The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

E. M. Pollard, The University of New Mexico

 

“Forty-thousand people dead, and you’re arresting kids instead.”

On May 2^nd 2024, I sat at my desk, brimming with anger which demanded release. First I scrawled out my personal narrative (reproduced below in italics) into the manatee and tea themed journal in which I keep all my dissertation related incomplete thoughts, questions, and musings. I was in the midst of my two month comprehensive exam period, and was desperately attempting to focus on my studies. But my body was in tension: nervous, anxious energy pulsating through my veins, pulling me toward the encampment for Palestine set up near the duck pond on campus. I now recognize this energy as my embodied reaction to injustice; it is a feeling which has overcome my self during key points in my life. In my conscious life I recall this feeling overtaking my body first when I lead a one-woman defense of gay marriage during a family Easter lunch. The second time was during the Nakba of 2014 in which evidence of torture of Palestinians was visible on my smart phone. Yet another time was when my husband and I learned of the lynching of George Floyd as we were preparing for our anniversary dinner in 2020.[1]

I treasure a conversation with a colleague on campus during finals week, in which we quietly acknowledged the tension. Between

Finishing the semester responsibly; submitting seminar papers;
Fulfilling grading, feedback, and teaching responsibilities

And

Answering the call of our hearts.
Toward justice and a free Palestine.
Calling our university into accountability

Raised in a conservative, Christian, evangelical household, I have a long process of unlearning Zionist indoctrination behind, and in front of me. As a cisgender white woman settler living and loving on stolen land, I feel a duty to deprogram my white supremacist cisheterosexist conditioning, and follow the lead of radical subjects (see Aswad, 2021); radical subjects include students protesting the genocide in Gaza and the their university’s financial interests. I am called to action by writers like Fargo Nissim Tbakhi (see Tbakhi, 2021), Bisan Owda, and Refaat Alareer, the latter martyred by the State of Israel. I am pulled toward discomfort by scholars like Steven Salaita, author of Inter/nationalism and Audre Lorde, who remind us that truth-telling is a high enough aim in itself, and anger is not inherently destructive.

Now, on the other side of my exam, my anxieties about pouring all my attention toward my academic success feels frivolous. Sometimes

I feel that I have betrayed my body,
and forced my attentions toward a direction counterproductive to my higher goals.

It is unjust that there are no longer any universities in Palestine, while students like myself in the empire sleep and study comfortably. I often think about Tamer Abumousa, who defended his master’s thesis in a displacement tent at a refugee camp. I wonder if he is weary of resilience.

Below are portions of a personal narrative recounting my thoughts during a tumultuous time on the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) campus. Itself a colonizing institution, I continue to be appalled and embarrassed by the actions of the university and administration as they silence the voices of concerned students, employees, and community members. As a member of the National Communication Association (NCA), I am also incredibly disheartened by the anti-Palestinian censorship of Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb and NCA’s refusal to release an official statement in support of a ceasefire in Gaza (see Muhtaseb, 2024). The crushing reality is that in the month since I wrote this original narrative, the State of Israel has continued its aggression and the realities of those living in camps at Rafah have only worsened. Save the Children estimates there are “up to 21,000 Palestinian children unaccounted for; at least 17,000 are unaccompanied and separated and at least 4,000 are feared buried under the rubble” (Al Jazeera, 2024). Through my phone screen I see courageous, loving Palestinian men dig through the rubble of their lives, searching for missing loved ones. As our tax dollars fund Palestinian death and suffering, is it actually too much to ask that we demand accountability for collective punishment?

In the early morning of April 30^th, 2024, UNM administration deployed New Mexico State Police against its own students. Students and community members entered the Student Union Building (SUB) the night before, extending their protest from the duck pond. This gathering was protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the university’s continued investment in the State of Israel. Protestors barricaded themselves indoors using desks and chairs, setting up camping equipment in preparation to stay the night. Protestors also made themselves at home, adjusting their environment to suit their needs, including writing liberatory messages on walls and bathroom doors. Chalks, marker, some spray paint were used. Then the police arrived.

I recall originally seeing these images while on Reddit; The link to the ABQ Journal article had been posted to R/Albuquerque. Commenters on the post described the author’s tone as “salivating” when describing police violence toward students. The night before I had received a LOBOAlert that the SUB was closed and was being occupied by protestors. Apparently, the protestors stated they would leave once the university (The Board of Regents, President Stokes) chose to be transparent about the university’s investments in the State of Israel, call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and divest from the State of Israel. Police, I assume, corralled or kettled protestors before tackling and pepper spraying them. These assumptions come from my viewing of images taken from the Albuquerque Journal article.

I viewed images of red-eyed young people, using bottled water to wash out each other’s eyes. My chest tightened, my palms become hot and moist, my heartbeat quickens. Even typing this narrative now, my body shakes and my eyes well with tears. I am reacting to the depictions of violence.

THIS,

kids,

students,

members of our community voicing their pain, anguish, grief,

and yes, righteous anger,

is what UNM’s administration is concerned with?!

So concerned, that they allow New Mexico State Police on campus and into the SUB to dole out violence against its own students?! SO CONCERNED, in fact, that they would invite and allow the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) to set up camp in the plaza. APD has a track record of corruption, disproportionate violence, and deadly force. Since January they have killed three people in my neighborhood. We cannot deny the classed-gendered-racialized frame through which policing occurs in the U.S, as it has been well-documented by scholars and everyday people alike (see Ore, 2019). To invite an organization onto campus which has a history and present of violence, demonstrates UNM administration cares more about protecting their property, and in turn money and profits, over the safety of their students. Further, to invite such an organization onto the campus of a supposed “Hispanic Serving Institution,” shows UNM leadership does not take seriously the danger in which they flippantly put our community.

The combined actions of UNM administration, including sending a dismissive and cold email to students in which they identify non-violent tactics like barricading and tagging as “criminal acts” and identifying discomfort and inconvenience as the impetus for deploying state violence to quell dissent illustrates the university leadership cares more for the well-being of inanimate objects like bathroom stall doors over the emotional and physical safety of students. To continue to allow APD, a violent and corrupt organization which the community does not trust, to essentially set up camp on our campus, the UNM leadership illustrates they will intimidate students in order to protect property. While UNM purports to value “diverse voices,” they do not value the embodied persons the voices come from. This disregard is further demonstrated by UNM’s mistreatment of graduate workers, half of whom are on SNAP benefits, who teach a large majority of classes, and do not make a living wage.

UNM leadership seems to think undergraduate students, graduate workers, and community members are not serious about justice and ending exploitation. That we take in images and videos of mass death, hunger, and genocide in Palestine daily, and are somehow willing to let this go. We will not.

The mask has slipped. We see who you are.

I have seen the fear in my student’s eyes. I recognize it as my own. Because the university has revealed who they really are: virtue-signaling, shameless oppressors of non-violent student protest, willing to inflict violence on its own community members to continue its machine of profit, exploitation, and land theft. According to its own land acknowledgement, the university lies on the homelands of the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo peoples. That UNM leadership would accuse students of criminal acts of trespassing, while occupying stolen land is laughably ironic if not for the devastating material impacts. Change is necessarily uncomfortable, disruptive, and inconvenient. UNM Leadership responds to these affects with state violence.

I am ashamed and appalled to be employed by such an organization.

I conclude by echoing the call of Wanzer (2012), “we all (regardless of whether we are interested in discursive con/texts explicitly marked by colonialism or imperialism) must seek to become decolonial rhetoricians” (p. 654). Decolonization is not a metaphor (see Tuck & Yang, 2012). It is time to support and center the radical subject’s rhetoric toward liberation. Those of us employed by universities, protected by numerous privileges including skin and citizenship are especially implicated by the injustices in Gaza, and how our employers profit from their silence and complicity.

 

References

Al Jazeera. (2024, June 24). Over 20,000 children buried, trapped, detained, lost amid Gaza war: Report. Al Jazeera News: Child’s Rights. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/24/over-20000-children-buried-trapped-detained-lost-amid-gaza-war-report

Aswad, N. G. (2021). Radical rhetoric: toward a telos of solidarity. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 24(1/2), 207-222. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/803159

Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider. Crossing Press.

Moon, D. G. (2016). “Be/coming” white and myth of white ignorance: Identity projects in white communities. Western Journal of Communication, 80(3), 282-303. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2016.1143562

Muhtaseb, A. (2024). An accounting from Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 110(1), 2-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2023.2296711

Ore, E. J. (2019). Lynching: Violence, rhetoric, and American identity. University Press of Mississippi.

Salaita, S. (2016). Inter/nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine. University of Minnesota Press.

Tbakhi, F. N. (2021). Palestine is a futurity: Prophecies (cruising Jerusalem). Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 18(3), 346-348. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2021.1954219

Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society, 1(1), 1-40.

Wanzer, D. A. (2012). Delinking rhetoric, or revisiting McGee's fragmentation thesis through decoloniality. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 15, 647‒658. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41940627

 

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E.M. Pollard lives, loves, and teaches on stolen lands originally stewarded by the Pueblo, Tiwa Piro, Ute, and Diné peoples. A Ph.D. candidate, Pollard utilizes qualitative methods (interviewing, rhetorical, and critical/cultural) to demystify the inner workings of normativities. Her research utilizes intersectionality, critical race theory, whiteness studies, and queer women of color scholarship to recenter femininity as a site of struggle. She writes about labor, organizational violence, undocuqueer, and Asian American rhetorics. Pollard’s writing appears in Quarterly Journal of Speech and Behavioral Sciences.