a rant, ii
finding the words is difficult. finding joy is difficult.
I don’t have the words required for what I’m feeling - what we’re all feeling.
I want to talk about all the ways that Spring is inspiring more of us to leave the house, but there are ICE raids, and staying inside (for some) has become pivotal to staying safe.
I want to talk about nearing the summer, a respite that most educators long for. How we trudge through March (the month with no holidays), how that marks a swift race to the finish line… but our funding has been threatened, the Department of Education gutted, and an entire sector is enveloped in uncertainty.
I want to talk about celebrating small wins, but “small wins” have become how we describe ceasefires… ceasefires routinely broken.
I want to talk about going home, but in Palestine so few have actual homes to go to. While in America we pay for bombs, in Connecticut we build the guns, and in West Hartford Zionists peddle propaganda to normalize dismembered children. How can one not feel complicit when the killings occur in your name?
I want to talk about joy, but Joy Reid along with many other Black and Brown journalists have lost platforms from which xenophobia was consistently challenged. It feels like the line in the sand is quickly disappearing or being trampled, which is also why I’m not talking about beaches.
I’m exhausted, I’m writing less, I’m often frustrated, and I don’t know what to do with the heaviness of the time we sit in. All things shift, yet during the transitions folks suffer greatly.