Olive Tree

From the artist:

Bio-power is the power of a State to make live or let die. It contributes to flourishing communities or produces sacrifice zones. A sacrifice zone is a geographic area that has been permanently impaired by state sanctioned environmental devastation and/or organized abandonment. Sacrifice zones exist across Mother Earth already, mountain top removal and open pit mines, open wounds that won’t heal, industrial farming poisoning the water in her veins and all life that depends on water, exploitative mining killing the literal children sent to pull lithium and other minerals from her bones in Congo, and mostly Black and Brown communities suffering lead poisoning and cancer in the abandoned industrial zones of the US from Flint, Michigan to St. James Parish, Louisiana. Sacrifice zones are considered the necessary collateral of colonization and capitalism driven technological advances. It is ecocide. It is genocide.

I wrote the song “Olive Tree” reflecting on biopower as a genocidal strategy in two places. First, the intentional destruction of Olive Trees in Palestine as a genocidal act targeting livelihood, culture and nourishment. Second, the intentional destruction of culture and land as genocidal acts targeting Native people on Turtle Island. From Palestine to the sacred land of the Apache people at Oak Flat, settler colonialism continues, as biopower, as genocide.

Psalm 9:9 God is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.

What is a stronghold amidst the oppression and trouble of our time? I believe it is people who refuse to abandon one another, who lean into responsibility and solidarity (radical dependence), and do not flee the trouble. It is the Apache Stronghold coalition of people praying and defending land, water and air. It is Palestinians, suffering genocide in Gaza, refusing to let their stories go unheard or stop caring for one another though they are cut off and abandoned by the world. It is mutual aid groups giving people the means to survive in the aftermath of a hurricane, or the war zones of the Sudan.

Love is presence. The opposite is abandonment and apathy. We are called, everywhere and always, to love, to be fully present, in prayer, that is our sacred intention and attention, and with care, finding abundance in collectivity. In doing so, we find what we all seek and need, belonging and beauty, in spirit, in community, in the world, despite the imminent threats that oppose life.