Time of Enduring
A Letter to My Hala Collective
By Micaela Kaibni Raen
The beginning of October 2024 signals a renewed time of action and advocacy for justice. Many organizations are planning “One Year of Genocide” events to benefit Palestinian communities. As we move forward as activists and creatives, we also bring with us those affected by genocides, past and present, around the globe, and in so doing grieve unconceivable losses to humanity and our mother-planet. As we mourn violence against humanity and garner new perceptions through the lens of loss, grief and rage, we seek new futures that call for an end to the colonial experiments’ reign of terror over mother-earth and her children.
We will shed tears for Palestine, Lebanon, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Syria, and so many more areas with people struggling to survive disease, starvation and violent attacks. We will demand an end to the violence including the ongoing Nakba and Military Occupation of Palestine and the imprisonment of her people. Our focus is justice, an end to the exploitation of all bodies: Indigenous, BIPOC, Queer/trans, and Female. We will advocate against the global systems of capitalism, pushing back against the normalization of automated and targeted violence.
As we create new work that moves us forward, we will mourn. Our tears, organically multi-faceted, uniquely reflect each of us and our specific presence in this world. Our tears are sacred waters, messages from our heart falling upon the earth in sacred communication. Our tears connect us to land, and to each other; they are centers of motion propelling us forward.
My beloveds...please hear my prayer/chant/declaration:
We, the justice seekers, are embraced and supported by our earth and her sky while on our land-journey. Our ancestors dreamed us into being and continue to feel our presence. We are sacred guardians of earth and her children…we are historians, cultural archivists, and light-workers…our hearts shine calling others to open. We are the chosen who give birth to new futures. We are spiritual entities in physical form woven within times’ fabric, millenniums’ unfolding. We are a fiercely sonorous composition, tuned by ancestral love and wisdom. We are strength, poetry, art, dance, song, prayer, magic and much more. We were formed by our ancestors’ dreams, skies’ glittery stardust, and our earth-mother’s soil, but we are shaped by love. We can keep moving through this time. We can and will endure.
As creators in such violent times, we need to acknowledge that it takes an unfathomable depth of courage and emotional strength to keep creating lit/art/performance and confront shadow bans, censorship and discrimination. In the 1980s/90s, multiple communities of color and Queer/Trans communities came together to advocate/protest/fight for healthcare and treatment for those affected by HIV/AIDS. I was already an activist, for Palestine and our people, when the waves of death caused by HIV/AIDS in North America expanded my grief and rage until it spilled over into community organizing. I became a LGBTIQ+ and HIV/AIDS activist to memorialize my loved ones lost…lost due to physical disease, violent hate crimes, and suicide. Being a Palestinian Lesbian in the “Gay Community” meant I had to face a lot of racism and threats from within the community. Soon I realized that grief and racism were not going to go away but that activism was moving me toward healing, with the by-product of creating deep connections with comrades, and joy in the hope/goal/intention of making a difference for the next generation. I use the word “healing,” but it was more like finding support and a way to live with something that was unthinkable. Being older now, I still feel the value in my path.
I hope your creative journey connects you to loving comrades and your tears lead you to new possibilities for living and loving. As we are called to action, our global leaders, the colonizers of our lands, are increasing their violence and profits with machines of war. But despite this we will continue to create, dreaming new futures into life.
Micaela Kaibni Raen is a Palestinian American cultural worker, author, artist, and activist. @micaelakaibniraen
