i showered at my friend’s
(my friend who would later grab my chest,
without my consent
(it’s okay because he’s gay))
and across from the shower was a mirror,
full and wide. i did not recognize the body i saw.
this body was not mine.
i felt sick.
and then i remembered,
in the night, someone had crept into my room
and changed my body
with surgical tools, cutting into my flesh
adding things i did not recognize
and sewing me up again
who was it?
i try to remember
i try so hard i forget myself
and eventually, when i come back
i realize that person was me.
or was it you?

my hands | Chantelle Schultz

sometimes i forget
that for more than a year
my hands would shake,
a cup would clatter in my hands,
the foam spilling over.
my hands keep shaking
and i cannot make them stop.
maybe i shouldn’t be trying to make them
maybe i should coax them
soothe them
hold them
love them
these flower petals swaying, dancing
in the wind.

erythro | Chantelle Schultz

i’m in the shower.
this is where i feel safest.
i’ve been here for a very long time,
the water is burning my skin off
and my feet are red
red
  red
    burning
        hot
like my father’s.
his feet carried him for decades
before they betrayed him.
i look down
at his feet on my legs.
if i could cut mine off
and give them to him,
i would.

inverted | Anonymous

The lines on my body reflect the stories of my soul:
A cry for self certainty of my physicality’s permanence.

It must be that
my ribcage that binds my heart and lungs,
And the Body
that binds my spirit,

Harmonize

for why fight against what is fighting for me?

[special_issue slug=”body_special_issue” element=”piece_footer”][special_issue slug=”body_special_issue” element=”init”]

The post Poetry and artwork appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Bahour, a Palestinian-American management consultant living in Ramallah, Palestine, told The Daily in an interview that “we know that others have been approaching [PayPal], like the Bank of Palestine, multiple times, and they haven’t had a reply. So we, as a U.S. not-for-profit that’s interested in Palestinian-American business, approached him and asked for a meeting, so that we can sit down and figure out how to deal with this and if there’s anything we can do to help.” Bahour explained that since PayPal did not respond, they decided to go public with the issue.

On August 23, a public letter signed by over forty Palestinian organizations, including APVE, was sent to Schulman urging him to reconsider, and to extend PayPal’s services to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The letter argues that the lack of access to PayPal hinders the growth of the Palestinian economy, specifically the technology sector, and that “tech is one of the only sectors with the potential to grow under status quo conditions of the Israeli occupation which severely restricts the internal and cross-border movement of goods and people.” According to the World Bank, unemployment in the West Bank was 19 per cent at the end of 2015, and twice as high in Gaza.

With the release of the letter came the social media hashtag #PayPal4Palestine. Palestinians have used the hashtag to voice how not having access to PayPal is hurting their opportunities, and individuals and organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace have used it to show their support for Palestinians. Dalia Alnajjar, a 22-year-old freelancer in Gaza, tweeted, “I couldn’t sign up for many webinars because I simply dont have a @PayPal account.”

“For Palestine to develop properly, it’s important that we have access to the global technology that’s out there. And in this specific domain, PayPal is a leader.” —Sam Bahour, chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy

Alnajjar told The Daily that “the Palestinian population is young and savvy, and has one of the highest literacy rates in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region, and as the youth unemployment rate is around 60 per cent, one of the ways to combat it is through entrepreneurship and hacking other markets through freelancing and the online world.”

Alnajjar continued, “I just want to be treated as a human. And with advanced technology that can defy all kind of borders and limits, it’s easier and the fact that people are denying us access to some service is just unfair and unhuman.”

The public letter to Schulman also addresses ethical reasons for PayPal to operate in Palestine. It cites the fact that illegal Israeli settlers have access to PayPal but their Palestinian neighbors do not, and states that “we believe a company like PayPal, whose actions in North Carolina reaffirmed its commitment to equal rights, would agree that people living in the same neighborhood ought to have equal rights and access to its services regardless of religion or ethnicity.” This is referencing PayPal’s decision not to open a global operations center in Charlotte, North Carolina, following the state’s new transphobic bathroom bill that forces trans people to use bathrooms according to their assigned gender at birth.

The decision meant the loss of 400 future jobs in North Carolina, and Schulman said in a statement that “becoming an employer in North Carolina, where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable. The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.”

Bahour stressed that “the issue is not to smear [Paypal], the issue is not to make it more complicated for them, the issue is inquiring so we can work with them to enter the Palestinian market.” He continued, “for Palestine to develop properly, it’s important that we have access to the global technology that’s out there. And in this specific domain, PayPal is a leader.”

The Daily reached out to PayPal but did not receive comment in time for publication.

The post #PayPal4Palestine appeared first on The McGill Daily.