Leonard is still in prison. Biden signed on January 20, 15 minutes before leaving the president’s chair, but, you know, bureaucracy takes time. Just as it is difficult to remove the teeth of a Doberman that is attached to your calf, it is difficult to remove the FBI’s teeth from Leonard’s leg.
This is how Peltier is spending this 49th anniversary of his entry into prison, into jail. We are waiting, not without a hint of anxiety, for February 18.
I have spent, together with many others, this last year in a continuous attempt to act for the end of the massacre in Gaza and for the liberation of Peltier. A succession of demonstrations, rallies, meetings, flash mobs, and appeals has been made to contribute to these distant struggles, in the face of which the sense of impotence was similar and the disproportion of forces was identical.
On January 19, the ceasefire began in Gaza; on January 20, Biden signed for house arrest for Peltier. In two days, calm seemed to return. Instead, in both cases, I felt empty, in tears, exhausted, and humiliated. I couldn’t “rejoice.”
And yet, in both events, something strange happened. Once, those who “won” the war celebrated; now, those who celebrate mean that they “won” the war.
So the images of Palestinians celebrating with two fingers raised and the Natives in the US who shouted with joy made me say: maybe then we should celebrate.
We are in very hard times, and worse awaits us. We rejoice over crumbs, seeming to enjoy ourselves like a puppy when given a cheese rind or a salami skin from the dinner table. We hear our whining in front of international appeals courts and the United Nations, which issue sentences and resolutions that those responsible use to wipe their behinds.
Two parallel stories: the dissolution of the Native peoples in the Americas, their confinement, exclusion, and massacre, with an underlying racism that allows everything; ditto for the Palestinians. The difference is that the Palestinians are still resisting. Perhaps fortunately for them, unlike the American Indians, they do not drink alcohol.
In the meantime, both of them (and perhaps all of us) feel the vulture Trump flying over their heads, wanting more, wanting everything, laughing raucously from the seat of power in the world.
We have all (I hope) seen the images of that river of men, women, old people, and children, who with their bundles moved towards the north of Gaza amidst the destruction, only to arrive in an equally destroyed place where they found their dead under the rubble. Those images will probably go hand in hand with a Peltier who, after 49 years in prison, will vomit the entire journey to his land in North Dakota. He will vomit because of the horizon he is no longer used to seeing and because of the jolts of the car. Let’s hope he doesn’t vomit because of the reality that will surround him, because of what has happened in these last 50 years, in which the rich have become increasingly rich, the poor have multiplied, wars are raging, spending on armaments is multiplying, and the planet is going to hell.
Let’s stop for a moment. Let’s try to catch our breath: Leonard returns home, hugs his family, and goes back to seeing the trees, the children, and the sea. The Palestinians no longer have planes and drones in the sky above them.
But we must start again from there, not to return to our homes, but to denounce even more loudly what these stories have been, so that we do not fail to remember, so that justice and freedom continue to be our goals for all the peoples of the world—indeed, for all living beings on earth. With even more determination, courage, and lucidity.
