This represents a chapter out of the longer publication I've authored, which is still in development, entitled "Standing, Photographing, Sitting, Filming, Organizing, Screenshotting, Resharing, in Solidarity, or how to block a highway for climate justice, report police violence without a follow-up, occupy a building for justice, and shake up art educational institutions for Palestine, together.", originally published as my graduation thesis from the program Photography and Society at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, in 2024.
Chapter 6. The Compartimentalisation of Solidarity. October 7th happens, reverberating in The Climate Protest March in Amsterdam, November 12, 2023
“American Sonnet for the New Year”
by Terrance Hayes
things got terribly ugly incredibly quickly
things got ugly embarrassingly quickly
actually things got ugly unbelievably quickly
honestly things got ugly seemingly infrequently
initially things got ugly ironically usually
awfully carefully things got ugly unsuccessfully
occasionally things got ugly mostly painstakingly
quietly seemingly things got ugly beautifully
infrequently things got ugly sadly especially
frequently unfortunately things got ugly
increasingly obviously things got ugly suddenly
embarrassingly forcefully things got really ugly
regularly truly quickly things got really incredibly
ugly things will get less ugly inevitably hopefully.
On Tuesday, March 22, 2022, a piece authored by Shireen Tawil was published on the global website of Extinction Rebellion. It was titled “The ”Desert” was Already Blooming. Palestine, Colonialism and Global Climate Justice”.
It dug into the situation of Palestine and the system of Israeli settler colonialism and Apartheid that ruled over it. It touched upon one of the chants heard over and over at Extinction Rebellion protests, scribbled across protest boards, photographed extensively:
What do we want?
Climate Justice!
When do we want it?
Now!
Tawil writes:
The terms ”climate justice” and ”environmental justice” are used interchangeably, but ”environmental justice” came first, rooted in the experiences of marginalised black communities fighting back against their neighbourhoods being used as a dumping ground for toxic waste. ”Climate justice” is a newer term and relates to specific injustices linked to the rapidly accelerating climate crisis, but is also linked to the growth of climate-specific social movements in the 21st century and an understanding of climate injustices as truly transboundary, international issues that demand international solidarity.
The piece framed the climate issue as one which is intersectional - spanning gender, citizenship status, ethnicity, or economic ability, Global North and South - an issue which is clearly visible in the disparity of how Palestinians and Israelis can tackle climate breakdown - one group having ownership over the resources of the other.
It was at the time, as well as during the A12 blockade in The Hague, unclear whether those taking part in Extinction Rebellion protests and chanting along to the tune of ‘climate justice’ demands had read the Extinction Rebellion positioning on the topic of Palestine. Extinction Rebellion operates based on an ‘action consensus’, which is 'a binding framework for non-violent direct actions undertaken during the Extinction Rebellion campaign', but can it also uphold one coherent political vision? And it became all the more obvious that little to no attention was given to the meaning of the chant invoking ‘climate justice’ once Operation Al-Aqsa Flood happened on October 7th, 2023, followed by Israel declaring a state of war, tightening its blockade, ordering the evacuation of the northern Gaza Strip, and launching ‘Operation Swords of Iron’ with the stated goals of destroying Hamas, controlling Gaza and freeing the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th.
While the conflict would not be the only one where Global North and Global South disparities were highlighted, nor the only situation on which the climate movement chimed in, it would come to drive a wedge in the Extinction Rebellion Netherlands groups, as well as between climate activist groups worldwide.
The Guardian reported on October 23rd about an XR action focused on Palestine, which seemed to be sowing division: ‘Extinction Rebellion protest at The Hague accuses Netanyahu of “war crimes” and running an “apartheid regime”’, with the subheading ‘European climate activists have staged protests and posted messages in support of Palestinians, prompting an online backlash and raising internal questions within the environmental movement.’
In the main photograph ‘Dutch authorities detained 19 activists from Extinction Rebellion on Monday after they occupied the entrance to the International Criminal Court. Photograph: Aleks Furtula/AP’ I'd recognised a few familiar faces from the ones that accompanied me on the A12 highway blockades. But the ones doing that particular protest would rebrand as an autonomous branch of Extinction Rebellion, that ended up being silenced by the main social media channel of the climate movement. They would become XR Justice Now! and defined themselves as ‘a group of XR rebels committed to the Palestinian cause.’
The war in Gaza would end up fueling a resurgence of protests on a global scale, kept alive not just by activist action on the ground, but also by its dissemination across social media networks. The real would feed the virtual, and it was no longer confined to grand overarching narratives created by media conglomerates.
Everyone and anyone in possession of a mobile phone, charger, Internet connection and access to Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp could add new layers to the narrative on the ground, from both those opposing the carnage, as well as those perpetrating it and cheering it on.
The tools of image-making and organizing were proprietary, but the making and distribution of content became democratized. Beyond the ‘perfect shot’ you’d now have the ‘poor image’ as theorized by Hito Steyerl:
The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.
The conflict left us swimming in imagery of violence, the flow of which was broken by images of resistance and propaganda. There was indignation, pressuring of authorities, streams of legal proceedings, marches, blowing up of civilian infrastructure, children picking up pieces of their parents from the rubble, poems, talk shows, civil disobedience, teach-ins, screenings, all easily accessible and recordable via mobile phones. Yet the war would rage on. Enough to make one ask: ‘What kind of world is this, in which nearly every individual atrocity in this month-and-a-half long (at the time) acceleration of genocide is filmed, live, captured, documented, reported, broadcast, tiktokked, grammed, heard, in real time, and… it doesn’t matter, the bombs just keep falling?’
In my own Camera Roll, these images would alternate with images of my mother and sister, a wedding I was attending at the time in Barcelona, pictures of relatives of my partner, friends visiting museums, shots of the beach, normal weaving into the abnormal.
In this overwhelming flood of content, we seemed to have almost gone beyond the image. On November 4th, 2023, Sho Shibuya, made his own reinterpretation of a newspaper, in the colours of the Palestinian flag, blocking full pages from the New York Times in the spirit of 1988's ‘Forbidden Colors’ by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Gonzalez-Torres’s work had commented at the time that ‘It is a fact that four colors red, black, green and white placed next to each other in any form are strictly forbidden by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories. This color combination can cause an arrest, a beating, a curfew, a shooting, or a news photograph.’ He then proceeded to paint the colours as individual paintings, worthy of a white cube setting.
Shibuya, in addition, listed news titles to accompany the colours, that by 2023, were no longer banned:
(green) Barrage Increases Deaths in Gaza as Anger Flares in U.N. Speeches
(red) ‘We Were Dying Along’: 34 Hours in the Dark Worsens Gaza Chaos
(black) Hundreds Escape a Tremulous Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Border
(white) Israeli Troops Encirle Gaza City as Backlash Over Airstrikes Grows
On November 9th, 2023, it was reported that:
About 150 artists and cultural workers including photographer Nan Goldin and poet Eileen Myles flooded the lobby of the New York Times headquarters in midtown Manhattan (...), to protest the news publication’s coverage of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Led by a group calling themselves Writers’ Bloc, the demonstration was one of multiple actions that occurred throughout the city as part of a global protest campaign called Shut It Down For Palestine. The group distributed approximately 4,000 custom-printed broadsheets titled “The New York Crimes” and featuring the headlines “Ceasefire Now!” and “We Killed Our Colleagues.” Each broadsheet was lined with over 2,600 names of Palestinian civilians and 35 journalists killed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza strip over the past month.
In the documentation of the action there seemed to be no images in the broadsheets given away, but the image of Nan Goldin herself handing out the newspapers was striking.
An exhaustion of bombs and destruction made words take precedence over images, made colour blocks take precedence. Some cliched shots remained however - women and children crying, starving, poor, and hungry, living in tents, as if Palestinian history had folded in on itself and the 1948 Nakhba would have come to life, this time in colour, from film shots, to mobile phone shots, 75 years apart.
On November 12, I’d be confronted with my own version of the ‘poor image’ after participating in the ‘March for Climate and Justice’, which was organized by the ‘Climate Crisis Coalition’, Comprising of OXFAM Novib, FNV, Fridays for Future NL, Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion NL, Fossiel Vrij NL, Milieudefensie, DeGoedeZaak and the Transnational Institute. Alongside these larger initiatives smaller organizations joined forces, as well as figures such as Greta Thunberg, all in all totalling over 85,000 participants. The march started on Dam square, and moved all across Amsterdam center all the way to Museumplein. I followed it on foot, filming and photographing as I went, until reaching the Museumplein stage.
I’d then instinctively point my phone, on video, to the first speaker, though I’d initially decided to only follow the march proper. The first speaker happened to be Sahar Shirzad, the Afghan winner of the PAX prize for peace in 2023. In a move that surprised, shocked and delighted the audience, Sahar would give the stage to Sarah Rachdan, a Palestinian that had been organizing sit-ins in solidarity in the weeks leading up to the march. Sit-ins have their roots in the non-violent civil disobedience tactics of the civil rights movement in the United States.
Sarah’s speech would go on to list the ties between the war in Gaza and the climate crisis. My phone would record the speech continuously, up until the moment when I’d notice nervousness from both the side of the audience and her invitee. What would have otherwise been a much needed speech ended up a point of contention. Moments later Sarah’s microphone would be cut, then reinstated, then cut again and a push and pull of ‘Let her speak!’ and booing would alternate. Ultimately Sarah could not finish her speech, and the focus of my recording would change.
Screams from the right side of my mobile phone would distract me. A quaint Dutch couple would call Sarah a racist, and my video camera would inevitably drift towards them. I’d imagine similar scenes would repeat themselves all across the Climate March, most likely not under the eyes of video recording.
I’d use my video camera as proof, as a reminder that I wasn’t imagining the tensions that I’d have witnessed within my own Extinction Rebellion group on accounts of wanting to discuss and stand in solidarity with Palestine.
I’d record the man’s aggressive push towards me.
I’d record the woman’s pleading attempts to make me delete the video recording I made of them, after she’d try to shove a phone camera in my face to record me.
I’d witness them both wanting to call the police on me for recording.
I’d witness, but this time not record, the man trying to pull at me as I tried to walk away, helped by the Climate Coallition stewards, faces I would recognize from previous Extinction Rebellion actions, who would attempt to protect me.
I’d miss the subsequent speakers of the event, each ignoring the violent act of censorship that had taken place.
I’d also miss the intervention of Greta Thunberg, that would bring Sahar and Sarah back to finish their speech and chant ‘No climate justice on occupied land’, while a man - by the name of Ejan Dam, a former political candidate of WaterNatuurlijk - would snatch Greta’s microphone from her hand in order to stop her from speaking. It would be an act that would reverberate in the media worldwide, in shot after shot of the twenty-year old, being assaulted on stage and nobody but the other young speakers she had invited standing up for her.
Erjan Dam’s name would become buried in article after article on the topic. He’d be referred to simply as ‘man’. Perhaps an act of protecting one’s political standing, perhaps as a way to show the ‘everyman’s indignation’. But a more in-depth digging for his stance could lead one to statements that would highlight the lack of understanding of the Dutch climate movement on the topic of ‘climate justice’ and Palestine. He’d be a symbol of a much larger misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘climate justice’.
Dam's Disappointment
As Thunberg voiced her support for Palestine, Dam couldn't contain his disappointment. Seizing the microphone, he addressed the crowd, expressing his concern over the shift in focus from climate change to geopolitical issues. He argued that the climate movement's core objective - to combat climate change - was being overshadowed by the controversial Palestine topic.
A microphone shut-down via a mixing desk - what happened initially with Sahar and Sarah - is not a very visual thing, no matter how visceral the act of cancellation may be. What was needed to illustrate the situation was a photograph, and Dam delivered. The physical act of a middle-aged white man rushing on stage and removing a microphone from the hands of a young woman climate justice activist, would end up splashed across newspapers around the world the next day. It would, however, be a simplified story: the poster-child for the climate movement, and her misunderstanding opponent. The story needed to give the space that was taken away to the Palestinian speaker.
From my smaller standing, I’d do my own job of helping out discourse. That very day I’d split the video I took of Sarah’s speech in two. One five minute long continuous section, showing the interrupted microphone and the reaction of the crowd, the other bit the reaction of the two audience members that ended up being violent towards me. I’d use a subtitling app to make the video more easily viewable online and post it on my social media channel.
I’d witness the account of Workers for Palestine and Sarah’s account snatch the video from my account and repost it on theirs. Resolution would diminish, while a few hundred likes would multiply, in their act of resharing, to a few thousands.
I’d witness the ‘poor image’ in motion, doing what it does best:
The poor image thus constructs anonymous global networks just as it creates a shared history. It builds alliances as it travels, provokes translation or mistranslation, and creates new publics and debates. By losing its visual substance it recovers some of its political punch and creates a new aura around it. This aura is no longer based on the permanence of the “original,” but on the transience of the copy. It is no longer anchored within a classical public sphere mediated and supported by the frame of the nation state or corporation, but floats on the surface of temporary and dubious data pools. (...) The circulation of poor images thus creates “visual bonds,” as Dziga Vertov once called them. This “visual bond” was, according to Vertov, supposed to link the workers of the world with each other. He imagined a sort of communist, visual, Adamic language that could not only inform or entertain, but also organize its viewers. In a sense, his dream has come true, if mostly under the rule of a global information capitalism whose audiences are linked almost in a physical sense by mutual excitement, affective attunement, and anxiety.
We’d continue to be linked to one another - me and Workers for Palestine - in subsequent actions.