A note from adrienne maree brown: Malkia Devich Cyril is the founder of the Center for Media Justice; Malkia’s grief and loss in their own life has focused them on how we turn our collective attention toward grief. As the founder of Pandemic Joy and the Freedom Cleanse, Malkia knows a lot about how online community can meet real-life needs.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, I’ve spent my nights scrolling through videos of dead Palestinian children, etched in Instagram and backed by blue light. I scroll because as much as I cannot bear the gruesome brutality of missing infant arms, bloody 5-year-olds screaming for their mother, grandfathers on their knees holding their dead child in one arm and dead grandchild in the other—I also cannot bear to turn away.
As a Black masc genderqueer lesbian, to turn away from this evidence of imperial violence would be to turn away from Sandra Bland, from Mike Brown, from Tamir Rice, from the anti-Black…