Everything for everyone, p.6
Everything for Everyone, page 6
Hassan: [Long pause.] It was the most beautiful day of my life. There had been marches, so many marches. There was a sense that as a movement, we had tried guerilla warfare on its own, and it hadn’t worked. So there had to be both a military presence and just mass uprising. People in kata’eb would work on bombing the borders, blowing up military outposts and all that.
But most people were just organizers, and they’d work on the marches. The marches were like big fucking parties. It’s where everyone let out steam from the stress. The stress of the random bombings, the stress of the raids, all of it. We cried, and we sang, and we danced. The dabka lines were bigger than you’d ever seen.
There was a big march that day. It was supposed to be the biggest one, but people were worried. Worried that everyone was getting tired of being out and about all the time, we worried no one would show up. But then the Israelis—they attacked a school bus that morning. They straight up shot up this bus, killed all the kids on their way to school. This photo went up on Ours of the bus in tatters, bits of flesh everywhere. It was horrifying.… And everyone came the fuck out. Like seriously all of Gaza marched that day. At least a million people marched to the border.
We stood there and the army started shooting at us. And we started shouting: “More will come, more will come, more will come.” Because it was true. More would come. It was literally do or die. The soldiers were overwhelmed and kind of backing up. They had no real strategy. Ours was to do what we had always done as Palestinians, refuse to stop existing. Refuse to disappear.
Those of us that were armed started shooting at them, some people made Molotov cocktails. And of course, they shot at us, but when our shuhada would fall, more would come. They couldn’t stop us. They started to see that.
This woman got on the mic. A comrade. I forget her name. She was killed a few days later. She grabbed this megaphone and started shouting, in English, “Drop the gun and run.” It became a chant, and everyone picked it up. Hundreds of thousands chanting at these soldiers, “Drop the gun and run.” And eventually they did. They dropped their guns and they ran. And to tell you the truth, we didn’t run after them. Because it wasn’t about them. It was about us, how big and beautiful we were in that moment. How unstoppable. We knew that we had done what our parents and grandparents had dreamt of doing—we knew that nothing would ever be the same again. They were what Darwish had called them, aaberoon—passersby. Us. Palestine. That was forever.
Abdelhadi: Incredible.
Hassan: Everything fell into place after that. We marched and the rest of Palestine marched. And everywhere the chant was the same, “Drop the gun and run.” The IDF fell in a few weeks. We liberated huge swaths of land in those months of marching. The “mixed” cities first and Khalil and al-Quds. Basically, everyone in the Israeli government defected, anyone who had the money or the means to get out did.
Abdelhadi: What happened to those who stayed?
Hassan: With every flare up in the uprising, more and more people had been leaving. Over the course of the years leading up to 2035, hundreds of thousands went back to Europe and America. Whole cities emptying out. They mostly already had dual citizenships in Europe, in America. Most of the Ashkenazis left. The people who remained were the poor people. The Eastern Europeans, the Arab Jews. A lot of them came around to insurrection, because the state wasn’t meeting their needs anymore anyway.
Abdelhadi: What about the settlements?
Hassan: We knew most of them had their own militias. So, the elders’ council, which coordinated across kata’eb, would assign different settlements to different kata’eb based on their size and our sense of how much weaponry they had. People were encouraged to join the katiba that was liberating their or their parents’ or grandparents’ villages, whenever that was possible. We had already had extensive debate within the liberation movement about what to do with the settlements. We knew they would be the last holdouts because they had always been so isolated and militant. They were taught they were vulnerable and could never live with Indigenous people. They were also the most heavily armed.
Abdelhadi: Can you tell me more about those debates?
Hassan: Some people wanted to just blow them the fuck up. They said that even if they surrendered, they didn’t want these settlements on the land. They didn’t want the reminder of what had happened: the genocide, the expulsions, almost a hundred years of apartheid and occupation. But that view lost out. Water was very scarce. And there was all this infrastructure built for these settlements, and we didn’t want to waste it. I remember one meeting, May said, “They have their names on it, but we built it.” Even if not literally, every piece of infrastructure had been the result of shit taken from Palestinians. So why throw that away? It could be put to good use.
Abdelhadi: Did your katiba get sent to any settlements?
Hassan: Yeah, a few. The hardest was called “Sderot.” It’s where Najaf is now, or where it is again. It had been Najaf before they killed or expelled everyone in ’48. Yeah, so Sderot was tough. Gaza had just been liberated, and they were terrified. And they didn’t realize yet that surrendering was inevitable. Plus, they had more guns than people; they’d been stockpiling guns for fifty years.
Abdelhadi: What did you do?
Hassan: What we generally did in settlements. We showed up and surrounded the town. We had megaphones, and we communicated that we were there to negotiate their surrender. That they wouldn’t be harmed if they laid down their arms and did not harm any of the infrastructure. We gave them three days to surrender before we cut electricity. Another three days before we cut water. Of course, no resources were allowed in or out.
Abdelhadi: How long did that last?
Hassan: Three weeks! They had a lot of supplies, bunkers, stockpiled food and water, etc. They had a lot of protocols. It was just a matter of time though, because they no longer had a state backing them. How long can you hold out a settlement in a liberated Palestine? One of the days, a group of men came out, hands in the air, to negotiate with us.
Abdelhadi: What did you end up negotiating?
Hassan: The elders’ council had sketched out a process where every settlement would have to submit to a collective process of redistribution in tandem with the natives of the locale. Some elders whose parents had fled from Najaf into Gaza participated in that process. I didn’t stay for that, I wanted to see the rest of Palestine, and keep marching on. You can go visit Najaf though and look through the village archives for some of those accords; you can probably interview former settlers and some of the folks at the negotiations. Most are probably still living there, that’s what usually happened.
Abdelhadi: Did all the settlements surrender this way?
Hassan: I wish. A handful refused to surrender, and things got bloody. Big shootouts until the settlers ran out of ammunition, or food, or energy, or hope. It was always inevitably a losing battle, because kata’eb could always get reinforcements when they needed them, but the settlers didn’t have anyone to turn to after the IDF fell. As soon as the shooting stopped, reconciliation committees would be set up to figure out next steps.
Abdelhadi: So, what was next for you?
Hassan: I went to fight in Lebanon. After we liberated Palestine, the rest of the Levant followed suit. Palestine was the model. We were occupied by Israel. Others were occupied by their ruling classes. People were done with occupation—no matter who was doing it. So yeah, I spent a decade fighting in kata’eb. First in Palestine, then in Lebanon. Then I wanted to settle down a bit, and I worked on commune councils. It was a good life. But I missed my family here in America. I always wanted to see my brother again, my cousins, and just New York. This damn city sticks to you, you know.
Abdelhadi: Hah, tell me about it.
Hassan: So yeah, that’s why I came back. Now I go back and forth every six months or so. It’s a long trip though.
Abdelhadi: You take a clipper?
Hassan: Yeah, I usually do a high-speed train from Gaza to Cairo, then catch another one from Cairo to Rabat or Casablanca. From there, a clipper to New York. The whole thing takes a week or so.
Abdelhadi: Yeah, the train systems aren’t as good here as they are in the SWANA region. I heard that they’re working on solar planes in Cairo?
Hassan: Yup, there was a test launch yesterday. We may be flying again soon!
Abdelhadi: That would really be something. I haven’t flown since 2045!
Hassan: We’ve lived long lives; you never know what will happen next.
Abdelhadi: Yes, when I first visited Palestine in 2016, I sat around a cafe in Jerusalem, and my friends and I dreamt of the day we could drive from Beirut to Jerusalem on a day trip. You helped make that a reality. It’s been an honor talking to you.
Hassan: The train ride is even better than the car ride would have been! Thanks for this, it’s been fun to reminisce.
3: TANYA JOHN ON THE FREE ASSEMBLY OF CROTONA PARK
Recorded on December 1, 2067, in the Bronx.
M. E. O’Brien: Hello, my name is M. I will be having a conversation with Tanya John for the New York Commune Oral History Project. It is the first day of December 2067, and this is being recorded at Tanya’s apartment in the Crotona Commune. Hello Tanya.
Tanya John: Hello M.
O’Brien: Could you introduce yourself, however you’d like?
John: Sure. I’m a coor of the Crotona Commune and serve as a rep in the Mid-Atlantic Free Assembly. Hold on, I’m getting a call. [Long pause.] Okay, sorry about that. I shouldn’t have to take any more calls.
O’Brien: You have an implanted phone?
John: Yeah, of-c. Where was I? You don’t have a phone?
O’Brien: No, I guess I just use my watch. What’s a coor?
John: A coor is a sysadmin. A ranner? The word comes from “coordinator,” I think. Basically, I make sure fec doesn’t get in the way of other fec.
O’Brien: Like you administer the commune?
John: Right.
O’Brien: You were introducing yourself.
John: Yeah, I work a lot. I am an auntie to tons of kids. I play music. I like parties. I’m good at managing things. I love my commune. I’ve been around. My new hobby is making drugs.
O’Brien: Drugs?
John: Synthetic hallucinogens. I’m taking a class in neuropsych.
O’Brien: You play music?
John: Yeah, I DJ. I’ve run parties here in the Bronx for twenty years. My big gigs though are on the Jakarta Circuit.
O’Brien: Jakarta, the city?
John: I guess? The Jakarta Circuit is clubs, a dance party scene. It’s big all along the rim of the Indian Ocean. The music is a wild mix, evolved from these dance barges that would run back and forth along the coast from Karachi, running through Colombo, Chennai, Kolkata, and then turn around in Bangkok. This scene was made by the kids that would take the barges back and forth, and then crash in the shanties and communes along the circuit. Then the dancing went online, and it got popular. It’s very catchy, very exhilarating. These days the servers are offshore near Jakarta. I play a show once a month or so. They are big.
O’Brien: Big?
John: Maybe twenty thousand kids come out on average?
O’Brien: I am confused. These were in person and now they aren’t?
John: Yeah. Ugh. I’ll try to explain again: they came out of the dance barges of the forties, but later became full sensory. In some cases, the same boats. Like now some of the old shipping freighters that had become international dance clubs now just house the server systems for immersion parties today.
O’Brien: Like online virtual clubs?
John: Right.… You should look this up.… You wanted to talk about the Free Assembly? The first one—of Crotona Park?
O’Brien: Yes! I’m sorry I am still a bit confused about the clubs. Let’s loop back around to that at some point. Maybe let’s start with your growing up.
John: Sure. I’m from the Bronx. I grew up in the Bronx River Projects. My dad was from Karachi. My mom was from the DR. My mom was a teacher, taught music in high school. My dad used to do food delivery and then he got sucked into running for one of the orgs.
O’Brien: Orgs?
John: Street organizations. The gangs. My dad worked for one of the old gangs, MS-13, doing pickups.
O’Brien: What were you like as a kid?
John: I got into music and parties early. I had a lot of friends, I got along with everybody really well. As a teenager I was into sex. Dated a lot. Enjoyed the drama. Always had something going on. I had fun.
O’Brien: How did you get involved politically?
John: I wasn’t really that political. Like I wasn’t in any political groups. I mostly liked to dance. I got really into organizing parties. I ran these monthly parties that would move around. They were totally wild. We were one of the first that started syncing between implants and externals. Like full sensory immersion, aug sense, but onsite. We had all these DJs coming in from all over. The music scene was blowing up in Nigeria around then, and we got in that just as it got really popular here. It was so fucking fun. That’s kind of how I spent my late teen years and early twenties. Made plenty of money from it. Calling them parties may not give the right sense. They would go on for a weekend. Everyone would live together in big empty buildings, and we would cook and eat together, and then people would dance or sleep based on their drug cycle. But also like we’d do like these workshops, and discussion groups, and fec.
O’Brien: Did it ever get messy, like serious conflict?
John: We took fights onsite really seriously. We put a lot of work into negotiating between the orgs to not get into it at the parties and had these resolution forums for people to work it out. The NYPD was no-go across a lot of the South Bronx at that point, so everyone needed support to address problems that came up, and we did that through the party organizing.
O’Brien: What was your party called?
John: Oh, we changed the name around a lot. Initially I called it Thalassa, but we changed the name a half a dozen times and people knew it was the same party. Despina, Galatea, Proteus.
O’Brien: Those are … moons?
John: That was the joke. Moons of Neptune. Some of our first aug sets were underwater. So, a roundabout joke, I guess. It made sense when we were tweaking.
O’Brien: Underwater dance parties. That is amazing. Could you explain, for people who don’t use implants or augmented environments, how tech worked at the parties?
John: Sure. By the time I got into the dance scene, this was maybe when I was thirteen or fourteen, in ’44 and ’45, wet tech had become a huge part of music. This meant kids had these head implants. We would have surgery rooms at the parties, for kids to get new augs. There were a few veteran medics from the war in Iran, where auggie implants were big on the US side of things. The medics knew a lot about how to do simple, quick neural implants. And lots of soldiers stateside were stealing and selling anything they could get their hands on, so we had a steady source of auggie supplies of all sorts. The tech was actually pretty sturdy, and infections and complications pretty minimal, because it was all designed for field combat conditions. Well, sometimes kids died but a lot of people were dying, things were a mess during that time, and the tech was a lot of fun, so we dealt with the death. These medic vets taught a lot of people how to work with the tech, and kids were mad scholastic about it.
O’Brien: What were the augment implants like?
John: Usually bugs in your ears, another for your eyes, and then one on the back of your neck. They added additional sounds and visual elements to what you heard and saw, like added to your reality. Many people know about this now from phones, but then it wasn’t much in civilian life besides the dance scene. So, when we’d have dance parties there would be the music in the external environment from speakers, and light shows from drones flying around, but then there would be this whole other level to the show in transmitting to people’s implants that would reshape what we saw and heard, so it would make all these levels of experience that the DJs could play with. And kids could talk to each other, add to the environment with glove controllers, so what everyone saw could be mutually shaped by each other. You could select what your implants took in, so like only seeing stuff your friends made, or a narrow bandwidth from the DJ, or whatever.
O’Brien: That sounds really interactive.
John: It was genius. All the circuits these days do this, but my parties were some of the first that did it in North America. The first of the really genius DJs were coming out of Lagos, but because of the heavy use of auggies by the US Army in Iran, all these vets in the Bronx had it already, so we became one of the first of the big dance scenes to take all this up.
O’Brien: That is all fascinating. Were you paying any attention to what was happening nationally and internationally at the time?
John: Yeah. I didn’t think of myself as focused on that sort of thing at the time. But I got really into talking with dance kids and DJs, and at the time this was heavily a scene based on traveling circuits. A lot was going down, like kids’ squats getting raided and people getting locked up, and I remember trying to get a handle on the bigger context. I think one turning point for me in thinking about the international context was in 2051. The US military decided to tank the whole Internet, like everywhere. They burned most of the satellites, crashing them into the atmosphere, had a virus that wiped out most of the servers, they just tried to fry the whole thing.
O’Brien: Yes, I wanted to ask you about that. I thought with the discussion of aug tech you may know something about it.
John: They were desperate. This was during their occupation of NYC. The civil war was going poorly, they were losing ground all over, and everyone hated them everywhere. I don’t know their thinking. But they crashed the Internet, and the cell networks, and basically any way we could talk to each other. It was really terrible for our parties, because it became so much harder to get DJs in from Africa. Two things started to emerge to replace the old Internet at that point, but they were both just starting, and it would be years before they really worked. Both replacements, strangely, were kind of connected to the dance scene.
