Thread by @maryamalwan

THREAD: Songs I associate with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment that @Columbia University cruelly destroyed, where I finally felt safe and surrounded by community on campus again for the first time in months🧵

#1: “Linger” by the Cranberries because it was stuck in my head as we were setting up the tents for the very first time at 4am on April 17th. I kept singing it that night and then a lot of people started sleeplessly humming it for hours

#2: A song that goes “Where you go I will go my friend, where you go I will go. Your people are my people, your people are mine. Our struggles align.” It hasn’t left my head since April 17th, when a protestor taught it to the massive crowd that mobilized to protect us from arrest

#3: “Dammi Falastini,” which played at midnight on April 18th with hundreds of students surrounding us and chanting in solidarity with Gaza. We hardly slept, waiting for the police to come at any minute, but the celebration of making it through the day overshadowed the fear

#4: “We Shall Not Be Moved,” a song from the Civil Rights Movement that we sang the afternoon of April 18th as we linked arms and the NYPD arrested us for “trespassing” one by one because we refused to leave until Columbia divested

#5: Not a song, but the chant “Disclose, divest, we will not stop we will not rest”—which has now spread nationwide along with the encampments

#6: Songs I forced everyone to sing on my corrections van when I was arrested on April 18th: “The Wheels on the Bus,” “I Will Survive,” and, for some reason, “What Makes You Beautiful”

#7: Songs that the NYPD radio was playing that were deeply unserious: “Toxic” by Britney Spears, “Water” by Tyla, “Dance the Night,” by Dua Lipa, “Hello,” by Adele. According to my friends in another corrections van, they were tuned into the same radio station

#8: Taylor Swift’s new album, especially, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” & “Fresh Out the Slammer.” It was released at 12am on April 19th, 2 hours after I finally got out of jail. I played it on repeat as I fell asleep in the open air on the second lawn that students took over

#9: “22” which my friends and I kept running around and singing during my birthday in the camp

#10: “Rich Man’s House” and “We Shall Overcome,” were other staples in the encampment among the many dances, teach-ins, community dinners, multifaith rituals, and cultural events held over the 13 days

The encampment was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. I will never be able to recreate that sense of community, creation, sumud, & solidarity. But it lives on through our music and memories, and when Columbia divests, we will remember how they ripped this away