when hell is a comfort
or: God gave us hands for a reason
Content warning: Discussion of mass incarceration, state execution, torture, and totalitarianism.
Dear Beloved,
I’m always catching up to the world. The night before I wrote this to you, I watched videos of Syrians returning to their homeland and reuniting with their families - decades - of separation. After decades under the al-Assad family’s totalitarian rule, the regime has fallen. Syria has been liberated.
The first thing they did was break down prisons and free their people.
Above is an audio from a newly liberated Syrian detainee, sent to his mother. Shared by Omar Alshogre.
This is how I learned about Sednaya Prison in Damascus.
Thousands were incarcerated in this underground prison. Thousands were tortured and murdered in the name of a dictator. There are children conceived in rape, born and raised in these prison cells. There are people imprisoned for so long, they had no idea that Hafez al-Assad had died 24 years ago. Some people don’t even remember their own names after the unspeakable trauma. Until only a few days ago, Sednaya Prison was Bashar al-Assad’s human slaughterhouse. People are still being unearthed from the prison’s layers as Syrians desperately seek out long-missing loved ones.
What kind of sick architect could ever imagine an underground torture city?
Meanwhile, just a short drive away is the Syrian Presidential “Palace.” The butchers of Syria lived in luxury at the price of blood until the al-Assads fled to Moscow.
Please know this, Beloved: I have no interest in joining petty online debates or joining in the impersonal critiques I’ve seen since the al-Assad regime was overthrown.
These experiences belong to the people of Syria. Syrian voices must always be at the center.
Seek out their voices and listen to the people of Syria. Respect this time of celebration and grief. Trust in their ability for self-determination. Syrians are fully aware of the political landmine surrounding them, and we must support their sovereignty and walk with them on the long, precarious political road ahead of them.
To start, you can explore Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution - a digital archive collecting memories of the revolution up to this week’s liberation.
I write this to you today as an American without a direct connection to the Syrian community but one who knows that our liberation is inextricably linked. I write this to you as someone running to catch up, struggling to accept that evil is an institutionalized reality and extremely lucrative for a parasitic few.
This essay is a reflection on our shared struggles and a call to action. As an American, I write with the full knowledge that not only did my “representatives” know about al-Assad’s networks of prisons but American officials outsourced torture to Syria to keep their white-gloved hands clean.
“[Maher] Arar, it turned out, had been sent to Syria on orders from the U.S. government, under a secretive program known as “extraordinary rendition.” This program had been devised as a means of extraditing terrorism suspects from one foreign state to another for interrogation and prosecution. Critics contend that the unstated purpose of such renditions is to subject the suspects to aggressive methods of persuasion that are illegal in America - including torture.”
- Outsourcing Torture by Jane Mayer
Now that the world is coming together, surging against our oppressors, the empire is panicking. Many of the forces that expelled the al-Assad regime are funded by the US to further destabilize the region. The oligarchy’s media - after 14 months of silence concerning Gaza and the people of Palestine - suddenly care about some death camps in the Levant and have so much to say. The United States once again poses itself as the hero and defender of democracy. While Israel launches U.S.-funded bombs on Syria, Zionists seize more land and meticulously remove Syrian military assets. Syria is equally vulnerable to Israel and Türkiye capitalistic ambitions.
I write this knowing so little, still catching up, but certain in the knowledge that our world is run by a small group of people who extract life for profit. They are the billionaires, the oligarchs, the corporations, and their cheap political puppets. They are families who stand on generations of wealth and blood. Our lives are but collateral to them, and our living planet is merely a resource to be extracted.
Just as the al-Assads lived in a palace while Syrian people were impoverished and dissenters thrown into death camps, so too does the ruling class everywhere else luxuriate in mansions at the expense of generations.
To you, Beloved, I ask: Which country has the highest prison population, and who are the people imprisoned? Where else does an elite few design political systems to their advantage? Which country invented the idea of camps for mass imprisonment and death? How much money is made from mass incarceration, and whose bank accounts swells with human suffering? What are the consequences of standing up to these elite few anywhere? How are your oppressors connected to mine, and how do they relate to those who have long oppressed Syria and her sisters in the Levant?
Raised in an evangelical family, I was frightened by hell growing up. As I grew older and moved away from Christianity, cultivating my own relationship with the divine, I discarded the idea of hell. Why should anyone be condemned to an eternity of suffering for mistakes? I thought. Until recently, I leaned strongly toward universal reconciliation because I believed everyone has good in them and most harm comes from unresolved pain or lack of resources.
Now the premise of hell is a comfort to me. While the wealthy and powerful continue to get away with mass murder and suffering every day, it comforts me to think that perhaps divine justice will prevail where human systems (intentionally) fail. If there is no recourse on earth, there could at least be heaven and hell. It would be easy enough consolation to leave it in God’s hands and turn back to my relative comfort in the heart of empire.
But God gave us hands of our own. We cannot wait for institutionalized evil to go to hell as that robs our world of more life and makes us complicit. To watch suffering and do nothing is to surrender to moral decay. For our collective sake, we must bring hell to them.
Empires have collapsed throughout history. They rise, they build, and they fall. Nothing lasts forever. Not even our pain.
- Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Post-election, I wrote about how we can doula our communities through the labor of birthing a new world for future generations. I called to you, Beloved, and asked how each of us will show up in our communities during empire collapse.
As liberation movements catch fire, we must listen to and learn from our comrades across the world. This week alone, we have examples from South Korea to Georgia to Syria shining in the face of oppression. From something as simple as ordering coffee for protestors to disarming state drones with laser pointers to breaking open mass prisons, we see what we are capable of as one. Liberation is ours by divine right. We only have to reach out and take hold of each other’s hands.
On the eve of the Trump regime, the US empire continues to crumble and climate crises rage on. The ruling class will keep trying to divide us and rain hell on our communities. After all, this is but an extension of a centuries-long war between the wealthy few and the rest of us.
That is why I am reaching out this God-given hand to you, Beloved, and ask that you give me yours in return. I invite you to raise some hell of our own in the coming years.
Free Leonard Peltier
Leonard is a Lakota and Anishinaabe man. He was a leader in the American Indian Movement and is a respected Indigenous elder. In 1975, he was persecuted in a sham trial and convicted for the deaths of two federal agents. He has been imprisoned for nearly 50 years and is the United States’ longest-detained political prisoner.
Since his conviction and imprisonment, prosecutorial misconduct and due process violations came to light years ago. The judge and the attorney who handled the case have voiced support for his release. Tribes, well-known activists, and organizers have called for his release for decades. Leonard has been eligible for parole since the 1990s, and his most recent parole hearing was only this July. The state continues to deny his freedom, even slating his next opportunity for a parole hearing in 2026.
Leonard Peltier may not have that long.
At 78 years old, Leonard’s health is extremely fragile, and his remaining time is short. There have been reports of severe medical neglect, and he is being denied visitors. Prison guards have even confiscated sacred ceremonial items - including an eagle feather and eagle bone whistle, items that are federally protected so as only to be owned by members of federally recognized tribes - and refuse Leonard’s right to ceremony.
Our only legal option is in Biden’s hands. If he can utilize his presidential powers to pardon his own son, then he can - and should - grant Leonard Peltier clemency. If he can offer a formal apology for the boarding schools, he can take actual action and free a Native elder from unjust imprisonment.
Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!
- Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance
Leonard Peltier will never get those 50 years of his life back. His family has been robbed of their son, father, and grandfather, his community a cherished member, and the wider collective justice and reconciliation. Leonard Peltier is owed his freedom and deserves to spend his last years with his community, surrounded by loved ones.
Below is one of the quickest, simplest ways to demand Leonard’s freedom. Don’t let this be the only way you raise your voice.
Seeds for Change:
Learn about the local councils in Syria, established by communities to manage their affairs and take care of each other. These local councils were proposed by Syria anarchist Omar Aziz.
When Syria and Türkiye experienced the devastating earthquake last year, Syria received far less international aid to support their communities post-disaster. Learn about how Syrians organized mutual aid to provide disaster relief.
Get involved in abolition work. Start talking to your loved ones, your neighbors, your communities and talk about how to uproot the entire prison industrial complex. There remains hundreds of prisons to dismantle.
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