Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people. Drawing together writers, editors, and other culture workers, WAWOG hopes to provide ongoing infrastructure for cultural organizing in response to the war. This project is modeled on American Writers Against the War in Vietnam, an organization founded in 1965.
Statement of Solidarity
October 26, 2023
Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people. This war did not begin on October 7th. However, in the last 19 days, the Israeli military has killed over 6,500 Palestinians, including more than 2,500 children, and wounded over 17,000. Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison: its 2 million residents—a majority of whom are refugees, descendants of those whose land was stolen in 1948—have been deprived of basic human rights since the blockade in 2006. We share the assertions of human rights groups, scholars, and, above all, everyday Palestinians: Israel is an apartheid state, designed to privilege Jewish citizens at the expense of Palestinians, heedless of the many Jewish people, both in Israel and across the diaspora, who oppose their own conscription in an ethno-nationalist project.
We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation. We stand firmly by Gaza’s people, victims of a genocidal war the United States government continues to fund and arm with military aid—a crisis compounded by the illegal settlement and dispossession of the West Bank and the subjugation of Palestinians within the state of Israel.
We stand in opposition to the silencing of dissent and to racist and revisionist media cycles, further perpetuated by Israel’s attempts to bar reporting in Gaza, where journalists have been both denied entry and targeted by Israeli forces. At least 24 journalists in Gaza have now been killed. Internationally, writers and cultural workers have faced severe harassment, workplace retribution, and job loss for expressing solidarity with Palestine, whether by stating facts about their continued occupation, or for amplifying the voices of others. These are instances that mark severe incursions against supposed speech protections. Specious charges of antisemitism are leveled against Zionism’s critics; political repression has been particularly aggressive against the free speech of Muslim, Arab, and Black people living in the US and across the globe. As was the case following the September 11th attacks, Islamophobic political fervor and the widespread circulation of unsubstantiated claims has galvanized a US-led coalition of military support for a brutal campaign of violence.
What can we do to intervene against Israel’s eliminationist assault on the Palestinian people? Words alone cannot stop the onslaught of devastation of Palestinian homes and lives, backed shamelessly and without hesitation by the entire axis of Western power. At the same time, we must reckon with the role words and images play in the war on Gaza and the ferocious support they have engendered: Israel’s defense minister announced the siege as a fight against “human animals”; even as we learned that Israel had rained bombs down on densely populated urban neighborhoods and deployed white phosphorus in Gaza City, the New York Times editorial board wrote that “what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law”; establishment media outlets continue to describe Hamas’s attack on Israel as “unprovoked.” Writers Against the War on Gaza rejects this perversion of meaning, wherein a nuclear state can declare itself a victim in perpetuity while openly enacting genocide. We condemn those in our industries who continue to enable apartheid and genocide. We cannot write a free Palestine into existence, buttogether we must do all we possibly can to reject narratives that soothe Western complicity in ethnic cleansing.
We act alongside other writers, scholars, and artists who have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause, drawing inspiration from the Palestinian spirit of sumud, steadfastness, and resistance. Since 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has advocated for organizations to join a boycott of institutions representing the Israeli state or cultural institutions complicit with its apartheid regime. We call on all our colleagues working in cultural institutions to endorse that boycott. And we invite writers, editors, journalists, scholars, artists, musicians, actors, and anyone in creative and academic work to sign this statement. Join us in building a new cultural front for a free Palestine.
Signed,
WAWOG Interim Organizing Committee
Hannah Black
Ari Brostoff (Senior Editor, Jewish Currents)
Elena Comay del Junco
Kyle Dacuyan (Executive Director, Poetry Project)
Kay Gabriel (Editorial Director, Poetry Project)
Kaleem Hawa
E. Tammy Kim
Shiv Kotecha
Wendy Lotterman (Associate Editor, Parapraxis)
Muna Mire
Perwana Nazif
Brendan O'Connor
Alex Press (Staff Writer, Jacobin)
Sarah Nicole Prickett
Dylan Saba
Zoé Samudzi (Associate Editor, Parapraxis)
Jasmine Sanders
Claire Schwartz (Culture Editor, Jewish Currents)
Janique Vigier
Harron Walker
Chloe Watlington
Gabriel Winant (Department of History, University of Chicago)
Webweaving -- Black Resilience -- To Be Young, Gifted and Black
The Watermelon Woman (1996) // Q.U.E.E.N Janelle Monae // To Be Young Gifted and Black Robert B. Nemiroff // Self Noname // Denise Huxtable // i Kendrick Lamar // A Different World Denise Huxtable // The Color Purple // Q.U.E.E.N Janelle Monae // The Color Purple // Stop Calling The Police On Me Dreamer Isioma // Toni Morrison // Lorraine Hansberry // boomboom Noname // Lorraine Hansberry
FAVORITE RELEASES OF 2023
↪ KALI UCHIS Red Moon in Venus
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Used a scene from our last D&D session to play around with Clip Studio Paint's features. Not 100% satisfied or sure what techniques I'll use moving forward but it was an interesting experiment!
I wanna talk about my view on Watchers and also where admins fall into place
There are two main types of Watchers, one type are more commonly known as “Viewers”, all they do is watch things unfold for entertainment
The other type are the ones that make said entertainment, groups like Noxcrew, noName, ETC
So where do admins come into play? My thought process is anyone with abilities normal players dont have, means they have some sort of magic.
Some Admins are your typical watchers, others are normal players who were gifted some Watcher magic. So that way theyre able to make sure games go smoothly/stories progress how they should.
To me it just makes moments where people need to fix things, or put a command in chat for something, just a bit more fun. Anytime someone does anything admin related, its just Watcher magic.
PLUS THIS DOESNT INTERFERE WITH ANY CANON (i think) AND IT MAKES SOME HEADCANONS FIT BETTER
For example the headcanon that Scott purposely disobeys and doesnt listen to the Watchers in charge of the Life Games. Why? Because he actively works with Watchers who arent awful.
This also doesnt interfere with Martyns lore (correct me if im wrong). For example Watchers feeding off of the negative energy because they really like how it tastes. Having there be multiple groups of Watchers doesnt have to change that.
Personally I like thinking that the Watchers from Evo and the Life Games are very old fashioned. Sure any Watcher can feed off of negative energy, but alot dont because they value their players.
Maybe im missing some information but anything Martyn has said (his canon or his headcanon) doesnt get affected by this idea.
I just love the concepts of Watchers in general so yes i will try to make it fit everywhere I can, its fun for me. Obviously im not saying you have to agree, this is just my little headcanon that i like thinking about