Our theme for the month of October is “haunt.”

One of the Tumblr blogs I follow is called heritage posts. It’s one of those gimmick blogs that tracks down, dates, and sometimes investigates old iconic pieces of Tumblr lore, bringing up gems like fake stories (down with the cis bus), people in 2014 talking excitedly about this Tumblr convention called DashCon, and moments like November 5th, 2020.

For the last year, the heritage posts blog has been exclusively talking about the genocide in Palenstine.

For the past year, I have scrolled past nearly every fundraiser post that they have shared.

The posts stick out like a sore thumb in the sea of cartoon-y fanart and pithy text posts that my curated feed serves me. They use large text, orange or pink for emphasis, and often embed pictures of the family or the destruction around them. At the end, they put the money raised in green and the goal in red, ranging from thirty to sixty to ninety thousand dollars. I used to skim these posts, but I have never once clicked into them, let alone donated.

Occasionally, a few of the other blogs that I follow will reblog a fundraiser, or they will answer a question from a Palestinian Tumblr user that contains their fundraisers. I’ve gotten a few of those questions in my own Tumblr inbox. I deleted them without answering.

Last year, I knew about the crisis in Gaza. I edited Gywneth’s series about Palestine, from the beginning to the calls to action to the art and writing and images and stories. My roommate would tell me about the devastation she saw on TikTok and the Starbucks boycott. In the winter, I saw Kate’s postscript on her tpc pieces. This American Life released an episode focusing on a man named Yousef and what he was experiencing in Gaza. This summer, I got an email from a friend asking me to sign a letter to Hillary Scholten, my own congressional representative, asking for her to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. I listened to the followup episode on This American Life, “Yousef and the Fourth Move.”

After that episode, I started to realize the journey behind the posts I would flick in my daily Tumblr scrolling. Chana Joffe-Walt clearly details how much time, effort, outside help, and straight up money it takes to leave Gaza at this point, not to mention the immense mental toll on all sides of the equation and the struggle to access the internet from an active warzone. All of that effort, and these Palestinians and their friends and family members are having to take to Tumblr—an obscure platform that largely exists these days as a small weird fandom-obsessed corner of the internet—in order to raise an astonishing amount of money.

People on the small weird fandom-obsessed website, to be fair, have stepped up. Heritage posts, probably among the most top-followed blogs on the site, has taken up a few fundraisers and continually posts updates on them alongside sharing current news and other Palestine aid resources. I’ve seen many posts about the Gaza Funds website, which highlights fundraisers to donate to in order to help eliminate choice paralysis, and some about Decolonize Palestine, which provides accessible information about Palestine and resources to learn further. One user posted about their experience volunteering with the Crips for eSims for Gaza fundraiser, a movement dedicated to providing internet to people in Gaza. I have organically stumbled across artists who were hosting art raffles and writers who took requests from people with proof of a donation to Gaza; still other artists created original art for fundraisers to get people like me to stop scrolling and listen to a family’s story.

But I do not find myself stepping up. I donate to Crips for eSims for Gaza, which feels like the bare minimum after ignoring hundreds of other cries for help. I am far from up to date on the news about Israel’s actions against Palestine and others, and I don’t try to catch up. I don’t talk about it in my circles; when the topic comes up in conversation, I pause before saying the word genocide, fearful that someone will call me out for it.

I read posts and reblog art on my silly little fandom app, and occasionally I come to a post that accuses me of inaction. It tells me that whatever I am doing now is what I would have done during the Civil Rights era: that I have chosen complicity and silence and the side of the oppressor.

I think about the lynching story Jemar Tisby told at his 2021 January Series, the same one he tells in The Color of Compromise, and my gut twists viscerally within me. I talk about Bryan Stevenson’s work with a friend and watch the video on the Legacy Sites: “Freedom Monument Sculpture Park confronts the deep and devastating tragedy of slavery and the continuing legacy that haunts our nation even today.”

I think about the upcoming theme month. I wonder how I am haunted by the injustices of this nation I live under: the ones soaked in the soil—against Black people, against indigenous people—and the ones that permeate the world—policies that fund wars, economics that value profit above all else.

I remember my own callousness, my own cowardice. I wonder if I will regret not donating more, not learning more about Gaza, not attending protests, not writing more.

I scroll past another fundraiser. I do not read it. I write this instead.

Elias Ericson on Twitter

Alex Johnson

Alex Johnson (‘19) is a virtual computer science teacher and a proud resident of Grand Rapids. When she’s not brainstorming the newest project to inflict on her students, she’s cooking semi-vegetarian food, reading too many romance books, and playing rhythm games.