When it comes to Gaza, you can protest—and keep protesting—until universities and workplaces divest from weapons manufacturers. You can support downballot candidates who support Palestinians. You can shut down highways. Interrupt speeches by war criminals. Boycott institutions and companies that profit from and perpetrate genocide. Give to mutual aid networks in Gaza and Lebanon that attempt to counteract the harm caused by US tax dollars. Don’t just unsubscribe but boycott news outlets that feed the genocidal rhetoric—and tell them why you are unsubscribing. And don’t stop talking about Gaza wherever you are.

As journalists, we take this last directive seriously, feeling the weight of the question Palestinian American writer Fargo Tbakhi posed in December: “What does Palestine require of us, as writers writing in English from within the imperial core, in this moment of genocide?” We believe that one of the most vital contributions we can make is to confront the media ecosystem that enables—and all too often promotes—the slaughter of Palestinians. Over the last year we’ve seen the spirit of McCarthyism overtake our industry, with journalists being fired or pushed out of newsrooms or barred from covering Palestine for speaking out. Many publications are punishing journalists who have the moral clarity to accurately describe the horrors of the genocide. As long as journalists on the ground in Gaza continue to risk their lives to tell the story of their own annihilation, then the least US outlets can do is follow their lead and not be afraid to show the truth.

It is in seeking to follow their lead that we, as journalists, refuse to promote Harris. When we think of her, we do not think of the redemption of American democracy. We think of mangled bodies. Press jackets buried with shredded remains in shoeboxes. Hospital patients, still attached to IVs, burning alive. Grieving mothers wailing until they pass out. The haunted eyes of a Palestinian prisoner. We think of pigtails and lifeless eyes, the smell of rot over mass graves, bodies without heads.

We think of ashes, dust, and blood.