Letter to Alaa, to our Egyptian Comrades

Dear Alaa,

You wrote a letter to your mother on October 31. A letter of resolve, of clarity, of love. After 11 years of being in and out of prison, you write that you are left with no other choice but to stop drinking water, having already stopped eating for over six months.

Your fight to kiss your mother, to embrace your son, to hold your sisters, your fight to wake up at home resounds across Africa and the diaspora. The courage that you and every Egyptian activist exhibits in your fight against violence and coercion reverberates through our struggles.

We hear you Alaa. We hear you our Egyptian comrades.

We are organizing, echoing your cry for freedom in the fields, in the streets, in kitchens, in the factories. We are everywhere.

We have a steep fight ahead of us, Alaa, for your life, for our lives.

The world is on fire, it is flooded, it is being blown over by winds whirling at speeds of corporate greed and authoritarian rule.

And yet, you, and our many freedom fighters, are the ones behind bars. Not the criminals who steal and pillage whole lands from their boardrooms and war rooms.

There has been endless talk in 26 COPs with no intention of action. As a people of the sun who still live under the rhizomatic legacies and present-day chokeholds of imperialism, we are clear who bears responsibility for this ecological crisis.

There is much talk about loss and damage at this COP in Egypt. We do not miss the irony that the calls for climate reparations are being headed by an Egyptian administration that specializes in ensuring loss and enacting horrific damage. We are not fooled by the choreography of evasion that Egyptian officials have mastered when they say “I believe that we should concentrate on the task at hand and on the priority as it relates [to] climate change” when asked about you, Alaa.

To concentrate on the task at hand, on our beloved planet, is to talk about you, about Nokuthula Mabaso, about the Garifuna, about Standing Rock and Mindanao. One by one our voices are rising up Alaa, rising into a crescendo, and just as those before us “…entered into the battle with a sense that victory was inevitable,” we too are coming “for not even the ruling class control the weather.”^[1] It may sound like a whisper, but like a storm, the revolution is always brewing. We hear it in the rustle of the trees, under the cacophony of our cities, in the hurry of the river.

Across our geographies we organize to ensure that your freedom dreams are reflected in our actions.

This is our cry.

Free the people, free the land.

This is our promise.

Free the people, free the land.

^[1] From Stormy Weather by Robin Kelly

Signatories:

Addisalem Tesfaye Gebrekidan
Ahmed Abbes
Ahmed Abdel Nasser
Ahmed Elnaggar
Ahmed Mohamed Ali Farahat
Ahmed Said
Aida Seif El Dawla - El Nadeem Center against Violence and Torture, Egypt
Ajamu Nangwaya, PhD
Amina Mama - University of California, Davis
Amy Horowitz - The Enclave Habitat
Asmaa Yousuf
Âurea Mouzinho
Awa Fall-Diop - ORGENS
Ayesha Imam
Barbara Ransby
Brian Ashley - AIDC
Cameron Rasmussen - NAASW
Cheryl Wilkins
Cherynne Carayan
Coumba Toure - Africans Rising
d'bi.young anitafrika - Ubuntu! Decolonial Arts Centre
Dalia Basiouny
Desmond D'Sa - South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
Dr Toyin Ajao - iAfrika
Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi - Director/Senior Scholar, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, San Francisco State University
Dr. William Ayers - University of Illinois at Chicago
Duha Elmardi
Dzodzi Tsikata - University of Ghana
Eman El-Hadary
Eunice Borges
Fahima Hashim
Fiona Dove - Transnational Institute
Firoze Manji - Daraja Press
Francoise Mukuku - Amazone advisors
Gabriel Teodros
Habiba Mohamed
Hakima Abbas
Halem Henish
Hamza Hamouchene - Transnational Institute/North African Food Sovereignty Network
Hana Farid
Happy Kinyili
Harshavardhan Thyagarajan - Queen's University, Ontario
Hibist Kassa
Hind Ali
Jan Susler
Kali Akuno - Cooperation Jackson
Larissa Kojoué
Laurence Meyer - Digital Freedom Fund
Lemia NAbil
Lisa Yun Lee
Luam Kidane
Lyn Ossome
Maha Bahi
Mahienour El-Massry
Maisara Gamal
Margo Okazawa-Rey - Professor Emerita, San Francisco State University
Martha Biondi - Northwestern University
Meriam Mabrouk
Mona Hamed
Muzan Alneel - Sudan
Muzna Alhaj
Nadia Ben-Youssef
Nelly Bassily
Nisrin Elamin - Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Paul Foster
Phumi Mtetwa - JASS Southern Africa
Po kimani
Premilla Nadasen - Barnard College
Randa hamo
Rania Rashwan Ahmed
Raga Mekkawy - University of Oxford
Rashid Abdelwahab Ali Mohammed
Rudo Chigudu
Ruth Mumbi - Women Collective Kenya (WCK)
S'bu. Zikode - Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement of South Africa
Sabine Mohamed - Johns Hopkins University
Samar Al-Bulushi
Sara Abbas - SudanUprising, Germany
Sara Mohani
Shailja Patel
Sokari Ekine
Stacey Sutton
Susan Rosenberg
Thawra al-Abdy
Theo Sowa
Usama Fakhry
Walaa Salah
Wendyam Micheline Kabore
Yannia Sofia Garzon Valencia - Observatorio VigiaAfro, Colombia
Zandi Sherman
Zeyad Elnagar - The International Marxist Tendency (Arabic branch)