Accessible Activism part 3

Powerful Protests - 3. Leah Manaema Avene (she/them)

Hi beloveds,

There’s been a lot of discourse about who is allowed to speak at the moment. What is your lane? Who are you speaking over? You’re not suffering in the same way I’m suffering, so it hurts me when you speak. These are expressions of profound pain. When someone is hurting, or if any inner child is crying out for help, what do you do?

I’d like to offer something to you, for this moment. The global pressure, violence and sorrow is real and if you’re not feeling some kind of grief at the moment, perhaps you’re not connected to how you feel.

Some activism is visible, and some is not. How you begin or continue is up to you. If you’re like me and you doubt yourself most moments of most days, if you feel like you’re not smart enough or have the capacity to understand everything going on, you’re not all by yourself.

I don’t have a political science degree or any degree actually. I loved this from Benjamin Law. It made a lot of sense to me. No lives should be taken in violence. Not the ones in Israel, not the ones in Palestine, and certainly not children and babies in any place on earth.

Just to be clear - Anti-Semitism, Anti-Muslim hatred, Anti-Palestinian human rights and general fuckery and violence toward people due to their race or cultural group is reprehensible. I cannot believe I even need to say this, but it bears repeating.

Even though I’m not the smartest person on earth, I know a lot about grief. I know how each new grief unearths the old, each new trauma nudges the pre-existing. Grief can cause a freeze response, anger, sadness, pressure, all of the hard things. When I’m stuck I talk to my friends. We meet one another where we’re at and see what happens with words and feeling.

I’d like to introduce you or remind you of the existence of Leah Manaema Avene (she/them). Leah is offering a number of free resources and offerings at this horrifying time.

We had a chat and I finally worked out how to edit the video to take out most of my unnecessary input, so please enjoy. In the interests of timeliness, I’m putting this up before I have captions, but I will come back and find out how to do that the next time I’m at my desk. I am slow at everything. Slow to understand, slow to create, slow to upload. I am doing my best. Thank you for your patience.

Much love, JP