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CONVERGENCE-S
A Writing Through Fences Project
Free Palestine: A Convergence of Voices
CONVERGENCE-S
a location/locations where airflows or ocean currents meet, characteristically marked by upwelling (of air) or downwelling (of water).
Oxford Dictionary, 2023
Free Palestine: A Convergence of Voices
'We have come to realise that it is through words and writing that the Zionist movement managed to occupy Palestine well before the actual infiltration that ended in occupying the whole land of Palestine killing and displacing millions of Palestinian unarmed civilians. So, we decided to Write Back. We endeavour to use all efforts and pens and to gather all material there is that helps promote our cause to enlighten both ourselves and all the peoples of the world'. Refaat Alareer, In Gaza, My Gaza!
'Read, quote, teach, share the words of living Palestinians. Withdraw from places that benefit from or take a studied and calculated indifference to our spectacular annihilation. Do what Palestinians ask you to; stop trying to be clever or develop your own opinions about something you have spent no time studying, something you have no material stake in. If you have a material stake in Palestinian freedom: by all means speak and act clearly from that, broadcast that clarity wide and loud and elaborate it deeply. Believe in the meaning of your own life without thinking you must be a genius to matter—this is an imperial lie, a patriarchal lie, a capitalist lie, an ableist lie, a white supremacist lie, and only those who wish to support those violences benefit from you believing you have no power'.
Free Palestine: A Convergence of Voices is a Writing Through Fences publishing project focused on foregrounding Palestinian literature, art, music and commentary.
It is also an offering we hope will mobilise non-Palestinians to untangle the racist colonial histories we/they have been fed and engage with Palestinian voices and knowledges in order to create an upswell toward liberation.
And, we hope, that this will help to counter the harmful language of Australian media, and that of the ideological West, mobilised in the interests of continuing the settler colonial project.
From the river to the sea, always was, always will be.
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A note on reading layout: When a non-Palestinian artist, writer, poet, creator is responding
to a Palestinian artist, writer, poet, creator, the name and work of the Palestinian
creator will be published first followed by the non-Palestinian creator's work.
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Writing Through Fences Solidarity and Action Statement
Founders of Writing Through Fences are horrified and heartbroken by the genocidal force of Israel fully unleashed against Gaza and the whole of Palestine.
We are appalled by much of the media coverage around Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and are committed to resisting the silence and propaganda of this colony; propaganda which promotes dangerous narratives of white supremacy enabled through structures grounded in the brutality of occupation and Indigenous dispossession.
Many of us know well how narratives are used to demonise and dehumanise. We also know their material and bodily effects. We follow Palestinian journalist and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, Ahmed Alnaouq, in calling out the violence of much mainstream media and, we add, publishers, ‘Most of the mainstream media in the West has always been complicit against the Palestinian people… The blood of my family is on their hand’ -@AlnaouqA
Founding member, Hani Abdile often reminds us that ‘language can heal and language can harm’.
Free Palestine: A Convergence of Voices, is an offering of solidarity with Palestinians and an acknowledgement of the vibrancy of Palestinian arts and literature. It is also an offering we hope will mobilise non-Palestinians to untangle the racist colonial histories we/they have been fed and centre Palestinian voices and knowledges. It is an offering we hope will help to counter the harmful language of Australian media, and that of the ideological West, mobilised in the interests of continuing the settler colonial project.
We demand CEASEFIRE NOW, end to siege, end to apartheid, land back, right of return and justice.
We demand truth telling, treaty, land back, prison abolition and justice for First Nations people in so-called australia
From the river to the sea, always was, always will be.
– Eghbal Asadi, Hani Abdile, Bernadette Ryan, Sriharan Ganeshan, Rose Ertler, Mohammed Boush, Farhad Bandesh, Jenell Quinsee and Janet Galbraith, 7th November 2023
Follow apan.org.au and bdsmovement.net and Loud Jew Collective on instagram or Facebook for information on direct actions.
Follow Overland Literary Journal for accurate and insightful reporting, creative content and commentary overland.org.au.
About Writing Through Fences
No one can give us a voice and no one can take our voice away. Our voices are ours and we do with them what WE will.
-Habib Saleh, Christmas Island, 2014
Writing Through Fences is a collaborative project and a loosely woven community evolving through art, music, writing and poetry. As project and community we grew out of an online creative relationship between a writer who had asked for asylum in so-called Australia and been immediately incarcerated in one of the colony’s immigration prisons under the egregious ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’, and a white writer, descended of Scottish settlers, citizen of so called Australia. Over time this creative relationship grew and eventually seeded other creative relationships. A network formed.
Writing Through Fences began in the Kulin Nation and has grown throughout the occupied lands of so-called Australia, sovereign lands that always were and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands. As migrants, asylum seekers and other non-Aboriginal citizens we do not support the colonial occupation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands and commit to learning from and respecting First Nations peoples, lands, waters, skies, cultures and languages. We do not support so-called Australia’s extra-territorial reach, exploitation of sovereign lands, disregard for their people, and creation of immigration prisons in Papua New Guinea, Nauru and Indonesia.
Writing Through Fences situates our creations as resistance to the racist, settler colonial systems that attempt to contain, silence, and divide us. We value connection. We share resources, ideas and languages. Our words, music and art breach borders and fences. We create. We connect. And we remember.
DONATIONS-SUPPORT
Financial support for our projects used primarily to pay writers, musicians and artists can be sent to the account below. If you would like to assist us to pay Palestinian, Indigenous and forcibly displaced artists and writers contributing to Free Palestine: A Convergence of Voices please mark your donation PALESTINE.
Writing Through Fences
Bendigo Bank
BSB: 633108
Acc No: 152841052