Writer Workshops During Genocide
All writing is not meant to be entertaining.
We don’t expect our doctor to only read medical books that never mention malpractice. Books that say “if you make a mistake, don’t worry. Mistakes happen. The world moves on. Keep a positive mental attitude. Keep doctoring.”
Medium is a place where you can supposedly read or write whatever interests you. But like any business that commercializes writing, Medium puts some writers up front and some in the back. Same with subject matter.
“Make money writing” up front. “Understanding the genocide in Israel” in the back.
Look at the discussion groups Medium set up for Medium Day — that’s a day where writers talk with other writers through Zoom. You get a crystal clear view of how commercialization distorts what gets written and what gets read.
The only discussion I found that touches on topics that frighten us? A discussion about giving voice to Palestinian poets.
It reads, in part: “Our Palestinian participants write amid forced starvation, the destruction of their homes, and wanton murder. Yet their poems speak with eloquence… how they have learned to perfect their craft through mentorship, and to resist the pressures of erasure.”
It seriously says that.
If you want to talk about your poetry while being starved, bombed, and shot at, Medium will give you a table. But only if you talk about poetry.
Medium is for writing that never suggests we should feel responsible for where our money goes. Everyone who works in the United States or Europe pays for the bombs that destroy people’s homes that main or kill them.
This is simple fact. Your taxes — the owners of Medium’s taxes — go into weapons that don’t sit in warehouses anymore. They kill people — today, tomorrow and the day after.
So why doesn’t Medium fund any discussion that questions how difficult it is to reach an audience on that subject?
What would it have cost Medium Day to include writers on painful subjects? To discuss writing about geopolitics, violence, war? Medium might say that stuff is available elsewhere.
But it isn’t.
Yes, you can read politics on almost every platform. But you can’t read about the challenges political writers face.
Medium advertises “Writing is For Everyone.” Not exactly. On Medium, writing is only for those who avoid controversial subjects.
Medium has no sense of physical reality. In Israel… you’re born 300 yards in one direction? You’re bombed, injured, starved, or killed. Born 300 yards in the other direction? You’re having dinner with friends in Tel Aviv.
Follow Medium’s logic to its conclusion and we’d censor all writing critical of our behavior. What should we focus on instead? Medium has it right in the name: Me. Me. Me. Me.
The problem isn’t what gets written. It’s what gets buried when commerce decides what gets read. That’s one reason genocide continues until… well… almost everyone is killed.
