“No celebrating while a genocide is happening.”
I saw this slogan on a poster for a pro-Palestine march that took place in Boston on December 31, the message being that it is inappropriate to celebrate New Year’s Eve when something as horrible as genocide is going on in the world.
This is a message that really resonates with me… not when applied to the Palestine / Israel / Gaza situation but rather when applied to the statue genocide that has taken place over the past three and a half years.
For me, the actions that have taken place in recent years regarding statues are so horrific that they have made my life not worth living. They have made the world a fundamentally bad place, a place not worth living in.
The actions that have been carried out against statues are so awful that I don’t understand how anyone could possibly celebrate anything in a world where these actions have happened (and continue to happen). The pain caused by these actions is so severe that my entire being is consumed by anger, grief, and rage; the injustice so profound that nothing matters other than avenging the statues and punishing the perpetrators.
In such circumstances, celebrating anything feels inappropriate, foolish, lacking in empathy, thoughtless.
So many times, when people talk or post about their pets, babies, vacations, sports teams, gardens, dishes they’ve cooked, et cetera, et cetera, I’ve thought to myself: “How can you care about that when everything that makes life worth living has been destroyed?”
At every holiday, whether it’s Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, St. Patrick’s Day, or New Year’s, I think to myself: “How can people celebrate that when everything that makes life worth living has been destroyed?”
In a strange way, I am comforted that other people share these feelings. I just wish they felt this way about the same subject matter as I do.