ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
Content Notice: genocide, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, settler colonialism, state repression, medical racism, maternal mortality, reproductive justice
Masjid al Aqsa. Al-Aqsa is known as one of the holiest sites for Muslims worldwide, a place where the Prophet Muhammad experienced a night of enlightenment.
As I write this, it’s April 11th, and we are on day 552 of the current iteration of genocide in Gaza and surrounding areas. Of course, this is as well as 75+ years of occupation, settler violence, and torture that Palestinians have endured at the hands of the Israeli state. Part of what originally led me to my abolitionist values was my passion for Palestinian sovereignty. You can’t recognize the violence of incarceration and policing without recognizing the violence of occupation. And in Philadelphia, there are even more threads that connect us all.
In mid-2024, Talia Charidah and Nneka Azuka were chosen to be fellows of the W.E.B. DuBois School of Abolition and Reconstruction. Alums of the second cohort, which met earlier that year, Talia and Nneka were brought on as supplemental instructors who would advance their political education further than taking the course. As part of the fellowship, Talia and Nneka signed up to visit Palestine in December 2024 with the Eyewitness Palestine delegation. As Talia and Nneka put it, the aim of the delegation is to get a first person view of Palestinian life. In fact, Nneka told me that:
“[The delegation] is to bear witness, to make connections, but it's also to feel the humanity of the Palestinians that we met. They're not a group of people who are just dying. They are people with real full lives, who are victims of an occupation. They're people first, occupied second. Not occupied and oppressed first and then people second.”
I sat down with Nneka and Talia to discuss their trip, the everyday routines they witnessed, and what, if anything, reminded them of Philly in Palestine.
Although we witness the horror in Palestine on our phones and on social media daily, it can sometimes be difficult to visualize Palestine as a place we can visit. Talia’s grandparents were expelled during the Nakba, and Talia was the first person in her family to visit Palestine ever since. She viewed and experienced the trip as a homegoing. When I asked Nneka if she ever imagined visiting Palestine prior to the trip, she admitted that she had feared that “there wouldn’t be a Palestine left to visit.” The fact that both Talia and Nneka were able to go is nothing short of miraculous, especially since we can all learn from what they saw and experienced.
The ways Palestinians are forced to move in their homes and otherwise is all controlled by the Israeli state and the IOF1. While we take for granted small things like walking to CVS, picking up our medications, gardening, and decorating our houses, all of these things are prohibited for Palestinians. Of course, this also means that Palestinians have learned how to care for themselves amidst such a harsh level of surveillance. Talia says that:
“We got to watch the sunset over Safad, a city in the north of Palestine where Talia’s family is from. Almost all of the villages in Safad were ethnically cleansed in 1948. The old city of Safad is now an orthodox settlement. This was the most beautiful sunset.”
“Palestinians are innovative and crafty and there's ingenuity in the way that they move through life with so many barriers. You have to be creative. That's why when I think of everyday shit, it's them knowing where to dodge settlers, or knowing where you can mess with them! It’s them making a playground out of the rubble, or the aunties being able to communicate to each other through the windows of their homes– because the homes are inches together in some of the camps– when the occupation is coming in. Everyday shit is literally every man in the camps being in one Telegram group chat, and just knowing what's happening in and around the camp. That's something I've always appreciated about my people. You need to survive, and you figure out how to do that by any means necessary, right?”
Something I learned over the course of our conversation is that Palestinians aren’t even allowed to do indoor home renovations without the permission of the state. Many of them are forced to repair their plumbing under cover of night, in order to avoid getting caught. If they do, they are fined and sometimes, imprisoned. “Talk about everyday shit,” Talia said, “they can’t even take a shit!”
Healthcare disparities in Palestine are exacerbated by Israeli surveillance, policing, and checkpoints. Nneka remembered a story she heard about the difficulty that emergency vehicles can have getting across checkpoints. If they are let through, then allowed to retrieve the patient, there’s always a chance the checkpoint could be “shut indiscriminately” by the IOF, resulting in sick people succumbing to their injuries or illnesses inside emergency vehicles. “So many women have died in childbirth because of the checkpoints,” Talia said, while Nneka nodded somberly.
This is something that’s painfully relatable in Philadelphia, and the US as a whole. According to the Philadelphia Maternal Mortality Review Committee, between 2013-2018, there were 110 pregnancy-associated deaths of Philadelphia residents — an average of 18 deaths per year. Nationally, according to the CDC, 4,066 women died of pregnancy related deaths between the same years.
Because Eyewitness Palestine is a BIPOC delegation, there were a lot of different viewpoints and life experiences in Talia and Nneka’s group. They talked at length about the excitement of the group while visiting the African Quarters in Jerusalem, and how much they enjoyed learning from the communities there. Talia said she learned that around 500 years ago, families from Chad came to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to Al-Aqsa Masjid2, and never left. Nneka says that:
“The Africans in the quarter and in Jerusalem are known as the guardians of Al-Aqsa, because during that time [that they arrived in Palestine] and during the Nakba, they were an integral part of the resistance against the Zionist militias, particularly in Jerusalem.”
I was fascinated to learn this, but even more so to learn that despite their history with Al-Aqsa, Black Palestinians are still often denied entry into the masjid. Nneka shared a story about one of the delegation members, Larry, a Black American man, who she said was accosted while trying to enter. Members of the IOF drew their batons, and there was also a gun drawn at one point. When the delegation shared this experience with the Palestinians in the African Quarter, they were unsurprised.
“They were like, yeah, that happens to us all the time. And sometimes it does come from the Palestinian guards as well, that the Afro-Palestians get pushed back. Sometimes they let them into Al-Aqsa, sometimes they don't, but they're also getting extreme racism from the IOF soldiers who are guarding Al-Aqsa.”
We have an Al-Aqsa Masjid of our own in Philadelphia, and while it is open to all, it lives in a city with a history of stop and frisk policies, some of which have made a comeback under Mayor Parker’s administration. It isn’t unbelievable to assume that what happened to Larry outside Al-Aqsa Masjid in Jerusalem could also happen to someone who looks like Larry in the neighborhood of Philly’s Al-Aqsa Masjid.
The joy of Palestinians is also something we witness on our phones and through people such as Bisan Owda. Talia and Nneka confirmed that this joy is intrinsic in all Palestinians. Nneka compared some of the family dynamics she witnessed in Palestine to Black families she’s been around in the US:
“Palestinians have a strength of culture that Americans don't have. But thinking of Black families that I know, I feel that we are more alike. Where my mind is going with this is that life's hard, but then you're in the house, you're at the barbecue, and nothing's wrong. ‘We're all fam here’ and there's a connectedness. There’s lots of ‘no, I don't care if we're in a refugee camp: you're gonna eat well! You're gonna be taken care of. We're gonna chat with you.’ And it's just those interactions, those engagements, being taken into people's houses like we were, where I just forgot where I was for a second. And then when I walked out of the door, I realized how strong those family ties are, how strong that culture is, and how that is withstanding, in its own way, the occupation that's happening right outside their doors.”
Talia and Nneka explained to me how politics inherently fits into everyday shit for Palestinians. “[In Palestine,] everything is political, and everything is dictated by the occupation,” Talia said. For me, this felt tied to how, for so many of us, the personal is the political. There’s no way to untangle our personal and social lives from the fact that we live under racial capitalism. It is our duty to learn from the Palestinian people how to act in ways that break down these systems of oppression in everything we do.
“It is our duty to learn from the Palestinian people how to act in ways that break down these systems of oppression in everything we do.“
Talia and Nneka felt so honored to visit Palestine, and I felt so honored to hear them talk about it. “I have to ask,” I said at one point in the conversation. “What was one moment in Palestine where you felt like, ‘this is so Philly?’” We all laughed while they tried to remember the moments that stood out to them. Suddenly Talia had a lightbulb moment.
“Wait- all the kids doing tricks on bikes! How could I forget the kids doing tricks on their bikes? That was so Philly.”
Nneka and Talia near the mountains right outside of Jericho.
1In recent years, many folks have replaced saying IDF with IOF, because calling them an occupying force is more accurate than a defense force.
2Al-Aqsa is known as one of the holiest sites for Muslims worldwide, a place where the Prophet Muhammad experienced a night of enlightenment.
Talia Charidah, MPH, is a public health researcher and poet whose work has focused on the impact of displacement on identity formation and mental health, particularly for refugees and immigrants from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region. She is interested in the ways in which those who are displaced cultivate community and connect to their ancestral homelands, transcending borders. Currently, she is a Project Manager in The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements and Population Health Equity, collaborating on a project focused on illuminating structural racism in the healthcare industry. Rooted in her commitment to collective liberation and international solidarity, Talia is excited to continue learning alongside her comrades and work to dismantle all systems and structures of oppression, from Philly to Palestine.
Nneka Azuka is a North Philly-based organizer who focuses on community support and defense, community garden development, and international class solidarity. Relationship-based organizing is key to her political philosophy because she knows that building trust is key to learning and the practice of overthrowing capitalism. A former healthcare industry worker, Nneka became increasingly disillusioned with the systemic inequities she observed, leading her to embrace organizing as a means to challenge and dismantle the very systems that perpetuate oppression. She’s interested in understanding the historical precursors that shape our current world and developing a materialist understanding of social conditions grounded in Marxist theory. She hopes to foster solidarity and build collective consciousness through community education. She knows that organizing happens at the speed of trust and uplifts working class communities and revolutionary praxis that is grounded in the love we have for each other and the land