I was a ghost long before my heart was known

[sovay]

On Christchurch. It is not that I wish the U.S. to retain any kind of monopoly on homegrown right-wing white terrorist attacks, but I do not like that we appear to be exporting them around the globe. I do not like the folded-hands rhetoric of thoughts and prayers, as if wishful thinking is sufficient to stop bullets, as if mosques and synagogues and Black churches are natural killing fields and the best we can do is regret the deaths as they go by. spatch told me that one of the shooters livestreamed their murders, as if it were an advertisement or a video game. Postcards from Abu Ghraib. A joke from PewDiePie. Some very fine people on both sides, the man in the White House reassured us.

The New Zealand Islamic Information Center is collecting donations for the bereaved and wounded families. You can donate directly or via LaunchGood. There is even an option to pick up the processing fees, so that the community gets the full benefit of the original donation amount. I found that practical; the website links it to the practice of zakat. The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has also set up a fund. The work of repairing the world which feels increasingly broken, barely bandageable: so you put back together the pieces you can. And you don't just stand by and watch people smash it.

I should have more to say. I don't know what else there is. The propaganda of the white nationalists is that their civilization is under siege, drowning in a non-white, unchristian tide. If their civilization exalts the murder of the Other, let the riptide take it. Purim is coming up; I'll bake hamantashn with my mother next week. It might be a folk etymology that the name refers to Haman, the villain of the story, the high-ranked plotter of genocide. All these people, the man in the White House and those who carried him to power and those like dragon's teeth he has sown and raised, I have begun to think of them all with the same kind of namelessness. I know them; I won't speak them. I won't give them the memory. Let them be outlasted, please, let's keep each other alive. Let them be remembered only so that we can blot them out again.

Comments

[redbird]

Thanks for the link; I have made a donation.

[sovay]

Thanks for the link; I have made a donation.

You're welcome. I couldn't think of what else useful I could do.

[seahearth]

Let them be outlasted, please, let's keep each other alive. Let them be remembered only so that we can blot them out again.
Thank you for these words. It’s just so hard to imagine beyond the fire taking everything. But we have to so we can work, so that maybe there can be a future worth working for. So we will.

[landingtree]

Thank you.

[gwynnega]

Thank you for the link.

[sovay]

Thank you for these words. It’s just so hard to imagine beyond the fire taking everything.

You're welcome. I have a lot of trouble imagining it myself these days, but I think it is the only thing to do.

But we have to so we can work, so that maybe there can be a future worth working for. So we will.

Amen.

Your icon is lovely.

[sovay]

Thank you.

You're welcome.

[sovay]

Thank you for the link.

You're welcome. I'm heartened that it's so far along already and I hate that this is what people have to do.

[cyphomandra]

Thank you.

I lived in Christchurch for eight years, and still have many friends there; as far as I know, none directly involved. Apart, of course, from lockdowns, and fear, and the loss of any explanation. My best friend, who lives there, teaches 11 & 12 year olds, who have grown up with the earthquakes and the knowledge that nature can't be trusted; now they have to add the active malevolence of people.

[sovay]

Thank you.

You're welcome. I am sorry it has to be said.

My best friend, who lives there, teaches 11 & 12 year olds, who have grown up with the earthquakes and the knowledge that nature can't be trusted; now they have to add the active malevolence of people.

That's worse to me. It is not personal when the land shrugs under you. No one should have to learn how to be unsafe.

[davidgillon]

And hate crime has a level of personal attack that's absent from much other violent crime, even if you're not the direct victim, simply someone who shares a characteristic with them.

[lokifan]

It's so awful. The Guardian had a couple of quotes from a refugee Muslim who'd come to New Zealand because there were no wars there, it was safe and peaceful :(((

[seahearth]

Icon is from the opening credits of Ponyo.
(All else aside, I think the fact that Miyazaki’s working on a new film about a caterpillar is enough reason to keep on getting out of bed.)

[sovay]

The Guardian had a couple of quotes from a refugee Muslim who'd come to New Zealand because there were no wars there, it was safe and peaceful

I hadn't seen that. People should be able to be safe.

[selidor]

We have a bitter half-joke in our household, of opening the news in NZ to go "Let's check we still have a home town".

It was a very hard Friday.

There is also the one run by Victim Support, which has now cleared 2.8 million.

[sovay]

It was a very hard Friday.

If they are of use, *hugs* . I thought of you when I heard the news; I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to e-mail, in case your people were not actually all right.

There is also the one run by Victim Support, which has now cleared 2.8 million.

It's upward of $3 million by now.

[selidor]

Thanks. My immediate circle are fine (some distressed kids from the school lockdowns), but the city are not. There was a little get-together of people this weekend held by the consulate, which was nice. The being on the other side of the world is particularly acute at the moment.

[brigdh]

Let them be outlasted, please, let's keep each other alive. Let them be remembered only so that we can blot them out again.

Yes. This is my prayer too.

[sovay]

Yes. This is my prayer too.

*hugs*

I want to make it action and not just thought. Prayer in American rhetoric has taken on the latter connotation: words, not deeds. I don't think there's any point in that.