From Kevin:

In the 20th century, 1964, the late Ella Baker stated: "Until the killing of black mother's sons becomes as important as the killing of white mother's sons in this country, we who believe in freedom cannot rest"*. Here in the 21st century, 2024, I Kevin Cooper say: " Until the murders of Palestinian mother's daughters and sons become as important to this world as the murders of Israeli mother's daughters and sons, We Who Believe In Truth, Justice & Freedom Cannot & Will Not Rest"! Not only are Palestinian mother's losing their children to genocide, they are also living under the constant threat of death and or imprisonment. Why, one must ask are so many Palestinian women being arrested and imprisoned?

Women are the real teachers of the world. They have and raise the children who grow up to be the adults who will fight for truth and justice and freedom against the oppressors who know nothing but oppression, lies and injustice. As Mao Tse Tung once stated "Women Hold Up Half The Sky"... and now the sky is falling in Palestine!

Her voice, settled beyond the steel frames which enshrine her faith

Inversion, our own emaciates (not,) her leaving rathe

Nectar from the olive tree, like roots our struggles twin

Destinies envisioned through hope- tomorrows our eyes hope to find

Raised hearts accent our resistance, false Accords across from us align

Avast not, the rivers towards which our struggles define

Joined by a United lectern from which visions of oppression are staggered

Amices adorn officiants, their treatment of us laagered

By these words of solidarity, united by kind ¡Levantaté! From us resistance you will find

The initial letters of each line spell out "HIND RAJAB."

Dear Dania Hanatsha,

The solidarity I feel with you is unmatched. Your strength and courage is an inspiration to me as I continue to speak out about the deplorable conditions of our womens prisons. I am driven by your perseverance to speak truth to power. We, caged women in the country providing resources to eliminate the Palestinian people, stand with YOU against our government. We will continue to put pressure on our government to end this unjust war. The Palestinian fight is the African-American fight! Stay strong and keep fighting!

Dear Khalida Jarrar and family,

We, incarcerated women in this pro Israel, pro genocide country called USA that continues, against its citizens wishes, to provide weapons and resources to eliminate the Palestinian people. WE stand in solidarity with YOU and ALL Palestinian people fighting for freedom. Your resilience in the face of oppression is an inspiration to all caged women. Know that you are not alone. We are fighting alongside you for your release and end of the occupation. Stay strong and keep fighting.

PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

"In the end, we did more than fashion hope out of despair. We also evolved in our narrative, in the way we perceive ourselves, the prison and the prison guards. We defeated any lingering sense of inferiority and turned the walls of prison into an opportunity. When I saw the beautiful smiles on the faces of my students who completed their high school education in prison, I felt that my mission has been accomplished.

Hope in prison is like a flower that grows out of a stone. For us Palestinians, education is our greatest weapon. With it, we will always be victorious." — Khalida Jarrar

Authored by an incarcerated Black man in America, Williams’ poetry draws tragic parallels between violent, carceral regimes across generations and borders. His words highlight not only the resilience of the Palestinian children but the resilience of the human spirit broadly — and the power of joy as resistance to carceral, oppressive systems. 

That the world remembered me. 

Somewhere 

Between May 15, 1948- October 7th, 2023, 

You were forced to remember that I live beyond a barricaded

Behind a wall 

Below a tunnel 

And between these checkpoints 

The bargaining tool that you convinced   Yourself that I was buried under

Broke your barriers 

And broke your necks while all of yall rubber necking trying to figure out who the 

fuck let the Palestinian talk. 

Who gave us the gumption, the gule, the tenacity to fly over barbed wire and destroy the foundation of what you think is a country. 

Who put us back on the map, when yall tried to erase us

Who gave us the right to fight back 

Who suffered in the will to resist

Over 150k murdered and most of them children and women

And we are asking ourselves who is watching us when we have always watched us? 

Who speaks for us when we have always spoken for our selves

Who loves us more than our mothers 

Who gave you the power to believe in god again 

Who gave you the will to keep moving forward in the sight of massive destruction and rampage 

We did 

Us 

The Palestinian 

Has awoken your dreams and fought your nightmares 

We have caused your tears and  laughter 

We have shown you our blood and flesh and have given you our our entire people to show you that

Zionism will never win. 

It will only evolve to self destruction 

And we are here to see the year of dragon 🐉 unleash itself in its power 

It’s strength

It’s glory  

And it’s fortune. 

When you are looking for a mythological creatures

Look for us, because our children

are your children’s imagination. 

We are your past present and future 

We have nothing else to give you 

For our limbs are in paradise and the only thing I have left is this voice. 

After her first detention, Dania leveraged and risked her delicate freedom to bring attention to the inhumane treatment of women prisoners by the IDF. Of course, I do not know Dania personally, but I imagine she knew that the Israeli occupation—like other carceral systems-– regularly targets former prisoners. She must have known that with each interview she took & story she shared, she was making herself more vulnerable to retaliation, re-abduction, and reliving the horrors of detention that she knew all too well.

And still, she spoke.

Dania’s is the kind of voice that oppressive forces rely on stifling. Voices like Dania’s expose oppression and therefore threaten oppression — and, because they refuse to be stifled, will outlast oppression. It is the same kind of voice ringing out from CCWF and CIW—women’s prisons in California, from immigrant detention centers along the Texas-Mexico border, from death row in Missouri. It rings out from the depths of despair, at risk of even greater danger, because it knows there is something to speak for, because there is another possibility beyond the despair, because there is hope.

In the words of Miriame Kaba, a Black American abolitionist, “Hope is a discipline.” In this work to dismantle the prison-industrial complex–from Palestine to the US and everywhere in between– hope is indeed a discipline: seemingly impossible at times, necessary always.

Today, we honor Dania, all Palestinian political prisoners, and all those imprisoned. Because the world has heard their voices, across generations and borders, imprisonment, imperialism, and colonialism will end one day. Until that day comes, we commit to uplifting voices like Dania’s that have not lost hope, and we commit to the discipline of finding that hopeful voice within ourselves.

Posted by Respond Crisis Translation

Though they do try

They try through torture and torment

Violence and vitriol

Repression and mind control

Prisons are not places for people and cages cannot contain freedom

Though they do try

They try through starvation and rape

Through the unspeakable, Inhumanity, and the inhumane

Intentional Exacerbation of suffering and pain

Prisons are not for places for people and cages cannot contain women

Though they do try

They most certainly cannot hold back freedom dreams and liberation songs

The spirit of women determined to fight on

Through cracks in the walls and holes in the roof

Our caged sisters continue to encourage the youth

to fight on

Resistance cannot be chained

And as Assatta said - chains are all that’s left to lose

You see dear women

The power there is

Your captor

Will never understand that truth about you

Prisons are not places for people and cages cannot contain women

Though they do try

Caged women we promise to not forget about you

Thank you

For your sacrifice

For putting your life

On the line

For freedom

for the rest of us

Who cannot be free

Will not accept deals, or treaties or pleas

until you are freed

we shall say your names

Write you poems

Sing your songs

Paint your stories

Scream till no voice is left

Never letting them forget

they

cannot dissapear

Your warrior woman spirit

Prisons are not places for people and cages cannot contain women

Though they do try

And there you should not be

I wrestle with the reality

That it could just as easily be me

While you are there

And I am here

I will continue to face the enemy

Showing no fear

Not give them the satisfaction of tears

Not matter the days or the months or the years

We will be here

Until we decimate all of the cages

And you dear sister - are free

-Cat Brooks, Anti Police-Terror Project

Secondly, I relate to is her fortitude and strength. Despite my hopeless circumstances with a juvenile life without parole sentence the support of my family, friends, and loved ones has helped me endure three decades away from society and I found hope through healing myself and assisting those around me heal.

-Liz Lozano, CCWF serving LWOP sentence, due to be resentenced March 7

We have the power to change the system if we focus on the right things while on the inside and when that is the choice we make we are roses and flowers growing out of stone. Every time we give someone else hope and lift someone up we are helping other flowers grow. 

In Solidarity,

Ursula Gomez - ICE Detained Hostage in NWDC  

My husband terrorized my children and I, and as a PTSD response I chose our lives and am now being punished for our survival.

My family and my kids are doing everything to participate in stopping the nonsense war and genocide happening on Palestinians.

Thank you all for demonstrating your love to the Palestinian prisoners unjustly imprisonment and treatment in the hands of the Zionist government. Their people are suffering too and want peace just as the Palestinians do. 

I can not compare my situation in here-CDCR to what they are going through. However, one thing I can compare is that my children n family have been doing a Life sentence along with me because they live a life of unfairness without any regard for the causative factors of my crime. I am grateful for the advocacy of my family for me, for the advocacy of organizations, and above all my own hope and hard works of utilizing the "R" rehabilitative programs. I had faith in God's Mercy & Grace that one day I will reap the fruits of what I am planting in here. And, it did through Resentencing for Exceptional Conduct.

Palestinians are Political Prisoners and are held hostages. My families and communities like you are fundraising, marching, and writing to their Reps at the state level and national level in order to help those helpless people.

I will join you all when I get out by his summer inshaAllah!

Love n respect,

Shajia Ayobi- CCWF, Lifer found suitable January 2025

Long live hope and activism! Free Palestine. 

-Wendy Fong, CCWF serving LWOP sentence

I cannot begin to imagine the sacrifice Khalida has accepted to take her stand for what she knows is right. It takes a strength to hold tight to your convictions through such horrific experiences. And the fact of her incarceration shows that she is a light to lead others. Khalida is a light that Palestine's opposition saw and wanted to extinguish because her soul calls out truth for many people to see and hear. 

Khalida's survival, her perseverance, is an example to follow. The surrounding circumstances will never change us for the worse if we don't allow it. We choose how to respond and who we will become from what happens to us. Khalida has held on to truth for so many others who could not. It shows an ability to find a deeper love.

In my incarceration I have learned to find a deeper love. To want more for people who don't know how to care about themselves. To believe I am deserving of more. To stand up, speak out and fight for what I know is right. Dignity, respect, freedom, opportunity. Fighting for all is the only way to truly achieve a higher goal for self.

-Krysten Webber, CCWF, resentenced from LWOP to 35 to life 

-Kiana Barker, CIW, Serving Life

-Kanoa Harris, CCWF, serving LWOP