Happy New Year, everyone...
For those of you who even see this message, I implore that you read and carry it with you. As we enter the new year, we all reflect on our characters and the resolutions we set for ourselves. We think about our progress this year and move forward with the hope of fulfilling our dreams with determination and striving once the clock strikes 12.
Of course, not all of these promises are held through to the end, but let us be sure to carry at least one.
Let us vow to remember the victims of oppression who have not been able to see the sunset on this day, from the children of Palestine, Ukraine, Congo, Tigray, the Xinjiang internment camps in China, and more worldwide. Let us not let the truth that the journalists have delivered to us in their blood go unseen. To the mothers and fathers who have carried the pieces of their children until they lay on the ground beside them, to the babies who were left to rot in their incubators at the start of the attacks in Gaza, to the Christian Palestinians who were slaughtered on the steps of churches in hopes to be safe in the hands of the Lord, to children who craved for a piece of candy before closing their eyes for the last time, to the teenagers who are suffering at the vile hands of soldiers, to the boys and men who were stripped at gunpoint and wiped from existence to those who became part of the ruins of their homes, to the families and friends who were torn apart by bullets; to all oppressed people who suffer and had their lives brutally torn away from them by famine, slavery, ethnic cleansing, and genocide - your cries will not go unheard, for they will echo in our minds until we join you in eternity.