For a while during my 20s, I was all “er fuck thanksgiving colonial holiday”. It’s not that deep of a sentiment actually, because the holiday is for people getting together who have all been touched by settler colonialism in some way, no matter the stated intent of who it’s supposed to “honor”. That’s what happens. And sometimes it’s the only time that it could happen in a year, a decade, or a lifetime. But it proves a lot, doesn’t it? And you in part become who you think you should be for the thoughtful in this land.

Americanized and weaponized standards of whiteness and racism are in a state of flux I’m not sure the watchers or managers, algorithm fuckers or whoever have fully caught on to yet. There’s a fuller understanding of history as the world comes together in support of Palestine and our places in it – we aren’t destined to be anything based on skin tone. We are free because we are human. The figuring of white, black, and what’s in between in the US is a total farce online. The diversity of humanity is so fascinating and wonderful to behold. The likenesses shared between maybe just one ancestor and one great grandchild emerge all the time creating a true fabric, endlessly multicolored and different in some ways and similar in others, that connects us all and reminds us why we honor the dead who truly brought us here. These standards and measures cannot be placed over the people of Palestine and simply be read as data points or whatever. They are the bravest people on earth and what is apparent before all else is their humanity.

I was thinking recently of Jacobin’s “white working class” nonsense prior to Trump. And I am prone to just calling it nonsense any time I’ve posted about it online! It addressed nothing real of course and was strictly fascist propaganda. Really think about it – how many strictly White families have you ever known? It’s telling that the Jacobin editors have some experience here. The working class doesn’t self-segregate actually, there is vast diversity in even smaller families, but we are always pressured to. I think this is why most white americans would shudder at thinking they were ultimately a product of slave owner AND slave. Colonizer and colonized is true as well of course, and according to these White academic terms is acceptable and desirable since they represent a fascist eugenic legacy of blood quantum laws and legislation that were designed to legally outlaw indian-ness. Appearance is what many americans get hung up on because why wouldn’t that be the case but it includes socialization and connection to the land, and not some particular parcel as the nativists imagine – the entire land, all of earth at any given time because it is OURS to share and tend to, and what it offers us and what we owe to it in our station – what our duties are to each other and every living thing.

Colonizers nearly wiped out the elk population in western North Carolina entirely. There have been efforts to reintroduce them into the wild and about 200 roam the Appalachian regions today. There haven’t been that many since before America™. How the fuck do you do that? How in the hell do you make it an objective to nearly drive a species to extinction robbing the inhabitants of them also? It makes me sick to think about, how such blind disregard for humanity and the earth that sustains us all led so many people to do so many terrible things. And they may have not benefited much individually, and it’s likely that their descendants are taking place in healing the wounds they caused. It should go without saying that these efforts under our current regime come with all the expected strings attached, but the institutions that cause them to be pulled in one direction or another are in a state of trauma and incomplete healing because the people they need to maintain them are thoroughly broken from the last three years. Scar tissue isn’t so strong actually if it’s just constantly dug into again and again. There is no branded recovery we can expect to read about from a headline, and there is no other kind of authentic recovery without fighting for true liberation.