Apparently, there is some confusion over the politics of Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. This is largely because his politics do not seem to align with the approved framework for today’s arrangement of power. They are messy. Because we live in messy times. Confused times. But this isn’t as bizarre or problematic as some would make it out to be. And anyone who has been traumatized is a victim of these messy, confusing times.

The reality is that he fits the archetype of hero. Not in a romanticized or sentimental way. Not in the Hollywood manner which infantilizes the very concept of hero with cheap nationalistic tropes, hyper-masculine numbness, or superhuman capabilities. He is a hero because, like all heroes, his life was scarred by trauma and unfathomable pain. Like all heroes, he has stepped out the shadows of deep, systemic injustice in our times to make a stand, however flawed, against this injustice. Like all heroes, he is misunderstood, maligned and demonized by the rich and powerful and celebrated by the oppressed, the lower caste, the underdog. He represents the latter’s disappointment and rage, and he channeled that rage into action, albeit misguided.

You don’t have to understand or agree with all of his political opinions to understand that he emerged from the pathos of an age where a group of wealthy businessmen have arisen to extract extraordinary wealth from the denial of medical assistance to millions of sick or injured people. An age of sheer barbarity, where life saving or pain-alleviating treatments and medications are only available to those who have the ability to pay exorbitant fees. An age where a small class of people, propelled by avarice and cupidity, enjoy pampered and untroubled lives of luxury via the siphoning of wealth from the vast working class who suffer daily indignities at their hand.

The assassination of Brian Thompson made clear that if you’re poor and murdered there’ll likely be no manhunt mounted for your killer or any blanket media coverage of the incident that could ever compare with what we’ve seen this past week. This one fact alone highlights the vast inequities within American society. It goes beyond healthcare. The justice system, the media, the whole system is unequal, unfair and staggeringly cruel. Far more cruel than any action allegedly taken by Luigi Mangione.

Heroes don’t always save people’s physical lives. In fact, they seldom do. Heroes save our humanity by showing the wealthy and the powerful that our lives have meaning, that we are enraged by the inequality, cruelty and injustice that they profit from, and that we are not going silently into the night as they would have us do.

Kenn Orphan, December 2024

*Photo is of alleged shooter, Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

A mother sits at the bedside of her baby girl, who appears more like a skeleton than a living human child. 

A team of rescuers frantically dig through the rubble of a bombed home, hoping to find any sign of life from within. They find a cat meowing weakly. She is covered in dust, her human companions all dead, suffocated by the bricks and concrete of their home or burned slowly to death. 

A father runs screaming down the street with his son in his arms. The boy’s face is almost unrecognizable. 

A young man gingerly and with utmost reverence places a child’s head in a body bag with the rest of her remains. 

The decomposing body of a boy with Down’s syndrome who was left to starve in his home are discovered by his family after they were forced at gunpoint to leave him with assurances from soldiers that he will be taken care of. 

A six-year-old girl pleads for help on a cell phone from her family’s car. Her dead family all around her as she bleeds. A tank rolls in aiming at her. Her rescuers ambulance is bombed, and her remains are found with those of her family days later. 

This is just a fraction of what I have seen, heard, or read so far, for almost a year. 

Add to it scores of photos or videos of soldiers parading around in women’s lingerie. Women who may be dead or forced to flee for their lives. 

Soldiers playing with or smashing children’s toys, school rooms, bicycles. Children who may be dead or forced to flee for their lives. 

Soldiers dancing while they blow up shelters, hospitals, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries, water, and food supplies… 

Add to it political leaders calling for complete annihilation. Civilians blockading aid trucks. And western leaders waving a scolding finger at anyone who dare speaks out. After all, they are “speaking” and we should not “interrupt” their election cycle, steal their “joy,” lest we get an even worse leader than them. 

In my entire life, I have never seen this many children slaughtered, bombed, maimed, starved, or shot at for almost an entire year. A livestreamed genocide. The evidence is beyond clear, yet we are still being gaslit that it is self-defense. That this is about “security.” As during the war against Vietnam, we are told to disbelieve what we are witnessing because it is “tragic, but complicated.” We are shadow banned or suspended on social media for posting pictures or videos of the atrocities (one wonders how they would have censored the photo of “napalm girl”). Or told that we are bigots for wanting an immediate end to the slaughter of children, women, and men. 

We are truly witnessing a nightmare. But one without even the glimmer of morning light to give us hope. 

Kenn Orphan, September 2024 

The recent, manufactured controversy over Imane Khelif reminded me of a speech by the great abolitionist Sojourner Truth. She made this speech to a white audience in 1851, but the message was especially directed toward white women. In it, she describes how many Black women were subjected to heinous bigotry especially if they did not conform to a specific and narrow white standard of femininity. Sound familiar?

No woman can ever totally meet such rigid and exclusionary standards. Imane, though assigned female from birth, isn’t what many men (and sadly some women) think a woman should look like. She is strong, confident, athletic and she is competing in a sport that used to be only for men.

But we cannot ignore that Imane is a woman of colour, and how many other women of colour have faced similar attacks? The attacks on Imane are most definitely rooted in large part in a deep-seated and pernicious racism that persists to this day. Sojourner Truth’s speech is but one example of this.

Sojourner could plow a field better and eat as much as any man. She could hold her own. But this didn’t conform to the patriarchal notion of white femininity. And this is what it all comes down to. The anti-trans mob isn’t out there trying to “protect girls and women”, they are out there to police gender. They demand a ridiculous litmus test for “purity” that echoes the calls of white nationalists and other racist ideologies, and it doesn’t just negatively affect transgender women, it negatively impacts cis-women as well, as Imane has unfortunately discovered these last few weeks.

Sojourner brought the house down with this speech because, despite being discriminated against as a Black woman, she wanted to unite ALL women in solidarity to make this world a better place for everyone.

The real transcript was lost to history, but there are many reliable accounts of what she said. Here is one.

“Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth.

“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.”

*Title image is of Sojourner Truth and is courtesy of the African American History Collective.

Kenn Orphan, August 2024

I just watched a child’s last breath. Lying on a gurney, bloodied and terrified. Red pools forming under his head. Eyes glazing over with the unmistakable shroud of death. This is Rafah. This is what is happening now.

And yet, I keep seeing people say they feel “unsafe” because of the mere existence of encampments on university campuses. Feeling unsafe because others are protesting a genocide. And I think about what it actually means to be unsafe. Is there anything more unsafe than being displaced, starved, endlessly bombed, shot at, or buried alive?

I think of all the universities that have been obliterated in Gaza. Of all the professors that have been slaughtered. How safe are the students who once attended them? I think of the mass graves found in hospital courtyards. Bodies with zip-tied wrists, catheters, medical gowns covered hastily with waste and mud. Bodies of children, old people, the sick and the medical teams who once assisted them. If you’ve done any work in human rights, you understand the horror that the term “mass grave” imbues. They are the absolute markers of atrocity.

Some have wasted no time reminding us that this is simply the “reality of war”. But is this really a war? I cannot recall another war where one side was able to so easily shut off the water mains, the electricity, the food and medicine shipments at will. If it is a war, I wonder where the soldiers on the other side are. Because I haven’t seen them either. I haven’t seen the other side’s tanks or drones or destroyers or aircrafts. I’ve only seen children, the elderly, the sick and the starving.

But I have seen soldiers. Soldiers from one side of this so-called “conflict”. They have been posting endless videos of themselves smashing children’s toys, defecating in kitchens, and parading around in the lingerie of women who have vanished. I’ve seen them making wedding proposals and holding podcasts on the rubble of bombed out apartment buildings. I’ve seen them hauling off jewelry, clothes and money. I’ve seen them firing on people waving white flags or who were simply crossing a road.

Much of the media, pundits and many politicians of all political persuasions have been wasting no time demonizing the student protests. They keep telling us how they make some people feel unsafe. And they continually tell us that this all started on October 7th. That this is a “retaliatory war”. And it’s true that terrible things were done on October 7th. But they never mention the 80 years prior to that day. They never mention apartheid and forced displacement and night raids and indefinite detention of children and home demolitions and settler attacks and a crippling blockade. Wouldn’t those things make anyone feel perpetually unsafe?

The assault on Rafah has begun. Millions of starving, sick and displaced civilians are in harms way with no where to go. And yet I keep hearing pundits, politicians and the media demonize students for simply demanding that their schools stop funding it. And wringing their hands over some people feeling unsafe because of those demands.

I cannot help but think of that little boy I just saw die on a gurney. I’m pretty sure he would’ve gladly traded places with any of the people who keep saying they feel unsafe because there are some nonviolent protests on some university campuses.

Kenn Orphan, May 2024

*Photo is of an evacuation order issued to refugees in Rafah by the IDF a few hours ago. I wonder how safe this little child feels right now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a painting lately. Scène du massacre des Innocents (Scene of the massacre of the Innocents) by Léon Cogniet, France,1824, which is currently in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes. It may be difficult for some to understand, but for all intents and purposes, this a Christmas painting.

Its subject is from the Gospel of Matthew which tells the story of Herod the Great, the client King of Judea in Palestine under the Roman Empire, who ordered the execution of all male children in Bethlehem who were two years old and under. He did this out of jealousy of a “newborn king” who might usurp his coveted position in the land. But it is the look on the mother that captivates me about this work.

Now, it is unlikely that this horrendous incident ever took place. After all, it is only mentioned in the book of Matthew and the most prolific historian of the age, Josephus, never mentioned it at all. Indeed, most historians believe it to be a literary device. The Gospels themselves were written at least 40 years to a century following the death of Christ. But regardless of its historicity, this painting is one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen.

I’ve thought about it a lot this season. It comes to me often when I think of Gaza. When I see a photo or video of a mother clinging to the body of her dead infant or hiding behind the broken walls of a building to shield their child from an Israeli sniper’s bullet. Of parents frantically digging out their beloved children from the rubble of an Israeli airstrike. Repeated and repeated thousands of times over. And I’ve thought about mothers in southern Israel too. The ones who tried to save their children from the rampage of Hamas militants early in October.

Each time I see these images and videos, I see that look. The look of the mother in this painting. And if I think hard, I can remember seeing it before. In Laos. In Cambodia. In Iraq. In Syria. In Yemen. In Myanmar. In Honduras. In Sudan. In Rwanda. How Cogniet captured such terror and defiance on canvas, and so perfectly, I’ll never know.

The faith of my childhood is a distant memory. Over time and after steadily opening my eyes, it has become unfulfilling to me now. But I still carry many of the stories with me. And this one looms over me large this season. All the carols and bells. All the bright lights, shiny packages and festive foods. They all have a paleness to them. A shadowy cloak that surrounds it all.

Amid this season of light, there is a season of unspeakable darkness. A systemic and calculated genocide of a people living in the world’s biggest, open-air prison. And I cannot help but be stunned by how these modern horrors resonate so much to the tragedy taking place in Cogniet’s work of art. A story of great brutality and greater desperation.

I think that Léon Cogniet’s painting is the most appropriate one for this holiday. With one look, this mother pierces through the manic compulsion of our modern age to wrap things up neatly. Her eyes meet ours with conviction. And then we realize that we cannot tie up genocide with a bow, obscure its ugliness with fancy paper, or silence its knell with a jingle.

The most powerful thing about this painting is that we know that this mother is out there now. And we feel just as powerless as she does in stopping a horror that is so unrelenting, so calculated, and so brazenly cruel.

Kenn Orphan, December 2023

Let’s be clear. What Israel is doing now isn’t about self-defense. It is about ethnic cleansing. It is genocide.

Israel lost approximately 1200 civilians to the Hamas attack. And this was no doubt horrendous. But in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, at least 20,000 have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, shootings and settler terrorism and pogroms, with thousands more scarred and maimed.

Israel has bombed hospitals, UN shelters, mosques, churches, bakeries and it has restricted food and medicine from entering the besieged enclave. Over a million people have been displaced. Their homes gone. It is making Gaza totally unlivable. And it is doing this so that Palestinians can never return there. It is committing another Nakba.

The rhetoric Israeli politicians and pundits are employing is nothing less than genocidal. A music video was even produced featuring children singing “we will annihilate you” to other children only kilometers away. The intent is clear.

All this, after 75 years of home demolitions, indefinite detention of children, collective punishment and systematic apartheid. And all with the financial, military and diplomatic backing of the US, UK, EU and Canada.

Gaza has been called a graveyard for children. But it is more than that. It is a graveyard for our very humanity.

Kenn Orphan, December 2023