Sorrow, starvation, pickleball
How to incorporate all the disparate content?
Today I listened to a heart-wrenching This American Life podcast called “Group Chat” that provided updates on Palestinian families interviewed in previous episodes. The show was so beautifully and movingly reported; everyone should listen to it.
The episode included updates from Yousef, a man who has been trying to coordinate care for his sisters in Gaza from afar since escaping to Egypt with his wife and children. Everyone still in Gaza is starving; children are fed first but are still suffering from malnutrition; flour costs $30 a pound and can only be purchased with cash, which Yusef can no longer get to his family members.
Next up was an interview with a young woman who is top of her online college class studying American Literature but is so starved she’s dizzy when she stands up. Just a couple of years ago she loved to post photos of her meals on Instagram, as many do, and now she scrolls through those old posts in the middle of the night when she is studying and ravenous.
The show ended with a report from a bubbly Palestinian girl, Banias, who is 9 and learned to speak English from her mother, an international journalist. Banias only likes to tell the NPR reporter upbeat news. She started her interview by saying, with extreme cheer, “I’m so so happy right now.” She described how she was looking out at her garden where children were playing, and she assured the reporter that all the bombs and shootings were far away. She carried the phone outside and climbed an olive tree, but as gunfire erupted in the background, the little girl said, still cheerily, “We’re safest if we don’t go up high, so I’ll just climb down now.” “Yes,” the reporter said, “and maybe you should go inside.” “If you’re afraid,” the child said, “I can take us inside.”
[Of course I am also horrified that two Israeli Embassy workers, young people about to be engaged and gathered to plan cross-cultural peace events, were executed last month and that a madman in Boulder, CO tossed firebombs at a group of people calling for the release of the Israeli hostages, with both men shouting “Free Palestine!” But I can be horrified by the treatment of multiple kinds of people—and the Palestinians featured in this radio show have nothing to do with the recent violence against Jews in the U.S. The Palestinian people are just trying to survive and longing for peace, not calling for more violence.]
This show and the one on which it was following up, “Yousef and the Fourth Move” (from which you can link to two earlier stories that include Yousef) do an extraordinary job of humanizing the individuals living in this war zone, helping us to understand that when we hear of neighborhoods razed and tens of thousands of people killed in the bombings, we are not just talking about statistics but real people, families whose lives are being destroyed.
Right after this listening to this gutting episode, in a bizarrely discordant transition, I signed into an online class on how to avoid pickleball injuries. I’ve only played pickleball a couple of times, but I really want to play more, so I’d signed up for this AARP course last week. Needless to say, I had trouble focusing, but I did my best and learned men suffer more strains and sprains but women suffer more fractures and broken bones. Lunging for the ball is dangerous. Not communicating about who is getting the ball is dangerous. And these are the stretches you should do before playing:
But that’s enough time spent on diversions, back to the horror show. I woke up at 5 a.m. from a nightmare that it was the day of Kyle’s funeral but instead of everyone telling me nice, funny stories about my son, everyone was telling me that I’d been blind to what a mean bully he was. (He did bully a couple of people in his life, which is deeply painful for me to acknowledge, but I understand he was a kind, polite, loving and gentle soul most of the time, and I feel certain this dream about bullying has to do with what’s happening in our country.) Little children in the dream were coming to me with tears in their eyes to tell me how my son had hurt them. Ugh. So I woke up crying and searching for Kyle, and when I couldn’t fall back asleep, I started reading the news.
Among the first things I saw was this video of a pretty harmless-looking guy wearing a backpack being trampled by L.A. police officers on horseback. When the poor man finally struggles to his feet (after reaching a hand up to all the police officers, who either beat him with a baton or further trampled him), another cop grabs him and slams him back down. The unnecessary violence is deeply disturbing; how do they explain themselves? (Does anyone ask them to explain themselves?)
But it gets worse. Despite LAPD officers firing hundreds of rounds of rubber bullets, opening flame throwers, tossing tear gas canisters, denying access to and arresting journalists, plus arresting scores of peaceful protesters, Trump felt they were not being rough enough, so he sent in 2,000 members of the National Guard (without providing them anywhere to sleep, leaving them to bed down on concrete floors) and today was sending in 700 Marines and 2,000 more National Guard members.
Surely people working part-time in the National Guard and full-time in the Marines did not sign up to wage an illegal war on their own people. As CA Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X: “[Marines] shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American." And the fact that they have nowhere to sleep makes clear that president doesn’t give a shit about them; they are fodder to him.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass notes that to end the protests, the U.S. Govt. should stop having ICE cordon off whole blocks to round up everyone who looks Hispanic/Latino. But that is definitely not going to happen. This is literally Trump’s wet dream come true, that he can send in armed bullies to rip apart families and terrorize citizens.
Newsom is suing, according to an article in The Guardian, “to block the defense department from deploying the state national guard [as] there has been no ‘rebellion’ or ‘insurrection’ in LA. California said ICE agents ‘took actions that inflamed tensions … provoked protest’ and ‘sparked panic.’ California noted that ICE sealed off entire streets around targeted buildings, used unmarked armored vehicles with paramilitary gear, and did not coordinate with LA law enforcement officials.” Plus, of course, ICE is arresting people with no criminal record in most cases, grabbing them when they show up as directed for immigration hearings, and deporting them, sometimes to third-party countries, with no due process. Trump promised to only get the worst of the worst, the violent criminals, but instead he is sweeping up guys outside a Home Depot trying to get day labor or dishwashers in restaurant kitchens, people who have done no harm to anyone, people who pay taxes and are less likely than citizens to commit any crime because they’re scared of getting picked up!
The last time the U.S. sent federal troops in against a governor’s wishes was in 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson sent the National Guard into Alabama to protect civil-rights marchers, which he only did because the police had beaten or encouraged the beating of protesters in Selma the previous time they attempted to march. Using the National Guard to protect peaceful protesters worked well—but the last time we used the National Guard to quell protests didn’t go as well:
At least in 1965 the National Guard guys could feel good about the peace they were keeping. I feel sorry for everyone still wearing a National Guard uniform or Marine uniform today and being ordered to violate California’s state sovereignty; these people swore an oath to the constitution—and to obey the president. How awful for them that they can no longer do both.
Finally, I called a friend to ask her if she’d go with me to the No Kings, Yasss Queen Pride Protest taking place this Saturday in Boston (when the bloated baby in D.C. is having tanks roll through the streets to celebrate his birthday, a masturbatory military display normally reserved for places like North Korea). Although my friend first said yes, she thought it over and declined, saying she was too nervous as “a brown person with terrorist-colored skin” to risk being taken away from her child. This woman is a naturalized citizen and brave; I am enraged that I now live in a country that has made her afraid to march in a Pride parade. But I do know that it is incumbent upon all of us white people to be putting our bodies on the line now. I pray all of you find your own No Kings protests:
Please let me know how you are keeping calm and carrying on in the midst of the many horrors occurring simultaneously.