Wednesday, September 11, 2024: Every Day, Palestine
Today's letter is a from therapist, social worker, and author Jodi Rhoden.
Last night, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris reiterated from the debate stage that her administration will continue to fund Israel’s military despite 70% of the American people wanting an end to the genocide. She provided nothing beyond more rhetoric about how she plans to restore life to the people in Gaza.
Source: Jodi’s photo of her home altar
Today’s Featured Letter:
September 11, 2024
Dear VP Kamala Harris,
The truth is, I didn’t want to write you. For so many months, from October through, probably the spring, I wrote every day – to you, to President Biden, to John Fetterman, to the governor of PA, along with millions of others – pleading you to stop sending bombs and money to Israel. But then I realized – you are not listening. I remembered what I knew (but temporarily forgot because the optics were so dazzling): this is not a democracy. You don’t represent the will of the people. YOU DON’T CARE. I don’t need to list the atrocities. You know exactly what is happening to the children of Gaza. It’s just that money and power is more important to you. Profits for shareholders of weapons manufacturers are more important to you. Extracting resources from colonized peoples is more important to you. So I stopped writing, stopped pleading, and I put my faith instead where it should’ve been all along: in the people. In my community. VP Harris, I’m not writing this letter because I think you will change course, you’ve told us you won’t. I’m writing because my friend asked me to. Because she called on her community to bear witness to the genocide in this specific way, and I answered the call because I believe in her.
Because I’m divesting my loyalty from celebrity politicians and placing my faith in my community. And while the Zionist fascist fever dream that you have midwifed into this world continues to destroy life and all good things, we will continue to build and create community and solidarity, to teach life and love, to study real liberation and grow in freedom and resistance.
Because the whole world is Palestine now.
And Palestine will be free.
Sincerely,
Jodi Rhoden
Philadelphia, PA
Letters to the Vice President can be submitted online here.
or mailed to:
The White House
Office of the Vice President
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
Formatting info etc. for mailed letters found here.
The Streets of Philadelphia, last night
Source: Jodi’s photo from last night’s pro-Palestine protest in Philly the night of the presidential debate (9/10/2024)
Read more from Jodi at Home + the World
Jodi has relentlessly, steadfastly written about Palestine across the internet, including, in her own Substack Home + the World, an exploration of
“the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake.”
We invite you to read or listen to one of her most powerful entries, 48. Witness. You will find it below.
