“Safety was never something you were meant to give yourself” — Locating my safety in the movement of a free Palestine

“As a young Jewish person I was taught to locate my safety in the idea of Israel. As a grown person, I locate my safety in the movement of a free Palestine.” – Amanda Gelender

     When I read this tweet a few weeks ago, I was so fascinated by this phrase, this question of where we “locate our safety.” That question says so much about this conflict in particular, but also so much about how I choose to fight oppression in general: when I feel insecure or disempowered, where do I locate my safety? Throughout my life, the answer was so often the wrong things, things I now realize didn’t actually keep me safe: playing respectability politics, working towards capitalist success, relying on cisheteropatriarchal ideas of love and family, pushing myself too hard towards ableist standards of wellness and strength. 

In 2020, I saw so many folks wake up to the reality that they could no longer locate their safety in the idea of the police. So many of those same folks still remain silent over these last weeks, and I keep wondering how long it will take before they realize they can also no longer locate their safety in the U.S. military, in the U.S. myth of a benevolent empire. 

Because locating my sense of safety in all of these dominant systems never worked. They never protected me the way I had thought they would. The core problem with how I managed oppression earlier on was that I thought I could find safety by placing my trust in what the dominant culture considered most important, instead of the refuge and power that marginalized people create when we band together. And I mistook safety as something I could externally obtain, and something that often required the constriction of someone else, rather than considering how it could be created with someone else. I recently watched a video that named this distinction between individualist and collectivist ideas of safety: “Safety was never something you were meant to give yourself; it was something the collective was meant to give each other.”

When Jewish writer Dave Zirin recently reflected on what truly creates Jewish safety from anti-semitism, he argued “Is a nuclear nation-state in the Middle East really the best answer we have? Or would we perhaps be better off by building solidarity with others who oppose oppression whenever it rears its head?” 

Lately, I have noticed the deep sense of kinship I feel towards those who chose the latter, my community of friends who continue to shout and rage about this genocide, even knowing what it may cost them individually. It’s not just that we are “on the same side.” It feels so much deeper than that: it’s the specific kinship created between oppressed people — queer, trans, BIPOC, disabled — who are all choosing to locate their safety in solidarity, instead of only what temporarily and immediately most benefits themselves. It’s a kinship of people who believe that we all become safer when we fight for Palestine, that fighting for Palestine is actually also fighting for ourselves. It’s a kinship of people who have made a commitment to opposing oppression always, whenever it rears its head. 

This month, my friends have shut down bridges, spent their birthday at #Landback marches, signed petitions against our Ivy League alma mater, divested their mutual funds from corporations supporting genocide. They’ve spent hours sitting in city council meetings, driving across states to protest, painting and hanging giant homemade banners over busy highways. They’ve organized kid-friendly actions with sidewalk chalk, made music that amplifies Palestinian voices, hosted Buddhist meditation refuge and political action circles. They’ve convinced their white partners to call-in their silent white friends, called-in themselves to research and learn where we have gaps, and showed up for so many uncomfortable conversations that we’ve been told we could never have with those we love.

I am in awe of these friends. Knowing them makes me feel a kind of safety so different from the safety I tried to create for myself years ago; a safety that feels not only more real, but also more powerful. Every day I witness these friends, I think about what Alina Pleskova recently wrote: “If I had to scrounge for one “good” thing about These Times, it’s getting a very clear view of who the principled and brave and discerning people in my orbit are and how they move, and learning so much from them, and feeling ever-compelled- not nudged, but jolted- to rise to meet them.”