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dontmesswithnoheroin · 3 years

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somebody just submitted this into my inbox and im wheezing omfg

If you can still give Gal Gaddot dignity and acknowledge her humanity even when she doesn’t care about the lives of thousands of Palestinian people under military brutality and war crimes, also partook in idf, then WHY can’t you do the same for Sia’s autism misrep scandal and the rest of them? WHY?! They probably feel the same as Gal when you fling them poop too! So cut this selective “teaching a lesson to”?! Leave all alone or call all out, don’t be a double standard shitfuck!

Look, don’t throw literal shit at Gal G-dot, but don’t deny her slipups and crimes too! #FreePalestine 🇵🇸

Come on, it is obviously known she did:

- Serve in the IDF during the 2006 Lebanon fiasco

- Expressed her support and praise IDF from time to time even after her mandatory service, her most famous one being the 2014 Gaza bombings which lost 4 boys. Even Holocaust survivors in the Haaretz spoke out against that incident saying it’s gone too far. Never apologized or retracted that. That specific FB post also still up.

- Allegedly responded poorly to a former friend’s r*pe and blamed the friend while defending the perpetrator

- Talks about her military service with pride and “how it has helped her play WW” despite simps’ claims that she hated IDF but was forced to do that

- Subtly mass stereotype all Palestinians and MENA Muslims as ‘terrorists’ and ‘inferior stock’ in her community. Have you seen WW84’s hateful writing?

Why people don’t care about Palestinians or military brutality war crimes in this case:

- “Gal is too hot and cute!!!12!! I’m gay for her!!!11!!”

- Gotten too attached to her thru watching her “relatable moments” and funny or sweet-presenting propaganda where she “being herself”…'psycho’ actresses sure can mask well, can’t they?

- Tried to hamster away her exact words by claiming she sorta apologized in some other way or “said something to counter that!!11!!1”. She only stood up for Arabs with Israeli citzenship ONLY, still not the Palestinian neighbours so simps stop bluffing! And saying “peeaceeee” multiple times is so vague. Does that word to Gal imply taking Palestine land and genociding the children?!

- pull the “Palestine is not oppressed” card. But when you just attack neutral run-of-the-mill Palestinian citizens and families and prevent vaccine supplies from them and go beyond apartheid, you know you’ve crossed some serious lines and can conclude Palestine is oppressed too.

- feel sympathy for her even though they hypocritically say “you shouldn’t feel sympathy for supremacists or terfs or military bootlickers!!!11!!“

- they have become stupid simps for her

All while no problem attacking and cancelling other people like Sia, Gina, Letitia Wright - NOT defending or condoning their deeds too but Gal is in such a similar boat don’t excuse it. At least Sia never was a sergeant or cheered on the bombing of a certain area

How do you scrub this kind of idiotic self-righteous hypocrisy and pious smugness?!?! If you can still give Gal dignity and acknowledge her humanity even with blood on her hands and beliefs, then WHY can’t you do the same for the rest of them? WHY?! They probably feel the same as Gal when you fling them poop too! So cut this selective "teaching a lesson to”?! Leave all alone or call all out, don’t be a double standard shitfuck! And Maddie Ziegler supports Sia but that does not mean she is defending the movie, she was just doing interviews!

Edit: Admit that the USA’s coverups and censorship of Gal’s pro-idf and borderline supremacist views also helped some!

You know America is all about stanning Israel and military, same with their allies, so obviously not letting too many know about Gal’s statements and putting out good propaganda of her to cover it would boost.

When US wants her as a token, they will have her as a token.

Edit 2: Just to be clear, Israel can have their areas but let Palestinians have some land too. And don’t go genocidal on them for it

Okay sis first of all I haven’t even seen Wonder Woman, if I simped for Gal Gadot some years ago it is because I am a wlw and was not aware of what she stands for. I’ve had this blog for over 10 fucking years of my life, starting when I was 15. I simped for a lot of bad people and I probably used the n-word, the r-word and a bunch of shit I’m not proud of. This blog is a personal journal to me, something I’ve used to grow in years which were really hard in my life, and I’ve probably posted a bunch of shit that should have never been posted. If I’ve ever defended Gal Gadot, among the 30,000 posts I posted on this blog in the past, then I admit, I was wrong.

But you literally coming here writing me this essay, it’s hysterical to me that you took your time to write this all out. Obviously you have some frustrations in your life that makes you write this shit, I know that all my frustrated posts on this page at celebrities, billionaires, etc, all come from simple life frustrations and I come here to vent. I post my posts as if nobody was ever gonna read them because I’m a nobody on this site, and nobody in life in terms of reach. It’s funny to me that you decided to equate some post I made years ago (how did you even find those??? i have literal 1000s of pages on my tumblr) with what I say about Sia. Autism happens to be very personal to me. And although I feel very strongly about what’s going on in Palestine and support the Palestinians (which I also posted about in the past, I’m pretty sure I also reblogged shit about Gal Gadot you mention but I guess you haven’t found those posts on my blog), I do not have as much of a personal connection to it, so I don’t post about it as much. And I’m still bewildered, where did I say I like Gal Gadot??? Last I recall I posted about Gal Gadot organizing this fucking disaster of a pandemic celebrity song contest.

But anyway, all this being said, you literally cannot come to people and bash them for not being ideologically pure. I’m 26 so I don’t give two shits about what you think of me, but there are teenagers on this site that really take this stuff personally. That get anxious about not being the perfect humans, invested in all issues at once. Everyone fights their own battles, sis. We can’t all support all causes at once. I will never support Israel but I can’t single handedly change the situation of the Palestinians, and especially not through a fucking tumblr post. So while I’m gonna post this, because maybe some people want to get educated about what goes on, why don’t we just quit making people feel guilty for not being aware about every single bad thing any celebrity did at all times? Like, I think the volunteer work I do with refugees in my country in real life helps much more than bashing celebrities online about their ideology on a blog nobody is ever gonna look at twice.

Maybe I’m too old and this is just a troll but it’s pretty incredible to me that you come into my inbox calling me all kinda shit. If you’re having a bad day, a frustrating time in the pandemic, sorry sis. Me too. Hope this venting helped you.

Yours truly,

Double Standards Shitfuck <3

#long post #ppl be calling me names on this gay morning #submission

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vssoise · 4 years

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Lesvos

I've been procrastinating writing this blogpost for a long time because it's felt like I'd have too many thoughts to effectively capture on paper and that it would be too rambling. But it's about time now, during my last evening in Mytilini, while my housemates cook food for my farewell dinner/party tonight before I leave tomorrow, that I get to it.

Mytilini and Moria.

I was so looking forward to this trip for such a long time. I was determined to keep a journal while I was here, to document the things I saw, the people I interacted with, to bear witness to the events. However, it was a perfect storm of circumstances that have forced me to have to leave for the States two weeks early. Before I arrived on the island, we knew of the Golden Dawn and other fascist groups holding rallies in the city of Mytilini and on the road to Moria, but then Turkey opened its borders and things got worse. The school at the One Happy Family community center, where my organization, Medical Volunteers International, operates a refugee medical clinic, was burnt to the ground by suspected fascist activities. This paused MVIs activities out of the clinic, and as fascist rallies started becoming more frequent, with some even attacking NGO workers and breaking car windows, there was an exodus of volunteers at the same time as Greece started tightening restrictions on NGO activities and migrant/refugee processing. They even suspended their cooperation under international asylum laws, rejecting new arrivals. A fascist group physically forced one refugee boat back into the water as they made land, resulting in the drowning of a child onboard. Then COVID-19 becomes a serious threat. There is one confirmed case on Lesvos, being treated at Mytilini hospital, but no known cases elsewhere. NGO activity is further hamstrung, and the local government makes no effort to facilitate aid to people trapped in the camp.

Fascists, fires, a pandemic, a volunteer exodus, restrictions on NGO activities. I've been frustrated at not being able to do anything about it all, despite being here. I know I could be more effective once I'm done with school, but even MSF and Kitrinos, two of the bigger medical NGOs still operating, have had to scale back their work. It feels like I came all this way to try to make a difference, and aside from about a week's worth of seeing patients, I wasn't able to do anymore. At times this has felt more like a poorly planned vacation than a trip to help people.

I also noticed that I wasn't as phased by much of Moria's situation: the open sewers, the poor hygiene, the burning of plastic for fuel, the rampant scabies, the five families living in one tent together, because it all felt very familiar. Like any slum I've visited in India. We are rightfully enraged about the EUs treatment of the refugees, and the conditions they've been forced to stay in. Perhaps justifiably more so because the EU has significantly better developed infrastructure and more money than does a country like India. But it made me consider why circumstances I get angry about here don't provoke as strong a response in my back home. Why do I more readily accept the status quo in India? I had this thought in a different vein a few years ago when I realized I treated service workers differently in India than in the States. Not that I treated them badly or dismissively here, but that in the States, be it due to a more common language or a less internalized sense of class structure, I found I'd treat service workers like people like me who are working a job. Potential friends, whom I treated as true equals in the sense of actually engaging and invested conversation. Whereas in India, I realized I never extended the same idea of possibly being friends to those who worked there. It was always cursory pleasantries, but never with the underlying idea that this person is a "real" person just like me, with a life outside work.

Perhaps it's just silly or privileged or stupid to have been thinking this way. Perhaps it's normal to think this way, as we can't be friends with everyone we meet and so we draw up those invisible divisions to make our social lives more feasible. Either way, the discrepancy between my thoughts/actions in the States vs in India was noteworthy to me, and one I have been conscious of not propagating further.

People.

Aside from that overarching frustration and general cloud over my thoughts however, the people I coordinated to room with are fantastic. As are the others I've met here. The house I'm staying in houses me, a German/French medical student, a German nurse, an Italian junior doctor, and a Spanish Antifa activist, and the landlord is a Syrian refugee who arrived on the island four years ago.

The translators we work with who become fast friends quite quickly include a Palestinian, a Burundian, and a man from Burkina Faso, the latter two of whom speak predominantly French, forcing me to improve my French significantly, having entire conversations for entire evenings in an entirely different language.

Then there are the coordinators of the different NGOs here. There's a German retired GP who made the decision to extend his trip in light of all the changes because he knows that now the need is highest and it feels wrong to leave. His family understands and supports his decision. There's an Irish lady who works with unaccompanied minors, i.e. kids below the age of 18 who have lost or been separated from their parents, aunts, uncles, or any family at all, but have somehow managed to cross an ocean to get away from the people literally destroying their homes. She teaches them, cares for them (sometimes as simply as giving them a place to shower), and more recently put one in touch with a lawyer to delay his deportation due to turning 18 and therefore being able to be tried as an adult. A 17yo kid, running away from the Taliban in Afghanistan, having had his family killed in front of him, arrives in Greece finally hoping he's safe, only to be deported to Turkey, where he knows and has no one. There's an American journalist who started an NGO to teach refugee kids to film and document their lives, giving them skills, and the ability to bear witness, but more so, just giving them something to do. He's stayed to document the EUs mismanagement of this refugee crisis. And there's a Russian teacher who runs a school for minors and children of refugees so they have somewhere to go and don't miss out on some form of education while their parents do what they need to to get by.

And lastly, I met the settled refugees in Greece, including my landlord from Syria and his friends. Got a haircut from one of his Iraqi friends, met some other friends of his in the Olive Grove, the overflow camp surrounding Moria.

The people I've met here are incredible. From all over the world, trying to do what they think is some good for the people they know are in need, in conditions where the vast majority of people would not stay in.

The remind me that everyone we interact with is just another human being, and force me to consider my own biases that I didn't realize I held until this trip. I didn't realize I unconsciously put up a guard around people who didn't speak the same language as me, or more accurately, people who didn't speak the same language, and, I'm ashamed to say, were doing poorly socioeconomically. Having traveled all my life and seeing the ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, I always thought I was very accepting and comfortable around any conditions. But be it a product of internalizing the presentation of certain types of people as dangerous or undesirable, or a core poor judgement on my part, I realized I was being defensive. It was clear to me when I was sitting across from this person on the bus, obviously living in Moria. I remember feeling an almost subconscious desire to avoid conversation. But then the Irish lady asked him if he was on his way to school, to which he excitedly replied yes, and showed her his notebook. I noticed it in myself again when we were surrounded by refugees as the Irish lady spoke to the boy about to be deported, and I found myself feeling uncomfortable, or even unsafe. But these were literally kids. 10 years younger than me, having seen and experienced so much more than I could imagine, gathering around to listen to how they could maybe help one of their newly acquired friends. I couldn't understand when I started feeling this way. I even jumped into a jog for a couple steps before very ashamedly catching myself when a homeless man in Atlanta tripped behind me.

What exactly am I scared of? Where is that insecurity coming from? And why, of all people, is it directed at those who are least fortunate? I hate that I've had to ask myself these questions. But I'm glad that I have. I think these questions are exactly those that many people in the world need to be asking themselves right now as well.

Life.

Living here has been a unique experience as well. Since my arrival, I knew my housemates were a special group of people. I've always only seen it on TV shows or in fiction, the idea of communal living, or a family of sorts formed out of the people you live with. Even in the States, my roommates and I very much kept to ourselves and led our own, parallel lives. But somehow, and perhaps because of the relative non-fancy-ness of our accommodation, that's exactly what happened with us. We would cook together every night and have dinner, go out for drinks with the other teams and organizations, spend afternoons together just talking. And the scaled-down lifestyle was something I was slowly getting used to as well. The relatively spartan bedroom with the creaky and drafty windows, the limited facility bathroom with the hot pipes running along the walls and the shower I can't stand up in, the "kitchen" with one working burner, knives more blunt than the spoons, and poorly draining sink, the laundry machine that no one knows how to work shorter than 5 hours, the cafe cat that started staying with us for food since the covid-19 lockdown, the tiny living room space that everyone gathers in both because it's the only option and because we're all new here and subconscously I'm sure want to spend time together with familiar faces. It's a simple life, with people you like around you, doing work you enjoy and find important. Life in Dayton with all the other things I normally do to try and fill my time seems so far away. I haven't watched a youtube video in two weeks, when I usually spend at least a couple hours watching back home. I've cooked more often these couple weeks with these blunt knives and poor kitchen than I did in Dayton over two months. I've learned new, inexpensive dishes. I've met and befriended more new people.

As my last post captured a snapshot of what I could see as my potential future, I think this trip captured a snapshot of what I think I wish my life could ultimately be like at least intermittently, if not always. When I do this kind of work that I already feel satisfied by, that feels important and fulfilling, I realize I don't feel that underlying insecurity or restlessness than makes me want to get involved in other things. I started Dayton Driven because I was too restless in medical school, for example. This feeling here reminds me of when I felt similarly in Geneva, just, finally, content.

I know there are other things important to me too though, in normal life, if not within this parentheses. I may not be able to be the Irish lady or American journalist, but perhaps I can be the German retired doctor, still being involved, still doing what I think is right, and still holding on to the other things important to me. Saara said something to me a couple months ago that I didn't realize would become something I'd think of quite often. She said, "If you ever feel like you are torn between two things and have to give up one, then you have the wrong two things." Maybe that's true. Maybe I can have and do every thing that I want. Maybe I can make it happen.

Well, it's at least pretty to thinks so.

#blogpost

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nieuwsuitdejungle · 6 years

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Blog Post Two

Sunday 19th November

“Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but when you are right in the midst of it you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.” – Thor Heyerdahl

The Prologue

Let me first provide you with a little background story on the Grande Synthe Jungle (which is where our team mostly operates on the ground) and the role of the Refugee Women Centre, in the hope that my future blog posts will make a bit more sense.

In March 2016 France’s first ever refugee camp to meet international humanitarian standards opened near the northers port of Dunkirk called Linière. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had built around 200-375 cabins at the Grande-Synthe site to house 2,500 people based there in the hope of reaching Britain. Most of those migrants – mainly Kurds from Iraq – had been living for months in atrocious conditions in the boggy, rat-infested camp of Grande-Synthe. Damien Careme, the local Green mayor, had fought for the right to build the new camp against the wishes of the French government, which had refused to pay a centime towards it.

Three Iraqi Kurd families were the first to be bussed to the new site, whose wooden cabins boasted proper lavatories, heating, a collective kitchen, public lighting and a field hospital but no fences. The camp also had no police controls to enter or exit, with authorities hoping this would make it easier to persuade migrants to move in.

The Refugee Women Centre has been present in Grande Synthe even before this first official camp. In 2015, in the first camp of Grande Synthe, Baroch, women would rarely – if ever – leave their tents, because they were either felt uncomfortable with the conditions in the camp or were not allowed by their husbands to go to the social spaces that weren’t female-only. This led to the creation and opening of a first Women’s Centre in two parts: one tent for the distribution of women’s clothing and hygiene products and another to serve as a social space where activities would be organised.

Based on this idea, a Women’s Centre was officially integrated in the planning of the Linière camp in the spring of 2016. The Women’s Centre was a community kitchen reserved for women, and their children if they wanted, in which volunteers would organise material distributions, activities, an generally provide a space in which women could spend time.

The overall management of the camp was initially handed to Utopia 56, a French organization that ran the day-to-day activities of the camp overall and ensured the presence of volunteers in different areas. This included the Women’s Centre. At the end of the summer 2016, the management of the camp was given to a different organization called Afeji, who only did general management, but didn’t place their employees in specific sections of the camp.

This is when independent volunteers arrived, during the Autumn and Winter of 2016, to take care of the Women’s Centre, and to ensure the continuation of the activities and distributions that were taking place until then. Those volunteers redefined the workings of the centre, boosted the activities and interactions between the women living in the camp and the volunteers, developed its support network around Dunkirk and abroad, and officially created the Refugee Women’s Centre as an independent charity.

Since the fire that destroyed the camp in April 2017, the Women’s Centre has gone mobile. Using a van, blankets and sometimes a tarp to create temporary safe spaces, the team on the ground continues to provide close support to female refugees in Dunkirk, and has more recently started to do so in Calais as well.

Week One statistics

Number of days I’ve been here: 7

Number of showers I’ve had: 2

Number of times I’ve wondered why on earth I came to this place: 0

Number of therapy sessions I’ve been to: 2

Number of cats currently in the mobile home: 4

Number of truly amazing and inspiring people I’ve met: countless

Number of bonfire-on-the-beach-sessions: 1

My first week of being in Northern France is almost over. Time to try and tell you about my experiences so far. I say try, since I clearly underestimated writing a blog, or frankly writing anything. Getting my thoughts on paper feels like a diabolic task. I’ve been struggling with this post for well over a week now. In the end I’ve decided to stop editing and rewriting. Here is the raw version, that might well leave you in the same confused state of mind I was and to some extend still am.

Let me start by telling you about what my housing situation looks like. I live with 5 truly amazing young women (and four cats) in a teeny tiny mobile home on a camping site by a slightly muddy but gorgeous beach. It’s about 11 degrees Celsius during the day and 5 degrees Celsius by night. The mobile home is our cabin, our shelter. It’s where our team catches up on the day’s events, cooks dinner and share beers. It’s a warm, cosy, chaotic space lit by candles. There is very little room with food, boxes of children’s activities and personal paraphernalia littering every surface. Moving around feels like playing real life Tetris with human beings as the tiles. The shower was broken for the first five days of my time here which means we were using bottles of hot water from the kettle to wash ourselves whilst we waited for the campsite owner to come fix it. I took my second shower of the week this morning, and let me tell you, it was amazing. Not showering for five days after being outside in the cold basically all day is a true gift.

The thing about arriving in a new place, is that you need to figure out how everything works. It’s like being in a dark cave with only a lighter to help you see. You need to find patterns, familiar faces and structures. Last year I arrived in Hamburg after the summer to study there for a year. Which was a completely new city for me and I didn’t know anybody there. However, it was still a place where I knew the language and things soon felt familiar. This new place however, is next-level-new. I went here with a very open mind. Of course I did do some research on the situation, but that didn’t prepare me.

Writing a comprehensive blog post on my first week in this state of mind, where I’m still trying to figure out everything is thus also quite a task. So forgive me if this post is very much all over the place. It feels like I’m making a really big puzzle, but I don’t have all the pieces yet.

This place feels like dystopian novel, as someone here accurately described it. And I’m now living in it. A place where the biggest supermarket I’ve ever seen is only a couple of hundred meters away from the jungle. A place where children of only two years old are sleeping outside in the cold and rain. Where the police takes any blankets or sleeping bags they find or spray them with pepper spray to render them useless. From where you can literally see the white cliffs of Dover, that are so close for some, but almost unreachable for others. Where asking the question ‘can you check if we have more sleeping bags for children’ is now the most ordinary thing. Where hotels refuse to rent out a room to a couple with a two year old because they are migrants. A place where people as young as 18 years old volunteer to try to make a difference and show some humanity. A place where trench foot has returned to the front of Dunkirk, and scabies is the order of the day. Where days off are as holy and precious as they are difficult. Where contrasts are so big, it seems as if we are living in a parallel world, like none of this is actually real. A place that I’m falling both in and out of love with more and more every day.

I’m writing this post on my second day off. We take our days off very seriously here. I slept in which felt reenergizing, had a home-cooked lunch and then headed for the beach. Our cabin is only a few hundred meters from the sea which has basically been my lifelong dream. I went for a long walk by myself hoping that this would provide me some time to get my thoughts into order. The beach here is stunning, the sun was out and the only sound I heard was the waves crushing on the shore.

I ran through this first mind-boggling week in my head. Starting on Tuesday when I first encountered the jungle in Grande-Synthe, to Thursday when I got to know so many different life saving organisations working on the ground and Saturday when we did administration and coordinated a dentist session in the jungle.

Every morning I wake up to wrap myself up in fleecy layers, pull my trusty fanny pack a little closer round my waist, get some breakfast inside of me and head of to the jungle with the team. We mostly operate in the jungle of Grande Synthe which is located close to Dunkirk. We start by preparing the orders we took the previous day in the warehouse we share with other organizations. These orders mostly consist of clothes and hygiene products. After that we take our van into the jungle to see what the situation is like, hand out orders, take new orders and do activities with the kids and the women, creating a safe space for them. There are around 200 young men living in the jungle and about seven families with little children (however, the numbers change every day).

The situation in the jungle has been changing quite a bit over the past few weeks. The police are carrying out major evictions in the jungle lately. Most, but not all the families have been bussed out to reception centres. No one knows exactly where they’ve gone.The single men mostly remain. The State wants people gone, out of the jungle, they slash tents and take possessions, but many refugees return. While some will claim asylum in France many wish to reach family or friends in the UK. The evictions mean that our team now also visits families in accommodation to provide them with the things they need.

My first encounter with the jungle was on Tuesday. After driving our van through the misty fields of Northern France, just in time to see the breath-taking sunrise we arrived at the warehouse from where we operate. With the team we walked from the warehouse to the jungle. Since it was still fairly early, not that many people were around (most people try to make it to the UK at night and then try to sleep a bit after that, which means people won’t really be around until midday). The busses were already waiting to take people into accommodation centres. We asked around whether people were getting on the bus or not and tried to make sure the ones who wanted actually got on the bus. We also took some orders and then headed back to the warehouse to prepare them. After which we returned with our van to play with the kids and distribute.

And yes, yes it is striking to see how two year olds are sleeping outside with these temperatures, how a nine year old who speaks perfect English comes to pick up his mum’s order and hands us back a bag full of warm blankets because they already have some. It’s truly heart-breaking to see people living in these conditions. Every day new people amongst which many unaccompanied minors arrive at the jungle. A seventeen year old boy came up to me and asked me for a sleeping bag. He just arrived in the jungle and the only thing that would provide him warmth that night was his thin jacket, he looked desperate, out of place and cold. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that there are so many unaccompanied minors in the jungle. This is reality, this is happening in Europe, this is what is happening right here in Northern France.

In the afternoon we went to the warehouse of Help Refugees (one of the biggest organisations helping refugees in Northern France and other places in Europe) that is located in Calais, to pick up stuff for our afternoon distribution for women in the jungle Calais (about which I will tell you more about later). We returned to the warehouse in Calais in the evening for a training session with the amazing Dr. Lynne Jones who is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, writer, researcher, and relief worker. We did a ‘personal resilience and supporting others’ training session in which we learned a lot about our work on the ground and how we as volunteers can do it better. I feel like it’s so good to reflect on our work and take some time to understand why we are doing what we are doing and how this affects the people around us, but also how we can justify ourselves and to trust our ability to help others. About working with people who have lost so much and have no certainty considering their future whatsoever.

My other therapy session of the week was on Friday, where me and other members of the team met up with ‘the refugee resilience collective’. They support volunteers in the traumatic and stressful situations in which they are operating. It’s great to experience that also as a volunteer there are places you can go when you want to talk since this is clearly not your ordinary moonlight job. The thing that has actually struck me the most this week is the warmth and resilience of everyone I’ve met here. That is the refugee women, children and men I met, but also all the volunteers. People are so caring. From other volunteers bringing you a warm lunch during therapy, to unexpected smiles, hugs and encouragements. One of the men in Grande Synthe asked me if we get paid to do this work, and when I said we didn’t, he looked at me in surprise and told me he was so happy that humanity still exists.

The team of lovely ladies I work with are also an absolute dream. Going home to our cabin in the evenings feels so safe. Having these miraculously resilient and kind-hearted bundles of joy around me fills me with warmth. We share our highs and lows of the day, eat delicious home cooked meals, read, write, drink, watch documentaries and have conversations about both world problems and spirit animals. We make bonfires on the beach, look at the stars and dream of brighter futures for this planet and the humans that inhabit it.

I’ll leave it here for now, thank you for making it this far. Even though I deeply want to share more experiences, I feels as if I lack the vocabulary to express them and I’ve already used so many words to puzzle this together. In my next post I will write on difficult distributions, my one day trip to Dover and home cooked falafel dinners.

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miadenise · 5 years

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Car Accidents, Calling, & Crossfit?? (lol jk about the crossfit)

Got to really start this year off with a bang. 😂

Jan 8th, I was in a major car accident with two of my friends from SBS.

We were picking up my car from the airport from a renter, and upon turning left into our neighborhood, a cop on a chase from the opposite lane crashed into my friend driving my brother’s car in front of me, which backed into me thus being; my first major accident.

If you’ve ever been in an accident, you feel like have like two seconds to assess the situation, and react before even registering what’s happening.

Long story short, my friends and the cop were a bit beat up. But no broken bones or deaths. PRAISE GOD. Thankfully, our staff Trenton, my parents, the cops, and half the entire neighborhood were there literally within minutes to help.

Not sure how we all walked away that day, but we did. It was as if an angel nudged the cop car just enough to the right that my friends and I were able to live another day.

ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ

You know what’s crazy?? People die in car crashes EVERY single day. But for some reason, we didn’t.

Jesus saved my life this year, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Aside from surviving, insurance on the other hand has been a nightmare. God’s been showing me how much of an adult I’m NOT through this whole situation lol. My brother’s car sadly was wrecked, but he got compensated by his insurance company.

However, I’ve been privileged to learn ALOT about insurance claims, and sadly my car’s off the market for a bit. The hardest thing is, my car was my main source of income and renting it out was my only way to make payments. Yet, in retrospect as I’ve been praying, God’s been teaching me something.

I can’t depend on ANYTHING but him.

“The eyes of all look to you,

and you give them their food in due season.

You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

(Ps. 145:15-16)

Nothing on this earth is dependable. Not a single person, object, or feeling.

The only one I can lean on is Jesus.

Does God pull through?

Always.

———————————

In other news, I’m proud to say I’ve lost 45 pounds since April, 2018. Single-handedly not sure how the heck this happened. But I’m am freaking stoked. My “curviness” as my friends would kindly say was actually one of my biggest insecurities and struggles. Now, I love working out. I LOVE running, and I love that I’m learning to control my body and not let my body control me anymore. Progress takes forever and blah blah, but I’ve truly never been so happy with the results. Hope I can keep this habit up for life. Maybe I’ll even take a Crossfit class one day. (lol ew)

And Finally, SBS.

The best part of CSBS (Chronological School of Biblical Studies) aside from the bible has not been the program, or the lectures, or the revelations.

It’s honestly been my friends.

I lost a lot of myself last year, and the one thing I prayed for for SBS were good friends to walk with in this season. People that’ll help me feel like me again.

Good news.

I found some. And they LOVE Jesus, are funny, encouraging, wild, ridiculous, and way too cool for me. I cry and pray for them all the time (don’t tell them that), and I wish this season with them would never end.

But, God is always knocking on the door of my heart.

Always calling me back to the dreams and vision he has for my life.

Dreams to teach. Visions of songs, sermons, and posts of education on God’s love and truth to young Christians in this generation.

I knew nothing about the bible before SBS.

And I’d read it multiple times. Every revelation I had before SBS- although real and true, was birthed out God’s grace, emotion, other people’s interpretations, but never in the context of what the Jewish people were actually going through from my own study. Which if you knew it- changes the whole meaning! It’s not that what I believed was wrong (well some things were wrong lol), I just didn’t really understand what made it right. This generation needs to understand & know the bible (like really know it) now more than ever.

With that being said, I will be teaching in the Heartbridge Performing Arts DTS next April-June about Worship, vocal training, and assisting in this year’s production. The DTS students I teach will go to Italy and Greece and minister/perform to refugees. I’ll be teaching them during SBS as my volunteer work duty.

How? In the middle of an 40-70hr week program? No idea lol.

My calling is crazy enough that I could never do it without God, but has changed my life enough that I’m convinced I could never do anything else.——————————

Overall, this life continues to be a privilege that I am unworthy of.

God is good, kids. Thank you all for your endless support and love on me after the accident. If you ever feel led to support this crazy life of mine, links are below and prayers always accepted.

Follow me on insta (@missmiajackson), to see the daily life.

Write back and tell me about YOUR life! Your prayer requests? I wanna have a virtual coffee date with each and every one of you. ☕😂

Xoxo,

Mia

Support Links ❤️

paypal.me/MiaDeniseJackson

Cashapp: @MiaDeniseJackson

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pulitzerfieldnotes · 7 years

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Finding Home

Aryn Baker

15 February 2017

“I need 100 Euros.” The request came out of the blue. Minhel, the husband of one of the central characters in our Finding Home documentary project, was lounging on the hotel bed as his wife, Illham, narrated her struggles as a Syrian refugee in Greece for the camera. Four of her sons, in identical bowl cuts, were bouncing on the beds while Illham held the fifth in her arms. To be honest, the family needed a lot more than 100 Euros. They needed a home, jobs, childcare, school, diapers, warm clothes, food — you name it. But we weren’t in a position to give them anything. From the very start of the project, when we approached a very pregnant Illham and proposed to follow her and her family’s story on camera and in print for the next year, we made it clear that we would not, could not, pay her. Many other women had declined, but Illham and her husband agreed. That didn’t mean Minhel wasn’t going to ask for help when he needed it. We diffused the situation with a joke, and continued on with the interview. But the episode sent a chill down my spine.

As a journalist who has reported from the frontlines of dire need and extreme poverty for most of my career, I am well accustomed to requests for help and money. Sometimes the need is genuine; sometimes the ask comes from pure and understandable opportunism — after all, the combined cost of my computer, phones and camera equipment probably amounts to more money than most of my subjects will see in a year, or even a lifetime. I usually deflect such requests with heartfelt apologies and an explanation that journalists are not allowed to pay for interviews.

That said, there have been times when I have been so moved by a subject’s suffering, or the fact that she slaughtered her only chicken in order to cook me dinner, that it would be unconscionable to walk away without doing anything at all. In those cases, once my reporting is done, I make sure to send over a bag of rice, a jug of cooking oil or a bundle of fruit. Usually I send it through a local NGO, or have my fixer or driver deliver it in a way that it won’t be directly associated with me as a journalist. Does that break one of the core tenets of Journalism 101? Probably. But every instance comes with a personal gut check: Am I doing this in order to get something journalistically, or am I doing it to help someone in a way my journalism likely won’t? When I do it after my notebooks are closed and the story written, the answer is clear.

But working on a long form documentary project that will be reported over the course of a year is a whole different category. The desire to help women in desperate circumstances competes with the demand for absolute journalistic integrity, which in many cases is in conflict with the ongoing need for continuous access. Just because the women in our project agreed to participate on day one doesn’t mean that they still want to several months in. After all, we are asking them for an extraordinary time commitment and access to the most intimate moments of their lives (literally – videographer Francesca Trianni was in the delivery room for the birth of all but one of the babies we are following).

And unlike most documentary productions, which come out several months after filming has wrapped up, we are reporting in real time. Even as Francesca collects video for a feature-length documentary to come out at the end of the year, I am regularly publishing stories about the families in TIME magazine and on the website. Francesca and photographer Lynsey Addario are posting images and short videos to Instagram on a daily basis. We all create Instagram Stories, and do Instagram Lives. At the beginning it felt exciting to be on the cutting edge of multi-media journalistic storytelling. These days I’m starting to understand why it’s rarely done.

Real-time reporting is the journalistic equivalent of quantum physics. The act of telling a story as it happens impacts the narrative in unpredictable ways. Even in regular documentaries the subjects are aware they are being filmed, and often perform accordingly. When they see the narrative of their lives unfold, in video, in the magazine or through Instagram, it affects how they conduct those lives and how they perceive our project going forward. One of our characters complained that she looked haggard and poor in some of the photographs, and asked to vet any new pictures going forward. (We reminded her that we were trying to report the real life of a refugee, and that no one would judge her for bad fashion considering her circumstances).

Another character’s husband complained vociferously about his circumstances in multiple on-the-record interviews, but once he saw how friends and family back home reacted to those interviews, he decided to pull out of the project. “How does this story help me?” he demanded, when he saw the magazine article. As we have repeatedly done with everyone else in the project, we tried to explain that it wouldn’t help his family directly, but that it would help all refugees if we could show the reality of what it’s like to be a Syrian looking for safety in Europe. He wasn’t convinced. He accused us of making a profit from his suffering.

Fortunately, our other characters understand. Despite the challenges of being constantly documented, they continue to open their lives, their dreams, their fears and their homes — no matter how impoverished — to our team. Their willingness to share is what makes the work so powerful.

It also opens up another conundrum. Scores of readers and viewers and Instagram followers have reached out asking how they can help the families. They want to donate clothes, or baby strollers or money. They want to volunteer, and provide much needed medical assistance. This is the kind of impact every journalist hopes to have when a story is published. Many journalists end up directing the queries straight to the subject, or set up a fund, or create a foundation. I have done similar in the past. But we can’t do that with this story because are still reporting it. So even though I would love to see Minhel get the 100 Euros he needs, or more for that matter, directing money from our readers his way would be the same thing, in a sense, as buying access outright. It wouldn’t be me paying for the interview, but my gut check says it’s still wrong. Doing so would fundamentally alter the nature of the reporting.

We as a team have struggled with this issue for weeks. We decided that the best approach would be to direct our readers and viewers to the humanitarian organizations that are directly helping our families. It’s an imperfect solution to be sure, but it lets readers act on their desire to help, and it helps our families indirectly through the aid organizations. Most importantly it keeps our readers engaged in what we believe is one of the most important issues of our time: refugees.

We are working with a new company, Speakable, that has just developed something called an Action Button. It allows readers of an online news story to share their support, be it a donation, a tweet, an email campaign or a petition, directly with the organizations involved. It’s not something that could, or even should, be used with every story. But as more people dive into this new kind of journalism, it’s one more tool to help deal with the inevitable complexities of reporting and publishing a human story real time.

To read more of Aryn’s reporting, visit her project “Finding Home”.

#pulitzerfieldnotes #arynbaker #refugees

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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Take 3 Minutes and Find Out What Its Really Like to Be a Syrian Refugee

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(This is part two of a five-part series on Syrian refugees. Read part one here.)

“HERE!” the guard said and pointed to a metal detector.

My delay causes him to point again. Pretty sure this is the only English he knows.

Which happens to be one word more than the Croatian I know.

So much has led up to this point. The months of planning. The mental preparation. The conversations with friends. The researching. The goodbyes to family. The sleepless travel days. The crossing through country borders. All came to this specific moment; the moment theory becomes reality.

We are pointed to an office where we must confirm security clearance. This is where we meet Kata, the Croatian police officer who will escort us throughout the refugee camp.

Kata speaks English.

Thank goodness Kata speaks English.

Kata has a kind smile. One of those smiles where you know she’s a sweetheart, yet could also leave you crying on floor with a broken arm if she ever felt the need to do so.

I made a mental note to stay in Kata’s good graces throughout the remainder of this visit.

“Over here is where they come in on the train,” she points as we walk through the camp. “And here is where they…”

…

They?

My mind went numb.

They…

I’m not sure I heard anything Kata said for the next several moments.

They.

As if an identity has been sequestered to this one specific definition.

They.

A word that instantly separates—pity silently attached.

Don’t get me wrong—Kata is a beautiful person! A woman who has volunteered her free time to help us out. To help these refugees out. I’m not entirely sure I could describe things any better, but it hit me when she said that simple word… “They.” It made me realize, at that moment, that I’ve been viewing these beautiful people—these often misunderstood people—as a “they.”

As if I somehow rank higher on the totem pole of value.

*For the record, from this point forward, “they” will unfortunately still need to be used in these writings. But I hope it will be taken as a word of endearment and respect, not distaste or pity.

We walk through the camp, slowly, soaking in detail after detail. “This is where they are processed and fingerprinted,” Kata explains. “This is where they receive medical attention. Over there clothing, shoes, backpacks, hot tea, etc.”

Then we turn to our right, back towards the train, and walk into a scene my mind will never forget.

Hundreds of people herded into an organized line, every possession their life has to show for, patiently waiting to board a train of which they have no clue the destination. Children with packs on their back they could quite literally fit inside, mothers with eyes which redefine the word exhaustion, and fathers who have no option but to strongly stand with optimistic hope.

Words do not do my emotions justice.

This is a largely misunderstood people group. Their identity, to us from the west, has been molded by a click-bait happy media, and they desperately need a voice to share why and what their reality has become.

I walked into the camp, honestly predetermining what my emotions would be. I’ve been through this before. I’ve done these videos before. Ranging from huts scattered throughout the countryside of Ethiopia to homeless street children in Addis Ababa, to persecuted people groups in Uganda, to incarcerated teenagers in Ohio. I’ve sat and cried with widows piecing together their future, I’ve been taught lessons in faith by orphans with nothing more than a t-shirt and shorts, and I’ve quite literally witnessed a demon prayed out of an eight-year-old boy… Yeah.

But the difference here… this is me.

I’m looking at me.

I’m looking at my family.

Bound together to all they know, the only real possessions left, have now become each other.

I’m looking at my children.

Faithfully following along through this confusing journey. Not quite sure what is going on, or why, but no longer preoccupied with what show to watch next on the iPad, or who stole their favorite toy. No longer demanding hotdogs and mac-n-cheese for every meal. No longer getting in trouble for forgetting to clean up their toys, because their toys didn’t make the cut, their mac-n-cheese either, and the iPad we had to sell to afford the journey.

I’m looking at my wife.

A mother’s never changing role, only now operating with an ever-moving base called home. SHE is the home now. SHE is the safety. SHE is the comfort. SHE holds the responsibility of never breaking, yet is always on the edge. The simple truth is that she cannot, too many little eyes are fixed on her.

I’m looking at my bags.

Everything I’ve worked for, up to this point in life, compressed down to a handful of possessions. So much has been earned, so many items bought, so many conveniences secured, so many goals achieved… yet it all has been erased from the preverbal chalkboard called “stuff.” All now stored as a memory, a smearing of white dust.

Did we pack the right things?

Do we have enough money to get there?

Where are we going exactly?

Will we even be allowed in, or will we be turned away?

I’m watching a group of people who, five years ago, lived much the same we way we do in the west. A group of people who, five years ago, had careers, homes, bank accounts, hobbies, and plans for the weekend. A group of people with dreams for their future, and desires for their children’s.

I think it’s easy to separate ourselves from what’s happening out here.

“They” are them and “we” are us, and it’s none of our business to redefine associations. But in all reality, we are human. We all have the same fears, and we all have the same insecurities, and we all have the same ability to feel anxious and feel pride, and elation, and bitterness, and inspiration, and loneliness, and we all get excited, and we all have beating hearts that require blood to move throughout our bodies. There’s not a difference here.

So let’s start seeing it as such.

And let’s start responding as such.

And let’s start caring about other people’s needs just as much as we expect others to care about our own. This experience in a refugee camp is showing me such.

At least, so far it is…

Jon

Jon Morton is a professional photographer based in Dayton, Ohio.

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