Dispatch from the Children
“What should be done is for more young people to speak up… it’s not just something that’s good from you to do… It’s something that’s required from every human who still has humanity.” - Janna Ayyad
The day before Presidents’ Day, I wrote a letter to Biden calling him a “mealymouthed, weak-willed, spineless, warmongering, bloodthirsty limpdick excuse of a human being.” Which is to say that I’m no particular fan of this President, or any of his predecessors.
I didn’t observe Presidents’ Day in the traditional manner this year—which as far as I can tell, involves buying discounted furniture from Raymour & Flanigan, and Googling whether it is Presidents’ Day, Presidents Day, or President’s Day— and opted instead to attend a Families for Ceasefire protest.
The event, which was entirely emceed by children and teenagers, featured speakers as young as 5, drum circles, a well-stocked snack table, and the irrepressible, thrumming anger of children.
“I have some things to say to you, Joe Biden. I want to know how you sleep at night, knowing you are giving Israel money to kill kids like me,” spoke one child, the daughter of Palestinians whose relatives are still in Gaza. She described coming home from school to find her mother crying. Her mother’s hesitation to explain why. There is no gentle way to explain mass murder, after all.
There are some who will say that children are too young to understand what is going on, but is it not adults who spin a complicated web out of a simple story?
How many articles have I read over the past few months dilly-dallying in semantics, fretting over whether it is right to call Israel’s attack on Gaza a genocide? How many adults who cannot bring themselves to call the murder of 30,000 people, half of them children, the displacement of 80% of the population, the bombing of “safe” areas, and the routine killings of medical workers and journalists, a genocide?
In the biting winter sun, standing near Independence Mall, listening to these fierce young people calling for peace, their voices heavy with betrayal, I was reminded that children, who are routinely reminded that they are smaller and less powerful than adults, have a built-in drive to question power. Children are enraged by illogic and non-answers, roundabout turns of phrase that never go anywhere. What child is not constantly asking Why? And what child doesn’t hate to hear Because I said so in response?
And of course, children of all ages are old enough to learn about genocide, because children of all ages are living through it. As another child speaker at the protest put it:
“It hurts to know that I have the privilege of sleeping in a warm bed every night while kids in Gaza are sleeping in tents or chicken coops.”
I cannot shake those children from my mind. Cannot forget the children of Gaza writing their own wills, the children of Gaza killed when they call for help, the children of Gaza buried underneath rubble, the children of Gaza with empty, aching bellies, the children of Gaza with their names Sharpied onto their limbs, so that, if they are murdered by U.S.-funded bombs, their corpses might be identified.
I am thinking of my own childhood. One of my first memories is of watching my mother try to reach her parents who were working in NYC on September 11, 2001. I did not yet know what had happened, but I felt her fear clearly, the still air of time-stopping emergency.
The so-called War on Terror began when I was 5 and my childhood intertwined with protest. Ballet class, followed by a march against the invasion of Iraq. Bumper stickers on our minivan. The celebratory atmosphere when Obama was elected; the subsequent disappointment.
I wonder how many first memories are being formed right now in Gaza, how many children will also carry the image of their parents’ panicked faces for the rest of their lives.
And I wonder about the first memories born elsewhere, at marches, and protests, at the vigil I attended on a windy December night, where one little girl stood by the candle-lit table, diligently re-lighting each flame that was blown out. She did this for a long time, while my friends and I silently wept in the darkness.
As a post-script, in the spirit of the delights that keep us moving forward, I submit this cutting missive to Dick Cheney, penned by my siblings, friends, and me (aged 9), which reads, in part:
“We don’t think that you are a very good vice-president. You have the mind of a dinosaur, a terrible lizard. Indeed, you are very terrible.”
I ask, what adult could write that? Only a nine-year-old well-versed in the T.Rex’s laughable body-to-brain ratio could produce such a delightful insult. If for no other reason, teach your child to speak truth to power simply to hear what they might come up with.
