No More Heroes. Jordan Flaherty
in other places. In order for me to convince you to be saved, I need to convince you to hate your community. This disconnects people from their own communities and societies.”
Rights as an approach is not something I personally and al Qaws as a collective relate to. . . . And what does it even mean to demand gay rights—from whom? From the occupier? Or the occupier arm in the West Bank? What does that mean, to get your gay rights without getting your human rights, or dignity, or basic food, work, basic conditions of being a human being? We think in Palestinian society, and without a broader critique, “gay rights” is an unethical approach. . . . The focus on a single issue (homophobia) is tempting, because it is easier than thinking about the complexity of our experiences and how our bodies and sexualities are used and abused by different layers of power.29
For members of Al Qaws, the idea of separating homophobia from other systems of oppression is part of the colonial project, and furthers pinkwashing, the use of LGBTQ rights to “cleanse” from discussion other forms of oppression. “You cannot have queer liberation while apartheid, patriarchy, capitalism and other oppressions exist,” writes Al Qaws member Ghaith Hilal. “It’s important to target the connections of these oppressive forces. Furthermore, pinkwashing is a strategy used by the Brand Israel campaign to garner the support of queers in other parts of the world. It is simply an attempt to make the Zionist project more appealing to queer people. This is another iteration of a familiar and toxic colonial fantasy—that the colonizer can provide something important and necessary that the colonized cannot possibly provide for themselves.”30
What leads people to give up on change? Is it the slow pace required by asking questions and listening to communities most affected? Or are people driven out of social movements because they are fundamentally disempowered by the inevitable failures of shortsighted campaigns?
If the energy that went into KONY 2012 went toward pressuring a government that the United States has more influence with, like the Israeli state, this could have incredible influence. Through the international BDS movement, the Israeli government would be forced into real negotiations that could bring lasting peace. By focusing on an individual rather than a state or systemic change, Invisible Children set their goals far too low, yet still out of reach.
Whether it’s aid for rebuilding in Haiti, human rights advocacy in Palestine, or hunting warlords in Africa, there is ample reason to be suspicious of gifts from wealthier nations. If the aid does not address the structural issues that create injustice, then it only creates a more stable status quo, locking injustice into place.
The U.S. position in the world—in fact, the very existence of the United States—comes from a history of colonial domination. If we want to make amends for that history, kindness is not enough. We need to stop thinking we can “rescue” the world from problems we helped create. Haiti has no money because the United States, France, and other colonial powers stole it. When we buy a twenty-dollar shirt that a Haitian was paid pennies to make, we are continuing to steal from them. When a U.S. aid worker in Haiti is paid a salary equivalent to that of fifty Haitians, we are continuing to steal from them. This is not aid. Aid is reparations. Relief is overthrowing the system of colonial domination, and eliminating debt. Support is standing in solidarity with Haitians and Palestinians and the Diné, all of whom are organizing and fighting and leading their own struggles for an end to colonialism.
Through her struggles around decolonization with Black Mesa Indigenous Support, Berkley Carnine sees many examples of both principled solidarity and the savior mentality, which she defines as “an internalized superiority added to a history of settler colonialism and genocide.”
Carnine often sees a pattern among non-Indigenous volunteers. They are confronted with the deep injustice of Native American genocide and don’t know how to deal with those feelings. That produces guilt and shame, which then trigger another set of emotions. “I’m feeling bad, and I want to be able to take some action and alleviate that bad feeling. So then the goal becomes not alleviating suffering for others but alleviating one’s own suffering.”
Carnine grapples with how to fight for change without putting herself at the center. What does it mean to not be from a community but still be accountable to their struggle? She seeks the answer through principled, accountable work as an ally. She has not sought to be a leader or a spokesperson but to help make space for indigenous activists to lead themselves, by taking on tasks like herding sheep that might otherwise take up their time.
“Decolonization is about mutual self-determination between people groups without the colonial state as mediator,” adds Carnine in a document written with fellow BMIS organizer Liza Minno Bloom. Among the other steps they advise for activists seeking decolonization:
Know whose land you’re on and “acknowledge that you are on occupied land when you say where you are or where you are from.”
Shift the entitlement inherent in settler experience by asking permission to be on the land.
Know where your water, heat, electricity and other resources come from.
Incorporate an analysis of settler colonialism into all of your organizing work, even if you are not working explicitly on Indigenous solidarity.31
These examples are a good baseline for any kind of solidarity work.
Chapter Three: The Death of Riad Hamad
I met Brandon Darby in New Orleans in 2004. He was twenty-eight, with a widow’s peak, a dimple on his chin, and a cool confidence that belied an intense passion when he got worked up. We talked about Palestinian rights, and he immediately expressed his support for anti-colonial armed resistance. He wanted me to know that he was ready to die for the cause of revolution. He also talked about his friendship with Robert King, who had been one of three imprisoned Black Panthers at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, collectively known as the Angola Three. King had spent twenty-nine years in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit, was freed in 2001, and eventually moved to Austin, Texas, where Darby lived. Darby told me the militants of the civil rights and Black Power movements inspired him.
Reading the autobiographies of Malcolm X and Assata Shakur radicalized me as a young activist, and as Darby talked about the Black Panthers and Palestinian freedom struggles while smoking cigarettes and drinking a beer he projected a white working-class cool that appealed to me. He had a compelling pattern of speech, expressing radical ideas about revolution or imperialism as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He would emphasize his passion through repetition, saying quietly, “There’s something wrong with a system that would allow this to happen, you know? There’s something wrong.” He would pause at a common word or phrase, as if offering to define it for you. “The FBI was afraid of the Panthers’ free breakfast program,” he might say. “You know, breakfast?”
Darby was visiting New Orleans and talking about moving there from Austin. That didn’t happen, and I didn’t hear from him for a while. Then, less than a year later, New Orleans was submerged in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Darby was back.
His story of returning to New Orleans quickly became legend. He had come in a car with scott crow, an anarchist activist also from Austin. They had come to rescue Robert King. Darby had taken a boat to Robert King’s house, faced down state troopers who got in his way, and rescued King from his house. “I knew I had to save King’s life, and I wasn’t going to let federal authorities or the New Orleans police force stop me,” he later said.1 Then he and crow went to the Algiers neighborhood, where they helped former Black Panther Malik Rahim face down armed white vigilantes. Robert King later disputed elements of this story, but by then the legend had taken on a life of its own.
Darby quickly became a leader of Common Ground, an anarchist-leaning volunteer group that brought thousands of young, mostly white volunteers in to work on rebuilding New Orleans. Founded by Rahim, his partner Sharon Johnson, Darby, and crow, Common Ground began with a well-informed critique of the massive failures of the Red Cross and other aid agencies.2 Their defined goal was to support local control of the recovery. Their slogan was “Solidarity, Not Charity.” From the beginning, Darby was impatient with the non-hierarchical