{"title":"Reciprocal Activism in Digital Spaces","authors":"N. Hajj","doi":"10.1525/luminos.111.e","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Mina H (a pseudonym), a young doctor living in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, sent out a plea on Facebook and WhatsApp to her extended family and village network around the globe for food and medicine. Just as the rest of the world was experiencing shortages of basic goods like flour, toilet paper, and protective gear, Palestinian refugees were facing dire shortages of food and other essential items. Within a few days of her plea, thousands of dollars had poured into the camp to help buy basic goods like food and medicine. Refugees around the entire world are confronting suffering unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetime: 68.5 million refugees have lost their homes, their livelihoods, and access to basic goods and services. Yet Dr. Mina’s pleas did not go unheeded. The response illustrates the strategy Palestinians have developed for helping the community weather scarcity and catastrophe. In her memoir Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle asserts that communities maintain their wholeness and thrive when the gap between our virtuous selves and our daily actions is a narrow one. Building on this idea, Bryan Stevenson asserts in Just Mercy that when there is scarcity, violence, and injustice, “There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.” (2014, 290). Reciprocity helps us reduce that gap. It gets people to give greatly of themselves even in terrible conditions. Readers of this book can learn a lot from Palestinian refugees about how to survive catastrophe and solve collective problems while remaining united. We can extend Palestinian refugee strategies to our own suffering communities, closing the gap between our virtuous selves and our daily actions by engaging in reciprocal activism.","PeriodicalId":406860,"journal":{"name":"Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.111.e","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Mina H (a pseudonym), a young doctor living in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, sent out a plea on Facebook and WhatsApp to her extended family and village network around the globe for food and medicine. Just as the rest of the world was experiencing shortages of basic goods like flour, toilet paper, and protective gear, Palestinian refugees were facing dire shortages of food and other essential items. Within a few days of her plea, thousands of dollars had poured into the camp to help buy basic goods like food and medicine. Refugees around the entire world are confronting suffering unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetime: 68.5 million refugees have lost their homes, their livelihoods, and access to basic goods and services. Yet Dr. Mina’s pleas did not go unheeded. The response illustrates the strategy Palestinians have developed for helping the community weather scarcity and catastrophe. In her memoir Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle asserts that communities maintain their wholeness and thrive when the gap between our virtuous selves and our daily actions is a narrow one. Building on this idea, Bryan Stevenson asserts in Just Mercy that when there is scarcity, violence, and injustice, “There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.” (2014, 290). Reciprocity helps us reduce that gap. It gets people to give greatly of themselves even in terrible conditions. Readers of this book can learn a lot from Palestinian refugees about how to survive catastrophe and solve collective problems while remaining united. We can extend Palestinian refugee strategies to our own suffering communities, closing the gap between our virtuous selves and our daily actions by engaging in reciprocal activism.