PRESS - Graphic
PRESS
For the next graphic, the blue PRESS vest honours the Palestinian journalists who continue documenting the genocide in Gaza while risking their lives and their families. It symbolizes a long pattern: when a colonial state controls visibility, it controls truth. It decides who gets to be seen, who gets to tell the story, and who gets silenced when the truth threatens its power. In Palestine, that suppression is deliberate. Colonialism Skateboards examines this history by tracing the roots of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel blocks foreign journalists from entering Gaza unless they’re under military control, shuts down telecommunications, and cuts off movement so reporters can’t reach the places where people are being killed. The only people documenting anything are Palestinian journalists, and they’re doing it while losing their families, their homes, and their own lives.
More than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed, many wearing clearly marked PRESS vests, some inside their homes with their families. Investigations from CPJ, RSF, the BBC, and others show patterns of targeted strikes and a complete lack of accountability. Even the “safe routes” like the yellow line turn into bombing zones. Every restriction – movement, communication, foreign press bans – works together to erase evidence, bury the truth, and silence witnesses.
And as I’m writing this, I’m thinking about home.
On Turtle Island, Indigenous peoples have lived through their own forms of erasure for more than a century. Mark Anderson and Carmen Robertson’s, Seeing Red, shows how Canada built its own colonial project by controlling the story. For generations, Canadian media erased Indigenous truth and framed the impacts of Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and child apprehension as Indigenous failure instead of the result of colonial policy. The press became part of the machinery that hid genocide.
Justice Murray Sinclair put it plainly: “While Indigenous kids were being told they weren’t good enough, the rest of Canada was being told that Indigenous people were bad.” That’s what narrative control looks like. It shapes what the public sees, remembers, and believes, and it protects the colonial state from accountability.
That’s the connection.
Colonial states don’t just take land or children, they take the narrative. They use media, politicians, athletes, artists, etc. to control and shape what the public sees, remembers, and believes.
The PRESS vest in this graphic honours the journalists in Gaza who risk their lives telling the truth about the genocide. It also brings awareness to every Indigenous storyteller, every witness, every person who has tried to document harm when a colonial government would rather the world look away. It’s a reminder that truth telling is dangerous work, and that erasure is part of how genocide is carried out.
Profits from this graphic will be going directly to where they are suppose to go.
References
Al Jazeera. (2024). Al Jazeera journalists killed and injured in Gaza.
Anderson, M. C., & Robertson, C. (2011). Seeing red: A history of Natives in Canadian newspapers. University of Manitoba Press.
Associated Press. (2024). Palestinian journalists killed in strikes on homes.
BBC News. (2024). Israel accused of targeting Gaza journalists.
Beaumont, P. (2023). Israel’s blackout of Gaza leaves journalists struggling to report. The Guardian.
Beaumont, P. (2024). Concerns grow over targeted killings of Gaza journalists. The Guardian.
Committee to Protect Journalists. (2026a). Journalist casualties in the Israel–Gaza war. https://cpj.org
Committee to Protect Journalists. (2026b). CPJ documentation of Israeli harm against Palestinian journalists. https://cpj.org
Hubbard, B. (2024). Journalists killed in Gaza strikes as families targeted. The New York Times.
Hubbard, B., & Kershner, I. (2023). With foreign press barred, Gaza’s journalists bear the burden. The New York Times.
Kershner, I., & Bergman, R. (2024). Telecommunications collapse deepens Gaza’s information blackout. The New York Times.
McKernan, B. (2024). Drone strikes on Gaza journalists raise questions of deliberate targeting. The Guardian.
OHCHR. (2024). Report on restrictions on movement and communication in Gaza. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Reporters Without Borders. (2026). Israel-Gaza war: Journalists killed in the line of duty. https://rsf.org
Reuters. (2023). Israel bars foreign journalists from entering Gaza.
Reuters. (2024). Gaza journalists killed while wearing press vests.
Reuters. (2025). No independent investigations opened into Gaza journalist deaths.