We All Deserve a Place of Refuge
And we channel our despair, our rage into action.
Tomorrow, Tuesday November 7, is Election Day in Mississippi. Make a plan to vote. Find your polling place and see your sample ballot. Check out the Mississippi Today Voter Guide for more information about the statewide candidates. Take a selfie with your “I Voted” sticker and tag us on Instagram.
Rooted explores stories of place from the people who call Mississippi home, with the aim of making our state a more just, more equitable place to live and thrive. Each week we ask: what does it mean to live in Mississippi? To be from Mississippi? The answers to these questions vary depending on the individual and the day. But a common thread I see among Rooted contributors is that to call Mississippi home is to answer a higher calling. If you choose Mississippi, you choose the underdog. You call out injustice when you see it. You channel rage into action. You fight close-minded bigotry with open-hearted love.
This month, I have also been asking myself: What does it mean to be a Jew in Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.A? What does it mean to align myself with the struggle for equality and liberation? It has been an especially lonely, isolating month, living in a state where only 0.5% of the population identifies as Jewish. I have been bolstered by the company of my Southern Jewish friends, like Rooted editor Shira Muroff, as well as moments of bittersweet interfaith solidarity in my community.
But you don’t have to ascribe to a certain identity to be horrified at the mass destruction of Palestinians’ homes, the wholesale murder of children and families, the bombing of hospitals and refugee camps, the cutting off of food, water, electricity, and fuel, and the displacement of millions of people. Nothing can justify this. I stand with my Jewish brothers and sisters in America and around the world who say: “Not in our name. My grief is not your weapon.” I also stand with mothers and Muslims and queer and Black activists in calling for an immediate ceasefire. We are witnessing a genocide, our government is funding a genocide, and we cannot stand idly by. I cannot stand to see one more body the size of my daughter’s wrapped in a blood soaked sheet.
I say this all the time, but I’ll say it again: Mississippi’s anti-woman, anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ state leaders do not represent me or the vast majority of Mississippians. That logic extends beyond Mississippi and the gerrymandered South. Palestinians are not Hamas. Israelis are not Netanyahu. Most of us simply want peace. We want happiness. We want our children to grow and thrive. We want to exist without fear. In his Rooted interview last month, C. Liegh McInnis writes:
Home is the place where one receives a foundation and blueprint of one’s personal and communal self, which teaches one’s worth, beauty, power, and possibility, with the comfort of remaining a haven for where one can take refuge when necessary.
I believe that everyone deserves this transcendent understanding of home, a shelter not just for the body, but for the heart and mind, too. We all deserve a place of refuge.
Don’t let our elected officials in Mississippi off the hook today—or ever. Join me in calling your representative and our Senators Cindy Hyde Smith and Roger Wicker. All you have to say is your name and zip code, and that you’re calling to ask your representative/senator for an immediate ceasefire.
Tomorrow is Election Day here in Mississippi. I’ll be exercising my hard-won rights and channeling my despair into action, while proudly wearing my “I Voted” sticker. See you at the polls.
A shortcut to call your Mississippi elected officials:
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith: (202) 224-5054
Senator Roger Wicker: (202) 224-6253
Congressman Trent Kelly (District 1): (202) 225-4306
Congressman Bennie Thompson (District 2): (202) 225-5876
Congressman Michael Guest (District 3): (202) 225-5031
Congressman Mike Ezell (District 4): (202) 225-5772
Catch up on the words of our brilliant contributors from last month, including poems by Celeste Schueler and paintings by Victoria Meek and a Mississippi Road Syllabus by Jennie Lightweis-Goff.