we can build institutions with explicit political lines. we must. otherwise we’ll keep projecting our politics on to identity-based sites of neocolonial reproduction only to be “let down” by them. clarify your politics, and build something meaningful we can count on. it’s urgent.

Why isn’t PEN America paying its incarcerated literary prize winners? @alex_tretbar & @deutschbitte ask in a new op-ed. Recent winners of PEN America’s Prison Writing Awards are missing a total of $925 in payments—a small fortune in prison. prismreports.org/2024/04/17/…

“This poem was written while looking for work, swimming in the vocabularies of potential utility to employers and overseers.” —Jordan Kapono Nakamura #AboutThisPoem poets.org/poem/interview-0

i really encourage people to reframe their activism as a duty, not a kindness. we aren’t big hearted for pressing buttons oceans away. the big hearted are the hungry and splitting meals. the poor housing the displaced. the defenceless defending others. this is the bare minimum.

something insidious about white people sharing that X’s poetry offers solace “in times like these” or is “what the world needs” — i’m not sure you should be able to self-soothe w a poem during genocide...for starters, i think you should be clear: what times? like what?

I ( others) risked my career to organize against Google's development of AI weapons. We won. Our arguments were evidenced and clear and made Google (temporarily) cancel the contract. But being right is not a strategy. And I've been sickly sitting w this. theguardian.com/world/2023/d…

I really love Jenny George’s poetry

since morning i hear a beloved voice saying ::::now is a good time to remember what gives u strength:::: we are building power even as they terrorize. i'm ashamed & determined. sharpened by fury. sharpened by love. we keep finding ways to each other. more vast than they fathom.

. @RutgersU is the first public university to suspend its #SJP chapter. This decision was arbitrary as the students did not receive a warning, a hearing, & found out from media bc the suspension letter was leaked. The students issue their demands below. I stand with them. #Gaza

RT @Nadia_Shammas_: There is no Palestinian victim who will ever be pure enough to be publicly and universally decried as one. If they made…

Brian Cox reads If I Must Die, by beloved Palestinian poet, teacher and martyr Refaat Alareer. Refaat was killed on December 7th by an Israeli airstrike. This was the last poem he published.

today!

no such thing as a theoretical revolutionary. your intellectual alignment/grappling don’t make you radical. what material impact are you having on your neighbors? how are you and the people in your locale working toward the destabilization of imperialism?

i wrote something about writing, “craft”, and what i think palestine requires of those who write in english from the imperial core in this hour of genocide. i hope that it might be useful