Jeff Mendez, 1972 - 2006

Brother, I fear we would've never had enough time. I'd just begun to settle into the life that found us crossing paths with regularity, and barely got to glimpse into all I had to learn from you. Some other time, perhaps.

It is with profound sadness and grief that the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation learned yesterday of the passing of Jeff Mendez, a former Steering Committee member of the US Campaign. Jeff was instrumental in organizing the US Campaign’s 2nd and 3rd Annual National Organizers’ Conference in Washington, DC in 2003 and 2004. Jeff resigned his position on the Steering Committee after he was first diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia in 2004.

Mark Lance, Steering Committee Chair of the US Campaign stated: “Jeff Mendez was a comrade in both senses of the word. He was a colleague in struggle and a beloved friend. Jeff was brilliant, tireless, insightful, loving, and hilarious. Though we tended to meet up, as he once put it, ‘on the atrocity circuit,’ life was good when hanging with Jeff. I honestly can't remember ever failing to have fun. Being with Jeff reminded me of why we care, why we bother to struggle against injustice. Because however much evil humans are capable of, they retain as well the possibilities of creativity and beauty. Working with Jeff and people like him, one sees glimpses of another world waiting for us to create it.

Jeff was both one of the best, and at the same time one of the nicest people I had the honor to know in my life. I will carry his memory with me all my days.”

The US Campaign would like to extend its deepest sympathies to Jeff’s family and his wide circle of friends and colleagues. In Jeff’s honor, we plan to uphold his life’s work by continuing our advocacy for human rights, justice, and dignity for all human beings.

Below is an obituary and details of a public memorial service that will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, September 12 at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC.


Jeffrey Librado Méndez, 33, died on Sept. 10 after a sudden relapse of Leukemia. He was surrounded by his friends and family.

Méndez was born on Dec. 5, 1972 in Cuero, TX where he grew up and graduated high school. He received his Bachelors and Masters of Arts degrees from Baylor University in Waco, TX. A Rhodes Scholar, he was enrolled in a PhD program in Political Studies and Gender at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He also spent time in Germany as an exchange student.

Méndez was a dedicated seeker of social justice, and he was particularly committed to struggles for Immigrant, Gay and Palestinian rights. This commitment led him to work as a Program Manager at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and at the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development/Palestine Center, where he served as acting Executive Director and Humanitarian and Development Director thereafter. Jerusalem Fund founder and noted Palestinian scholar-intellectual Dr. Hisham Sharabi considered him a son. Méndez had recently resigned from the Jerusalem Fund to be Development Director at the national office of the international Catholic peace organization Pax Christi.

Méndez founded the Africa Fund for Emergency Relief, an organization operating in Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland to serve the needs of HIV-positive orphans, and was active with the Latino Advocacy and Action Council, the National Minority Bone Marrow Foundation, the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of Washington, D.C., the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Edden Group for Social Justice, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church, and was an advisor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Jeff was a source of love and strength for all who knew him. His always present smile and laughter will remain in our hearts forever. He will be brought home to Cuero where he will rest near the family home. Jeff is survived by his parents Librado and Cecilia; sisters Sandra and Nancy; brother Ron; nieces Crystal and Elena; and nephews Robert, Dustin, Kevin and Jacob.



Please remember me. Fondly.
I heard from someone you're still pretty.
And then, they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
Have some eloquent graffiti.
Like, "We'll meet again."
And, "Fuck the Man."
And, "Tell my mother not to worry."
And angels, with their great handshakes
Always done in such a hurry.
- Iron & Wine

What life gets in the way of...

There's an old Steven Wright joke that goes: The other day, I was walking through the woods, and a tree fell right in front of me... And I didn't hear it.. If you've ever heard the man speak, you know why this is funny. Even funnier, I outdid him.

Yesterday, I was walking in downtown Montreal, and a plane landed in the middle of the street, just half a block behind me... And I didn't hear it. No shit.

The day kicked off not unlike any other of my Sundays: Late breakfast, coffee. Meagan and I had walked down to what's referred to as Tam Tam; a weekly drum circle of sorts. The weather was having a bit of trouble making up its mind. After a few hours of throwing my hoodie back on every time the sun ducked behind a cloud, I suggested we make our way back east on Mont-Royal, offering to cook dinner and give her time to catch up on schoolwork. It was a quick affair: Tomato-basil penne with mock chicken. About the time I was finishing up eating, my phone began buzzing and sliding around the table. It was a 202 number.

The body of Jeff Mendez was moved from George Washington University Hospital less than twenty-four hours ago. Roughly a week prior, his Leukemia reappeared, and his doctors had him undergo chemotherapy immediately; compromising his immune system, allowing an infection to rip through his body like a flash flood. By the time I'd picked up the phone, he'd been unconscious for three days, and his family had gathered with friends to remove his life support. I had no idea he'd ever been sick. I spent the final hour of his life overcome by the urge to call him, buttressed by the knowledge he'd never hear it. Ever.

I've been on a train from Montreal for the last eleven hours, with another four to go. Around 1:30am, I'll make my way out of Union Station, walk the three blocks east to Stanton Park, then another four south to a client's house where Seager is dogsitting. I'll (hopefully) sleep a few hours, walk to Murky, find my way home, say hi to the cats, shower, and head out with Lance to the five hour memorial at the Palestine Center.

Later in the week, I'll borrow money from a friend to cover the train, and slip back across the border as though it were all just a bad dream, until I can make sense of a world in which Jeff Mendez is not alive.

I'm not in this movie, I'm not in this song.

Montreal boasts an all-vegan Thai joint that, were it not for its stroke-inducing prices, would easily put Seattle's Araya to shame. Specializing in mock meats, they do an absolutely stellar job at replicating traditional, authentic Thai dishes that steer clear of being overly-fatty and greasy (a nice change of pace in terms of Asian food). Of course, what the food offers in the way of health is just as quickly cancelled out by what one's body suffers upon gandering at the bill. Jesus.

I met Helen a year ago at Renewing the Anarchist Tradition, where she gave a talk on growing older within movements, and considerations for building communities that both enable and support that project. It turned out to be one of the talks I most appreciated, and it spurred several hours of subsequent conversations with other attendees. Having cut my teeth with anarchism in the District, where youth is the discursive boundary that circumscribes what passes for self-idenitified anarchist politics, it was almost surreal hearing folks even have such conversations at an explicitly anarchist gathering, much less conversations that did not hinge on reaffirming one's loyalty to a specific set of aesthetics.

When my body dragged me across that frontier (admittedly, with an albeit clumsy willingness on my part), I took up spiritual residence among those I'd worked with around Palestine; a rabble of vibrantly diverse constitution (especially in age), far less inclined to police each other's lifestyles or force each other's increasingly square bodies through the round hole of perpetual adolescence. Certainly, there was a liberatory quality to that. But there were also moments in which I felt the chasm between myself and my own reconstructive vision inching wider; to the point that when several local infoshop characters were facing potential legal troubles over something typically stupid and irrelevant, I openly contested any obligation to them, dismissing the contention that they were somehow "my people" as fully lacking in evidence or coherence.

Being in Montreal, it seemed simply given that I'd catch up with IAS folks where possible, and despite our mutual scheduling conflicts, Helen was insistent that we at least grab dinner Friday night. I'd holed up in a cafe on Mont-Royal most of the day, futilely attempting to export an IAS database query that seemed to have been corrupted in a few recent updates. But by 7:30pm, I'd given up and we were strolling down Saint-Denis toward ChuChai. On the way, it struck me that I didn't really know her well. Beyond her presentation a year ago, the only time I'd spent with her was in the IAS board meeting in Boston, where I don't even recall us talking outside of the meeting itself. My subconscious kinda peeked out, reminding me that her nursing student schedule wasn't likely to afford time beyond dinner, a block I could easily fill up with banter specific to our work.

Helen had other ideas. Between dinner and the first fifteen minutes of the following day, we must've walked nearly the entire eastern half of the city, not to mention climbing the mountain at the center (in the dark), and finding our way back down. I don't recall any particular gaps in our conversation. What's more, I felt challenged in much of it; in both reflections on adjusting to dramatic disjunctures in day to day life, and reflections on the reincription of colonialist discourses undergirding certain threads of "queer" solidarity in Iran. Oddly enough, a certain part of me felt like an impostor at times, though mostly in that "Hold on a sec, I need to pinch myself real quick" sort of way.

Ultimately, I caught myself (here and there) giving way to the idea that it is, in fact, possible for me to be this person I wake up to each day; that there's hope he might begin to make some sort of sense in the reasonably near future.

I'm a city boy. Who knew?

While the charm of Montpelier is ample, given its status as the capitol of a state overrun by people sporting bumper stickers reading Vermont: Most Likely to Secede and US out of VT (see Second Vermont Republic), and the manner in which even the most apolitical Joe Schmoe is disdainful of even modest departures from face to face direct democracy... It's still little more than a small town. And after a month comprised largely of coffee, Nietzsche, instant-message marathons, The Shield, and low-brow cold sesame noodles... I've smuggled myself across our border with our younger, smarter cousin; landing in Montreal just in time to catch A Silver Mt. Zion's final tour date (which was nothing short of jaw-dropping).

There's an irony in my long journey to Canada: Until about 6pm EST yesterday, I'd spilled across the Western Hemisphere (not to mention a brief residency in the Middle East), without so much as ever setting foot in either of the countries bordering that of my origin. And I suppose it makes it that much better that my sleepless urban withdrawal is momentarily colliding with the European motif of my adolescent years, to the tune of utter elation. Languages melt into each other in mid-sentence, hemmed between structures half-Brooklyn/half-any-European City (take your pick); the character of the communities inhabiting them evident in ways that give the lie to the meanings my country has invested in "democracy." Less than twenty-four hours down, and I'm already dying for someone to tell me there's a dogwalking market here.

On the Metro last night, transferring from the Green to the Orange Line, I made my way over to a somewhat crowded bench. Preparing to unclip by messenger bag, I set down the copy of Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition that I'd been reading since we set off from Montpelier. The guy sitting in the adjacent spot immediately picked it up, looked the cover over, and shot me an approving nod. I'm not sure why, but that sort of interaction registers with me as rare, to say the least (especially in the US); perhaps in part because we've grown resigned to a certain flavor of alienation, and in part because the range of ideas that enjoy that sort of broad currency in the US is shamefully narrow.

None of which is to romanticize my current surroundings as somehow utopian; given the work of a number of people dear to me, I know well exactly what (we'll say) imperfections lurk (and loom large) here. But it's a fairly jarring reminder that we can do better on our side of the border.