravado?

We spend our whole existence conjuring up images of heroes in our lives. We give them traits invisible to the world, we attribute major accomplishments to them, and we build them up to mammoth heights.

Then on unbeautiful days we are shown who they really are.

We begin to see blemishes in their once perfect glistens.
We see cracks in their superior shells.
We see rough edges in their once flawless finishes.

Our once bold, unbreakable faith that had upheld the foundation of these distant statues begins to shake, threatening to give way...

How can we repaint the images we once ogled at with admiration?
How are we to reimagine the perfectious figures we once held in such esteem?

To what degree are we, the witnesses, capable of sustaining heroism...

The Fallen Hero...

"Against the Wall": William Parry & the Art of Resistance

"It’s a means of communicating about injustice. It’s one means of getting a message across. The more people who learn about Israel’s crimes, the more who challenge the West’s blind backing of Israel – the quicker Israel’s incredibly sophisticated military machine will be undermined. The spray can is part of the spectrum of other creative, non-violent ways being undertaken by civil society to raise awareness, challenge historical narratives and overcome injustice..."

- William Parry 

Is the spray can mightier than the sword?

British photojournalist William Parry thinks so. He's the author of Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine. Parry travelled extensively throughout the West Bank & Occupied Territories collecting photos of the artwork that covers the wall dividing the region from Israel.  Being careful to include a thought-provoking variety of images and graffiti, he contrasts each image with a vignette of a Palestinian community that lives with the daily reality of the ugly "security" wall and all that it represents.

The book features artwork from Banksy, Ron English, Blu and Palestinian artists and activists.

Here are some of the images from the wall, which has been recently called "the largest protest banner in the world":

Here's William Parry in a BBC interview from a few years back speaking on the book and some of the artwork on the wall (as pictured above)...




William Parry will be in Canada next month for a serious of lectures called Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine.
go to www.cjpme.org/ for more info.