Engaging the Oppressor Within

Abstract

We are at the essence. Here, the core of community, the very root of politics, and the edge of imagination. In dismantling oppression, how are we positioned and aligned? In settler-colonies, whether Israel or the United States, on whose side do we stand? What do we resist, and for whom do we envision the future? Having inherited a diasporic legacy – I am the daughter of refugees and immigrants – with my ancestors’ propensity towards art and revolution, I am disturbed by the task to describe something so essential as this. As an organizer and an advocate for a world we have not yet known, I am offended by a debate that reduces principle to strategy, and that distorts the history of struggle in order to pacify present fears of the powerful.