For over two years, the People’s Forum has been the hub of New York activists fighting for a free Palestine. Since that fateful October 7th, the flow of people who show up every Monday has never stopped. Indeed, when asked the ritual question, “Who’s here for the first time today?”, new hands are always raised. Most are young people, especially those very young, experiencing their first opportunity for political and social engagement. But despite their youth and inexperience, they have managed to establish a system of counterattack against power and the rhetoric of the mainstream media that is astonishing. In my many years of life, spent in and around Italian and European grassroots movements, I had never encountered such a well-structured organization, both in terms of practical efficiency and collective thought. The movement hasn’t lost its way, even in the face of the violent repression that hit universities last spring, where, I’m told, protest activity has now dwindled to a bare minimum or gone underground. It has reorganized in other places and in new forms. I’d even say: It is more fluid than capitalism itself. So I’ll try to give you a picture, though I know in advance that, compared to the vibrant passion of the original, this image can only be pale.
The Digitalization of the City
New York City is divided into five boroughs, a word that translates as neighborhood, district, or zone. These are spaces so vast that they are cities in themselves—for example, Brooklyn, where I live, is about four times the size of Milan. Organizing a cohesive human movement in a megalopolis, within which friendships and sharing develop, is no easy feat; to achieve this, the young people literally digitized the Big Apple, even annexing New Jersey. The movement is conceived as a federated structure, divisible into groups following the logic of the boroughs. Then, through the use of digital platforms (Signal, Google Drive, and Instagram), the divided map is uploaded online. For example, I live in Central Brooklyn (there are also South and North Brooklyn), so if I want to participate in street actions, study groups, information booths, etc., I connect with the groups in my area that are active during the week. Every Monday, neighborhoods converge on the People’s Forum, where, among other activities, the next seven days’ schedule is decided and the platforms are updated accordingly. The impact on the city is widespread.
An information booth for Palestine activists
Personal and collective growth
Within the movement, great emphasis is placed on knowledge. Knowledge is considered a fundamental element of citizen activists, and so training courses are organized. I attended the introductory course, “What are a PAC, a Super PAC, and AIPAC (the super PAC linked to Israel)?” A short course on the contemporary history of wars in the Middle East, “America’s Forever Wars in the Middle East,” will soon be starting. In addition to courses of historical and cultural depth, which are typically held on-site on Thirty-seventh Street in Manhattan and which, while maintaining our language, are designed in a federated manner, there are others organized directly by the borough groups. For example, some time ago I joined one to “prepare for public speaking in various situations”—giving a speech in a square or on a subway train, drawing attention to an information booth, and the like. The meeting was in a private home, where some of us sat on the floor and others on sofas or armchairs; first, partly to get to know each other and break the ice, we asked each other questions about major systems, then we watched videos. I immediately realized that no one was an expert in public speaking—It’s hard to be one for a twenty-year-old.
Once we’d pinpointed the points we felt were important for constructing a good speech, such as giving importance to our listener, and had grasped some enunciation rules, such as remembering that it’s always an illusion to believe we’re speaking softly, each student spent ten minutes composing their own speech and delivering it standing up in front of everyone else. Needless to say, the students put in their utmost effort, both in their delivery and in helping each other improve; they did so in such an honest and spontaneous manner that no one felt offended or intimidated; in fact, we all went home enriched. And some decided that on Saturday (it was Thursday) they would speak in public at an event.
Research
There can be no knowledge without research, especially if the goal is lofty: to expose the truth of politics. I’d call it a herculean task, but it hasn’t intimidated New York activists; on the contrary, it has driven them to seek out data, facts, and names to present to other New Yorkers, whom they encounter on the streets and on social media, who are often victims of piecemeal information and ad hoc propaganda, such as “Israel’s right to defend itself.” So let’s take a closer look at these “defense weapons”!
Each group decides where to focus its research. Some are investigating the weapons factories in Brooklyn and New Jersey, where Israel sources its supplies; we at Central Brooklyn have chosen to focus on the flows of money flowing from Zionist lobbies into politicians’ pockets. One of my mentors told me, “Let’s follow the money.” He didn’t know he was a spiritual disciple of our dear Giovanni Falcone.
The research is conducted on Sundays at a charming café, where we set up our laptops at a large square table, surrounded by cups of tea and tasty pastries, and immerse ourselves in a labyrinthine network of institutional websites and online publications. Here too, we work on a shared platform that mirrors the group system of the digitalized city.
My first task was easy, but not predictable, and once again it demonstrated the level of expertise the movement has achieved. From a folder containing information on some of the city’s politicians, I extracted the key points for each name (money received from x and y, votes cast or withheld, phrases spoken, and more) and entered them into a document. In the end, I had compiled for each politician a list that would serve as a guide for preparing public speeches and that the speaker could keep handy if needed.
This specific research is part of the AIPACout! campaign, which aims to impose, through a sort of popular plebiscite, the exclusion of the Israel lobby from American politics. I’ve already discussed it in this article.
Awareness
One of the things that most struck me is how the natural pragmatism of American society has integrated with the desire for human and spiritual growth. Every time we meet, much of our time is spent not planning actions, sifting through details and technical problems, but reflecting on the reality around us and engaging in dialogue. We usually read articles, a paragraph each, and then discuss them. The last one we discussed was from the socialist magazine “Jacobin” and dealt with the historic solidarity of dockworkers. (Incidentally, from reading, I learned that in 1935, American dockworkers refused to load weapons destined for Italy for the invasion of Eritrea.) Another time, I remember, we worked on the concept of a barrier. The starting point had been an article that raised the possibility of another wall, this time between Israel and Lebanon.
Then there was a thought experiment, the outcome of which surprised me and gave me faith in a better humanity. We imagined that the Palestinian question had been resolved for the better and asked ourselves: “Will our work be done then?” Everyone answered no: there was so much left to do, for all the oppressed and disadvantaged peoples of the planet. We would remain committed until the war waged by imperialism against humanity and nature, in the form of neocolonialism, had been resolved at home and abroad.
Conclusions
This movement, born, or perhaps reborn, when we least expected it, isn’t interested in the enemy itself. In the people I frequent and meet, I’ve found neither anger nor a desire for revenge; in the assemblies, I’ve never witnessed verbal clashes; on the contrary, in the dialogues, respect for others and politeness reign supreme. In homes and small groups, I’ve never detected signs of drug use or other forms of abuse (what will the CIA think up this time?); I’ve always encountered only welcome, openness, and interest. Observing these people, so pure and devoted to the cause of a better society, I realized that perhaps they are the first generation to have understood that, first and foremost, we must raise the level of collective awareness: only then will good things come and last.