A Gathering of Spirit
Aneil Rallin
August 2024
I claim responsibility for the Israeli crimes against humanity because I am an American and American monies made these atrocities possible. I claim responsibility for Sabra and Shatila because, clearly, I have not done enough to halt heinous episodes of holocaust and genocide around the globe. I accept this responsibility and I work for the day when I may help to save any one other life, in fact.
--June Jordan, 1982 (cited in Magloire, 2024)
300 days and counting and 76 years. I am writing these words in Los Angeles, occupied stolen lands originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash peoples. I am writing these words as a citizen of the settler-colonial united states of america empire, cognizant of what my government, the government of this settler-colonial empire, these united states of america that I have called “home” for most of my adult life, is unleashing on the occupied lands and peoples in Palestine. I am not unaware of the misery this empire, these united states of america, causes daily there, here, and around the world. We feel it on our bones, in the depths of our bellies, in our wrecked hearts, its unending capacity for ruin. I feel every day the onus of my own complicity. I write deeply ashamed and enraged by the actions of this united states of america empire. I write, stomach tangled in knots, blood curdling, as images of bodies upon bodies keep arriving, limbs scattered everywhere…breaking, breaking. I feel now more than ever before the futility of words. Still, I write, I try to write in the face of the unfathomable horror before us.
The horror is compounded by our helplessness, our powerlessness to stop it. We witness day after day the unimaginable horror in Gaza, in Palestine. We cannot believe the unfolding horror we witness day after day after day. We cannot believe nothing and no one has been able to stop this united states of america/israeli genocide in Palestine. It’s unbelievable, unspeakable, and yet what choice do we have but to try to speak/write, to voice our shared revulsion, our grief, our anger, our rage, our sadness, to proclaim we did not consent, we do not consent to this genocide funded by our monies, we do not accept these conditions of living, these conditions of our lives are not of our choosing. We refuse to normalize the united states of america/israeli genocide of Palestinians.
We know writing is insufficient but still we write, even when it feels impossible. We come together in these impossible times, knowing writing matters even when it seems not to matter, knowing writing can and does produce psychic resonances and material reverberations, understanding that writing doesn’t and shouldn’t preclude us from taking additional actions. We may feel writing in these times of genocide is absurd, we know remaining silent is even more absurd. So we write, grasping that the shame of Gaza is on us all.
We write, as Ussama Makdisi (2024) reminds us:
The slaughter of Palestinian civilians and children has become to routinized that it barely registers except as a passing notation in the Western media. Our outrage and horror are signs of our shared humanity.
We write, as Zeeshan Joonam (2024) tells us:
I wake up and say enough, I won’t write about wars and genocide and suffering anymore. I will write about flowers and moonlight and lovers bathed in moonlight, but then I remember the child whose head was blown off yesterday. And I write.
We write, as Remi Kanazi (2024) lists the terrifying horrors before us:
Israel is exterminating journalists
Israel is raping prisoners
Israel is massacring refugees
Israel is murdering medics
Israel is bombing water reservoirs
Israel is bombing hospitals, schools, and mosques
Israel is committing genocide and we are soon entering 11 month
We write, as susan abulhawa (2024) describes us:
Only the willfully ignorant and morally vacuous, which may well be one in the same, are untouched by this holocaust in real time. The rest of us are awake and enraged and mobilizing. Gaza has altered our collective DNA. We are united in our love and pain and resolve to resist and escalate until Palestine is liberated and these genocidal Zionists are held to account in the same manner Nazis were.
We are not untouched.
We are enraged, grief-stricken.
We write to resist these conditions that are not of our choosing, as we keep working to change these conditions of our lives, these conditions that value some lives over other lives. We write because we hear Omar Hamad (2024): “Can you imagine what it means for a mother to say to the young man who was retrieving the bodies: ‘Find my son’s head for me, for I have found his body but not his head.’”
We come together distraught by the unthinkable cruelty Palestinians are being subjected to by israel and the united states of america empire and disheartened by the silence of our discipline, the silence of our national professional organizations, the silence of so many colleagues in rhetoric and composition, colleagues who have built extraordinary careers as leading feminist and/or social justice and/or decolonial scholars/teachers, colleagues who are always silent when it comes to Palestine.
We come together, we write in the face of these shameful silences.
We write in the face of shameful legislative attempts in these united states of america seeking to criminalize support for Palestine and shameful university actions in these united states of america brutally shutting down academic freedom and student/faculty/staff dissent and voices/speech opposed to the united states of america/israeli genocide in Gaza and for a liberated Palestine.
We write, exploding with rage, trembling with grief, but united in our love, pain, and resolve to resist and reject these inhospitable conditions, to do what we can, knowing what we write/do isn’t enough, knowing we have failed, we have all failed.
It is this resolve that infuses this gathering of spirit, this quick coming together for Palestine that emerges from the Rhetoric and Composition Scholars/Teachers/Administrators/Students for Palestine open statement that we issued on 13 November 2023.
As university leaders in this settler-colonial united states of america empire were manufacturing consent, yet again, for the annihilation of life and the living in the Gaza, the horrific assault on Palestinian lives, we watched in anguish and despair, disbelief and grief, at the unimaginable horror of the livestreamed genocide, the indescribable cruelty of these united states of america in aiding and abetting the israeli genocide of Palestinians. We expected, not unreasonably, that our national professional organizations, here in the belly of the united states of america empire, would, at the very least, finally take a stand for Palestine, would, like several other professional organizations, swiftly issue statements condemning this unthinkable horror, calling for its immediate end, calling for the liberation of Palestine, refusing the manufactured narratives, reaffirming our discipline’s commitments to academic freedom and to dissent. But the Palestine exception in our field runs deep. Our national professional organizations that were swift to issue statements in support of Ukraine chose silence, yet again—a stain that will forever tarnish the credibility of these national professional organizations.
Agitated by their silence, we came together to quickly issue the following open statement:
Rhetoric and Composition Scholars/Teachers/Administrators/Students for Palestine
13 November 2023
We are concerned rhetoric and composition scholars/teachers/administrators/students witnessing with horror the unfolding of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. We come together to grieve the unfathomable loss of life and annihilation of the living. We condemn the ongoing genocide in Palestine unequivocally. We reject the racist rhetoric/language used to dehumanize Palestinians and to minimize Palestinian suffering. We refuse to minimize Palestinian suffering. We refuse to disregard the value of Palestinian lives. We cherish Palestinian lives. We insist on cherishing Palestinian lives. We refuse to censor Palestinian voices and/or our own voices in support of Palestinians and for a free Palestine. We uphold the rights of Palestinians, and all oppressed peoples everywhere, to fight for freedom and self-determination. We support their struggles to be free of colonization, of occupation, of annexation. We support and amplify the calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. We say no to this destructive war enabled by the US government and fueled by our tax dollars. We endorse the statements issued by Publishers for Palestine, Writers Against the War in Gaza, Academics Against the Assault on Gaza, and A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine, and join global solidarity efforts calling for the liberation of Palestine from a brutal occupation, now in its 75th year, and a lasting peace to Palestine and for Palestinians.
As scholars/teachers/administrators/students in a field attentive to the workings of language and power, we are outraged by the silence of professional organizations in our field that are typically quick to embrace discourses of justice, freedom, liberation, and decolonization in theory, but in practice are habitually silent on the question of Palestine and unwilling to support the decolonial struggles of indigenous Palestinians long under siege. Silence is complicity. We are aghast that our professional organizations are silent yet again, even now in the face of the unthinkable horrors being inflicted on the peoples of Palestine. At the same time as we condemn the genocide taking place in Palestine, call for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza, demand that the US stop funding the Israeli genocidal apartheid project, denounce racist rhetoric/language dehumanizing Palestinians, reject the censoring/punishing of those who speak up for Palestine, support the decolonial freedom struggles for a liberated Palestine, we urge rhetoric and composition professional organizations such as the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Society of America, Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, Council of Writing Program Administrators, and Modern Language Association to stand in solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians under occupation, speak up, take action.
Free Palestine!
Let the record note that a link to this open statement was emailed to a number of our senior colleagues in rhetoric and composition celebrated for their commitments to social justice, inviting them to add their names to our open statement in support of Palestine and Palestinians under siege and facing genocide. Most of these emails vanished into the void. Shameful.
Let the record note that a link to this open statement was emailed to WPA-Announcements twice (on 13 November 2023 and 16 November 2023) asking for the link to be posted on WPA-Announcements. It never appeared on WPA-Announcements. Shameful.
The Conference on College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Society of America, Council of Writing Program Administrators, and Modern Language Association failed to act, failed to stand with Palestine, failed to hear the screams from Palestine, failed to consider even our modest urgings, as I delineate in “Shame, Shame: My Field’s Failure to Act on Palestine” (2023). Shameful, shameful.
The Conference on College Composition and Communication failed to heed the urgings of the FourCsDoBetter collective who held a silent protest at the opening session of the 2024 annual convention in April. Shameful, shameful.
At the 2024 Modern Language Association annual convention in January, the Delegate Assembly adopted Emergency Motion 2024-1 on academic freedom introduced by MLA Radical Caucus with the co-sponsorship of a number of MLA forums and MLA Marxist Literary Group. The motion called on the MLA Executive Council to take immediate steps to defend the academic freedom of all students, faculty, and staff who have condemned the israeli government for its massive bombardment of Gaza and criticized the US government for its unwavering economic and military support of the israeli government and rejected the proposition that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. MLA Executive Council’s response to this emergency motion, only advisory unfortunately, was predictably dismal. MLA Executive Council declined to adopt the emergency motion and proposed instead (classic diversionary tactics) to host a webinar and issue a call for papers for a special issue of its journal Profession on “fighting back against the current climate of hostility on so many of our campuses”—nothing about the unimaginable conditions, unendurable suffering that israel/these united states of america empire has spawned, is spawning in Palestine. Shameful, shameful.
The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition issued a statement, Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition Statement about Gaza and Israel, the type of statement Nada Elia takes to task. The Coalition has failed to take any meaningful action. Shameful, shameful.
These are silences, failures we will not forget, these are silences, failures we will not let them erase.
Marina Magloire’s recent “Moving Towards Life” (2024), a timely reading of the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, underscores June Jordan’s unwavering commitment to Palestine. In a letter, June Jordan takes Audre Lorde to task for Audre Lorde’s irresolute support for Palestine. June Jordan writes, “you have behaved in a wrong and cowardly fashion. That is your responsibility. May you […] live well with that.” Our national professional organizations, along with so many of our colleagues, have likewise behaved in a wrong and cowardly fashion—their principled cowardice and moral failings now laid bare.
It is unbearable this endless horror and unbearable the silence of our celebrated colleagues who will not speak up for Palestine—leaders, teachers, mentors, scholars, cowards. We must not let them forget their silence now, we must not let our professional organizations forget their silence at this time.
We have been watching israel’s systematic decimation of libraries and universities and schools in Gaza, the systematic targeting of books and sites of knowledge production and documentation and memory-keeping, the systematic killing of students and professors, and still to date not one of our national professional organizations has unequivocally condemned the systematic scholasticide in Gaza.
We have been watching, we are watching the united states of america/israel’s genocide of Palestinians before us and still to date not one of our national professional organizations has had the rectitude, courage, clarity to condemn unequivocally what we see with our eyes and hear in our hearts and commit its resources to Palestine, to commit to efforts to stop the genocide and bring an end to the violence against Palestinian peoples in Gaza, the West Bank, across historic Palestine, and in the diaspora, to uphold the call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against israeli apartheid, to assert that Palestinians have the right to freedom, resistance, and return, to life, to live, to thrive.
A note about this gathering of spirit.
The impetus came from a remark Sophia Greco made, a question Charlie Robeilos posed. I asked Sophia and Charlie if they would write something if we put together a collection. I offered to collect and assemble. We debated whether this was the right time. Hesitant but then convinced that the disease around us seeks to keep us silent, I sent out a query via email in May 2024 to all the signatories of the Rhetoric and Composition Scholars/Teachers/Administrators/Students for Palestine open statement, asking what colleagues thought of such a coming together—and if colleagues would be interested in contributing a piece to a collection of immediate critical/creative pieces of/for the moment from rhetoric and composition scholars/teachers/administrators/students for Palestine that speaks in any way, shape, or form to this moment we find ourselves in—the unimaginable situation in Gaza, the student encampments against the genocide and historic demands for divestment, the brutal attacks on pro-Palestine students/faculty at universities. I solicited suggestions for publication venues.
The response was rapid, overwhelming, almost unanimously in favor of this quick gathering in solidarity with Palestine. A number of colleagues from across the ranks (undergraduate and graduate student to professor emeritx) committed right away to contributing a piece. A number of colleagues said they were unable to contribute at this time (for any number of reasons, including the very real fear of retribution from their universities) but offered their assistance. One colleague, among this gathering, fearful of retaliation from their university/state, uses a pseudonym. A couple of colleagues asked that I make sure the gathering does not profit from the suffering in Palestine. I offered the colleagues who had committed to submitting a contribution only this one follow-up sentence as guidance: “we’re imagining this rhet/comp for Palestine collection/collaboration as a gathering of spirit, of rhet/comp folx who refuse and have refused to be silent about israel's genocide coming together quickly to respond in and to this moment in solidarity with Palestine, a response from us here in the united states of america academy that has been, at the very least, indifferent to Palestinian lives and in a nation-state that has enabled this genocide in Gaza.”
Christina V. Cedillo reached out to offer space in this journal for this gathering of spirit.
This is a quick gathering, a small gathering, “there is no attempt to be comprehensive here,” as Nuzhat Abbas forewarns of her vital edited collection River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation (2023, p. 7). This is a collection of the offerings I received, a quick coming together of us rhetoric and composition scholars/teachers/administrators/students who live/love/work here in these united states of america founded on genocide and slavery, this settler-colony that has built an empire that ransacks the world, this settler-colonial empire that is the cause of so much harm, so much sorrow in our world, this is a coming together of those of us who could come together now, between May and early August of this terrible year 2024.
This gathering of spirit is a protest. We come together to grieve, to rage, to reflect, out of fury, out of love and for love. We come together amidst an ongoing genocide, catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, to add our voices to the voices standing in solidarity with Palestine. We come together to add our voices to the voices against the united states of america/israeli genocide of Palestinians, against the war machine, against the manufactured rhetoric that renders so many lives disposable in service of land theft-profit-greed-empire. We come together to do what it is we can do because we know silence is not an option, inaction is not an option. We do not only write/make art, we do not only write/make art for each other, we write/make art in the ways we can now, knowing our oppositional words and our art are not enough, will not be enough, but knowing also that words and art are what we have and oppositional words and art have always been threat to empire/nation/state/university that demands our silence, our complicity, our compliance.
Of what use are these quick words, our words? What will these words do? We do not know how these words, our words, will travel, if they will travel, where they will reach, whom they will reach, how will they be received. We do not know but with these words, our words, we say, we are not silent, we will not be silent, we did not and do not consent to the incomprehensible horrors in Gaza that this settler-colonial united states of america empire has endorsed, has enabled, has unleashed. We here in this settler-colony stand with you there and here and everywhere, and we grieve and we rage and we gather, coming together in spirit and in solidarity, in pursuit of Palestine liberated from the sea to the river.
Here’s to Palestinian life, liberation, and just futures.
Palestine Zindabad! Viva Palestina! Free Palestine!
Acknowledgements:
I am thankful to the contributors of this gathering for coming together quickly, Sophia Greco, Ian Barnard, and Kristi Wilson for helping to put together this gathering, Christina Cedillo, the many colleagues who responded to the call for this gathering with encouraging messages and support for Palestine even if they were unable to tender a contribution at this time, Brooke Hotez and Matthew Abraham for getting me going, Beth Brant for the title, borrowed from the essential collection A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection of Writing and Art by North American Indian Women edited by Beth Brant.
References
Abbas, N. (2023) River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation. Trace Press.
abulhawa, s. (2024, June 25). Gaza is changing us all. The Electronic Intifada. https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-changing-all-us/47316
Elia, N. (2003, October 23). On statements of concern, solidarity, and support. Mondoweiss. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/on-statements-of-concern-solidarity-and-support/
Hamad, O. [@OmarHamadD]. (2024, July 28). Can you imagine [Post]. X. https://x.com/OmarHamadD/status/1817499529572204867
Joonam, Z. [@ZeeshanJaanam]. (2024, July 29). Every day, I wake up and say enough. [Post]. X. https://x.com/zeeshanjaanam/status/1817867489058930835?s=48
Kanazi, R. [@remroum]. (2024, July 31). Israel is exterminating journalists [Post]. X. https://x.com/Remroum/status/1818690501375095139
Magloire, M. (2024, August 7). Moving Towards Life. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/moving-towards-life/
Makdisi, U. [@ussamamakdisi]. (2024, July 30). The slaughter of Palestinian civilians and children [Post]. X. https://x.com/UssamaMakdisi/status/1818284211964666308
Aneil Rallin (they/them) taught rhetoric and composition for thirty-three years at nine universities in the US and Canada (including Soka University of America, York University, California State University, San Marcos, and University of Southern California) and is the author of Dreads and Open Mouths: Living/Teaching/Writing Queerly.
