That Time Meta Tried To Silence A Black Poet, Saul Williams, Who Spoke Out Against Genocide

Saul Williams is firm in his stance that the genocide in Palestine is an issue critical to Black people in America. Meta disagreed, which is why he woke up on Sunday to a slew of emails and texts from friends telling him that his Instagram account had been suspended.

That’s when he noticed the note sent to him by the company saying he’d violated community rules.

In an exclusive conversation with NewsOne, the renowned poet, actor and filmmaker said that it wasn’t his first time being dragged into the ring by Meta.

Last year, it banned him from following anyone. His friends noticed their likes of his posts were erased, disrupting their reach to new eyes. He was banned from adding any new followers. As of this writing, that ban remains in place, capping the artist beloved across the States, West Africa and Western Europe at just under 300,000.

But the suspension imposed on Saturday? That was lifted as we were speaking on Monday.

Here’s the backstory.

“We die. That may be the meaning of life.

But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate Lecture, Dec. 7, 1993, Stockholm, Sweden

Read the historic lecture in full here.

 

“In 2023, I started doing something I’d never done before: posting on Instagram every single day,” Saul began. He was in Brazil’s favelas in Rio for a gathering of poets he’d been invited to join when he heard about Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023. “I knew immediately that the response would be brutal, extreme and disproportionate,” he said.

“I was watching a genocide on a screen I held in my hand,” Saul offered quietly. “I had to do something,” he said. “No one should be silent in the face of genocide. Not in Palestine, not across Central Africa and not here in Black communities. The same policies and nation that drive the genocide in Palestine, are the ones that drive it here, in our communities.”

The U.S. operates across the world guided by a foundational belief that it has the right to decide who gets to live and who does not. It established the republic based on that. So was the State of Israel, backed by U.S. money, power and philosophy. The original displacement and exile of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, the dozens of massacres that killed 15,000 civilians, destroyed 531 towns and took 78% of Palestine away from the Indigenous population, was immediately followed by the dispossession of 98% of Black-owned land, mostly across the Southern U.S. The project, long bubbling, was undertaken in earnest starting in the early 1950s.

“October 7th was not the start of anything,” Saul said, adding, “and if we’re silent about that it gives license to the continuation of policies that are designed to hurt us all.”

After a moment, my old friend added more.

“We have to connect the dots between what is happening in Palestine with what’s happening here — and across Central Africa and beyond. Genocide. I began studying it after I met Anisia [his actress and playwright wife, Anisia Uzeyman],” he explained. “We’d met shooting a movie in Paris for a Senegalese filmmaker. We knew right away,” Saul said, the smile in his voice so apparent I could see it although we were only on the phone.

“Freedom is indivisible or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary,

short-sighted,

and short-lived advancement for a few.”

June Jordan

“We went to Rwanda and worked there for years. It was critical for me to hear the testimonies of survivors, and find ways to give platform to their words,” he continued. “That’s what I am doing by posting daily on IG. It’s what writers are supposed to do. Elevate and amplify narratives that would otherwise go unheard.”

He reminded me of something Tupac once said: “I may not be able to change the world, but maybe I can spark the mind of someone who will.”

Then he added, “My wife is from Rwanda. This is the 30th anniversary of the genocide there. Israel armed the Hutus there, allowing them to kill 1 million people in 100 days between April and July of 1994.”

The algorithms of oppression

I mentioned the training the IDF did with apartheid soldiers, before Saul reminded me about Cop City, a sprawling training ground about to open in Atlanta. It’s funded by the same group that funds AIPAC, the powerful lobby that ensures American laws and budgets favor Israel. What’s been created is a way to get law enforcement to become more versed in the use of military weaponry. Weaponry of war.

Make it make sense.

Law enforcement doesn’t even make the top 10 on the list of the most dangerous jobs. Loggers and fisherman are far more at risk. Trash collectors and delivery truck drivers are at the top of the list.

The harsh punishment of young people who have protested it recalls the treatment of students protesting for a ceasefire on campuses across the nation. Those students were Gen Zers, the kids who grew up leaning to the phrase, “it’s really problematic because…”

Saul finished my thought.

“This is the generation who had courses throughout school that taught them about colonialism and imperialism in ways our generation wasn’t. They’ve been doing land acknowledgments for a decade. Who thought a genocide could be snuck by them? It was being broadcast live on TikTok, the one social platform that wasn’t controlled by AIPAC. That’s the reason they’ve come under attack,” he said, and I agreed.

After a moment he continued, “In 1804 in the U.S., no one was allowed to write about Haiti on the off-chance one of the slaves defied the law and had learned how to read. The job of the poet is to bear witness.”

Even still, they were criminalized, lied about, attacked by police, here in a place that has immortalized free speech on politics and the right to assembly in its own Constitution. We say, Saul and I, we don’t know what’s happened to those kids. I think but do not say, what’s happened to the probably 200 Palestinian children held in detention in Israel since before Oct. 7, 2023? Will we ever know that?

“In the context of tragedy, all polite behavior is self-denial.”

June Jordan

In the beginning

Saul Williams, 30 years a poet, posted a poem the day after learning that Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, was killed by the IDF. The Lebanese leader had been living underground in Iran. When they killed him, they took out an entire city block and killed innocent civilians who had no idea what was going on. It was Saturday, early-ish in the day. By the evening, Saul’s account had been suspended.

By Sunday, his friends and fans rallied. By roughly 4:00 ET p.m. on Monday, as Saul and I were speaking, Meta sent him an apology.

Here’s the poem he posted that triggered Meta’s stalker bots. Written by the most beloved poet in Iran today, Hafez, it was first read and treasured by the people who were his contemporaries in 14th-century Persia (now Iran).

I’m a candle.

Chop my neck

a million times

I still burn bright

and stand.

What else is there to say except perhaps to quote a brother whose poetry became this summer’s anthem — and like Hafez and Saul Williams — will survive the dismissive memory of time?

They not like us.

SEE ALSO:

Why Black Americans Should Stand In Solidarity With Palestinians: Activist And Scholar Nyle Fort Explains

Personal Stories From An Afro-Palestinian Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict

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, Meta suspended the Instagram account of a cherished Black poet, Saul Williams. This is how it worked out for them.
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