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To Grieve Together Is to Heal Together
Rituals of Care In Minneapolis
Signs of resistance and community solidarity are found on every block, in every neighborhood. This is a sign a few houses down from Renee Good’s memorial. Photo Credit: Joi Lee
Over the last three months, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. have lived under siege. On December 4, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced the start of Operation Metro Surge as part of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Around 3,000 immigration agents flooded into the region, turning Minneapolis into the epicenter for what would become the largest immigration enforcement operation in United States history.
Neighbors watched other neighbors being abducted. The shrill sound of whistles—the warning sign that ICE was nearby—became the all-too-familiar soundtrack to the city. Streets, and the businesses that lined them, once bustling, became quiet, threatening the many diverse communities that form the cultural backbone of the Twin Cities: Somali, Hmong, Latine, among others.
And then, on January 7, Renee Good, an everyday Minnesotan who was watching out for her neighbors, a legal observer, was shot and killed. Seventeen days later, Alex Pretti, an ICU Nurse, met the same fate at the hands of ICE officers.
What followed made international headlines: civilians clashing with federal agents as flash bangs, tear gas, and rubber bullets filled the streets of Minneapolis. Images of confrontation traveled far beyond the city, flattening a much more complicated reality unfolding on the ground—as the news cycle has done repeatedly to Minneapolis over the years with the murders of Jamar Clarke in 2014, Philando Castile in 2016, and George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of police brutality.
As tensions threatened to spiral further, the Trump administration announced a series of changes: replacing ICE commander Greg Bovino with so-called “border czar” Tom Homan, and on February 12, announcing that the operation in Minneapolis would come to an end. But in Minneapolis, many residents say the shift has been more cosmetic than substantive. Raids continue, surveillance lingers, and entire communities remain on edge.
The fear has not lifted. It has settled.
In this fragile uncertainty of what happens next, the Minneapolis community has turned to care. Across the city, people are gathering not just to strategize or protest, but to also grieve together: to light candles, pray, sing, and move their bodies in unison. Memorials for Good and Pretti have become meeting grounds. Healing circles, ceremonies, and music-filled vigils have emerged as lifelines for a community nowhere near recovered, yet refusing to unravel.
Posters of Renee Good and Alex Pretti adorn the city, plastered on empty walls, hung up on store windows. Photo Credit: Joi Lee
A legacy of trauma—and healing
In Minneapolis, trauma does not arrive without memory. Neither does healing.
I met Leslie Redmond, an organizer and former president of Minneapolis NAACP, at a healing circle she convened the day after Pretti’s murder. Nestled in a small community cafe, tables were pushed aside and chairs brought into the circle. Wafts of warm home-made chili floated in from the vegan kitchen, and cups of piping hot lemon ginger tea—nourishing for the soul, we were assured—were handed out.
As folks trickled into their seats, nervous chatter gave way to quiet realization that everyone was holding a pain that needed to be shared. Looking around the faces in the room, many etched with stress and exhaustion, Redmond reminded us, “Before we can build, we must heal.”
Redmond is no stranger to collective trauma inflicted by the hands of law enforcement. She had lived through the police killings of Jamar Clarke, Philando Castile, and George Floyd, as well as the uprisings that followed.
“Back then, I wasn’t actively healing. My back went out. My hair was falling out. We were in the fight phase. And then I realized, we need to move to the healing phase.”
By the end of 2020, Redmond decided to create a community healing team for collective mourning. When Good was killed, that infrastructure, built slowly and deliberately, was ready to spring into action.
“Healing is fundamental,” Redmond said, before quoting Audre Lorde’s seminal words from A Burst of Light: “Self-care is not self-indulgence. Self-care is self-preservation, which is an act of political warfare.”
These days, Remond facilitates weekly healing circles. For many, the healing circles have become a place to reset. To find solace in knowing that what Minnesotans are going through is real, and not imagined. To find validation in their pain, yet also resolution in how to move forward. At one of the meetings, a 13-year-old quietly confessed to the group, “I feel like I’ve lost my peace.” At another, a Somali elder shared, “We’ve been living in fear. But looking around, how beautiful to remember why I decided to call this place my home.”
Different cultures, shared medicine in memorial
The memorials of Pretti and Good, built at the sites where they were killed, have become living spaces of ceremony and connection. The rituals of healing are as diverse as the communities that Pretti and Good gave their lives to protect. At a vigil for Pretti organized by his fellow nurses, I met members of the Hmong community, an ethnic group that originates from Southeast Asia and largely came over as refugees to Minneapolis in the mid-1970’s. The Twin Cities are home to the largest concentration of Hmong people in the U.S.
One person held a sign reading, “A Hmong shaman for healers & humanity!” Another read, “A Hmong Christian for healers & humanity!”
A woman who asked me to call her Yaya explained why she was there. “As a healer from the Hmong community, as a shaman, I came to support them, healer to healer,” she said. “Because we do so much healing, but we forget to heal ourselves. Today is about healing the healers.”
The group offered both prayers and blessed strings. People approached quietly, asking for care. Some requested Christian prayer, others a shamanic blessing. Kiki, the Christian, clasped their hands tightly, offering a prayer and a hug. Yaya took each person’s right hand, looping a thin string around the wrist and tying it gently in place, murmuring a prayer so soft it barely rose above the street noise.
Many accepted both.
Ceremony as resistance
Indigenous communities also organized ceremonies honoring Good and Pretti.
Among them was a Jingle Dress Dance ceremony, rooted in Ojibwe healing traditions, meant to restore health and balance to those who need it. Over 30 members of the Minneapolis Native community came together at both memorials to perform their sacred dance, adorned in vibrant dresses. Metal cones are woven in intricate patterns around the dress, such that a slight movement creates a rhythmic sound.
“The dress came to our people when there was a time of sickness. And so that’s what we do. We show up when there’s people suffering,” Downwind said, one of the organizers of the ceremony.
Jingle Dress Dancers gather at Renee Good memorial’s site to perform a healing ceremony. Photo Credit: Joi Lee
The sound of metal cones sewn onto the dresses echoed through the cold air—each step a prayer, each movement an offering—was met with quiet attentiveness by the audience.
When the dance finished at Good’s memorial, the crowd moved to Pretti’s, a journey that in itself felt like a pilgrimage, connecting the deaths of two Minnesotans with the lives of all those who remained, continuing their legacy.
For many in attendance, the presence of Native dancers felt both sacred and a reminder that this land holds older traditions of survival. That healing did not begin, nor will it end, with this moment.
Music and the permission to feel
Music has also become a vessel for collective healing. Groups like Brass Solidarity,a band that was founded in response to the murder of George Floyd, have organized performances at the memorials, bringing instruments into spaces thick with grief.
In the cold, unforgiving nights of Minneapolis, hundreds gather by Alex Pretti’s memorial site to listen to the musical tribute given by Brass Solidarity. Photo Credit: Joi Lee
One evening at Pretti’s memorial, hundreds of people stood shoulder to shoulder, bodies seeking warmth and rhythm. Brass instruments rang out, fingers braving subzero temperatures to play. Anthony Afful, a musician with Brass Solidarity, described the role of music in these spaces. “Part of what we’re doing,” he said, “is helping people remember that they’re human.”
Music, he explained, creates room for the full range of emotion. “This is a dark time. There has to be space for grief, for rage, and also for joy—to exist together.”
I spoke to another musician, Tufawon, who is Native-Boricua. For him, it is not just experiencing music but also its creative expression that helps unlock emotional processing. He’s currently holding a music workshop for Native youth, many of whom have been deeply impacted by ICE raids despite being the Indigenous peoples of this land.
“As colonized people, we’re impacted by historical trauma,” Tufawon explained. “We carry it through our genes. And now there’s a collective trauma that the entire city, the entire state, really, is holding. We don’t take the time to process what we experience. Music is a mindfulness practice. So I use music to bring healing into the moment, so they can find some level of balance and not crash so hard when it’s all over.”
Tufawon is a local Minneapolis artist, both Native and Puerto Rican, who uses music as an educational and community tool to heal and lift up the Native youth community. Photo Credit: Joi Lee
Healing circles, ceremonies, music, and prayer: many of these are rituals with a rich, long history. They have navigated many cultures in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
They have passed through countless cultures and generations, carrying meaning far beyond any single moment.
But in a time where Minneapolis is being ripped apart—when the very definition of who belongs, of what it means to be an “American,” is under violent scrutiny—these rituals of care have reaffirmed something that cannot be detained, erased, or deported. That the very fabric of this place has been woven together by so many cultures, by so many peoples. And that it will be healed by them, together.
Minneapolis is no stranger to rebuilding. It is a city, a sacred land, that is practiced in rising from devastation, again and again.
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{
"article":
{
"title" : "To Grieve Together Is to Heal Together: Rituals of Care In Minneapolis",
"author" : "Joi Lee",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/healing-rituals-minneapolis",
"date" : "2026-02-20 08:48:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Lee_Minn_Image1-.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "Signs of resistance and community solidarity are found on every block, in every neighborhood. This is a sign a few houses down from Renee Good’s memorial. Photo Credit: Joi LeeOver the last three months, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. have lived under siege. On December 4, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced the start of Operation Metro Surge as part of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Around 3,000 immigration agents flooded into the region, turning Minneapolis into the epicenter for what would become the largest immigration enforcement operation in United States history. Neighbors watched other neighbors being abducted. The shrill sound of whistles—the warning sign that ICE was nearby—became the all-too-familiar soundtrack to the city. Streets, and the businesses that lined them, once bustling, became quiet, threatening the many diverse communities that form the cultural backbone of the Twin Cities: Somali, Hmong, Latine, among others. And then, on January 7, Renee Good, an everyday Minnesotan who was watching out for her neighbors, a legal observer, was shot and killed. Seventeen days later, Alex Pretti, an ICU Nurse, met the same fate at the hands of ICE officers. What followed made international headlines: civilians clashing with federal agents as flash bangs, tear gas, and rubber bullets filled the streets of Minneapolis. Images of confrontation traveled far beyond the city, flattening a much more complicated reality unfolding on the ground—as the news cycle has done repeatedly to Minneapolis over the years with the murders of Jamar Clarke in 2014, Philando Castile in 2016, and George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of police brutality. As tensions threatened to spiral further, the Trump administration announced a series of changes: replacing ICE commander Greg Bovino with so-called “border czar” Tom Homan, and on February 12, announcing that the operation in Minneapolis would come to an end. But in Minneapolis, many residents say the shift has been more cosmetic than substantive. Raids continue, surveillance lingers, and entire communities remain on edge. The fear has not lifted. It has settled. In this fragile uncertainty of what happens next, the Minneapolis community has turned to care. Across the city, people are gathering not just to strategize or protest, but to also grieve together: to light candles, pray, sing, and move their bodies in unison. Memorials for Good and Pretti have become meeting grounds. Healing circles, ceremonies, and music-filled vigils have emerged as lifelines for a community nowhere near recovered, yet refusing to unravel. Posters of Renee Good and Alex Pretti adorn the city, plastered on empty walls, hung up on store windows. Photo Credit: Joi LeeA legacy of trauma—and healingIn Minneapolis, trauma does not arrive without memory. Neither does healing. I met Leslie Redmond, an organizer and former president of Minneapolis NAACP, at a healing circle she convened the day after Pretti’s murder. Nestled in a small community cafe, tables were pushed aside and chairs brought into the circle. Wafts of warm home-made chili floated in from the vegan kitchen, and cups of piping hot lemon ginger tea—nourishing for the soul, we were assured—were handed out. As folks trickled into their seats, nervous chatter gave way to quiet realization that everyone was holding a pain that needed to be shared. Looking around the faces in the room, many etched with stress and exhaustion, Redmond reminded us, “Before we can build, we must heal. ”Redmond is no stranger to collective trauma inflicted by the hands of law enforcement. She had lived through the police killings of Jamar Clarke, Philando Castile, and George Floyd, as well as the uprisings that followed. “Back then, I wasn’t actively healing. My back went out. My hair was falling out. We were in the fight phase. And then I realized, we need to move to the healing phase. ”By the end of 2020, Redmond decided to create a community healing team for collective mourning. When Good was killed, that infrastructure, built slowly and deliberately, was ready to spring into action. “Healing is fundamental,” Redmond said, before quoting Audre Lorde’s seminal words from A Burst of Light: “Self-care is not self-indulgence. Self-care is self-preservation, which is an act of political warfare. ”These days, Remond facilitates weekly healing circles. For many, the healing circles have become a place to reset. To find solace in knowing that what Minnesotans are going through is real, and not imagined. To find validation in their pain, yet also resolution in how to move forward. At one of the meetings, a 13-year-old quietly confessed to the group, “I feel like I’ve lost my peace. ” At another, a Somali elder shared, “We’ve been living in fear. But looking around, how beautiful to remember why I decided to call this place my home. ”Different cultures, shared medicine in memorialThe memorials of Pretti and Good, built at the sites where they were killed, have become living spaces of ceremony and connection. The rituals of healing are as diverse as the communities that Pretti and Good gave their lives to protect. At a vigil for Pretti organized by his fellow nurses, I met members of the Hmong community, an ethnic group that originates from Southeast Asia and largely came over as refugees to Minneapolis in the mid-1970’s. The Twin Cities are home to the largest concentration of Hmong people in the U. S. One person held a sign reading, “A Hmong shaman for healers & humanity!” Another read, “A Hmong Christian for healers & humanity!”A woman who asked me to call her Yaya explained why she was there. “As a healer from the Hmong community, as a shaman, I came to support them, healer to healer,” she said. “Because we do so much healing, but we forget to heal ourselves. Today is about healing the healers. ”The group offered both prayers and blessed strings. People approached quietly, asking for care. Some requested Christian prayer, others a shamanic blessing. Kiki, the Christian, clasped their hands tightly, offering a prayer and a hug. Yaya took each person’s right hand, looping a thin string around the wrist and tying it gently in place, murmuring a prayer so soft it barely rose above the street noise. Many accepted both. Ceremony as resistanceIndigenous communities also organized ceremonies honoring Good and Pretti. Among them was a Jingle Dress Dance ceremony, rooted in Ojibwe healing traditions, meant to restore health and balance to those who need it. Over 30 members of the Minneapolis Native community came together at both memorials to perform their sacred dance, adorned in vibrant dresses. Metal cones are woven in intricate patterns around the dress, such that a slight movement creates a rhythmic sound. “The dress came to our people when there was a time of sickness. And so that’s what we do. We show up when there’s people suffering,” Downwind said, one of the organizers of the ceremony. Jingle Dress Dancers gather at Renee Good memorial’s site to perform a healing ceremony. Photo Credit: Joi LeeThe sound of metal cones sewn onto the dresses echoed through the cold air—each step a prayer, each movement an offering—was met with quiet attentiveness by the audience. When the dance finished at Good’s memorial, the crowd moved to Pretti’s, a journey that in itself felt like a pilgrimage, connecting the deaths of two Minnesotans with the lives of all those who remained, continuing their legacy. For many in attendance, the presence of Native dancers felt both sacred and a reminder that this land holds older traditions of survival. That healing did not begin, nor will it end, with this moment. Music and the permission to feelMusic has also become a vessel for collective healing. Groups like Brass Solidarity,a band that was founded in response to the murder of George Floyd, have organized performances at the memorials, bringing instruments into spaces thick with grief. In the cold, unforgiving nights of Minneapolis, hundreds gather by Alex Pretti’s memorial site to listen to the musical tribute given by Brass Solidarity. Photo Credit: Joi LeeOne evening at Pretti’s memorial, hundreds of people stood shoulder to shoulder, bodies seeking warmth and rhythm. Brass instruments rang out, fingers braving subzero temperatures to play. Anthony Afful, a musician with Brass Solidarity, described the role of music in these spaces. “Part of what we’re doing,” he said, “is helping people remember that they’re human. ”Music, he explained, creates room for the full range of emotion. “This is a dark time. There has to be space for grief, for rage, and also for joy—to exist together. ”I spoke to another musician, Tufawon, who is Native-Boricua. For him, it is not just experiencing music but also its creative expression that helps unlock emotional processing. He’s currently holding a music workshop for Native youth, many of whom have been deeply impacted by ICE raids despite being the Indigenous peoples of this land. “As colonized people, we’re impacted by historical trauma,” Tufawon explained. “We carry it through our genes. And now there’s a collective trauma that the entire city, the entire state, really, is holding. We don’t take the time to process what we experience. Music is a mindfulness practice. So I use music to bring healing into the moment, so they can find some level of balance and not crash so hard when it’s all over. ”Tufawon is a local Minneapolis artist, both Native and Puerto Rican, who uses music as an educational and community tool to heal and lift up the Native youth community. Photo Credit: Joi LeeHealing circles, ceremonies, music, and prayer: many of these are rituals with a rich, long history. They have navigated many cultures in the past and will continue to do so in the future. They have passed through countless cultures and generations, carrying meaning far beyond any single moment. But in a time where Minneapolis is being ripped apart—when the very definition of who belongs, of what it means to be an “American,” is under violent scrutiny—these rituals of care have reaffirmed something that cannot be detained, erased, or deported. That the very fabric of this place has been woven together by so many cultures, by so many peoples. And that it will be healed by them, together. Minneapolis is no stranger to rebuilding. It is a city, a sacred land, that is practiced in rising from devastation, again and again. "
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "The Trump Corollary: A Warning for Latin American Sovereign",
"author" : "Isadora Szklo",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-trump-corollary",
"date" : "2026-03-12 13:07:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Screenshot%202026-03-13%20at%209.54.00%E2%80%AFAM.png",
"excerpt" : "In the major film award ceremonies of the past two years, my country, Brazil, has been garnering numerous statuettes. I’m Still Here and Secret Agent share a common theme: our military dictatorship, which began with the 1964 coup d’état. Brazil was but one of six Southern Cone nations to have its democratic regime severed during that era through Operation Condor, in which the CIA was deeply entrenched.",
"content" : "In the major film award ceremonies of the past two years, my country, Brazil, has been garnering numerous statuettes. I’m Still Here and Secret Agent share a common theme: our military dictatorship, which began with the 1964 coup d’état. Brazil was but one of six Southern Cone nations to have its democratic regime severed during that era through Operation Condor, in which the CIA was deeply entrenched. Excerpt from a report based on CIA information, drafted by the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Harry Shlaudeman, and presented to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in August 1976. Attacks on Latin American governments are not isolated events, but Trump’s foreign policies are the precedent-setting warning that the “Operation Condor” of the 21st century has arrived. On the 3rd day of the year, Trump has normalized the kidnapping of foreign leaders as a tool of interventionist statecraft, and the West didn’t seem to think a big deal out of it. We are watching the creation of a new yet old “permission structure” for U. S. intervention: the blunt extension of American penal law over foreign leaders, bypassing any international consensus. Now, a bit over a month later, the even more strict sanctions against Cuba seem to go along the same path. It all signals that sovereignty in the Global South is now and again a revocable privilege, and that the domestic laws of the United States have officially become the new international law for the entire hemisphere. Why it matters: beyond VenezuelaSeeing the relief of Venezuelans this January, I recognize a yearning common to subjugated peoples: a longing for mutual solidarity and the power to dismantle projects that fail to guarantee a meaningful life. Perhaps it is also a craving for the ideals of democracy and multilateralism once sold to us. Yet, if these concepts were always dubious in the Global South, they are now a proven farce—a reality made undeniable by two years of permitted genocide in Palestine. After Gaza, anything is possible. The situation reveals a deep and persistent void. In its wake, a rift opens in the relations between the Global North and South. Since politics abhors a vacuum, Trump occupies this space in the most hazardous way possible. He does what the U. S. has always done, but with a certain popular mandate from those who disregard history in favor of their immediate, desperate desires. For them, the more desperate, the better. And keeping Cubans from having fuel to drive ambulances, while stealing its neighbour’s oil, sure is a successful way to keep people desperate. Although we are living through the symptoms of our time, when Trump treats international law as a mere extension of American law, they are simply reheating old colonial ideas. It is crucial to distinguish his blunt, fascist undertones from the broader arc of U. S. history: while uniquely terrifying, Trump’s methods possess a potential to shatter the myths of Western benevolence. We often forget — or our media fails to mention — that this history has repeated itself as a farce since at least the 1954 invasion of Guatemala. This curated amnesia creates the perfect vacuum for the Trump Corollary to take root: without reckoning with our own history of intervention and imperial violence, we remain susceptible to old colonial tropes disguised as modern justice. Meanwhile, in the West, Trump exploits the limited common knowledge of Latin American, Venezuelan and Cuban history to market the satisfying image of punished dictators and failed regimes. To many, this appeals, allowing them to forget that the execution of this punishment was a dangerous violation of human rights. It should be quite obvious that a leader being captured and forced to answer to a foreign penal system—without any constitutional guarantees—is utterly absurd. No one, not even a major criminal, should answer to the legal system of a country where they have no democratic standing. One does not defend democracy through colonial, authoritarian, and universalist methods. It is chilling to observe that even the international left or progressives seem to treat Trump’s world-dictator stance in Venezuela, Cuba or Iran as something subjective or filled with positive contradictions. This leaves any challenger of the empire vulnerable. And by challenger, I mean anyone living in the South who either actively fights it or who simply believes it is better to live in peace on their own southern soil than under a threatening Yankee thumb. A Lab for Latin AmericaSocial inequality is foundational to the survival of neoliberalism and capitalism. Consequently, the system relentlessly suppresses any effort to operate on a level playing field. How many times in the history of class struggle have the impoverished, the workers, and the slum-dwellers been allowed to determine their own reality?This is no different in Latin América or Venezuela itself. As any progressive project progressed in our territories, so did the friction and intransigence of an international bourgeoisie. So, one by one, they fell. Today, most of our countries are no longer as threatening to the global order as Venezuela or Cuba. During these times it is difficult to imagine that it would be possible for a country in the global south to dictate the future of the world’s biggest commodity and its billions of dollars. So, to deal with these projects, the plan was to repeat the last century: use the national bourgeoisie to sabotage internal processes. This, as it always does, involved illegal and cruel methods against the people, marred by coup attempts and U. S. intervention at the height of the “War on Terror. ”The repression records discovered in Paraguay that proved Operation Condor and make up the ‘Archives of Terror’ (CIPDH). Trump is merely the most grotesque symptom of a dorsal U. S. policy that remains unchanged regardless of who sits in the Oval Office, now exacerbated by a fascist mandate. Trump’s Corollary and his freedom to attack countries and its leaders seems to be a lesson on what happens when our governments dare to act without consulting U. S. interests. The strategy is repeated ad nauseam: implode the economy to force an authoritarian turn, then use that very turn to justify military punishment. This is the permission structure that now threatens the entire continent and global order. Destabilizing nations to make them too fragile to oppose American will is an old strategy. Yet the West, alienated from the conditions its own regimes impose on us, buys into this “democracy” miracle — ignoring that this laboratory is already preparing its next targets. Trump’s Corollary and 2026The Trump Corollary poses an immediate risk to any nation seeking strategic autonomy. Countries like Colombia, under Petro’s attempt at reform, Cuba, or Mexico, are most at risk—politically, as targets of regime change rhetoric, and economically, through the weaponization of the dollar and sanctions. The rhetoric itself is already very alarming, as the pressure of a potential intervention against a leftist government creates, by itself, a massive influence over our political direction. If electing a progressive government is already difficult in Latin America, it becomes almost an impossible mission when the progressiveness of the government and its alliance to the US is used as a way to evaluate how much it poses a threat to a fascist administration. Who wants to be Donald Trump’s target?In Brazil, the danger is tangible, as 2026 is the year of one of our most important presidential elections. Bolsonaro, who has been a threat to our democracy, was put to jail for an attempted coup, and since then, his son has been in the US begging for regime change intervention, creating an environment of growing flirtation with the idea of the U. S. breaching our autonomy. The other son of his is starting a presidential campaign. Just like the narrative to arrest Maduro was narcotrafficking, there is an ongoing narrative about our issues with narcotrafficking, and an attempt to classify it in a way that only makes sense in the US. With the tariffs and the constant threats of classifying our specific social problems using the American rules, we remain in the crosshairs of this laboratory of destabilization. Can we turn demands into solidarity?To allow—without protest—invasions, sanctions, deaths or abductions by finding solace in the flaws of an adversary is to normalize a new, profoundly dangerous political order for the Global South. These hegemonic tools never intend to promote liberation; they are masked by the West’s claim to a universal voice, a convenient fiction used to justify a cowardly refusal to engage with our complexity. As children of colonized soil, we must be the first to distrust these totalizing narratives, recognizing that our peoples are not a monolith and that our struggles cannot be evaluated through a single, foreign lens. True solidarity, therefore, requires more than a lenient silence that treats our lands as mere testing grounds for the whims of a foreign leader. It demands a conscious effort to move beyond common sense and meet us where we are, centering the voices of those living the reality of their own soil. We ask that you truly listen, reject simplistic narratives and study the geopolitics that enable genuine resistance. Real multilateralism begins by crafting narratives that center sovereignty over market stability, ensuring that the precedent set in Caracas does not become the blueprint for our own capitals. As Latin Americans, the task before us is immense, but we cannot stand alone. We must be able to count on your collective conscience. Across this continent, there is a profound, shared longing for true sovereignty: the simple, radical desire of a people to determine their own destiny. Or, as Victor Jara would say, we only want the right to live in peace. "
}
,
{
"title" : "Weaving Palestinian Heritage with Lara Salous’ Wool Woman",
"author" : "Ayesha Le Breton",
"category" : "interviews",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/lara-salous-wool-woman-palestine-heritage-interview",
"date" : "2026-03-12 12:21:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Wool%20Woman%20Image%201.jpeg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "Lara Salous with shepherd Rajeh Al-Essa at his house in Mughayer village where he shows her how to use the Palestinian traditional drop spindle (Ghazzale)Photo Credit: Raof Haj YahyaTo Lara Salous, the disappearing art of wool weaving needs a revival. “The loom is a tool that’s now endangered in Palestine,” says the 37-year-old Palestinian artist and designer, who called me from her studio, nestled in Ramallah Al-balad, the old city, in the occupied West Bank. She’d spent the morning packing art frames, throws, and short stools that customers in Norway and Canada ordered from her home decor brand: Wool Woman. “It’s more of a network rather than a company that controls everything,” Salous explains of Wool Woman. Behind the brand is a delicate, sometimes precarious, web that connects Salous to shepherds and wool spinners in Palestine—too often at the mercy of Israel’s siege of the area. Abu Saddam Traifat, a Palestinian Bedouin shepherd who Salous sourced her wool from, for instance, spent years tending to his Indigenous flock of Awassi sheep in al-Auja, Jericho, washing his harvest of wool in the vital water spring. All his sheep are now gone, as are the majority of Palestinians in the area, because Israeli settlers, accompanied by the Israeli army and police, stole all his sheep in the middle of the night. This, Salous explains, is just one case of how Israeli control and violence affect the area. “In al-Mughayer, a village near Ramallah, I interviewed three shepherds,” she says. “When I visited them the last time, it was just after the settlers burned 30 houses, including one of the shepherd’s homes. ”Recent reports by Al Jazeera confirm that Israeli settlers have annexed the entirety of al-Auja spring, forcing out and blocking water access to Bedouin herding communities like Traifat’s, who have resided in the surrounding areas since before 1967. Throughout 2025, settler violence against Palestinians soared to record devastation across the West Bank. In October alone, there were over 260 violent attacks, leading to deaths, injuries, property damage, and stolen livestock. As Israel’s genocide on Gaza and occupied Palestine rages on, Salous’s Wool Woman feels more crucial than ever to archive and celebrate Palestinian culture and identity. Lara embroidering the Palestinian flag with wool on a woven frame. Photo Credit: Mahmoud AbdatSalous traces Wool Woman’s inspiration back to October 2020. At the time, she was teaching an architecture and design course at her alma mater, Birzeit University, near Ramallah, and participating in a workshop investigating historical, cultural, and personal ties to the making of Palestinian rugs. It was on a field trip to visit Bedouin communities in Khan al-Ahmar, whose rug industry was once integral to the area’s economic livelihood, that Salous was struck by the absence of rugs and the wool used to make them. She learned that shortly after Al Naqba, the tribe fled harassment in the hills south of Hebron, leaving their homes and belongings, including the livestock and wool. But even in their new location, Israel encroached upon the Bedouin community’s lives, limiting where they could graze and raise their sheep, eventually making wool production nearly impossible. “Something started to spark in my mind; I began questioning what was happening to this industry or to this craft,” Salous remembers. “The [Bedouin women] showed us one [rug] that they preserved in a wooden box, which is used for celebrations or weddings. ” I asked them, “Why don’t you make them anymore? They said, ‘It’s so hard to maintain a living from sheep because we are in a daily struggle with the Israeli settlers. ’”Houses in Khan al Ahmar where Lara visits the woman she purchases wool from. Photo Credit: Lara SalousWitnessing remnants of the fading practice, Salous felt a renewed sense of purpose in working with these artisans. Through word of mouth and returning to Bedouin communities in Khan al-Ahmar, Salous began interviewing, photographing, and filming the shepherds, descendants of weavers, and searching for wool spinners. “I’m collecting oral history and trying to capture images and short videos, because you can never find anything in the archives,” Salous explains. “We invited one woman to weave at the university. I then started to ask around about women who are still spinning [wool]. It took me a lot of time, to be honest. ” Years of field research and building relationships culminated in the evolving network that now makes Wool Woman possible. Using her interior design background, Salous started to integrate wool into furniture designs. Since most Bedouin weavers are either displaced or long deceased, she is mostly self-taught and dyes the material herself. Experimentation and play are at the center of her process. She conjures thoughtful motifs of Palestinian identity and liberation, including olive trees, poppies, and watermelon slices. She incorporates bold teal and maroon stripes and abstract color blocking that take shape on rocking chairs, room dividers, throws, curtains, and benches, among other pieces. “Sometimes I do some design sketches on paper, [or] I just design on the spot while mixing the colors because you can do more when you have these rich textures and tones in your hand,” explains Salous. The first products she sold were stools and chairs created with carpenters in Ramallah—the carpenters crafted the wooden structures while Salous wove the seats and backs. LEFT: Lara’s woven olive tree design on a stool inspired by the Palestinian landscape. Photo Credit: Lara SalousRIGHT: Lara finalizing a wool throw she wove on the loom. Photo Credit: Mahmoud Abdat“The kick start for me was at a gallery here called Living Cultures, but now it’s closed. People started to come, and they purchased them [the stools and chairs],” she recalls. “From there, I built on other designs. It was very interactive with the local community because people started to ask me for bigger chairs or higher stools or chairs with a big back. ”Community is core to the designer’s craft revival. “It’s something that we inherited, and we need to pass it from hand to hand,” Salous explains. Through Wool Woman and the Palestinian Centre for Architectural Conservation, Salous has developed intergenerational weaving workshops for children and their parents, and any adults who wish to participate. Together, they create natural dyes with flower petals and integrate Palestinian traditional tile design into simple weavings. Her impact on attendees extends far beyond the triannual sessions. Salous beams when she explains that some students have taken on the practice as their own. “I’m so happy that one of the students purchased a professional loom that she now has at home. Another one who was very excited; he wanted to work with me,” she says. Running Wool Woman is not without its challenges. As the shepherds and women Salous sources from remain under constant threat of theft, violence, and land siege—their livelihoods at stake—Wool Woman has encountered supply chain delays and Salous has had to pause visits to her collaborators’ communities. “It’s not safe at all,” she shares. “I keep sourcing from one shepherd, but it’s very dangerous now, especially recently, now that the Israeli settlers built another settlement on the top of their mountain [in al-Mughayer]. ” She keeps up with orders as best she can, holding onto a stock of wool that is already processed and spun, and dyeing the material herself. “To be honest, it’s exhausting,” she admits. Local demand has expectedly dwindled throughout the genocide, making it impossible for Wool Woman to afford employees and increasingly difficult to make a profit. But as Salous recounts these hardships with vulnerability, her commitment to preserving Palestinian weaving echoes. “I’m alone on the business side, but I keep supporting these women by purchasing wool from them,” she says. “[I’m] trying to take this material into other shapes and other possibilities. ”Lately, Wool Woman has found creative refuge by collaborating with fellow Palestinian artists. “With architects, interior designers, and fashion designers, these are the best projects I ever had because you feel that you are integrating more into your community,” shares Salous. Nöl Collective, the popular fashion label that celebrates weavers and embroiderers across Palestine, recently commissioned braiding from Wool Woman for a pair of trousers. And it was through their founder that Salous connected with Hussam Zaqout, one of the last surviving Gazan weavers and the inspiration for her latest art installation, If Only We Could Bury Our City. Guided by their shared purpose of preserving Palestinian heritage, Salous presents a towering traditional Majdalwi Fabric loom and intimate interviews with Zaqout, who narrates his intergenerational connection to the ancient profession. Multimedia installation of ‘If Only We Could Bury Our City,’ made from Lara’s research and interviews with Hussam Zaqout. Photo Credit: Elis HannikainenFor Zaqout, Israel’s genocidal onslaught is tangible. “Just one month before the war, I had set up a new workshop, added additional tools and equipment to expand my work. I also had parts of a weaving loom that existed in the city of al-Majdal before the occupation,” he recalls. “Unfortunately, all of this was destroyed during the airstrikes on the city. ” By March 2024, Zaqout made the difficult and expensive decision to evacuate Gaza to Cairo. Through fundraising, he and some of his family reached Cairo safely, where he has been rebuilding his weaving center. Facing profound loss and a need for hope, for Zaqout, contributing to Salous’s art felt imperative. He shares, “It was a mix of pride, gratitude, and responsibility: for my personal experience and the craft I inherited from my father, to be an inspiration for an artwork of this significance. [It] makes me feel that the voice of my family, the voice of Palestine, and the memory of my hometown, al-Majdal, are still present and not forgotten, despite all the loss and displacement we have endured. ”In the wake of destruction, clinging to and sharing memories has become a form of resistance and a means of survival. Salous delicately entwines oral histories, like Zaqout’s, and material politics into thoughtful art and design, holding a rare space for Palestinian identity, culture, and history to flourish. “One story could say a lot about [the] shared realities that Palestinians face since the Nakba. Through meeting Husam and other Palestinian weavers, I bring back memories to a wider audience,” says Salous. “Our cities are being erased, but we still hold them in our bodies and memories. ”Multimedia installation of ‘If Only We Could Bury Our City,’ made from Lara’s research and interviews with Hussam Zaqout. Photo Credit: Elis Hannikainen"
}
,
{
"title" : "Forced From Home: Women Living Through Lebanon’s Evacuation Zones",
"author" : "Sarah Sinno",
"category" : "essay",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/forced-from-home",
"date" : "2026-03-12 11:56:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/PHOTO-2026-03-11-04-23-35.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "Photo Credit: Omar GabrielMalak told me they left Chaqra, a village in southern Lebanon, at four in the morning and did not reach her aunt’s house in Saida until one in the morning the next day. “We were fasting and exhausted, but we had dates,” she said. “We took them out of the car and began sharing them with the people around us. We also helped another repair a car that had broken down, and despite the fear, we got to know each other. ”The following morning, the news arrived: their house had been bombed by Israel. On March 2, residents across southern Lebanon woke to Israeli “evacuation orders. ” At first glance, the term suggests concern for civilian life, invoking the language of safety and protection. In reality, however, these orders function as a mechanism of forced uprooting, compelling entire communities to abandon their homes under the threat of bombardment. Official state reports indicate that nearly 700,000 people have been internally displaced over the past week. Many spent nearly 24 hours trapped on the roads trying to reach Beirut, a journey that normally takes less than two hours from even the farthest villages along the Lebanese–Palestinian border. Many of those forced to flee their homes had been preparing shour, the meal eaten before sunrise, ahead of the daily fast, when they left in haste, unsure when they would be able to return. Women, who often manage the household, cook, and care for the children, frequently bear the emotional burden of holding the family together in times of crisis while coping with prolonged uncertainty. For working women, displacement frequently results in losing their jobs and the financial independence they once had, pushing them into increasingly difficult conditions to sustain themselves. Photo Credit: Omar GabrielFor instance, on March 4, similar evacuation orders were issued for Dahiye, Beirut’s southern suburbs. Khadije, a resident of Hay Al-Solom, is now sheltering on the second floor of the Lebanese University in Beirut. The public campus, usually crowded with students moving between classes, is now filled with displaced families. “No one has asked about us,” she says. “I am a Lebanese citizen. I have a Lebanese ID. Where is the emergency relief?” Sitting in the corner of a classroom, she speaks with visible disappointment. As she shows me the medicines she depends on, she questions why the Lebanese government has done nothing to provide protection or assistance. It is a sentiment widely shared across a community that has long felt neglected by the state. Even international organizations, faced with shrinking budgets, have fallen short in their relief response and have not been able to act at the level of urgency required. “Several of my neighbors could not leave despite the evacuation order, because they have nowhere to go. They only leave at night and sleep by the beach in Ramlet al-Bayda to escape the constant bombing sounds. ” With no alternative, one might think that sleeping in the open air would, grimly, feel safer than staying in one’s own home. Yet even there, they remain targets of Israeli barbarism. On March 12, around two in the morning, Israel carried out a massacre against displaced people who had sought refuge by the Ramlet al-Bayda beach, killing ten of them. Witnesses describe women’s and children’s body parts scattered across the site. Nowhere is truly safe. Souad, who lives on the outskirts of Beirut, was forced to flee her home and is now sheltering in a school in Choueifat. In this area, speaking with displaced residents proved difficult, as the municipality appears to have imposed strict regulations. These measures are meant to organize the large influx of people and, I was told, prevent chaos. But they also create an uneasy atmosphere. Conversations feel monitored, almost scripted, as if everyone is careful not to say the wrong thing. The tension of this is palpable across the country, with fearmongering on the rise and some openly expressing that they do not want displaced families in their neighborhoods. As a result, many of the displaced feel targeted both by Israel and from within. There is growing concern that even minor disagreements could quickly spiral out of control. With a smile that never quite leaves her face and a frail cat sitting beside us, Souad tells me that her house was destroyed during the previous war. Now, she says, it feels as though everything is happening all over again. “When I lost my house last time, I went back to search through the rubble,” she recalls. “Luckily, I found what is most precious: a photo album of my children. ”Displacement did not begin with the most recent evacuation orders; it has been ongoing. Since 2024, several frontline villages have been razed to the ground and turned into ghost towns. Photo Credit: Omar GabrielReturn has effectively been forbidden as the Israeli occupation gradually expands its control. On March 5, it announced the seizure of additional land alongside the five positions it has held there since November 2024, further entrenching a reality in which many displaced families still have no clear path home. Wafaa, from Rab El Thalathine, a southern village directly on the border, had her home destroyed in 2024 and has not been able to return since. Displaced once again from a second house she had rented in Beirut, she now finds herself sheltering in a school in Burj Abi Haidar. When I ask her what she longs for most once the war is over, a moment of silence follows. She takes a long breath, her voice breaking, and says:“I had planted my garden in the village with all kinds of flowers: jasmine, Damask roses, gardenias, and carnations. After the last so-called ‘ceasefire,’ I was told the garden had been scorched. All I want is for my land to remain. ”As I write these lines, Israel issues new evacuation orders. It never stops. "
}
]
}
