"Riseup.net"
All Power to the People \\//\\ Intifada means "An Uprising" \\//\\
Fair warning: Today’s post is going to be a long one…
[Lowkey]
Born alone and die alone
Those words ringin' inside my dome
Best friends are the pen and the microphone
Roamin' until I find my way home
Turn my body cold but my soul is mine
Take a deep breath, and I close my eyes
I will go when I'm supposed to die
But in death I will multiply[Mai Khalil]
My back’s against the wall
But you can't kill us all
Even if you take my life
Still we will survive
We shall overcome
And the tables will turn
Today I die as one / but as millions I'll return
But as millions I'll return
But as millions I'll return[Lowkey]
You might take my life
But you can't take my soul
You can't take my soul
You might take my freedom
But you can't take my soul
You can't take my soul
First, a “reprint," from my brief stint as the “Spoken Word Editor” of The Progressive Magazine (online). My tenure only lasted three months: early February-early May 2011 (this was around the time that my last long-term relationship was in the process of falling apart rather spectacularly—prior to my recent experience of same—so one could definitely say that my mental health was not in the best place at that particular moment in time, and that probably the last thing I should’ve been focused on was unpaid “online copywriting” (even if it did come with a cool-sounding title and a minor affiliation with the time-honored Left-wing independent media outlet The Progressive). But, as they say: “hindsight is 20/20” and them’s the breaks…
At any rate, it means I now have this “nifty dispatch” from “Past Isaac” to repost here (with newfound significance in the “Year of Our Lord” 2025). Brief note: You can see that the music video for “Million Man March” was posted to Lowkey’s YouTube channel on Nov 4, 2010, and I wrote the following post in January 2011, in the midst of witnessing that year’s Egyptian Revolution (during the so-called “Arab Spring”). Remarkably, Lowkey, in releasing this song, really (as ever) had his finger “on the pulse” of the times. Here’s an introductory comment from “Past Isaac” (with some slight edits contributed by “Present Isaac”):
I am listening to the song “Million Man March” released last year by UK musicians Lowkey and Mai Khalil, as the eyes of the world are now on Egypt, where the people of the world's largest Arab country are rising up against a military dictatorship which receives $1.3 billion of annual U.S. military aid (second only to Israel). Egyptians are suffering from widespread poverty and unemployment and 30 years of violent repression by the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak's government is also a key ally to the United State's imperial project in the Middle East, and actively collaborates with Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people.
What is occurring in Egypt is not simply an uprising against Mubarak's dictatorship, just like Tunisia's uprising wasn't simply against Ben Ali's. These movements are not, ultimately, about individuals. They are uprisings against the neoliberal economic systems that have impoverished the peoples of these nations (along with the majority of the world) and the neo-colonial occupations and oppressive regimes through which those systems are enforced. Perhaps most importantly these are uprisings in consciousness, where people shake off the power that their oppressors hold over them. In the words of Steve Biko, leader of (Anti-)Apartheid South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement: “the most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed.” This week's song embodies the message of the current uprisings: that even in the face of the most oppressive regimes, when the people rise up, their liberation cannot be stopped, even by death.
The song's title and chorus are inspired by a quote (shown at the end of the video) “I will return and I will be millions.” attributed to Túpac Amaru II, a leader of 18th century uprisings by indigenous Aymara and Quechua-speaking peoples against the Spanish Empire in what is now the nation of Bolivia. Túpac Amaru II (born José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera) changed his name to honor his ancestor Túpac Amaru I, the indigenous Andean leader who also organized a rebellion against the Spanish (in the 16th century). For leading these uprisings, Túpac Amaru I was hung to death, while Túpac Amaru II was, likewise executed by the Spanish by being tied to four horses who (unsuccessfully) attempted to pull his body apart, before he was then quartered/dismembered and beheaded. Túpac Amaru II is seen as a forebear to Bolivia's contemporary indigenous movement, a movement which has propelled Evo Morales to the country's presidency. Bolivia, also the place where Che Guevara was executed (and his hands cut off, the same punishment Columbus declared for those Taino who failed to bring him sufficient quantities of gold), embodies the history of revolutionaries who saw their legacy not through the length of their own lives, but in the ways that their actions would influence others to struggle for liberation.
The rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur was named after Túpac Amaru II by his mother Afeni Shakur, herself a member of the Black Panthers, an organization that drew inspiration from the work of Frantz Fanon and the wave of anti-colonial revolutions sweeping the African continent. Afeni Shakur said of her son: “I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood.” Furthermore, as discussed in the documentary Slingshot Hip Hop, Tupac was one of the foremost influences on DAM (Da Arabian MCs), innovators in the Palestinian hip hop movement that Lowkey and Mai Khalil have been influenced by. DAM saw parallels between Tupac's description of the oppression Black people experience in the ghettos of American cities and the oppression that their people experience living under Israeli apartheid.
Connections such as these, which stretch across history and geographic location, show that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt can be viewed both as part of a global struggle against neo-colonial/neoliberal empire, and in the lineage of the over 500 year resistance to European colonization of the majority of the world. This song reflects the cross-pollination represented in global hip-hop culture and the transnational/transhistorical movements for justice which global hip-hop has the power to reflect and give artistic voice.
In my capacity as The Progressive’s (last, I believe?) online “Spoken Word Editor,” I took over from the longtime homie Josh Healey, a fellow Lefty/anti-Zionist Jewish American poet/spoken word artist (who, among many other illustrious accomplishments, helped found the First Wave Spoken Word and Hip Hop Arts Learning Community while an undergraduate organizer at the University of Wisconsin—Madison). Side note: In other funny/uncanny parallels, Josh’s wife Esther is (like my ex, “A”—who I described as “my anti-Zionist Jewish/Israeli-American college girlfriend” in a previous Studying Up post, “Night of the Remix: My Long Poem”) a professional midwife, an (admittedly remarkable) career that “A” was embarking upon when we moved to Detroit together. Somewhat tangentially, here’s a (rather sad, but, I think meaningful) poem I wrote years later about that time in our lives (thanks to The Cortland Review for publishing it):
The Moon is a Moan
over quiet winter
streets paved with unplowed
snow. inside our bed, the cheap
mattress reveals a furrow
down its middle that we roll
towards. we fall asleep turned
away from each other's face,
watching the peeling walls.
winter of loud words
raised against ceilings,
slammed doors and snow
boots. better cold than in
love when this is what love will
do: turn the neighborhood
into a moonscape
where our voices echo
until a call (miraculous)
is heard and we drive
to the midnight hospital. she
is learning to deliver babies. this,
her first. she hurries into the opening
hospital doors. i meander the car
through streets of steaming
manhole covers, veer away from
potholes, follow the moon down MLK,
Grand River, Joy Road. until,
past downtown's glow, the moon
becomes the mouth of a mother
giving birth. moon of sacrament,
moon of departure.
train whistle in the distance, or
wind. does it make a difference?
the moon grows full
before it's extinguished.
In maybe what’s a story for another time, it’s interesting to note that I met my past two long-term partners through friends of mine who are (both) Palestinian women. “A” through Dina Omar (mentioned in previous posts) and “G” through T (who I, in turn, met through “A,” because they had been part of a doula collective together… and, after “A” and I broke up and she moved back to California, T became my next-door neighbor in Detroit’s Woodbridge neighborhood). Are my semi-pseudonymous single initial names getting confusing enough yet? LOL 🙃. I think what I’m trying to say is that I owe the two most significant relationships/romantic partnerships of my life to close friendships with Palestinian women, so that has to count for something, somewhere, someway, somehow.
On that note, I’ve been reflecting (relevant to several aspects of “our story”) on the fact that there are crucially important revolutionary communities, “socialities,” and networks of resistance that have been brought into being through+by the historical Palestinian movement, cause, & struggle. This is something that I’ve personally experienced since I was an undergraduate (& maybe even before, in middle school-high school, when I first began unlearning Zionism via my initial encounters with Palestinian narratives, even before I knew/became friends and comrades with Palestinians personally). It feels significant to acknowledge that Palestine/Palestinians have been a political “guide star” for me, as for so many people the world round. “We” owe much to Palestine, and that is a debt “we” (including as anti-Zionist Jews) must honor and hold ourselves/each other accountable to.
Back to Mr. Healey: Josh now co-hosts the podcast “Friday Night Semites” with the Palestinian American comedian Sammy Obeid (according to his Wikipedia page, more accurately/comprehensively Obeid is “Lebanese-Palestinian-Syrian-Italian-American”). I still have (one of multiple contact entries for) Josh’s number saved in my phone as “Josh Big Baby Moses” (his old nickname, not my own invention 🤣).
I also found this IG video by Sammy Obeid on the nonsensical/racist origins + usage of the term “Semitic” to be quite illuminating (/disturbing), as well as more than a little funny (“gotta laugh to keep from crying”):
https://genius.com/Logic-peoples-army-spectator-lyrics
Insha'Allah we all can see
That God is the goodness in you and me
No religion has ownership
See, the Quran and the Bible and the Torah
were all wrote with ink
https://genius.com/Lowkey-relatives-lyrics
Pain is the same fam, it's all relative
They cried the same tears, you cried for your relatives
And one way or another, my brother we’re all relatives
Home is where the heart is, yeah that's where it is
^A song whose music video ends with the quote, attributed to Henry Kissinger:
“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
[Which reminds me of the time when, while on a coffee break one evening during an MFA workshop, one of my classmates mentioned the “funny anecdote” about how they’d once worked catering for an event where Henry Kissinger was present (he was still alive at the time when I was doing my MFA…), and I joked: “Did you try slipping some poison into his champagne?” Whereupon my classmate immediately gave me a terribly confused, aghast look…]
As they say, “the good die young”:
Speaking of (unfortunately) “ever-timely” songs:
https://genius.com/2pac-changes-lyrics
And still I see no changes, can't a brother get a little peace?
It's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty
They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me
Yet, in spite of everything, as the OG poet-friend Maddy Clifford AKA MADlines (who I first met back in 2006, when she and Hollis Wong-Wear performed an incredible “duet” group piece on the Brave New Voices finals stage @ the world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, representing Youth Speaks Seattle—Legends! 🙌🏻) just posted:
Other places to view Maddy’s work:
Maddy on Creative Wildfire: https://www.creativewildfire.org/maddy-madlines-clifford
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@madlines
IG: https://www.instagram.com/mad.lines
FB: https://www.facebook.com/maddyclifford1
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MADlinesTV
And Hollis just dropped a GENIUS brand-new music video:
Other places to view Hollis’ work:
Hollis’ website: https://www.hww.work/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/holliswongwear
FB: https://www.facebook.com/holliswongwear/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS3brQZ6D0WGxFRxCE2tv1w/about
+ Here’s some more Seattle (+ “Seattle diaspora”) brilliance:
Further context for this post’s ruminations…
This past weekend I went on a bike camping trip with two dear friends (and fellow recent “divorcées,” though only one of us was actually legally married/divorced). This was my first time going bike camping and it was a beautiful, though no doubt challenging, experience. Coincidentally, my older brother Max (who I’ve talked about previously as one of my role models—from the very beginning—in life: politically, intellectually, and in terms of his character and the way he carries himself in the world) last week attempted the most grueling bicycle race he’s ever competed in (across decades of such feats): a 300+ mile mountain bike race through Colorado and Utah where each entrant is responsible for fending for themselves entirely, i.e. they carry all their own food + supplies, chose where and when to sleep (mostly bedding down by the side of the road), when to ride (Max chose to do so primarily at night, because the temperatures were in the triple digits, i.e. 100+ degrees Fahrenheit, the whole time). Ultimately, Max made (what I think was a very wise decision) to withdraw from the race along with what ended up being over half the other racers who’d entered. From the online leaderboard it looks like he was one of the last to withdraw, after having already traveled a considerable portion of the route, but due to dehydration and riding the borderline-edge of heatstroke for multiple days he finally chose to bow out. For which I have just as much respect as for him entering the race in the first place (and completing as much of it as he actually did). Considering this is my brother who used to hop freight trains across the country (after he dropped out of UC Santa Cruz), en route to attending anti-globalization/counter-WTO & IMF mobilizations across the country (and beyond—he was a street medic during the April 2001 anti-“Summit of the Americas” protests in Quebec City, which were not quite on the scale of the “Battle of Seattle”—but somewhat in the proverbial “vicinity”).
https://genius.com/Blue-scholars-50-thousand-deep-lyrics
They threatened to arrest us, we pushed back and then
A hail of rubber bullets hit teens and old men
I admit, had to split when the first gas canisters hit
Felt it burn in my eyes, nose, and lips
They tried to blame it on the anarchists, garbage
I was there, I'll tell you right now the pigs started it
But they distort it in the news
Talkin' bout stompin' down Niketown wearing their shoes…
Globalization is the root of the pain
Made the reason that they left and the reason that we came
Catch my breath, blood pulsates my brain
And they called it a riot?
Huh, I call it an uprising
And they call this a riot?
But nah, I call it an uprising
And they call this a riot?
Nah man fuck that, I'ma call it a uprising
Anyway, I say this to make the point that my older brother, while infinitely more hardcore than I am, has also (by his own admission) matured and wised up, at least somewhat (and “wizened” too lol, haven’t we all? 😂), though he’s still an inspiration as far as attempting new challenges and pushing myself to face the unknown/attempt the severely intimidating… (my cousin Zoe as well, who over the past few years has dived into long-distance biking in the Metro Detroit/SE Michigan region, in ways that really speak to a kind of “Miller stubbornness” that many in our family exhibit, mostly for the better, though sometimes for worse). At any rate, this past weekend, me + two friends biked ~40 miles each way up to Illinois Beach State Park and back. And, along with the two training rides we did (both in the opposite direction, south all the way to the Illinois-Indiana border) in preparation for this bike camping trip, I’ve biked around 175 miles in the past two weeks, which is pretty outrageous lmao... It helps that I pushed myself/was pushed to ride alongside friends who are (like my brother) considerably more hardcore than I am. Though I’m proud of myself for being able to hang with them (to the extent that I did). While they could have made even better time if they were setting the pace without me, I don’t think I slowed them down too much, and, ultimately, we made the journey together.
While I’m genuinely proud of this accomplishment, and I hope to continue pushing myself to build (further) strength and discipline in this sphere of activity, the main reason I bring this up (in addition to fleshing out the “worldbuilding” of this “Substack”/experimental writing project), is that I was mostly off the internet and social media over the weekend and arrived back in Chicago last night (Sunday night) to the news that there was a full-blown uprising against ICE (our very own American Gestapo) taking place in Los Angeles, at the same time that Israel was stopping and kidnapping the activists aboard the Madleen Gaza aid flotilla (I remember well the 10 activists murdered by Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara during the Freedom Flotilla attempting to break Israel’s siege. of Gaza back in 2010) and updates on the North African “resilience convoy” consisting of thousands of diplomats, humanitarians, and solidarity activists traveling in a 100-vehicle convoy with participants from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Egypt, currently attempting to deliver aid to Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, attempting to break Israel’s siege that is starving millions of Gazans. I watched the video of a young Gazan boy (you can see the starvation on his face) whose mother had just been murdered while attempting to seek aid from the nightmarish (+ Orwellianly titled) “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” and I just lost it…
To think that any single story of the tens upon tens (upon hundreds) of thousands of Gazans murdered, exterminated, imprisoned, tortured, starved, maimed, orphaned by Israel, if stared directly in the face, is enough to bring me (and I’m sure any one of us who has not yet been robbed of our souls) to tears is an overwhelming, and blunt, fact. Especially given the sheer magnitude of human suffering that we can only attempt to extrapolate from the violence, pain, and out/rage contained in every single one of the lives irreparably shattered and/or destroyed by the unceasing Zionist violence that has taken place over Israel’s past year-and-a-half-long genocide. Furthermore, this gaping chasm of despair is practically unfathomable when “scaled up” to the actual size of this catastrophe (not even thinking historically to the 75+ years of ongoing Nakba—see, for example, the article “Towards Nakba as a Legal Concept”). Even just reading the list of names of Palestinian children alone who have been killed by Israel over the course of this genocide is enough to shake me to the core of whatever even remains of my/our shared humanity after witnessing (or just attempting to conceptualize or “wrap one’s head around”) such dehumanizing and spiritually disfiguring violence:"
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2024/israel-war-on-gaza-10000-children-killed/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/11/20/an-a-z-of-the-children-israel-killed-in-gaza
On a somewhat different, though related, note—I recommend reading
“They’re terrorizing U.S. citizens,” one man said of law enforcement’s deployment of tear gas to disperse the protests. The clear emphasis on how this affects people in general — not just immigrants — surprised me.
Another protester, a black woman named Alex Walls from Louisiana, told CNN that the deportations were “disturbing” to children. “You’re separating people from their kids, families, and whatnot,” she said. “Ya’ll got kids don’t understand what’s going on, seeing this going on. It’s very disturbing.”
Others said explicitly that their motive was to impede the deportations, like Ron Gochez, who also told CNN: “ For every single minute that we were here resisting against the Border Patrol, that was time that they were not out deporting people in our community.”
(To be continued…)
In solidarity,
—I