may this be the last Christmas that Palestine tastes the violence of Israeli settler colonialism, may all of Palestine and all Palestinians be free of its poisonous yoke, may all Palestinian martyrs be remembered forever, may their souls find peace through Palestineโs liberation
globally police are reminding us again and again that their function is to act as the physical embodiment of state violence mobilised for the purpose of maintaining and legitimising global capitalist colonial order.
The question isnโt how did Corbyn lose, the question is how was he ever meant to win.
The system isnโt broke, itโs working exactly as itโs fucking meant to.
Palestine & Palestinians have brought us into a new moment of global study and struggle. Sitting both with unspeakable pain and unbelievable hope. Witnessing so much of humanity connected towards liberation and the life-affirming, a global movement against settler colonialism
๐Ruth Wilson Gilmoreโs Abolition Geography reading group starting this time next week
Sunday 26th June, 8pm UK time
Starting with discussion of the introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano
Interested? Join us!
The necropolitics of empire that continually finds new ways to create suffering to maintain control will be overcome. The more violent the state becomes the more the masses will lean on each other to enable our full humanisation. We will continue to create a better world
English as a language lacks so much warmth. You donโt say anything after someone eats? You donโt say anything after someone has a shower? Cooks? Buys something new?
Racial capitalism breeds carcerality as carcerality maintains racial capitalism.
Fascists burning a police car isnโt opposition to the function of policing, but its perceived mobilisation.
Policing has always been mobilised as it does currently - to legitimise violence.
Earlier this year a few of us on here got together to read Harsha Waliaโs Border and Rule. It brought people from all over together and it was great tbh.
Weโre about to start Ruth Wilson Gilmoreโs Abolition Geography. If youโre interested in joining get in touch!
This is so important in terms of boundaries. Not just with other kids but with family too.
You see how uncomfortable kids can be when families be hugging them and not letting go.
Simple things I do with my godchildren is say: Do you want to give me a hug?
The history of solidarity between Palestine and global liberation movements is there for everyone to read and witness. Non-Black people weaponising Palestinian suffering to question the solidarity and legitimacy of BLM does nothing but expose their own anti-Blackness.
I really don't understand why so many on that side of Twitter claim black people don't care about Palestine, cos most black organisations across the world have an interest in Palestine's freedom...
DClinPsy trainees: as fascism deepens in this country and the violence of racial capitalism, settler colonialism and imperialism deepen locally and globally how are we responding? How are we recognising the professionโs complicity? How are we addressing it collectively?
reading Health Communism - really reminds us how ableism pathologises our relationship to rest while literally depriving us of the ability to seek rest and rest in the way we somatically need to throughout our lives because of ableismโs emphasis on productivity
NHS, Grenfell, Windrush, anti-Blackness, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, austerity, food banks, homelessness, child poverty.
The British public donโt care about any of it. Fucking joke.
the BPS recommends reading something to take back control from spending too much time on social media.
couple books I might start with:
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Discourse on Colonialism by Aimรฉ Cรฉsaire
"You can stop yourself getting into that 'scroll hole' and take back control."
Chartered Psychologist Dr Sandra Wheatley shares five tips to stop you from getting pulled into endlessly and mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed.
May all indigenous peoples be free from the yoke of all colonialisms - may all indigenous peoples, lands, bodyminds and tongues never taste its poison again, may it be relegated to a history that we never forget and may it never set root anywhere ever again
& work. & any other type of commitments; appointments, meetings, deadlines.
Academic, workplace and other pressures create an environment of unhealthy obligation at the cost of your own mental and physical health.
This book is melting my brain in the best way possible.
The first and only time I have read about genuine unapologetic decolonial praxis in mental health.
I'm only finishing the first chapter but it's making me cry tears of joy and relief.
perfect example of the media as a tool for the legitimisation and increased mobilisation of ableist violence, both in narrative and daily practice - disability as both threat and burden
๐ด Millions are claiming benefits without ever having to look for work, helping to push the tax burden to hit its highest point since the Second World War.
Use our calculator to reveal how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state โฌ๏ธ
The toll of being constantly attuned to the violence of racial capitalism & witnessing it everywhere breaks me over and over again. Like can't even put into words the psychological toll of the constant awareness of past, present & looming violence, dehumanisation & alienation
imperialism, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, the logics that legitimise, enact and reproduce the repeated cycles of violence we witness globally are poisonous to all life and all humanity. there must be no room for their logics in our being and our being with each other
Abolition as language. Abolition in constant rehearsal. In constant enactment. In constant study of. In constant development. In constant relationship to and with others. Abolition as Ruth says that is ontological. That intrinsically seeks to produce material change
Fav books I read this year:
Abolition Geography - Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Being Human As Praxis - Sylvia Wynter
Selected Writings on Race and Difference - Stuart Hall
Brick by Brick - Cradle Community
May the week ahead bring us closer to Palestinian liberation and liberation for all colonised and oppressed people.
May all our efforts be sustained towards making it reality and may we sustain each other throughout
regular tweet if anyoneโs interested/ engaging Marxist & abolitionist analysis of clinical psychology training, especially DClinPsy, would love to connect
โItโs ok not to be okโ
Ok thatโs well and true but these mental health awareness schemes are redundant without robust, accessible, affordable mental health care thatโs culturally nuanced, not a postcode lottery and is preventative rather than just reactive at crisis point.
Assyrian men. Read, reflect, do better. The rhetoric around women maintaining Assyrian heritage is just another indicator of how misogynistic our culture is.
Worth also reflecting on the rampant anti-Blackness within the concept of nukhraye.
Looking at the moon. Thinking of Reem and her father. Thinking of my father. How he was made to taste war. Thinking of all Palestinians. All Assyrians. All indigenous and colonised peoples. And the heart breaks and the heart bonds. Over and over. Every day, every moon.
You know that feeling when youโre studying something and it clicks, that feeling like somethingโs both been put into place and dislodged at the same time, that you see the world differently and youโre different because of it. Undefeated.
At around 9pm last year today, my Dad passed away. You were our rock and I miss you. To my mum, who was his rock, Happy Motherโs Day. I love you both.
This is not something that sits outside psychology but is intrinsic to its emergence: a psychological practice absent of an understanding of the violences of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism is a psychological practice incapable of truly understanding a true humanity
over the next ~10 months hoping to deeply study the social reproduction of harm in clinical psychology in relationship to racial capitalism, carcerality, abolition and disability justice
arrived here through the work of so many mutuals on here who I owe a debt to
would be interested in proposing a
#DClinPsy
thesis idea regarding abolition in relation to clinical psychology, services and mental health
Anyone know of anyone or any psychs with similar interests or any other recommendations/links, who to talk to and potentially work with?
Assyrian Twitter, Iโm going through my grandads old books. Most of them are religious texts but willing to give to anyone interested. Will post on here. Can send by post, but if large in number would prefer collection (West London based). Just DM
Assyrians deserve better than rhetoric that will genuinely cause people to suffer and die unnecessarily. for what gain?
humility is listening and learning from people, especially those working to save lives, not preaching your religious & moral superiority
bell hooks. what an incredible loss.
the outpouring of love and learning people are sharing is testament to how transformative her work was and the immeasurable impact she had on so many.
this weighs so heavy
a psychology devoid of dialectical understanding of the psychological effect of colonisation on the colonised & coloniser has no capacity to practice a truly liberatory psychology.
Grateful to everyone who showed up to Books Against Borders
@antiborderbooks
at Dalston Solidarity Cafe yesterday, for everyone that fed, shared & cared for each other and the space, to
@cradlecommunity
&
@NExclusions
for all they do & all they continue to encourage us to imagine
Palestine. Haiti.
Being Assyrian.
Being from Iraq.
Being disabled.
Grenfell. Being in Latimer.
Stephen Lawrence. Mark Duggan.
Kelso Cochrane. Mike Brown. Trayvon. Afghanistan. Malcolm. Ferguson. Gaza. Libya. Sudan. Vietnam. Korea. The list is endless.
BPS, like all public health institutions, reproduces colonial logics or disrupts them.
British imperialism has always reproduced Orientalist, colonial framings of โan eternal conflict in the Middle East.โ
An eternal conflict it is responsible for, perpetuates & profits from
This was the BPS statement about what is happening in occupied Palestine:
-Frames loss of life as a "humanitarian crisis" ignoring the strong evidence of genocide
-Doesn't use the words "Palestine" or "Palestinians"
-Literally uses the phrase "both sides"
Just thinking out loud - having started training feel the time and space given to decolonisation in practice is drowned out with all the other responsibilities - wonder if other trainees know of/would be interested in ways to engage cross cohort/courses to create space for this?
Will delete but itโs difficult to put into words the toll it takes seeing money being poured into new buildings close to Latimer while living under the shadow of Grenfell. Itโs so alienating
โA civilisation that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilisation...that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilisation...that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilisation.โ โ Aimรฉ Cรฉsaire
Grateful for another year of life and another year of growth, for everyone and everything that has shaped the year thatโs been and everything that is to come ๐
Difficult to overstate how disastrous the HEE change is, the impact itโs had on peopleโs well-being & the knock on effect it will have on services & people that need them. Changing so many peopleโs current material reality & future prospects without consultation is unjustifiable