Jake: *finger Guns* Hey, Cool Beans, How Are You?

Jake: You haven't moved since I left 5 hours ago...

Isa: Excuse me, where do you think these chips came from?!

I was punched and pepper sprayed by cops that my university administration set on student protesters yesterday. Including once where a cop ripped my mask off my face, grabbed my jaw, and sprayed pepper sprayed straight into my mouth. The university sent out an alert in the middle of our protest canceling classes for the rest of the day, only citing “adverse conditions”. After protesters dispersed under threat of even more violence and three buses of riot police from all over the state with rubber bullets and bully sticks parked in front of one our school’s famous landmarks. I staggered over to a couple of friends who were watching on the sidelines. They gave me water and an apple and held a bag of ice on my very pepper spray irritated face. As they were walking me back to my dorm we ran into one of their roommates. She had taken cancelled classes as an opportunity to get crumbl cookie with her friends. Standing in front of her, happy in a floral blouse with her box of cookies, in my pepper spray and water soaked tshirt, keffiyeh sadly hanging off my shoulder, holding an ice pack to my mouth, felt like a slap in the face.

After putting my pepper spray soaked clothes, shoes, and keffiyeh in a plastic bag and taking an extraordinarily painful shower, a friend and I went for dinner just off campus. There we had a pot of green tea and ramen to soothe pepper sprayed throats. We got ice cream after (shared a cup with chocolate and raspberry pomegranate with strawberry pieces on top, it was very good). From our spot outside the ice cream place we watched a steady stream of groups of sorority girls in matching jeans shorts and blue bikini tops walking back to their apartments after some apparently raucous parties. The cognitive dissonance was insane. I really felt a little like I was going crazy.

Even this morning, waking up to the smeared sharpie of the National Lawyer’s Guild’s phone number on my arm, a black and blue chest from where a grown man straight up clocked me while I was held up by two other protesters in a wall, and a still sore throat and eyes from the pepper spray, life goes on like normal. I still have final papers to write and a math exam to review for.

I’m not sure I really have a point. But, this feeling only makes me want to fight harder for a free Palestine. So, fuck Israel for being an apartheid state and all of their crimes over the last 76 years. Fuck university administration for not disclosing their level of investment in Israel. Fuck university administration for not divesting from this genocide. Fuck Joe Biden for actively supporting this genocide. And fuck the police.

This is the same thing over and over again. Palestinians die every day, but it gets a lukewarm headline from mainstream media because death and destruction is inherent to Arabness. Then an aid convoy with white workers is obliterated, and now both the president of the United States and the president of Israel are making statements apologizing for “the poor protection of aid workers.” At one point we were seeing multiple reports a day of paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society dying, but nothing. Crickets. Because they don’t care. And even in these “remorseful statements” there is a strategic reminder that white lives hold more weight than brown lives.

zionists are finding gazans donations posts and harassing them and talking shit. if you see that PLEASE drown them out but with love for the gazans you're defending and not with hate towards the zionists. the goal is to make the person being harassed feel loved and not to fill their notes with negativity even if it's directed at zionists

reminder : love yourself 💕💕

Jake: The first time I ever got upset in front of Isa, she put her arms around me and it was so awkward that I had to ask her if she was hugging me or reaching for something on the shelf behind me.

Isa: I was doing both, for your information.

Kai: The first time Isa hugged me, it was such a disaster we didn’t make eye contact for, like, a week after.

"I'm nothing to him. But that's okay. He's everything to me."

the thick, grey mist concealed the sun’s golden rays. a ray of light managed to creep through the curtains. she burrowed herself into her blankets. she could still remember that day.

fuck! i’m in love…again!

Isa: Do you take constructive criticism?

Jake: Not without crying.

Isa: I am going to name my kid Pac-man so he can see ghosts.