We Must Open Our Eyes and Choose to See

"Did you shuffle off the pavements just to let your betters pass?"
Oil and graphite on canvas. Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude.

Thijs’ face remained open and calm as he described his childhood memory of his Jewish neighbours being removed to whatever fate they met: “I remember the SS or Germans going upstairs, kicking them down the stairs, so they rolled right on our sidewalk, in front of our door.” I was interviewing him for an installation about the concept and feeling of ‘home’, and this was part of his response. I think that I, too, looked unphased by this story. We both have lived so long in a society that treats such traumatic experiences as passing news, and turns to chemicals, distraction, or denial to keep from dwelling on the horror. 

But it IS horror. It’s horror every time a starving Palestinian child tries to get food and is blown to pieces, but still alive, briefly, to witness the cries of his mother. It’s horror every time a child holds the dead face of his parent, living only in terror, oblivious to what life will be like as an orphan of genocide, however short that life may be. It’s horror every time a girl, a child; a desperate woman is captured, owned, and brutalized to feed some sick person’s illness, and then silenced, for the good of the nation, or at least for the benefit of those profiting off the nation. It’s horror every single time a person of colour, an indigenous person, a woman, or a poor person is kidnapped by brutal masked agents of terror, hiding behind anonymity and the letters I, C, and E, or simply balaclavas. It’s horror while these people sit rotting in internment camps created with the intention of brutalizing their bodies, minds, and futures. It’s horror when a child is raised with such depravity that they applied for the jobs that mean brutalizing their fellow citizens; that they are willing to create more such depravity in hopes of rising above it, for the good of the nation. For the good of the family. It’s horror when we turn away, because it hurts so much to see, and blindly, through chosen ignorance, raise our own children to be unphased by the horrors that we condone, for the good of the family.

It’s easy to buy cheap milk eked out of tortured beasts on tortured stolen indigenous land because my children need calcium, to bubble their water with a machine made on stolen Palestinian land, and to turn their eyes away from the news, towards a screen filled with shiny ads. To turn my own eyes away from how those ads are harming them, because I need time to make their dinner, and it's easier. It’s easy to allow the fascist few to benefit from our choices, for the good of the family. For the good of the nation.

What family?! What nation?! What kind of monsters are we that we can look but refuse to see?! I hear a siren right now outside my window, and I’m scared because I know that siren means someone in my community is scared, too, right now. 

I can’t turn away. I can’t be the person who allows these horrors to happen, while I avert my eyes. Neither can you. I know that, because you probably looked at the news, today. You’re reading this, right now. Not to numb yourself, not to bolster ignorance, but to SEE. You’re trying to see. You’re looking to bolster community by being willing to share the suffering of others.

We know we’re bound to each other as humans. We know each child stripped of dignity, health, safety, love and life by the greed of the tiny fascist few is a part of us. We know, even, that those greedy few are part of us, so like we need to weed them out of our society, we need to weed the tendency to greed and ignorance from our own psyches. We need to rise up as individuals to save the whole of us.

I know this all sounds very big-picture. Very abstract. We want something actionable. We want to reject the rise of greed, hate, and fascism. But how? I’m working on that. I can’t say how it will look for you, but I can, at least, describe what I’m doing, and hope it helps inspire you to make whatever choices make sense in your life. 

Ending Reliance on Fascist Corporations

Those photos of Trump surrounded by the tech billionaires whose private jet flights we fund with our digital existence were very enlightening, to me. I can no longer pretend a single one of them is good. Not even if they tout vaccines for impoverished populations or free transit. They’re a huge piece of the fascist landscape, and I can’t be supporting them. Obviously, it’s difficult to just quit these giants in a world that they’ve carefully arranged to be mandatory opt-in. In fact, we pay for the right to use these systems that we’ve been convinced we can’t live without!

Well, I’ve been dumping the tech giants at a steady pace for about six months, now, and I’m here to tell you it’s not only less daunting than I feared; it’s liberating!! It feels wonderful!! So here’s a list of the great alternatives I’ve found. And of course there are many more! Luckily, we live in a whole world full of caring, creative individuals, working in community to build a better world.

Facebook/Instagram/Twitter ⟶ Mastodon 
Mastodon, with it’s cute little Elephant logo, is wonderful for connecting to like-minded community. A bit of an adjustment in terms of how posting works, but not difficult, by any means. Yes, it’s part of a whole landscape of options, but you don’t even need to understand that to use and enjoy it!

WhatsApp ⟶ Signal 
For some reason I had the idea that Signal was for right-wing people. (?) Once I joined, I discovered that wasn’t true at all. It’s just for people. Some might be right-wing, but I wouldn’t know, just like you wouldn’t know that about your phone contacts list. It is, after all, just an app you can use for free video, phonecalling, and messaging, that uses your contacts list. But it’s an app that’s not stealing and selling your data. And yes it’s free.

News sources ⟶ Al Jazeera and local sources
Obviously, this depends on where you are. But Al Jazeera definitely has a more open view of world events than any mainstream North American news sources I’ve looked at. And I augment my news intake by subscribing to local and indigenous sources that have more to say about my specific local interests.

Blogger/Website ⟶ Autistici/Noblogs 
Yeah!! I haven’t moved my domain name over yet, but I was honoured to be accepted by the good people who create and maintain Autistici. I’m slowly transferring all my previous content to my site there, and will redirect my domain name when I’m ready. This (moving all my content) is definitely the most daunting task I’ve undertaken, but it’s worth it, not to be chained to Google/Blogger.

Web/Chrome ⟶ Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla is an amazing group of people fighting very hard to maintain fair and open internet. They make Thunderbird, which is a great email reader/system (I’ve been using it for decades), and Firefox, which is possibly the best, safest, most versatile web browser out there. Yes, it’s WAY better than Chrome!! Mozilla’s browsers are free, but you can donate if you want to. Of course the US fascist regime has cut their funding, so now is a great time to donate to such things!!

Gmail ⟶ Autistici
I got a free email account with Autisici too, and use Mozilla Thunderbird to access it.

YouTube ⟶ MakerTube 
Part of the PeerTube system, MakerTube allows creatives to upload very similarly to YouTube, but without the ads, constant AI spam, and data domination. And free, too, of course! I’m also slowly migrating my content to my new MakerTube account: https://makertube.net/c/emilyartist/videos
(For video-watching, PeerTube definitely doesn't have the amount or variety of content that YouTube has, yet, but it's increasing every day! And it's real, unlike the AI dumping-ground that YouTube has become.)

Google ⟶ Ecosia 
On both phone and laptop, I search with Ecosia. I’ve installed it as the default search engine on my Firefox browser. While Google uses ads to raise their already astronomical profits and fund fascism, Ecosia provides the same search, but uses the ad revenue to fund reforestation.

Windows ⟶ Linux Ubuntu
This was the scariest change for me, but it turned out to be both simple and amazing!! Not only are there incredibly robust and useful (free, open-source, decentralized) alternatives for every single application I previously bought or subscribed to, but the platform itself is only slightly different from the platforms we’re used to. Also: There’s an amazing community of Linux users ready to help me when I have a question! 

Next I plan to replace the Android on my phone with Ubuntu touch, which will apparently relate seamlessly with my laptop, and be free (from costs, data insecurity, AND fascism!) I’m also going to get a fully repairable Fairphone. 

Here are some of the apps I use, on Ubuntu. They're also available for use on Windows. Every single one of these is actually better than what it replaced for me. And free.

Word/Spreadsheet/pdf Processor ⟶ LibreOffice
Image Editor ⟶ GIMP
Video Editor ⟶ Kdenlive
Audio Editor ⟶ Audacity
Video Player ⟶ VLC (plays all kinds of things that popular players can’t)

There was one program I couldn’t get an alternative for, which is Blurb’s BookWright app. This worried me, because I do use it frequently. But it turns out there’s an easy fix for this issue! I installed Wine from the Ubuntu store, which emulates Windows, and thusly runs BookWright for me, effortlessly. That’s what’s going on in the background. What I see is just the BookWright app logo on my desktop, and it runs like there’s no background at all. :-)

Freedom and Human Rights

At some point I realized that in almost every country, it’s illegal to live without buying or renting space on the planet. Sure, there are organizations trying to help those who can’t afford the luxury of shelter, but their goal is still to get people earning enough money to rent space. Eating is the same. You must make enough money to pay someone else to produce food, because growing it, while not always illegal, is at least only available to those who pay for space to grow it. As corporations like Nestle commandeer water resources, and municipalities begin taxing citizens for water-use, but not corporations for draining aquifers, many are now also unable to afford water. We always have to pay for our right to live. And who makes that money? Those depraved billionaires, of course. The only way to keep the basic human rights of taking up space, eating and drinking, is to exercise those rights.

I’ve noticed, personally, that when I go into the city, I feel like I need to pay for food or entertainment, if I want to sit down. To buy a cookie if I want to use a toilet. Cities offer parks and benches, of course, but I feel like there’s a growing expectation that if we’re using the spaces, we should be paying someone. The right to simply rest should not belong to the wealthy.

So taking up space is part of exercising our rights. Drink from the creek. Begin to care where it’s coming from, and who’s polluting it. Sit on the sidewalk and learn to see your neighbours. Encourage them to sit on the sidewalk, too. Plant food crops in disregarded soil. We have the right to live a good life on this earth, with the gifts this earth gives to all animals. Live it.

Activism

I’ve been severely limited by disability these last few years, and haven’t attended a single protest. Luckily, protests are not the only way to act against tyranny! They may not even be the most effective way! My auntie reminded me of this when she sent me this poem, yesterday. With a dizzying array of health problems like strokes and pneumonias that have put most of her career as a poet, performer, educator and author on hold, she still managed to write this poem, record it, and send it out. So I took one minute out of my morning and shared it on my MakerTube and Mastodon! We can ALWAYS do something. 

Maybe the something looks like growing our own food, and sharing the bounty with neighbours. Maybe it looks like writing to people in position to make political or corporate change. Maybe we can make change by choosing how and where we spend our money, or earn it. Maybe we reject industries and products we know to be harmful. My son messaged me yesterday to say he sadly forgot to ask for oat-milk in his cappuccino. Why? I asked him. His answer was that the dairy industry is terrible. We didn’t talk about the coffee industry, but it’s a small thing to request oat milk instead of dairy. Maybe coffee is next. We make a journey by taking one step at a time, and every step matters.

The solution to so many of the world’s problems seems to be thoughtfulness. Awareness. Like when I talked about drinking from a stream, to allow us to take stock of who’s polluting that stream, we need to go through our lives with our eyes open, so that we are compelled to make the changes necessary to live well.

The people who profit off of our ignorance pay big money to maintain that ignorance. But we still have the power to open our eyes. To witness and make choices. When Thijs watched his Jewish neighbours rolled out onto the street he didn’t look away. In fact, eighty-odd years later, he’s still telling the story. Still using his traumatic experience of witnessing genocide to educate; to help all of us to open our eyes. 

We’re all witnessing genocide, today. We’re all witnessing a rise of fascism that is stunning in its similarity to what Thijs and many of our elders experienced less than a hundred years ago. It’s up to each of us to not turn away. To not accept. To not condone. To not support fascism. 

I know it's not so simple. We're funnelled into supporting fascism with every breath we take. But this is war, now. We're dying from our apathy, and the only thing that will save us is taking responsibility for the change. Nobody else is going to do it for us. As Sinéad O'Connor sang in "Drink Before the War", "Somebody cut out your eyes, you refuse to see". They can force us all they want, but the choice to see or not to see is still ours.

It’s up to each of us to build the world that feeds the many instead of the few. It’s up to each of us to look at our own hands and be sure they’re doing work we’re proud of. It’s up to each of us to open our eyes and become aware of the consequences of every action we take, and only take actions we’re proud of. For the good of the family. For the good of all people, and the future and ecology that feeds us, we must open our eyes and choose to see.

"Drink Before the War" 
Oil and graphite on canvas. Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude.