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On the brink of tears, sanity and war, I feel powerless, hope less and less than alive. What do we tell young people? How do we say, "...your voice means nothing to those who think life is about power over others and greed?" And where is it safe to think for yourself and try real hard to not want to hurt nobody? I don't want to hurt nobody, God knows. In Iraq, children are looking towards the night sky with fear, as though there were no stars, only bombs in the cosmos. And they are afraid of the earth because they can count the cancers in their hoods now, where once there were none. And how do I tell American youth that popular culture means nothing to justice and everything to keeping them numb to the world? And how do I scream when I have no voice left? And who will answer these questions for me? Not Rachel Corrie. She is dead. And no matter what any army says, I have seen the photos and that woman was wearing orange, bright and alive one minute and dying under rubble the next. Even I, it seems, have developed a callousness to the deaths of Palestinians, because the murder of this white girl from Olympia, Washington has my heart breaking and my blood faint. Something like ten Palestinians have been killed since yesterday, when a Caterpillar bulldozer driven by a man demolished the home that was her body. If anyone knows her family, please relay to them my grief and my sorrow. You can still find her phone number on the Internet for meetings and organizing. You can still read her accounts of being in Palestine. She was a good writer. There are people who are writing, "She should not have been there in the first place" Now she is dead. "Good riddance" Now she is dead. "Treasonous bitch" Now she is dead. What do I tell young people about non-violence when they can see for themselves how even orange bright and megaphone loud and cameras and US citizenship will not stop your murder? I recall the days black boys were lynched and dismembered for looking at white women, now tax dollars are crushing dissent wherever it blooms. Human shields for human targets. There are words I am taking back. I reclaim them and will no longer allow anyone to dictate my language. There is no "right wing" a wing is of nature, and murder may be human, but it is not natural, even if animals eat each other, is that what we are then, animals? If so, claim it, motherfucker. There is no "mother of all bombs". Blair, Sharon, Bush, all have mothers and no matter what they do, there is something they love. White power, oil, the need to be God's only chosen, whatever, but they love something, because their mothers loved them. A bomb loves nothing, has no mother and is not about life. There is no mother of all bombs, only more mankind self-destruction. There is no safety in being a bully. I know because I have been bullied and I know now, with my first grey hair and all, that authentic power is not about others but about self. This is not a poem. This is not a threat. This is a promise. God has a better imagination than all of us combined and I do not know what form retribution will take, but I have seen karma happen and it will again, and when it does I will chant the names of the innocent and I will stand with those who have kept their hands clean of blood and their hearts clear of hate. It is hard not to hate right now. But I have been loved, I have loved and I know that those who de-humanize their enemy are only doing so to themselves. Peace work is justice work is God's work. Rachel Corrie wrote, "Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean." She is dead now. And the ocean will miss her gaze. Palestine will miss her heart, but mostly her family will miss her breath. And the president of the United States of America (when did that happen again?) has all but declared war on Iraq, and so more deaths are promised. What do I tell young people about any thing? Especially humanity and morality. Slightly a month before her murder Rachel wrote home, "Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds." More words I reclaim: Hero, Brave, Soldier. This young woman did the un-thinkable, she did not blink, did not half-step, did not back down in the face of death. What greater odds than one lone female frame against a destructive machine? What greater story to tell? On the brink of war, may our power come from the people Rachel Corrie was murdered defending. On the brink of war, may our hope come from one another. On the brink of -- wait -- this is not a war. On the brink of whatever new-fangled imperialist project this is, may Rachel Corrie live in our resistance, in our pursuit of justice, and in the spirit of sisterhood. On the brink of war, may we remember how divine human beings can be. -- Suheir Hammad Suheir Hammad is a Palestinian-American poet living in New York City.
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