Revolution is our only future

On AWP, the bombing of Lebanon, revolution, queer & trans community, and Chappell Roan

I wanted to start this newsletter with this beautiful poem by Lebanese-Armenian Poet Perla Kantarjian, because when I first started trying to write this, I had no words.

(Gofundme at the bottom of the newsletter for ways you can help out my friend in Lebanon and migrant workers in Lebanon!)

I feel rage. I feel grief. I feel an overwhelming need to write.

I wanted to write about being in Baltimore for AWP this year, one that felt so epically gay, so especially trans. I wanted to talk about being in the States while the US bombed Iran, while Israel bombed Lebanon. I wanted to talk about running between events and tabling for eight hours a day while texting my friend about the sheer terror he felt while bombs hit Beirut and Israel put out an evacuation order for large parts of Beirut, including where he and his family live. I wanted to write about the things we don’t always realize happen during periods of “war”, periods that differ from other moments of occupation or imperialism, the ways getting your passport renewed during a “war” means spending more money because you have to bribe government workers to get your paperwork done faster. It means the price of transportation to safer places is way higher. It means that even if you have a car, the streets are filled with people evacuating. Lebanon’s highways and streets have always been thick with traffic, something I’ve experienced a lot. It’s hot and the car is barely moving. It’s an old car and the AC might not be strong enough to help. I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be in that traffic when you’re fleeing death.

I wanted to write about the guilt I feel anytime I choose my career while bombs are falling. It always feel like I’m choosing it over my people. How to be a writer or publisher while my people are dying? How dare I spend any time focusing on anything other than liberation? I spent Tuesday-Saturday at AWP, running around between events, going to events to hear queer and trans and racialized people read, spending time with writer and publishing friends from other cities I don’t get to see often. I drank with other writers who think and feel similarly to me. I did karaoke and let my show boat out. I connected with other queer, trans, and racialized writers and publishers. And it felt really special!

I met a trans girl writer named Revna while selling books at Metonymy’s booth at AWP’s book fair and she said, and I’m paraphrasing, but basically “Why should a room of seventy trans people talking about writing feel so special, feel so holy?” When I told her that I missed the trans publishers’ panel because I was tabling, but I went to the Big Trans and Hon-Binary reading, filled with over a hundred queer and trans people, she said: “Did you feel God there?”. She meant that God was there in that room because we were together, taking up space, enjoying being queer and trans together. I think she was asking, “Isn’t it sad that it feels so special? That we have so few of those spaces? And I think she’s right. As someone who isn’t religious but is spiritual, I did feel something special at the different extremely queer, trans, and racialized spaces I was in. I felt an energy in the air at the Dopamine Books (Michelle Tea’s press) reading and karaoke night and I want to cherish that. I wish it were more common. But given it is special, I also choose to dive into that specialness. I choose to bask in the feeling of aliveness it gives me. It gives us.

Because this joy is what keeps me going. It is the energy that pushes me forward. It is the recharging force I often need to keep fighting. It is the way I give myself self-care. Because fighting for liberation is not about stewing in my guilt that I too am not running from the bomb. That I left Lebanon with my immediate family right before the Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006. Liberation means anchoring myself in my love for my people, in the work. It means not stewing in guilt.

And I don’t say this to center myself in the situation. But I am also a person who has feelings and we’re in situations we’ve never learned how to cope with. How to hold it all, how to feel joy in order to double down on what you believe in, how to feel the joy so you have the energy to move with rage and intention. I want my activism to be a long term, ongoing fight; no matter how much we wish we could change things quickly for our people, this is not a quick race. I finally truly understand what the non-capitalist version of self-care is. Cause joy can be revolutionary when you let that joy power you to push further than you have ever pushed before, when you allow your love of life and living make it impossible for you to not fight for the liberation of others.

At AWP, I only went to off-site events. I got to listen to so many readings by queer/trans/racialized writers, got to go to a reading fundraiser by Mizna at Red Emma, a huge and beautiful communist bookstore, café, and event space. Radix put on an event right after of Radical writers. I got to go to the Big Trans and Hon-Binary reading Little Puss and the Feminist Press put on, got to sell books there, got to dance with so many queer and trans people. I got to hear excellent readings at Atomic Books, a reading inter-spliced with karaoke, and it was so queers, so trans, so racialized. It reminded how special these writing communities and spaces can be when they don’t forget the world we live in, the devastation amid the joy.

My joy for life isn’t an antithesis to my activism. Feeling guilty for singing karaoke while my people are dying doesn’t help. Spending the next day collecting all the funds I collected for my friend the day after does.

I think people are afraid to center themselves during these times. And I’m not saying you should make a genocide or the bombing of Iran and Lebanon about you — but that’s just obviously a bad move. The world IS BAD. We’re all struggling in one way or another. We’re all broke. We all need to band together and talk about the hard and difficult feelings, talk about the guilt, talk about our needs, if we’re going to be able to move forward collectively, if we’re going to be able to enact change. Guilt and shame are the emotions that stop us in our tracks. Love and rage and a sense of justice are what keep us going.

The revolution will not last if we push ourselves for almost three years and then burn out, like I and so many others did. The revolution looks like setting up long term and concrete plans for change. The revolution looks like asking for help when you’re part of a legal case that’s been ongoing for two years because of a peaceful action*/sit-in at Scotiabank with forty-four others. You disavowed Scotiabank’s investment in Elbit systems, the arms company that is literally killing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and you got arrested. I honestly wish I had done more if we were going to be in court for it. The revolution is all of us working together so that less of us burn out. The revolution is pushing to do a little more every day and building our capacity. The revolution is about what we prioritize. The revolution is putting our money and our labour where our mouths are, no matter what profession. we’re in. Revolution is our only future.

I want to end on a particularly great moment from the karaoke party, where a queer with a beautiful voice sang a perfect rendition of Chappell Roan’s “Casual” and ended the night. Devon drove Oliver, Sasha, and I back to our hotels while we listened to it again, singing it into the Baltimore night.

There’s something about “knee deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out, is it casual now?” that makes me sad Chappell Roan wasn’t around when I was 21, but that makes me happy she is writing fucking gay ass lyrics now. That makes me want to sing it over and over again.

There is joy in this revolution and it is in those special moments of feeling seen, heard, and well surrounded.

And on that note, thank you to EVERYONE who has helped me/my friend in Beirut by donating to the ofundme I’ve set up for him (for those who don’t know, Lebanese people and Palestinians and Syrians can’t set up their own Gofundmes because it isn’t available in their countries). We haven’t finished fundraising tho! So if you’d like to keep helping my friend in Beirut, I’m still raising money at this Gofundme! Please keep sharing!! Donate if you can! If we make more than my friend and his family needs, I’ll donate money to migrant workers in Beirut who have less networks of support than most people. See link HERE to donate to them.

xoxoxo
IN LOVE AND SOLIDARITY,

Eli Tareq

* I say peaceful because it was. We didn’t even do anything wrong “legally” so to speak and we’re still facing charges, and the case is getting dragged on for two years. Again, if you want to help us, donate here, cause our legal fees keep growing. We need money to fight back because our case IS important. If we lose, what does it mean for other activists who want to fight back against our country’s complicity?