gaza freedom march, cairo, dec. 31

"You came for the big party, and tomorrow is it," Mick from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign said last night at the organizing meeting as we planned our illegal demonstration happening in a police state, in a meeting that overflowed the restaurant of the hotel in which we were meeting and was surely infiltrated with police agents.

Having been barred entry into Gaza, we had decided to have our Freedom March right here in downtown Cairo, in Tahrir Square, the Times Square of Cairo. There were so many reasons why this plan was insane. We had been prevented from meeting in large groups. Communication could politely be described as sketchy. All our meetings had been infiltrated and they were probably listening to our cell phone conversations. The location we had picked was large, complex, and ground zero for Cairo's kamikaze traffic. The police presence had already been quite intense and groups assembling on the street had been quickly targeted.

The night before the march, we noticed police buildup around all our hotels. The de facto affinity group that had formed at our hotel decided to leave early that morning. Everyone was dressed in non-activist clothes, looking like tourists, traveling in small groups. As we headed out in the morning, we were relieved to find our hotel had not been sealed off, but as we passed the Lotus Hotel, where many of the organizers were staying, we saw it was completely barricaded and surrounded by riot cops. A crew of people ended up being trapped there for several hours.

One thing I've learned from this week is that if you're going to do something insane, you have to commit to it. Because we had already survived one confrontation with the riot cops, at the US embassy, unscathed, my two friends and I all felt confident enough to volunteer to be in the "front line" contingent of women (which only ended up being about 15 people) who were going to give the signal to start the protest and be the first to go into the street.

We had decided that the only way we could assemble was by "flash mob," where small groups of people come together quickly like swarms of mosquitos at a pre-determined point. Man, flash mobs were made for this shit. Our crew of about 15 had all tucked "flags," really just large bright pieces of cloth, into our shirts and bags. As we reached the point where the protest was going to start, the cops scoped us out and started closing in. Next thing I know, Lisa, our team leader, has her flag out and is chanting "Free, free Gaza!" and marching right into the street. Then we're all doing it, and suddenly out of nowhere we have a crowd of several hundred people behind us. The notoriously homicidal Cairo traffic parts like the Red Sea for us and we are marching in the street.

That lasted for probably about a minute. The cops had their own flash mob brewing and were on us immediately. They penned us in and stopped everyone from moving within minutes...I'd say less than five, but who knows? We sat down in the street and linked arms. I couldn't really tell how many people sat down because damned if I didn't end up in the very front line.

The cops had clearly decided that if we were going to get a dose of violence, blocking traffic was the right excuse for it. They started physically pulling us out of the street--grabbing, shoving, hitting and dragging those who peacefully resisted, and apparently shouting insults at us in Arabic, although I couldn't tell you what they were. They had observed quite accurately who the instigators were and targeted us first. The uniformed riot cops (who ironically are the scary-looking ones) we learned are mostly military conscripts who either couldn't care less about us or are actually sympathetic. They were great at blocking us in but tended not to hurt us. The plainclothes cops are the career policemen, and they were very rough with us. One of my friends was punched in the head (though luckily not too hard); a man was hit hard with a walkie-talkie under his eye and was bleeding. I was grabbed forcefully enough to leave bruises on my arm, although I'm proud to say I gave them a decent amount of trouble. I ended up being extremely grateful for the nonviolence training we had taken with Starhawk the previous day. Through some protest miracle, I managed to hang onto the keffiyah I'd bought in Gaza, and all my electronics escaped damage.

They forced us onto the sidewalk with really remarkable speed. Once on the sidewalk, they surrounded us again, but by getting everyone to sit down (I'd say this was 300-500 people now), we held the space. We were now occupying a sidewalk on one of Cairo's busiest streets. We hung banners and flags from a tree and lamp posts, waved Palestinian flags, chanted, sang songs, held a speakout with representatives from all the different country delegations that had participated, and held spokescouncil meetings right there on the sidewalk to decide what to do next and how long to stay. We set up a bathroom station when they refused to let us leave. Egyptians brought us food and water, passed through the police lines. We re-christened our space "Free Gaza Square."

We held the space for nearly seven hours. Our original plan was to stay through midnight and ring in the new year in Free Gaza Square. By late afternoon, our numbers had dwindled significantly though, to a level that some people thought was unsafe, and we decided to disperse peacefully as a unified group. While we weren't able to carry out the stay-til-midnight plan, I think the fact that we were able to organize *anything* given the conditions we were operating under is a significant accomplishment. I felt that we had achieved what we wanted to achieve, which was to show the world that we stand with Gaza, we want to see the siege broken, and we will not let the Egyptian government silence us. Even though we would have much preferred to be in Gaza, we knew that we were marching when the Palestinians were marching, and they knew it too.

Although I had been ready to stay until midnight, or longer, I can't say I wasn't grateful for a few hours back at the hotel to depressurize. We did ring in the new year with a protest, back in Tahrir Square: a lovely, really beautiful and moving candlelight vigil in a tranquil plaza. The most moving thing was the numbers of Egyptians who materialized seemingly out of nowhere to participate. Even here, the riot cops couldn't leave us alone, and plainclothes officers scared off most of the Egyptians pretty quickly. But everyone knows what we have done here. People wave to us on the street and greet us with a "You go to Gaza?" and sometimes a "Good luck!" or a victory sign.

During the vigil, Medea called Deema, one of the march organizers in Gaza, where they had just finished a concert for the folks who did make it in, about 85 all together. Medea relayed messages from Deema to the crowd, and at one point we all chanted "We love you, Gaza!" into the phone. Toward the end of the conversation, Deema said something like "we can feel your solidarity, and it gives us the strength to keep fighting for our freedom." In all the chaos and confusion and infighting and hastily made, imperfect plans, this was the most important thing of all to hear.