Gaza! Gaza!

The past few days have been extremely interesting and intense, in every sense of the words. We have been scrambling with leaders from all over to recover our wits and our solidarity and devise an action that would represent everyone as much as possible. The very important decision to boycott the buses was finally made by codepink, which happened after intense pressure from the entire delegation, and very bitter and angry exchanges, but was ultimately necessary in order for any unified process to move forward.
i met yesterday with the most exciting element of the entire international congregation, the congress of south african trade unions, cosatu, whose motto by the way is "an injury to one is an injury to all"! as a wobbly i just knew we would get along, and sure enough they have emerged as the pearl in this mess, and i am happy to say that i believe something extraordinary will come of this.
where to start...
i think i described in basic detail what happened the first day, where we were at a demo at the UN building in cairo. immediately we were surrounded by riot cops, but were essentially corralled in a small area and we were not allowed to move, and basically we were kept in or kept out. an interesting tactic. the police seemed keen on not arresting anyone, which is a strategy that they have kept so far. but it made me feel really weird to be penned inlike that. there was mass disorganization, and we were notified that the codepink leadership sent in two reps to deal with the UN to negociate on our behalf with the egyptian govt.
they decided to ask for a deal that would accept two buses to go to gaza if they wouldnt allow us all. like i said before, a fatal strategic error.
why its wrong, i think our gaza freedom march organizers in gaza say it best:

Dear Gaza Freedom March organizers and participants,

After a lot of hesitation and deliberation, we are writing to call on you to reject
the "deal" reached with the Egyptian authorities. This deal is bad for us and, we
deeply feel, terrible for the solidarity movement.

We initially felt that if representatives of all forty plus countries can go to Gaza
and lead a symbolic march along Palestinians it would convey the message to the
world public opinion, our main target. However, after listening to the Egyptian
Foreign Minister's press conference last night on Aljazeera and the way he described
the deal in details, we are unambiguous in perceiving this compromise as too heavy,
too divisive and too destructive to our future work and networking with various
solidarity movements around the world.

Mr. Abu Al-Gheit described the 100, that they graciously accepted to allow to enter
Gaza, as those from organizations which Egypt considers "good and sincere in
standing in solidarity with Gaza the same way as we [the regime] do." He described
the rest as "from organizations that are only interested in subversion and acting
against Egyptian interests, to sow havoc on the streets of Egypt, not to stand in
solidarity with the Palestinians." He also said that the Egyptian public was wise
enough to see that those were hooligans and stayed away from them. Other than the
obvious divisiveness that agreeing to this deal would cause, what's wrong with this
picture:

1) The Egyptian government in this press conference painted a picture of the great
majority of the internationals participating in the GFM as hooligans and agents
provocateurs, not real solidarity groups. This is a grave insult to all of us, to
all our partners and to the entire GFM, as it depicts us all as partnering with
"fanatic," "destructive" forces, not forces for ending the siege and for the rule of
law;

2) Arab and international public pressure on countries imposing the siege on Gaza
are rising dramatically due to the actions that you ALL have engaged in and the
excellent media messages that you have sent. This deal is being used now to release
pressure .

Either they allow all 1400 participants into Gaza (if they are "hooligans," best to
get rid of them from Egypt and "ship" them to Gaza, right?) or we strongly urge you
to reject the deal out of hand as too little, too late, too divisive and too
ill-conceived.

We cannot possibly decide on this matter, as ultimately this is up to ALL of you. If
a CLEAR majority among the international delegations feel that you want to go
through with the deal, we shall always welcome you in Gaza and deeply appreciate
your solidarity. But we feel your solidarity without coming to Gaza, exposing the
siege against you and us, may bear more fruit for us and towards ending the siege,
at least from the Egyptian side.

We have repeatedly argued that the march itself is not supposed to be only a
symbolic gesture, but rather a key part of a process, a series of events, which may
ultimately lead to lifting the deadly siege. We want to intensify and continue
building an effective solidarity campaign, not divide it.

We salute you all and thank you from our hearts for the indescribable work you have
all done for Gaza!


Respectfully,

Haidar Eid,
Omar Barghouti,


I am deeply moved by the long-term commitment to total freedom and not accepting anything less despite the fact that there will be intense suffering in the meantime. it very much reminds me of the what the zapatistas call "being in resistance", basically not accepting anything short of complete and total liberation.

we have heard that while we have been halted here in cairo that there are leaflets being dropped by israeli airplanes in the north of gaza saying that there is an imminent airstrike, the same leaflets that were dropped last year at the ssme time before operation cast lead began. while it may be a terrifyingly cruel piece of psychological warfare, we can only assume that we are facing another attack in gaza. so far nothing has started, but its scary for us here, since we are stuck.

egypt has made an incredible mistake in stopping us in cairo. first, if they had let us arrive to al-arish and stop us there we could have caused much less uproar in the middle of the desert than in the middle of the capital. they are forcing the issue upon themselves that they are intimately complicit in the seige of gaza, and a puppet of the israeli and american govts in all this. i mean, unintentionally, this convergence has led to the total rejection of all tourism in the egyptian sinai, because all foreign passport carrying individuals are sent back to cairo. this economic impact to egypt must be huge. and the MASSIVE security apparatus that has had to be mobilized in cairo must be infinitely expensive. all this makes it clear to me that egypt MUST be under tremendous pressure from the US and israel to hold the line, because this is not looking good for egypt at all.

yesterday we had a rally to support our hunger strikerns at the journalism syndicate, and there were hundreds of internationals and egyptians, who participate at tremendous risks to themselves. most are tortured and beaten and detained for long periods of time.

but what has been going on in the undercurrents is the most interesting to me. the international coalition that has been building out of this scramble, with no previous organizing, has taken us days but has been fruitful. hardcore, committed, veteran activists with solid politics and big hearts have been meeting in small cafes and in hotel rooms in this fascist land. we are watched, followed, bumped, hassled, intimidated, but we are not getting arrested or dissappearing, so its not THAT scary. but i am paranoid all the time. yesterday an israeli secret police guy followed me for a block and confronted me, that was actually seriously scary.

last night we saw police gather around the circle where all our hotels are, and we were prepared to be blockaded into our hotels in the morning so that we couldnt carry out the action that we had been preparing.

as it turns out, only one hotel which had a lot of the codepink organizers was barricaded by the police, and nobody was allowed to leave. they were on house arrest, and it eventually took them 5 hours of negotiation with the foreign ministry to let them out. but the beautiful thing was that we had already developed a new leadership autonomous from the codepink folks, and we organized the march today without them, so we were still able to pull of the coolest action i have been a part of in a really long time.

the plan was for all participants (now dwindling to around 500, as most have gone home), to loosely gather in groups of 3, 4, or 5 around the entrance to the egyptian national museum at around 10am. when the signal was given, we would all converge and take the street and begin the march. its called a flash demonstration, and it was incredibly successful. as soon as the women sent up the flag, i was in the front line, locking arms and we took this massive street, a main artery of traffic in downtown cairo, in a matter of seconds. i looked around and before the police could control it, we had two to three hundred people taking the 12 lane road, both side. we held it for 45 minutes. the police surrounded us quickly, so we werent able to march very far, but we blocked traffic. the police were certainly ready for an action, but they werent ready for us to do what we did, for it to happen so fast and so fucking organized. they surrounded us and we sat down, attempting to keep the police in a circle around us. riot cops, the rank and file guys, were certainly scared, it was easy to make a connection quickly with most of them to calm them down, they didnt want to be there and most of them agreed with us, but they had orders and they get tortured if they dont follow orders just like anyone else who doesnt follow the rules in egypt. but thent he scary beefy plain-clothed guys got it, and they split our march in half and started picking one person out at a time, beating, kicking, and punching us until we were all out of the street and corralled on the sidewalk between a building and three sides of riot cops 4 rows deep. it was extremely tense, to say the least. medics tended to the injuered, a couple of people had gashed under their eyes, but it didnt seem like there were broken bones or busted heads. people were banged up, but not seriously injured. on my end of the action we sat and they tried to drag me away but some hardcore ladies held on to me and stopped them from doing it, but then a 75 year old woman who was fasting for three days needed to leave, the riot cops wouldnt let her go through their lines, and the only other exit was through the thugs kicking the shit out of people, so i had to help the lady jump over a steel fence, which was hard for her, but she made it, and ultimately it was safer for her. meanwhile the cops, all of them, were targetting journalists and anyone with a camera, and mostly men, but there were many women who were roughed up.

once we were corralled, i was constantly going to the edges, training people how to de-escalate so that we could all stay safe. after a few hours things calmed down a bit, and we started to have meetings about what to do with the space. there were 400 of us in a small space, only big enough for us to stand, and barely move around. lots of older folks, many people pretty freaked out, because the action was so intense and the police were stronger than many had anticipated. a few key reps from the different delegations represented gave moving speeches.

al-jazeera and bbc and other news sources had us live on tv, and egyptian tv as well.

sa the day went on, some people were allowed to leave and thats when it began to change. the solidarity had changed, somehow. about 3/4 of the original march had left, and it left us in a very vulnerable position. we were still trying to hold our edges of the occupied space with less people and more cops, and in the interim the egyptians were sending in groups of plain-clothes guys, huge men, into our area. they were obviously doing recon, and strategizing about how to disperse us, and we kept feeling more and more threatened on the inside and the outside, as there was no way to remove the men from our demo. we simply didnt have the organization, the tactical wisdom, nor the numbers to do so. we decided to end the action and leave calling it a success after 7 hours of occupying a space and getting across our messages to international media, before the cops could escalate.

now i am back at the hostel, writing, extremely tired but since i havent written yet i thought i should get this stuff down and out.

oh, just a couple of exciting things, slightly random:
1. my "round-table" meeting with the greeks, indians, south africans, spanish, scottish, italian, canadian, british, irish, and french happened in the bar where in 1919 the revolution began in egypt against the british occupation. i thought that was pretty fucking cool, auspicious, even?
2. one guy who was travelling as a boisterous american tourist to the sinai was turned back on a bus for having a foreign passport, and while he honestly wasnt part of the freedom march, he was returned to cairo. not understanding he asked a few people about it. two days later he was at a meeting in cairo and at the demo today! thats fucking coo.
3. in the UK they have made it a law that all goods must be labelled if they are produced in occupied palestine! what a great fucking success. i hope we can get that going in the US as well.

The boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) that the south african delegation is calling for is going to be incredible. i will post our declaration that we sign tomorrow, as soon as i get it. right now the draft is being send to gaza and the west bank for review, and we will finalize it tomorrow morning, hopefully.

ok, update on me getting into gaza:
most everyone is leaving tomorrow or within the next few days. there are a small group of us who will still try to get in in the coming weeks, there are no guarantees. i wont discuss my strategy here, but i still have a lot of hope.

friends, i appreciate all your supprt. i dont know if i will get into gaza, but this trip has been worth it for the international community and this movement. while i have many criticisms about the way things have been organized there is so much learning to take away from this. and the coalitions and friendships that have been created, in this unique crucible, are going to last for a long time. this part of my trip was not planned and is very different than the days to come, hopefully.

some lessons for me:
1. the movement lacks a real depth of analysis of power. there is still too much emphasis on working with embassies, representatives, police, etc. we still havent figured out that WE, the MASSES, are the ones who give them power, and we only strengthen it by coming to them for permission, acceptance, and approval. the analysis of power also applies to how leadership is defined, created, and carried out. i want to go into this much more, because it reflects a lack of self-reflection and our own personal addictions to being in various positions of power.
2. decision-making process must be consensus. when i was in the zapatista national congress we worked with hundreds of people to get consensus, and meetings lasted full days, but an extraordinary thing came out of it. it must be done, and we cant be lazy about fully democratic process. especially when working with radical italian, french, and greek anarchist groups. its better to work together than get separated, and ultimately its the best process.
3. what does it mean to listen. fuck, if people would just slow down and listen to one another, and respect what has been said with no attachment to their own ideas but just contribute with the best interest of the group, we would be so much more productive. listening doesnt just mean being quiet when someone else talks, it means holding a space where creativity and honesty can happen.
4. i am tired of working with "important people". the codepink delegation kept saying "look who is here, we have this intellectual, this person, balh blah blah" and it makes us all feel like shit. its not necessary. STOP doing it! we are all in the movement.
5. a long discussion about what it means to be male/female and what it means to be a man/woman is very necessary now. codepink has really surfaced a lot of things for me about power/gender dynamics. more on that later.

i am going to suggest that you check out the louisville website for photos and to stephon's facebook page for videos. johnsdoemaine on facebook, for those of you who understand what that means.
peace.