How not to be complicit

July 2025

Years from now, I hope that the records can prove I wasn’t silent. Not on genocide.

Why do I care about what the records show? Please forgive me in saying that it’s not for you, dear reader.

Well, not entirely for you.

I write this particular newsletter—just as I craft my stories—for myself first. To appease my own conscience, which screams at me to do something, anything, to resist the apathy towards the ethnic cleansing and mass starvation of the Palestinians and all people currently suffering under the cruelty of empire.

See, I don’t necessarily believe that joy is resistance. If you think otherwise, then that’s your right, but it’s been a long-held conviction that actual resistance consists of sacrifice and selflessness. My last newsletter discussed the important of making art to recharge the well in order to resist, but making the art itself is not resistance. It’s what I use the art to do that makes the difference. Art for art’s sake—and joy for joy’s sake—is a means to an end. That end is fighting.

But I’m not here asking you to fight. Only to not be silent. There’s so much out there to educate yourselves, and the time for excuses has past. Humans are being deliberately starved to death by a superpower backed by a superpower. Israel is inflicting a live-streamed genocide. And, let’s be honest, the state has been doing so for well over a year and has existed as an apartheid state since its inception (I wrote a college thesis on the subject over a decade ago).

So, if you’ve been silent until now, the time has come to speak up. Donate, protest, educate. . . do whatever you can. Let the record show that you weren’t complicit in what’s become a litmus test for our morality.

We need to work together to stop this nightmare.

Recently-released books to get informed

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad

Genocide Bad - Sim Kern

The Message - Ta-Nehisi Coates