June 10 2025 reading

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I generally do not take requests.

I haven’t felt compelled to write down my thoughts in a very long time. That’s because I was writing (finishing, editing, living amongst, drowning in) this book called small prophecies. It’s out now to humble beginnings— I haven’t really talked about it (because I know, fundamentally, this book* will flip my world around with wild ripple effects; I am only going to talk about it once I am ready to not talk about anything else until I leave the social internet in 2028).

Better said: every now and again, I get the freedom to just… feel and write how I please. It’s a really lovely existence, just being able to write and breathe for a small loop of time. I write like I am possessed— actually. The metaphor is unnecessary. I write because I am possessed. Much of the words I share and like most do not belong to me. Writing and speaking the words that stick to the inside of my flesh and gnaw their way out, parasitic, maggots, babies, something lush— I am typically just as shocked and as moved as you witnessing are. Most of my words do not belong to me, they came down through my mind and out my flesh in bloody, beatific brilliance— much like a child, sovereign in their own right, if soft and infantile, needing guidance.

*This is why I am impressed with such a collection of work, by the way. Not because I wrote it (I didn’t), but because I am impressed with my ability to withstand this level of spiritual conduction without completely shattering my mind or falling (back) into fatal alcoholism. That being said:

I only write what I feel compelled to speak on. 

Every few news cycles, I get a comment like, “ismatu why aren’t you talking about X thing happening in the world????”

Honestly, this is one of the (many) reasons I stopped checking my social media notifications. This is (one of the many) reasons you can’t DM me on Instagram. I don’t feel a need to take requests. I… feel sometimes that we forget that I am not a news source, or some sort of little animatron you can program to interest you specifically. I am a person who shares what I think about the world whenever I find myself… I was about to say helpful. Really, I write when I am unable to ignore writing. Most times, most days, I feel absolutely no compulsion to speak. I know it might be difficult to believe because of my various chosen professions but I do not actually like to speak. I like the way obedience within my godself feels. Or: God likes it when I speak and I like the feeling of pleasing God, the feeling of getting to touch God with my hands. And so I speak. But speaking (+the gravity and the visibility it requires) has always (always) been a contentious calling. 

I have a lot of things I do like to do, that I feel compelled to do by pleasure or necessity or survival: I feel compelled to think and read and live my life in a sensate manner, to take copious note, to learn the discipline of love and adjust to people around me and eat layered, delicious meals… but I do not speak until I feel compelled to speak. I imagine if this were not the case, a lot of you would trust me less (and rightfully so). Who trusts someone constantly vying for the mic?

compel (v.)

1. To force (a person) to do something; drive or constrain: synonym: force."The court compelled the company to pay full restitution. My conscience compels me to speak out."
2. To necessitate or require, as by force of circumstance; demand."Growing riots compelled the evacuation of the embassy."
3. To exert a strong, irresistible force on; sway.

—from the American Heritage Dictionary in the 5th edition

Compulsions I act on rarely come from you all witnessing me. I know I only talk about my spiritual life and disciplines glancingly, leaving lots of questions about the specifics about who/what I believe in and engage with. Today’s a great day to provide absolutely no clarity to any of that! What I want you to know for right now is that I really only do things in public because I fundamentally, on a bone level, on a divine level, feel like I should. i am compelled// i am obliged// i have to tell God thank you with every day of my life; one of my primary languages of love for divinity lies in the expression of obedience. If I was not literally compelled by the highest powers I answer to, I would have hung TikTok up forever in 2022 with ease. I would not have progressed into different, longer forms of speaking. I would not have stayed a therapist (a professional talker). I would have never written poetry again (because I know what happens to people when they witness me read poetry). 

For the record, I do occasionally try and disobey. My life dissolves accordingly and without ceremony. I both like the feeling of pleasing God and abhor the dissolution that distance with my benevolent divine creates. I am in covenants I cannot deviate from peacefully. I have to tell God thank you with every day of my life— that includes, in this stage of life, a relationship with being on stage, speaking. 

I don’t feel a need to provide an opinion on every geopolitical event that flits across our news screens— that’s not to say the event itself is not important; that is to say my particular opinion is not, the vast majority of the time. I have loyalties and desires to particular people, missions, and states of beings that I… feel like I espouse relatively often. You can probably guess how I feel about one thing because I’ve laid out pretty strong thesis points about what I work towards. That process is called extrapolation and it’s good for you, I swear. 

Here is an easy example of why I do not take recommendations. 

The recurring request for comment at the moment is the Madleen Gaza aid flotilla, which can be summarized in this picture below: 

I would like to introduce a concept I learned as a street medic that applies itself well to the news cycle. 

Look for the people who cannot scream. 

The flotilla Greta is on has commandeered social media and traditional news circuits. The mainstream US-American newsis talking about it. Democracy Now interviewed her while on the float. They had internet connection in the middle of the sea to put up live updates; they garner, even in being thwarted, more airtime and watch time than the people they fly the flag of. That’s not a critique of anyone aboard the ship; part of the goal in actions like this is to draw attention as a means of pressure. Whether that’s an effective strategy is not the point of this essay— Palestinians murdered for attempting to get food while they starve is no longer a singular catastrophe, as the flour massacre was painted to be in 2024; it is the daily, chronic reality; it is ongoing; it has, thus, become routine. Not news-worthy.

To pass on something I learned from training as a street medic in 2020: battlefield discernment takes time and practice. Your automatic response when the gas deploys, when the bomb ignites, when gunshots (with rubber bullets or live ammunition) ring out, is to run towards people that are screaming. You, as a medic, must understand that if someone is screaming, that automatically means that they are alive. Street medics are taught a lot about head injuries (especially with weapons like rubber tipped bullets). Someone could be knocked unconscious, brain bleeding, unable to scream. To paraphase what my trainer said: anytime a situation has escalated into overt violence, you would likely benefit to force yourself to pause, take a step back, scan the scene, and find people who have been injured that are unable to scream. They might be alive and only able to stay that way with intervention.

It’s not that the second iteration of the flotilla is not important. It’s that there are literally tens of thousands of people talking about this particular thing and millions more looking at people talking about this thing. If you care about Palestine and you are in the Western World, you are more than likely aware of this particular flotilla that one of the most famous activists in the Western world is on (not to mention a parliament member of the European Union, Rima Hassan, who was taken to detention in the occupation for refusing to sign documents admitting they were entering “Israel” illegally). We are wondering if Israel is going to bomb the little white girl turned young white woman that we have known and liked over years. The West has become desensitized enough to the Palestinians who are shot in the head attempting to get flour, so we focus on this instead.

To zoom in: Israeli regime has created a new tactic of slaughter. They’ve been besieging Gaza by not allowing any humanitarian aid in, killing negotiations of a ceasefire once the second phase of negotiations expired on March 1, 2025. Since then, Israeli soldiers have been firing live ammunition into crowds of people gathered to receive aid, receiving the designation of “human slaughterhouses.” The genocidal occupation tests out a new method of killing people and instilling literal fear of survival, such that if they ever are to receive life saving aid, there will be a critical number of people that don’t go get the food because they have been conditioned to be afraid of ending up shot to death. The Israeli regime invents new, more streamlined means of physical and psychological torture and death via infrastructure the genocide they created necessitates. 

In these moments, I consider how difficult total eradication of a people is to pull off. People survive. They do not give up. How do you convince people to come out of hiding so you can shoot them dead? In this case: starve them. They will walk to their deaths for the chance at a bag of flour. The news cycle does not scream about this. Is it rhetorical, at this point, to ask why?

Thirty six more Palestinians shot dead today, June 10 (the final day of writing this piece.) 

Now that I’ve laid out that background work: people have already said this. Everything I just said, from the summaries to the caveats has already been said. Even the bit about the uneven news coverage! 

What reasonably do you want me to add? Especially because, I am someone with ever accumulating power and connections. I am thinking on, strategizing, postulating, and executing means of media that result in better material outcomes. That work needs me to be in my physical life making connections and plans and away from screens, writing essays, possessed, maniacal. I cannot strategize when I’m attending to the screaming thing. Harder question for those that emailed/commented/beseeched me to speak about the Madleen: what materially changes if I talk about the flotilla, other than maybe your opinion of me? Public figures reveal to us our personal values as we project our ideals onto them. Is your most valiant understanding of a cultural hero, someone brave and powerful, simply someone that comments on and reacts to the most popular event news cycle? Why was it important that I said something about— not Gaza as a whole, nor the suffering that the West Bank suffers, never mind the happenings in the rest of the world, but the flotilla? Why wasn’t anyone in my email demanding comment on the water wars India keeps threatening? No one has demanded my comment over ICE raids in Flatbush, targeting Haitians. No one is asking me about the activists from Kenya and Uganda detained in Tanzania tortured and dumped elsewhere, and the greater trial for treason that’s attached to. No one is even asking me to comment about the aid massacres mentioned in this essay. Why the flotilla?

Reactionary news cycles are designed to keep us talking about the thing that happening right now, mobilizing right now,responding right now rather than looking at the global chess board, making connections, and taking notes. Struggle is protracted; resistance is protracted; victory is protracted. I’m certain there’s a non-zero amount of people going, “But I would not have known about the flotilla, or any of the things about genocidal humanitarian aid, if you did not write this piece.” Genuinely: I am pleased you now know. Also: I don’t think I’ve ever expressed to you all that my primary goal is not actually to keep you informed; my goal, fundamentally, is to be in blissful and blessed covenant with God. Every productive or humbling or life-changing thing that happens from that is a byproduct, not the point. I’m taking this moment of personal lucidity to cement this into our collective understandings of me:

ismatu gwendolyn: someone who loves the masses because of divine love. I was radicalized in my youth by studying religion and went onwards from there.

ismatu gwendolyn: someone who writes because the word maggots eat their flesh if they don’t. I do not actually like talking! I do so because it allows me to touch God and I am rarely stirred to speak if that is not the case. 

ismatu gwendolyn: not an unbiased news source!

I’m getting to know an idea as I write it down for you. I always liken essays to math homework: I am practicing the theories, teaching myself something previously unfamiliar to me. In sounding it out, concepts go from nothing to something not just for you all, but for me as well. I do not feel compelled to write down what is widely observable, already been discussed, and where I have nothing new to add and no incentive to engage beyond joining in the pointing at the spectacle. Especially because the gaze of spectacle here was not actually on Palestinians, who are suffering actively and in ways I struggle to comprehend. 

so then why did i feel compelled to speak on… cory booker?

This was one of the rare moments I actually was compelled to speak because of you all. I have long since understood that I am compelled by God. I did not realize I loved you all (the public) enough to be compelled by you, and that’s a change I wanted to archive in this moment, as I continue to become someone bigger than myself in front of of you all (and also, for you all).

To be clear: I wasn’t going to say anything. I got a big shiny notification on Instagram saying he reposted one of my videos on Facebook… paused… meditated for a moment on whether I was politically compromised (because if Cory Booker is unironically like, yeah this is my shit about MY videos… maybe I need to take a step back and re-evaluate my trajectory)… and then, upon slightly more research regarding how the man uses social media and the video he chose to repost, I felt repulsion (appropriately). And I moved on with my day. I had no plans to acknowledge it. Why would I? 

Like I said, I don’t really check my social media notifications… unless… I feel compelled to. I was in Chicago trying to plan some really last minute get togethers and I saw comments under the video he reposted of me tagging me, asking me if I had given him permission to do this. 

Then. Then I felt compelled to speak. Some of you actually wondered whether I had given permission for him to share my face and voice fully downloaded and reuploaded onto his platform. Of course I didn’t.

This is one of the (increasingly less) rare occasions that I experienced compulsion towards speaking by an entity other than the God I am in covenant with— though, I am not sure just how much I make delineations between the will of God and the sovereignty of the people. Divine sovereignty has the same energies in different forms. As I said: I write like I am possessed because I am. If there are words that need to come out of me, I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I cannot pull myself away from getting them out until its done or I’m permitted a break to maintain this corporal body. I’m usually not sure why it’s important or worthwhile until the words are nearing their final form. It makes sense in hindsight, on the page. I did not know that I like and love you all enough to be here, sitting at my computer, typing away, a madman.

I’ll also tell you: I asked myself at least three times if this was a vanity project before posting. Answer ended up being: I don’t care if I’m vain. Not really. I care that politicians use my likeness to create narratives of progressivism that they do not actually support with their voting actions, and I did not know that this was a thing I cared about until it happened. I’m not saying I am without ego; I am saying that I do fundamentally believe he and I move different and you all highlighted this for me. I believe that he is one of the many US politicians that utilize their social media to create a political narrative that is in direct opposition to their voting records. This methodology allows for people to say or believe that the person is good, but the system is making them make bad decisions. Combine this with the spectacle of liberation, like a filibuster which resulted, ultimately, in absolutely no material and long lasting political gains, and there you have it: a politician that uses their power in ways which openly betray the people and protects their job with political shields (such as narrative and spectacle) to mitigate the pushback they should be getting for heinous, heinous, heinous shit. Like voting in favor for $20 billion weapons sale to Israel, alleged Nazi salutes1, and voting to approve… Jared Kushner’s dad as the ambassador to France (he was the only Democrat to do so). 

This also revealed to me that I have come so far with you all in the last three years. I am a strong believer in the necessity of reorientation in order to fully enjoy the reaping. Many of the seeds I planted in my first year of online public existence are ready for harvest (literally!) and I don’t want to leave you all behind on that. I know I said we’d take June to review but… honestly, it takes as long as it takes. I’ve got to get us caught up to speed.

I’m not sure if the emotion is coming across well on paper… I am a teacher (in this way) only for the next three years. Then, I am handing the reigns over to you to be able to move throughout the world well. I feel (and am given!) a lot of power in these loops of time to shape our collective consciousness about what is on the way to us. I don’t think (at all) that I overstate my place as an algorithmically elected official— I just haven’t let you all know the depths of how true that actually is.

I’m writing shorter essays these days so that they’re easier to read at once. So I’ll explain more in the next one. For now: what news do you think is underreported? What do you all see directly in front of you? Do you understand world events as stories that exist in hierarchy (most to least important?) Or do things exist in a constellation of sorts? What shapes do you make with the constellations?

Hoping the work of your day passes through your hands with ease. 

or simpler said: peace. 

ig

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which like… how do we even get close? Even if it was an accident? How are you performing something close… to a Nazi salute? I promise I’ve never accidentally summoned the Third Reich in my black ass life. Whatever.